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Sweden's deadliest mass shooting highlights global reality of gun violence, criminologist says

Police in Sweden have yet to identify a motive for the worst mass shooting in the country's history.

The attack at an adult education center in the city of Orebro, which has claimed at least 11 lives—including the suspected assailant—and injured six people is a tragic reminder that mass shootings are not restricted to the United States, a Northeastern University criminologist says.

"We've seen large-scale mass shootings in Russia, Norway, England, Germany and other countries," says James Alan Fox, a research professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern. "We in the United States don't have a monopoly on mass shootings, though we certainly have more than our share."

A study by Fox and his colleagues found that approximately 16% of the world's mass shootings—not including acts of political terror—were committed in the U.S.

"We have 5% of the world population," Fox says. "So 16% of mass shootings amounts to about three times our share."

Fox doubts that U.S. mass shootings influence similar tragedies in other countries.

"If that were the case then you would find shootings elsewhere following more closely in time the shootings in our country," Fox says. "I wouldn't necessarily see the shooting in Sweden as a copycat of what we've had."

According to the Associated Press/U.S. TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database, which Fox manages, the U.S. experienced a 27% drop in mass shootings with four or more victim fatalities in 2024 compared to the previous year.

"The last very large-scale mass shooting in our country was in Lewiston, Maine, more than one year ago," Fox says of the shootings that claimed 18 lives in October 2023.

The world's five deadliest mass shootings have occurred outside the U.S.—in Pakistan, Kenya, France and Norway.

Norway, New Zealand and Australia are among the countries that have responded to mass shootings by enacting stricter gun laws.

"Australia essentially outlawed the private ownership of guns," Fox says of the response to the 1996 murders of 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, by an assailant with a semi-automatic rifle. "They did a nationwide buyback and didn't have another mass shooting for decades now.

"But we're not Australia," Fox adds. "We have a Second Amendment that makes stricter legislation virtually impossible."

The mass shooting in Orebro occurred in spite of Sweden's strict gun laws. Though gang violence has been increasing in Sweden, Fox describes the tragedy as an outlier while noting Sweden's rate of 0.3 firearm-related homicides per 100,000 population.

By comparison, Massachusetts has a firearms-related murder rate of 1.6 per 100,000 people, which ranks Massachusetts among the safest states in the U.S.

"Sweden's rate is much lower than Massachusetts," Fox says. "These events happen elsewhere—but not to the same extent that they happen here."