Police in Iceland shot and killed a guy the other day (search "Iceland" on Google News). He had a shotgun (presumably because Iceland doesn't really have a big old smorgasboard when it comes to firearms), and was somewhat menacing. Still, the reason why the story went outside Iceland is because it's the first time that Icelandic police have ever, EVER, shot anyone to death.
See, I'm the kind of guy that sees guns in public, and sees police doing shootouts, and kind of moves to the next story. But it was the level of news of "the first time in history" so I'm taking a second look also.
And what I'm seeing is that Iceland has guns. Not a lot of guns, not a few guns, but some guns (what I read was 30 per 100 population, versus our 90 per 100 for the U.S.). And Iceland doesn't have all types of guns, like, for example, no handguns, because the folks there use guns for hunting, and that FACT leads to a reasonable constraint on options. Also, the red tape there, apparently, would make a standard U.S. gunnut resort to intemperate language expressing "appropriate" outrage at the restraint on personal freedom.
Still, what caught my eye was that Icelandic Police, in a country of over 300,000 persons, and 90,000 guns have just an incredibly, incredibly small number of true problems.
I wonder if we ought to do more things the way that Iceland does?