The figures do not admit nuances: in 2019, in Sweden 320 shootings were registered, with a balance of 100 wounded and 41 deceased. And, according to last year’s data, the country is already the second in Europa con “more deadly shootings” only after Croatia. What about one of the richest countries in the world, which until recently was admired for the results of its welfare state?
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According to Infobaethe increase in this type of homicide has been recorded since 2012, but it would suffice to go back to the beginning of this century to find a diametrically different picture.
For 2000, Sweden I was in the queue of European countries”in terms of deaths by firearms”. From being ranked 18th out of a total of 22 nations, by 2003, the nation “registered 2 deaths per million inhabitants, when the European average was 3.8″.
But what followed was the rebound. The peak was in 2017, when the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention indicated that there were already 4 deaths per million inhabitants. Infobae writes that while the continental figure reached 1.6, Sweden reached second place on the list of murders.
A failed project?
Sweden earned the respect and admiration of the world for handling a proposal that achieved very good results. The Welfare state helped citizens to fulfill their life projects to the point that, until two decades ago, was in second place in the Human Development Index. Today is seventh.
Similarly, while in 2005 “actual poverty or potential affected 14.4% of the population, the second lowest level in all of Europe”, for 2021, it reached 18.8%.
Even so, these figures are not enough to explain the increase in murders with firearms. What could have happened?
Also…
What happens in the US?
According to the NGO Team Enough, dedicated to educating about violence with firearms in the US there are 14,062 murders a year on average (864 of them are boys and girls between 1 and 17 years old). It is also estimated that every day 316 people are shot, 106 people die from gun violence and 39 are murdered.
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There are those who point to the lack of integration of migrants -”Sweden is the ninth country in the world that admitted the largest number of asylum seekers in relation to its population between 2010 and 2019″- as one of the causes.
In the equation we should also mention the large presence of illegal weapons, the formation of ghettos, the increase in criminal networks and mistrust in the system (both judicial and police as well as banking).
According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention“more than eight out of 10 shootings are related to organized crime” and mostly affect men between the ages of 20 and 29.
The BBC share more data: a study indicates that the “foreign-born children and their children are 2.5 to 3 times more likely to be suspected of a crime than those born in Sweden to Swedish parents”. Also, “30% of men born in Sweden but whose parents were born in Africa were suspected of crimes between 2015 and 2018″.
With this in mind, it is worth asking what the situation is like in neighboring countries. In the following graph, the data: