OnlinePoker

Iceland is a peacefully nation - they do not even have a army, an airforce or a naval force to speak about - just coastguard - who seldom use violence - but can bite even without weapons - as the british learned in the 1970s - over some fish rights... Iceland won that battle...

Diclotican

There are 60,000 guns in Iceland (30,000 registered owners), one for every 5 1/3 people. You would think at some point in the past, one of these gun owners would have gone off the deep end and had to be dealt with fataly by the police. It shows the measure of their society that they've probably been able to talk down these situations rather than coming in with guns blazing.

OnlinePoker

I also think, it is because in Iceland - and in so many other nations - even if it exist a lot of weapon - it is used to what it is intended to be used - to hunt animal - not pepole... And Universal Health Care - who might keep track about the few with mental disabilities does the trick in Iceland.... And it can also be because in Iceland - people is not as violent in general - than in the US, who is looks like the use of violence - and weapons (your dreadfully 2 amendment) is something ingrained into your Psyche - violence is the answer to everything - even old men with Alzheimer - who knock on a strangers door at 5 in the morning...


Diclotican

Nothing to do with any of those, for good or ill.

which is a Japanese credit company as well as a gazelle-like animal.

They are scientifically advanced and have access to one of the world's biggest armed group: NATO. A little information on Iceland:

'Among NATO members, Iceland has the smallest population and is the only one with no standing army. Its lightly armed Coast Guard is in charge of its defences.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland

Iceland's defences consist of the Icelandic Coast Guard which patrols Icelandic waters and airspace and other services such as the National Commissioner's National Security and Special Forces Units.[1][2][3][4] Iceland is however the only NATO member which maintains no standing army, although there is no legal impediment to forming one and Icelandic services perform the operations fellow NATO allies relegate to their standing armies...

There is in addition, a treaty with the United States for military defences and who once maintained a military base, Naval Air Station Keflavik. There are also agreements about military and other security operations with Norway,[7][8] Denmark[9][10][11] and other NATO countries.

Iceland holds the annual NATO exercises entitled Northern Viking. The most recent exercises were held in 2011,[12] as well as the EOD exercise "Northern Challenge". In 1997 Iceland hosted its first Partnership for Peace (PfP) exercise, "Cooperative Safeguard", which is the only multilateral PfP exercise so far in which Russia has participated. Another major PfP exercise was hosted in 2000. Iceland has also contributed ICRU peacekeepers to SFOR, KFOR and ISAF.

The government of Iceland contributes financially to NATO's international overhead costs and recently has taken a more active role in NATO deliberations and planning. Iceland hosted the NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Reykjavík in June 1987. Additionally Norway has agreed to grant Icelandic citizens the same eligibility as Norwegian citizens for military education in Norway and to serve as professional soldiers in the Norwegian Defence forces.[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Iceland

Let's look at the scope of NATO for a moment:

NATO recieves 70% of the world's defense money. Here is the map of NATO countries in the region:



The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's "Partnership for Peace", with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.[4]

For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization became drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and later Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Cold War rivals, which culminated with several former Warsaw Pact states joining the alliance in 1999 and 2004. The 11 September attacks of 2001 signaled the only occasion in NATO's history that Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty has been invoked as an attack on all NATO members.[5] After the attack, troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF, and the organization continues to operate in a range of roles, including sending trainers to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations[6] and most recently in 2011 enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. The less potent Article 4, which merely invokes consultation among NATO members has been invoked three times, and only by Turkey: once in 2003 over the Iraq War, and twice in 2012 over the Syrian civil war after the downing of an unarmed Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet and after a mortar was fired at Turkey from Syria.[7]

NATO spans the globe:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/North_Atlantic_Treaty_Organization_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg

NATO members:

Albania
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark*
Estonia
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal*
Romania*
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Turkey*
United Kingdom
United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO

Everyone's tax dollars. Iceland is part of the world community and have used it to their advantage. I'm sure that was TMI but I'm too tired to edit it. See you around.

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In Iceland, When Police Kill a Gunman, They Apologize

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-02/in-iceland-when-police-kill-a-gunman-they-apologize.html

/snip/

"The police regret this incident and wishes to extend its condolences to the man's family," said national police chief Haraldur Johannessen.

Details of the event have yet to emerge, but this much is clear: Iceland is a weird place. The population of the island is 325,000, while the number of registered firearms is 90,000, which when you consider that Iceland also has children, suggests that more than a third of the population is armed. So why don't Iceland's police have to shoot people?

/snip/

One factor may be that only SWAT teams of the kind called in for in today's shooting are allowed to carry guns; the rest of the police don't. So the average officer -- let alone a neighborhood watch character such as Florida's George Zimmerman -- can't shoot anyone because they aren't armed. And one reason they don't need to be armed is that the homicide rate in Iceland is so low -- on average, fewer than 0.3 per 100,000 of population, compared with 5 per 100,000 in the U.S. In 2009, according to the Global Study on Homicide, just one person was murdered in Iceland.

/snip/

Another point might be that although there are a lot of guns in Iceland (Icelanders like to hunt), buying one requires stringent checks, including a medical exam and a written test. That may prevent people from buying and using guns in a fit of anger. It might also explain why very few of Iceland's very few homicides involve firearms.
___________________________________________________________________________________________

Universal Healthcare, hydro and geothermal energy, no gun-toting civilians, OR COPS - no war machine,

and

fortunate for Iceland;

no oil, gas or anything else the USA can figure out how to get their mitts on.

I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I read years ago that when the Norse/Vikings whomever discovered Iceland and Greenland, they reversed the names.

Ergo, the land covered with ice was named Greenland,

and the "green" island was named Iceland.

Reason was (as the story goes) that the explorers did not want everyone rushing to this green paradise.

Whatever, Iceland is fortunate that it worked out well - just a little over 300,000 people in iceland - about the same population as St. Louis.


Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg

If I ever decide to retire anywhere other than Canada -

Iceland is on the top of my list.



CC

Every Icelander probably knows each other intimately within 2 degrees of separation. Concealing a crime in a situation like that would be almost impossible (plus you'd be shunned by literally your entire country).

It's an impressive stat, but not particularly useful because it could never be replicated in a larger country.