Norway like every other Western European country expect Switzerland has restrictions on gun ownership which limit guns legally to people that can actually use them, have a clean criminal record, actually need the gun and are completely mentally stable, however Norway does have one the highest gun ownership rates and gun homicide rate in Western Europe. The gun the recent attacks was probably stolen for a military warehouse.
P.S. And an earlier answerer claimed that the attacks happened because of strict gun laws, but countries with higher gun ownership almost universally have higher gun homicide rates. For example the country I live in has some of the most strict gun laws in the world to the point where I have never seen a real gun and neither has anyone in my family and the police don't have any guns. We also have the 2nd lowest gun homicide rate in the world with there being 42 gun related homicides a year in a country with a population of 62,000,000. Meanwhile the USA has the highest gun ownership rate in the world and had 12,632 in the same year.
mttamkim
2011-07-25 00:52:30 UTC
Norway has strict gun laws, although it's pretty easy to get a license for a shotgun or hunting rifle.
Licenses for the type of guns the shooter used in killing all those kids are impossible to get except for very, very special cases - and the shooter didn't even try. He didn't even have a license for the shotgun he had with him, which 'could' have been legal depending on if he had a criminal background.
As always, of course, all that banning guns meant was that when a criminal ignored the law and bought illegal guns, no-one was armed to stop him.
Kim
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