Firearms in Norway |

It's hard to know how to begin writing about Friday's horrific tragedy in Norway. There's the absolute insanity of the shooter, Anders Behring Breivik. There are the American fundamentalist bloggers who supposedly influenced him. There is the growing fundamentalist movement in Europe.

There is something especially interesting, however, about how the Norwegian government and citizens are responding to this tragic event. It will be worth paying attention to the decisions that are made in the coming months and year regarding security in the country. This largely unarmed society could set an example for other nations like it, and even our own country, in terms of how it deals with this mass shooting.

Right now, most police in Norway don't carry weapons and were, perhaps, under-prepared for Friday's tragedy because they simply don't deal with violence often in the country. But will the government decide to loosen gun regulations and increase gun ownership, the way some Americans think they should, or will they continue to believe in the trustworthy, peaceful society that it has built for decades?

It is a startling and unfortunate truth in the United States that the number of people who were killed in Norway on Friday are killed every day by guns here. Norway considers this a national tragedy and the entire country seems to be coming out to mourn the dead. Yet, within hours of the mass shooting in Norway, we had four mass shootings in the United States, all of which went relatively unnoticed in the news. Over the weekend, Detroit experienced mass shootings as well. Granted these shootings weren't of the same scale as the youth camp shootings, but still, why don't we know more about this? And why doesn't our government consider these national tragedies?