Swedish Study of Gun Violence Ignores Migration, Ethnicity of Shooters
3rd September 2024
As they do.
A report from Sweden’s Crime Prevention Council (BRÅ), commissioned by the government to study the increase in gun violence, completely fails to consider mass migration or the ethnicity or culture of shooters in its analysis.
Henrik Angerbrandt, one of the authors behind the study, told news outlet Samnytt that the study did not include the background of perpetrators as it was not considered interesting for the report: “We have not looked at the individual level. We have not looked at foreign backgrounds, and we have generally not examined socioeconomic factors.”
Last year, Sweden registered 363 shooting incidents (including 53 fatalities and 109 injured)—the highest numbers in Europe, in a country that once had the lowest firearm crime rate per capita. In contrast, the other three Nordic countries—which have all had significantly more restrictive migration policies—registered only six fatal shootings combined in 2023.
While Swedish authorities have shied away from identifying poorly controlled migration as a cause of increased violent crime, their Danish counterparts are upfront about it:
“Sweden is a frightening example of what happens when too little attention is given to immigration and law enforcement policies,” Danish MP Preben Bang Henriksen told daily paper Aftonbladet. “Neither the conservative nor the Social Democratic governments have addressed the problem.”