> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but

> the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does Number of guns is a contributor to the difference, yes, but a more direct measure might be number of officers killed. The first source I find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Police_Service) says that 10 Norwegian police officers have been killed since 1945, or something like 0.14 per year. The US figure (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826297) is something like 50 per year, though that's actually way down since the 80's. Running with those numbers and dividing by population today, the US has almost six times as many officer deaths per capita. And that's an average; there are many places where it's as safe as Norway, and some places where it's a hundred times more dangerous.