Salient to Investors:

Iceland is 15th in the world in legal gun ownership – 90,000 in a country with just over 300,000 people – yet violent crime is virtually non-existent, with a homicide rate between 1999-2009 never above 1.8 per 100,000 in any year versus between 5.0 and 5.8 in the US, according to the UN’s Global Study on Homicide.

In Iceland there is virtually no difference among upper, middle and lower classes.

The  University of Missouri found only 1.1% of study participants identified themselves as upper class, 1.5% saw themselves as lower class, and 97% saw themselves as upper-middle class, lower-middle class, or working class.

Bjorgvin Sigurdsson says equality was the biggest reason for the relative lack of crime – here the tycoon’s children go to school with everyone else, while Iceland’s social welfare and education systems promote an egalitarian culture.

Gun ownership includes a medical examination and a written test, and the police are unarmed.

There are few hard drugs in Iceland. Iceland has a tradition of preempting crime issues before they arise.

Read the full article at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22288564

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