The Swedish parliament in fact held a vote of no confidence against the secretary of justice, for not having been able to handle the increase in gang violence. It failed, but none the less, it goes to show that this is not something that is being hidden. It is at the centre of public debate.
If people say it is not being addressed, they must be blind and deaf.
Still, we need to keep things in their proper perspective.....
If you look at the really big picture, the problems in Sweden are barely visible. Violent crime is fairly unusual compared to most other countries, and has not changed musch over time:
Yet if you zoom in a bit, you may start to detect something. While violent crime is slightly lower than in the 1990's, it has risen in recent years, and we're not following the downward trend in Westwrn Europe at large:
Perhaps even clearer if you compare with the other nordic countries:
So, basically, even though it is still true to maintain that deadly violence in Sweden is at a lower level than in 1990, you could also say that for the first time in the postwar era, the homicide rate in Sweden is higher than in its neighbouring countries.
It's 50% lower today than it was in the other nordic countries in 1986, but it is higher than their present homicide rate. While violent crime has nearly been halved elsewhere in Scandinavia over the past thirty years, it has not gone down as much here.
And then you can also present graphs that look as striking as this (People killed by handguns in Sweden):
It's a 462% increase over twelve years...
... but at the end of the day, 45 people were killed by handguns in Sweden in 2018 and 14,623 in the USA.
In all fairness, there are nearly 330 million people in the USA and only 10 in Sweden, so to make numbers comparable we need to divide the US number by 33. That makes it 443. Still slightly more than 45.
This is not denying that we have serious problems, at least when compared to the other Nordic countries or Western Europe, but it is kind of odd to see the Harmageddon-like descriptions presented by US and Russian media, when you consider that homicide and gun homicide rates in those countries are exponentially higher.
The uptick in gun related deaths, as well as in grenade use and explosions in general, is virtually completely connected to turf wars between drug gangs in Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg though, even if the odd incident has happened elsewhere, but then often in relation to people from one of those three cities. As one police officer in Malmö said on TV when asked if people should be concerned: "Every one shot so far had a criminal record. If you don't, you can probably sleep well at night."
Yet as these gangs increasingly start blowing up cars, clubs, stores and even homes, the risk for innocents getting hurt is increasing.
And the two women - one of them a young MD - that have been gunned down as a result of having criminal boyfriends, has really shocked people.
Everyone agrees that the problem needs to be addressed, and the political parties are competing at how many policemen you can throw at the problem.
