Shootings have fallen by half since 2022, but the numbers are landing in an election year that still treats gang violence as the country's biggest wound.
I checked the news on my phone last week, out of habit more than anything, looking for the kind of headline that used to arrive every few days: a shooting somewhere in Stockholm, a name, an age, sometimes a photo of police tape strung across a parking lot. I didn't find one. It took me a moment to notice what I was actually noticing.
The numbers.
Year | Shootings recorded | Fatal shootings / gun deaths | Est. share tied to gang/criminal-network conflict
2022 | 391 | 63 (record high) | ~80%
2023 | 363 | 53 | ~80%
2024 | 149 | 45 | ~80%
2025 | 158 | 42 | ~80%
2026 (H1, Jan-Jun) | 39 | not yet published | ~80% (provisional)
Sources: shooting and fatal-shooting counts from Statista/Swedish Police data (2022-2025) and NordiskPost (H1 2026); total deadly-violence and firearm-death figures for 2024-2025 from Brå. The ~80% gang/criminal-network share is Brå's own estimate (via researcher Kim Hradilova Selin), describing the recent baseline rather than a year-by-year official breakdown.
The toolkit.
None of this happened by accident. Since 2024, Sweden has rolled out a set of tools borrowed partly from Denmark's playbook: security zones where police can search people and vehicles without individual suspicion, a law letting police seize luxury goods from suspected gang members who can't explain how they paid for them, longer sentences for gang-related offenses, and anonymity protections for witnesses willing to testify against criminal networks. Reuters quoted Brå's own assessment that these measures, combined with better intelligence sharing, gave police the tools to seize gang assets and intervene before shootings happened rather than investigate after.
The catch.
Sweden holds a national election in September, and crime still polls as voters' top concern, even as the statistics improve. Part of that gap is real: Stockholm is the one major city where gun violence hasn't followed the national trend down, even as Malmö and Gothenburg cooled off from their worst years. Part of it is that fear doesn't update as fast as crime data does, especially after a decade of genuinely shocking headlines. And part of it is the security zones themselves, which Sweden's Equality Ombudsman has flagged as a real risk for ethnic profiling, since officers can act on clothing and appearance rather than concrete suspicion.
My read.
I'm glad the numbers are moving the right way, and I don't think that's an accident of politics. But a policy built on searching people without suspicion is a trade worth watching closely, not applauding uncritically. Sweden bought this improvement with tools that would have been unthinkable in Swedish policing a decade ago. Whether that trade holds up depends on whether Stockholm eventually falls in line with the rest of the country, or whether it turns out the easy gains have already been banked and the harder core of the problem is what's left.
Watch this.
If Stockholm's shooting numbers haven't caught up with the national trend by next year, that will say more about where Swedish policy still has work to do than any campaign speech this September will.
FAQs:
1. Does this mean neighborhoods like Rinkeby or Tensta are safe now?
A: Nationally the trend is real, but Stockholm is the one major city where shootings haven't followed the same decline seen in Malmö and Gothenburg.
2. Are the security zone searches actually preventing violence, or just displacing it?
A: Brå credits the combined toolkit, security zones plus asset seizure plus better intelligence sharing, with letting police intervene before shootings happen, though it cautions against reading too much into year-on-year swings.
3. How does Sweden's approach compare to Denmark's, which it borrowed from?
A: Sweden adopted a similar mix of tougher sentencing, warrantless search powers in designated zones, and asset seizure, following Denmark's earlier and broadly credited success against gang crime.
4. Why does crime still poll as the top voter concern if the numbers are improving?
A: Public fear lags real data after a decade of shocking headlines, and Stockholm's stalled progress keeps the issue alive heading into September's election.
5. Could the security zones themselves become a political liability?
A: Yes. Sweden's Equality Ombudsman has already flagged them as a real risk for ethnic profiling, since police can act on appearance rather than concrete suspicion.
6. How much of this is actually gang violence, versus other kinds of shootings?
A: The large majority. Brå's own research puts the gang/criminal-network share of fatal shootings at roughly 80 percent, a figure that has held steady even as the total numbers have fallen.
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