Simon, now going by Andersson,
seemed to be a local, and to have formerly taken classes at the college:
The suspected gunman, who was among the dead, was named in media reports as Rickard Andersson, 35, a former student of the school who lived locally. He is understood to have attended some maths classes at the school a few years ago and had been unemployed for a decade.
I don't know how it compares with the immediate aftermath of other mass shootings, but for this one it's been
noted how reluctant the authorities are to release facts:
In the days since the shooting, there has been a striking lack of information from the authorities. On Thursday night, police had still not confirmed the identity of the gunman - widely reported by Swedish media to be 35-year-old local Rickard Andersson - nor any details about his motive or the victims.
Was this a 'race hate' attack? The perpetrator's a white native, while the victims appear to be mostly minority Syrian and Bosnian. Swedish TV has
reported that Andersson is heard on video shouting: "You will leave Europe!"
Andersson apparently registered as living in an apartment block in Orebro, yet his neighbors
don't recall seeing him living there:
He said he knew “nothing at all” about Andersson. “I’ve only seen his name on the door, that’s the only thing,” he said, describing it as “very unusual” because he says hello daily to his other neighbors in the small block.
It seems to be relatively easy (relatively, for Europe) for Swedes to acquire guns, and many of them
own at least one:
Authorities said the shooter had licenses for four weapons, three of which were found next to his body. Police have seized the fourth. Officials have only said at least one gun was a rifle-like weapon.
Currently, in order to possess a firearm legally in Sweden, applicants must obtain a weapon license and demonstrate that it will be used for an acceptable purpose, such as hunting or target shooting, and not be misused.
Applicants must also submit previously obtained hunting or target shooting certificates. Hunting certificates require people to pass a training course, while target shooters must be certified as active and experienced members of clubs.
In a country of roughly 10.5 million people, there were just over 660,000 registered gun owners at the beginning of 2024, according to the Swedish news agency TT. Those registered owners had some 2 million guns, objects that are considered firearms and weapon parts that require a permit.
TT reported that 1.6 million of those guns are registered for hunting, and another 176,000 for target-shooting.
All weapons must be stored in secure cabinets approved by the police.
Now we're hearing that the 'right-wing' (again, it's relative in Europe!) government is going to pass
a gun control law "restricting access to semi-automatic weapons," and this despite there being no official statement on the shooter having used such.
We do appear to hear semi-automatic gunfire in one of the videos from the atrocity:
It also appears that the perpetrator attempted to set fire to the building, before killing himself. However, this occurred after the police arrived and apparently
engaged in gunfire with the shooter:
Regional police chief Lars Wiren said officers arriving at the scene, where the gunman had killed 10 people before apparently killing himself, had described a scene resembling "an inferno".
Wiren said officers sent to the adult education centre in Orebro, west of Stockholm, were faced with "dead people, injured people, screams and smoke".
Releasing a timeline of the attack, police described how the first officers arrived at Campus Risbergska five minutes after police received several reports about a shooting at 12:33 pm (1133 GMT).
Shortly afterwards, officers reported smoke spreading through the building. They saw what they perceived to be "the shooter armed with a rifle-like weapon", said the police statement.
Within around 10 minutes of the first alert, a specialist first-response team had arrived and entered the building.
Wiren told reporters that officers got the impression that "the shooting started being directed at police when they entered the school instead of students and staff".
After a "time-consuming search" of the partially smoke-filled premised which lasted about an hour, they found the suspected shooter "dead with several weapons next to him".
Officers also found 10 empty magazines at the site and "a large amount of unused ammunition" next to the suspected gunman, who had turned the gun on himself and was dead when police reached him.
That seems odd to me. Andersson was
seen when they first arrived, and he presumably saw them because he opened fire on them... yet it took an
hour of "time-consuming search[ing]" to locate him, at which point he was prone on the floor and surrounded by a veritable arsenal of weapons and ammunition.
What was that "specialist first response team"
doing for an hour? Taking out the patsy and preparing the 'evidence'?
While the media is describing this as "the worst mass shooting ever in Sweden," it's anomalous in a country that has
the highest gun-homicide rate in Europe:
Sweden has recently earned a reputation as the EU's gun homicide capital.
In all of 2023, 53 people were killed in shootings across Sweden, which is home to around 10.5 million people. In 2022, that figure stood at 62 - and Stockholm's per-capita murder rate was roughly 30 times that of London.
Experts say the violence has been driven by a number of factors: Turf wars between gangs, a growing drugs market, an influx of guns into the market, growing inequality, high level of immigration and also a failure of migrant integration into society.
Mafia groups abroad have called the country a 'haven' for their activities, while organised crime groups have infiltrated business sectors and found ways to smuggle military-grade weapons into the country.
"Military-grade weapons" don't find their way into a country without the security services, at the very least, turning a blind eye to it.
www.friatider.se
