Sweden moves to tighten gun laws after mass shooting

Sweden will tighten its already strict gun laws, the government said Friday, days after a lone gunman killed at least 10 people in an attack the prime minister has called the worst mass shooting in the country's history.

New legislation was already being planned, based on the findings of a 2022 inquiry. After the mass shooting on Tuesday, at an adult education center in the central city of Orebro, it has been fast-tracked.

The proposal has not been formalized, but it will likely strengthen the basic requirements for acquiring a gun license, instructing the police to take into account age, weapons knowledge and skills as well as the person's criminal history. It will also likely call for broader checks on the applicant's medical history.

The new rules would make it more difficult to access semiautomatic weapons such as AR-15-style rifles. The firearm, lightweight and compatible with large magazines, has been permitted as a hunting rifle in Sweden since 2023. Under the new act, access to the weapon and similar types of firearms will be greatly restricted.

"The rules on gun possession are about balancing society's interest in preventing crime and accidents involving firearms and the interest in individuals and organizations having the opportunity to possess firearms in justified cases," the government said in a statement.

"We want to ensure that only the right people have guns in Sweden," Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the Swedish news agency TT while on a working visit to Latvia.

The minister of justice, Gunnar Strommer, told a news conference on Friday that the next step would be "spelling out in plain language what will be taken into account in the legislation."

The government then plans to pass a bill through parliament before the country's next general election in 2026, according to Caroline Opsahl, a spokesperson for the justice ministry.

The attack in Orebro has shocked Sweden, raising questions about how a Scandinavian country long associated with high living standards and low crime rates has developed what statistics indicate is one of the highest per capita rates of gun violence in the European Union.

"The horrific act of violence in Orebro raises several key questions about gun legislation," the government said in the statement announcing the new laws.

Although the police have not publicly confirmed the identity of the gunman, investigators had traced four firearm licenses to the suspect. At the scene, the police said, they found the gunman, who was among the dead, with three weapons, including what appeared to be a rifle, and a large cache of ammunition.

The new laws will give the police and medical professionals greater powers to assess a person applying for a gun license, by giving them more access to more information about the applicant.

They will be empowered to obtain information from local government records, public groups and other sources, the statement said. The police will also have greater powers to revoke licenses.

Sweden already grants gun licenses largely only to hunters or members of sports shooting clubs, according to Sven Granath, a criminologist at Stockholm University, but gangs and the drug trade have been able to stockpile firearms smuggled from postwar Balkan countries, Eastern Europe and Turkey, he said.

Gun violence has been on the rise, with 281 instances in 2017 when Sweden first started recording shootings during a crime wave, and peaking at 391 instances in 2022, according to police figures.