'General armament': Why police in Norway could soon carry guns
Can Norwegian police bear arms today?
Police in Norway - like their counterparts in the IK (apart from Northern Ireland), New Zealand, Ireland, and Iceland - do not carry weapons when carrying out general duties.
Weapons are locked in patrol cars or at police stations, with officers required to obtain permission from the chief of police or someone designated by him/her before they can collect and use weapons.
Some specialized units, like the Emergency Response Unit, or Delta Force, are armed whenever deployed.
Police can also be temporarily armed, as happened in 2024 when there was a widespread threat to mosques around the country during the Eid al-Fitr festival.
READ ALSO:
Police in Norway can now patrol streets with firearms
What is the new law and when was it passed?
The new law,
Changes to the police law: armament in daily service,
will give Norway's National Police Directorate the power decide to arm police officers firearms in their daily work.
The directorate will be able to arm officers without any time limit and regardless of whether there is a severe threat - previously a condition for temporary armament.
The directorate will also decide when officers should be unarmed, such as
when working with children and youth, during school visits, preventive assignments, hospital security, contact with relatives, or when officers are testifying in court.
The directorate can also decide to leave local police forces the right to make an assessment over when or whether armament is necessary.
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When will the new law come into force?
The justice ministry hopes that the new law will come into force some time in 2026, after which it will be up to police chiefs to set the terms and extent of arming officers, depending on location, timing and assignment.
What's the rationale for the change?
There is growing unease over gang crime in Norway, with 38 homicides in 2024, the highest number since 2013. Norway has also suffered several terror attacks over the past few decades, such as the 2022 Oslo shooting, the Bærum mosque shooting, and the 2011 twin attack on Oslo's government quarter and the island of Utøya.
"There has been a change in crime patterns whereby organized criminal networks are now armed," Norway's justice minister Astri Aas-Hansen (Labour Party)
told VG
when she presented the proposal in May. "The police are encountering armed people out there, the threat situation has become sharper. And the police have been very clear in their professional advice to us."
Police Chief Ida Melbo Øystese said: "I am grateful for the trust that politicians in the government and the parliament show when they place so much emphasis on the fact that we in the police believe that general armament has become absolutely necessary."
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Who voted for the proposal?
The change was passed with a large majority: 81 in favour and only 20 against. Only four of the country's 11 parliamentary parties opposed the proposal, the Social Left Party, the Liberal Party, the Red Party, and he Green Party.
Ingvild Wetrhus Thorsvik, from the Liberal Party, said that by passing the law Norway had "crossed a line that marks a radical change for our rule of law".
"With widespread arming, the police lose their civil character," she told Norwegian news agency NTB.
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