Norway to ban semi-automatic firearms as of 2021

Norway is moving to ban semi-automatic firearms as of 2021, which will mark a decade since mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik used such weapons to kill 69 people, most of them teenagers, before surrendering to police.

Peter Frolich of the Norwegian Parliament's judicial affairs committee says private persons, including hunters, "should not have the right in Norway to access such weapons." Frolich said today "a broad majority" in Norway's 169-seat parliament back the center-right government's proposal. No date for a vote was immediately set.

Breivik is serving a 21-year sentence for the 2011 attack where he first set off a car bomb outside the government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people, before opening fire on the annual summer camp of the left-wing Labor Party's youth wing on a nearby island.