Los Angeles Times
For the first time in Iceland's modern history, police carried out a fatal shooting early Monday during an exchange of gunfire with a man reported to be firing at cars from his apartment window. Two police officers were wounded in the shootout that followed a 5 a.m. emergency call from neighbors, Euronews quoted an Icelandic news agency as reporting. The 59-year-old victim from eastern Reykjavik, who wasn't immediately identified, was taken to an area hospital where he died of his wounds. The British broadcaster referred to its May report on Iceland's crime rate, one of the lowest in the world despite widespread gun ownership. There are about 90,000 guns registered among Iceland's 315,000 people, making it 15th in the world in per capita gun ownership, GunPolicy.org reports. The author-researcher of the BBC crime study, Andrew Clark of Boston's Suffolk University Law School, attributed the low incidence of violent crime in Iceland to the absence of class distinctions in a country where 97% identify themselves as middle class. Clark also noted that, unlike in the United States, acquiring a gun involves a more rigorous system of checks, including a medical examination of the applicant and a written test.
Written test? That's how we could eliminate many of our gun owners right there.
