Stockholm, Sweden: 63-year-old Daniel Cuevas Zuniga was peddling home after his night shift. He stopped to pick up an object that he thought was a toy:
It was an M-75 hand grenade. Manufactured in great numbers for the Yugoslav national army, and then seized by paramilitaries during the civil war in the 1990s, the grenades are packed with plastic explosives and 3,000 steel balls, well suited for attacks on enemy trenches and bunkers.
So reports the New York Times. Zuniga died; his wife, Wanna, peddling ahead of him was also blown off of her bicycle, shrapnel penetrating her body. Trying to crawl back to her husband, she was stopped by the police who happened to be nearby. The explosion shuddered windows 50 feet away.
According to the Times, “Much of the problem is the supply of surplus weapons.” Wait a minute. These “surplus weapons” have been available since the 1990s. But when did this use of hand grenades begin?
Affixed to the wall in Mr. Appelgren’s office in Stockholm’s Police Headquarters is a chart showing the increase in the use of hand grenades. Until 2014 there were about a handful every year. In 2015, that number leapt: 45 grenades were seized by the police, and 10 others were detonated. The next year, 55 were seized and 35 detonated. A modest decrease occurred in 2017, when 39 were seized and 21 were detonated.
Mmmm…what else happened beginning in 2015?
“We have lost the trust from the people who lived and worked in this area,” said Gunnar Appelgren, a police superintendent and specialist in gang violence.
What kinds of gangs? Blond-haired, blue-eyed Swedes?
Varby Gard has produced a street gang, the Varby Gard Network, which the police have been monitoring for two years. It is…