Sweden Goes From Being One of the Safest Countries in Europe to the Second Most Dangerous

A new investigation finds that Sweden has gone from being one of the safest European countries 20 years ago in terms of gun crime to the second most dangerous.

The study, published by the country’s National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå), reveals that Sweden is the only country on the continent where shootings have increased substantially since the start of the century.

“Most of the fatal shootings in Sweden (around 80 percent) had a link to organised crime, according to the study, a proportion which had risen from 30 to 50 percent in the early 2000s and less than 20 percent in the 1990s. Brå also compared the proportion to other countries: around 60 percent of fatal shootings were linked to organised crime in the Netherlands, while in Finland such events were extremely rare,” reports The Local.

After having been ranked 18th out of 22 countries for gun crime from 2000 to 2003, Sweden now ranks in second place, behind only Croatia.