When protesters rallied against the shootings Thursday night in Dallas, at least one gunman opened fire on 12 officers, killing five of them.
Shortly after the shootings, U.S. and foreign commentators put a renewed spotlight on what they think has been one of the origins of most of the recent violence: gun control laws. But some experts say that a successful disarmament of the United States would have to be more extensive than many believe: Citizens and law enforcement personnel would have to hand over their weapons in the long term to make the U.S. a safer country.
It's a strategy that seems to work surprisingly well for other countries: In Britain, Ireland, Norway, Iceland and New Zealand, officers are unarmed when they are on patrol. Police are only equipped with firearms in special circumstances.
Police officers there have saved lives — exactly because they were unable to shoot.
"The practice is rooted in tradition and the belief that arming the police with guns engenders more gun violence than it prevents," Guðmundur Oddsson, an assistant professor of sociology at Northern Michigan University, told The Washington Post.
As the U.S. debates gun control and better policing, these five nations could teach some crucial lessons.
In Iceland, one third of all citizens are armed — but police officers are not most of the time
When police shot a man in Iceland in 2013, it was the first time police had used their firearms and killed a person in the history of this country, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Granted, Iceland is a tiny country with only 300,000 inhabitants.
However, one third of the country's population is armed with rifles and shotguns for hunting, making it the 15th most armed country per capita in the world. Despite this, crime is extremely rare.
Are Icelanders simply more peaceful than Americans? "Iceland's low crime rates are rooted in the country's small, homogeneous, egalitarian and tightly knit society," sociologist Oddsson said.
When asked what struck him most about crime in Iceland, Richard Wright, a criminology professor at Georgia State University, said: "Once, during a presentation, an Icelandic police officer kept referring to 'poor people with problems' — and it took me a while before I realized that she was talking about offenders. She considered every citizen precious because 'we are so few and there is so much to do,' she said."
Wright also thinks that the powerful standing of women in Iceland's politics, as well as within the police force, has helped to maintain low crime rates. Both Oddsson and Wright agree that low inequality and a strong welfare system have contributed to Iceland's success in sustaining its unarmed police.
Most of Ireland's officers are not even trained in using firearms
Ireland has gone a step further: There, most police officers would not even know how to use a gun if they were threatened. According to the U.N.-sponsored research site GunPolicy.org, only 20 to 25 percent of Irish police officers are qualified to use firearms. Despite that, Ireland has much lower crime rates than the United States.
In Britain, 82 percent of police do not want to be armed
"Sadly we know from the experience in America and other countries that having armed officers certainly does not mean, sadly, that police officers do not end up getting shot," Greater Manchester Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy was quoted as saying by British media outlets in 2012, after two of his officers were fatally shot.
The practice of walking unarmed patrols is an established fact of police life everywhere in the U.K. apart from Northern Ireland: Since the 19th century, British officers on patrol have considered themselves to be guardians of citizens, who should be easily approachable. There are far fewer incidents of deadly clashes between police and suspected criminals. While there were 461 "justifiable homicides" committed by U.S. police in 2013, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, there was not a single one in the United Kingdom the same year.