37 gun killings in Sweden in 2004 sounds reasonable, we usually have around 110 - 120 murders in sweden each year. We do also have an increasing problem with gang violence using illegally imported firearms, mainly old Sovietmade arms imported from the balkans.
Be aware though, that the numbers on the poster is useless, what is useful is the "per capita" numbers. 37 gunkillings in sweden would mean roughly 1480 gun killings in a country the size of the US.
This still means that there are roughly 8 times more gun murders per capita in the US than there are in Sweden, but then, Sweden is quite a bit smaller than the States, we have only one city of more than 1 million citizens (stockholm with connected towns is roughly 2 million citizens), the number two city is 600 000, number three 250 000 and number 4 is less than 200 000. Our entire population is less than the New york metropolitan area.
The big numbers of gun killings in the US is in the bad parts of the huge cities, types of neighborhoods that we simply dont have in sweden (yet). The difference in numbers of gun deaths between sweden and the USA is not a function of gunlaws, it is a function of radically different social systems and radically different cultures, not least of which is different welfare systems. In sweden you cant get rich through just ordinary work, due to thigh taxes, but on the other hand, our welfare systems make sure that even the unemployed, the sick and the unemployable have an acceptable material standard of living, hell, many on welfare have better clothing and more hightech toys than i have. This means that we as of yet have no killings over Nike Airs.
Our system have many failings, but fueling a thug culture is not one of them.
Our tough gunlaws is not responsible for our low gunkilling rates, our low total rate of murders is responsible for our low gunmurder rates.
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