@shadowen Said
"The two top reasons is the amount and type of training police have to get..."
Fair enough, that's your personal opinion. I agree that with better training comes (generally) better outcomes. BUT i would strongly dispute the fact that the top 2 reasons for Iceland's combination of high gun ownership and unarmed police (general duties) is the result of better police training. IMO the far more influential factors are socio-economic, demographic, geographic. It's down to their tight gun control, low drug rate, very little organised crime, a largely homogeneous society, social policies that provide a generally effective safety net etc etc etc.
Your theory may be correct . And I agree it's a combo of a lot of different things that makes something work or not . But I still say that it's the amount and type of training police have to get before they’re fully qualified and the mind set of the government . Here I will make a comparison, look at what happens when police get a more complete training as in countries like Iceland and then look what we get when police get 19 weeks of training on how to defend themselves.
As for the governments mind set, in America we have cops trained to defend themselves against us the citizens , in Iceland they have police trained in how to protect its citizens.
I started this thread thinking that we Americans could learn from Iceland's success , I'm not thinking copy cat them .
Hell, having cops trained to think more about the communities welfare then defending themselves from the community , would be a huge step in a better direction .