Sweden passed a milestone this month, but the dubious achievement was mostly lost under a deluge of news and commentary about Chinese spy balloons and the war in Ukraine. Crime statistics from last year revealed that the nation that once had one of Europe’s lowest rates of gun violence was closing in fast on Croatia for the continent’s highest per capita rate of fatal shootings.
The news was celebrated in a Stockholm suburb when a hooded gunman fired 15 rounds from an AK47 into the home of a mother and her infant child. Police arrested 13 and 14-year-old suspects after the getaway car crashed during a high-speed chase.
Such a brazen assault would have been front pages news in Sweden a few years ago. Today, however, it is another in a long litany of gangland violence that plagues the country. There were 388 shootings last year, with 61 fatalities. That was more than double the 2021 number, which itself had set a record and moved Sweden ahead of Italy and eastern European countries.
In fact, since 2000, Sweden is the only one of 22 European nations that has recorded “a significant rise in gun deaths.” While the number of shootings and fatalities might seem modest to Americans inured to mass shootings, it is alarming to Europeans who are accustomed to a fraction of the U.S.’s violent gun culture.
Rapes and sexual assaults are also at record levels. Every year during the past decade, the country averaged between 62 and 78 rapes per 100,000, about three times the number reported in 35 other European nations. The government claims that is because in 2013 it instituted a more liberal definition of rape by eliminating a requirement for the use of violence, threats or coercion and including cases where the victim did not physically resist.
Sweden’s is not unique, however, since many of its EU neighbors have similarly broadened the definition of rape but have not seen a jump in the number of reported assaults.
Sweden’s socially liberal and tolerant Nordic neighbors, Denmark, Finland and Norway, match or exceed Sweden’s progressive laws about rapes and sexual assaults. Yet, they have 60% to 80% fewer rapes per capita. Sweden has six times as many shootings per capita than their combined figure.
While the crime stats are bad, many Swedes suspect the numbers are underreported. That belief was so widespread that the government was forced to issue a report denying it was “covering up crime statistics,” claiming it had “nothing to gain” from underreporting the numbers.
What is behind the Swedish surge in crime?
A recent report put most of the blame on 52 criminal gangs concentrated in huge immigrant suburbs of Stockholm, Malmo, and Gothenburg.
They are in a cut-throat competition to control a booming and lucrative narcotics trade. The violence has skyrocketed because the gangs are heavily armed despite Sweden long boasting some of the strictest gun laws on the planet. All guns are licensed by the government, buyers have to take training courses that can last a year, and firearms are seldom stored at homes but usually in a lock box at a registered gun club.
What the Swedes did not envision was the birth of sophisticated criminal enterprises with cross-border reach. Swedish police and border agents have failed to stop the gangs from arming themselves with millions of dollars in surplus weapons smuggled from the Balkans. The gangs also have developed a penchant for using explosives, either bought on the black market or stolen from local construction sites. Some gangs produce their own IEDS or use ex-Yugoslavian M75 hand grenades.
It is no longer shocking to hear about a gang blowing up a restaurant or shop that refuses to pay protection money. Swedish police created a new crime category in 2017 to monitor the number of explosives and grenade attacks. (The only other country that tracks grenade attacks is Mexico; the two nations have a similar rate per capita).
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