The police officers were just checking people when the shots were fired.

Stockholm on Sunday evening, the problem district of Rinkeby on the outskirts of the city.

A young man drove past the control on an electric scooter and is said to have opened fire on the police officers.

No one was injured and the suspect was arrested immediately.

Even if the background remained unclear at first, it was yet another example of how big the problem with shootings is in the country.

So big that in a speech just a few hours earlier, the Social Democratic Prime Minister had made the fight against gang violence and shootings a focus of her election campaign.

And she has long since addressed problems that social democrats have otherwise been reluctant to talk about in this context: immigration and integration.

Matthias Wysuwa

Political correspondent for northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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For years, there has hardly been an issue that has moved politics in Sweden as much as increasing gang violence.

Again and again people are shot dead on the streets of the kingdom, hand grenades explode, and again and again bystanders are hit.

The police had counted more and more criminal networks in recent years, and the gangs apparently find it easy to recruit young people again and again in the country's problem areas.

Neighborhoods like Rinkeby, where the proportion of people with a migration background is particularly high.

The opposition has long been driving the social democratic government in the fight against gang violence, demanding more police and harsher penalties.

In June, the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats tried to overthrow the responsible justice minister.

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The reason given was that crime was spreading in the country and that Sweden had become a "gangster country".

The motion of no-confidence just barely failed.

But Andersson had already begun to sharpen the tone in the fight against the gangs.

She has been prime minister since the end of last year, and just as she has consistently guided her Social Democrats towards NATO membership, she is now opening up her party to talking about segregation and integration problems in the fight against gangs.

The opposition threatens to lose an election campaign hit.

The Social Democrats are in polls at more than 30 percent, the middle-class moderates and the Sweden Democrats at around 18 percent.

Language requirements as a prerequisite for residence permits

There have already been 232 shootings this year, Andersson said on Sunday in Gothenburg.

So many that some barely made the headlines.

She said too much migration and too little integration had created parallel societies where gangs could grow.

She announced a national plan of action against gang violence.

These should include tougher penalties, so the minimum sentence for a serious weapons offense is to be raised from two to four years in prison.

In the future, however, the police should also be allowed to search apartments or cars in which gang members may have hidden their weapons without concrete suspicion of a crime.

Customs should also be given more options so that all the weapons don't even come to Sweden.

On Monday, her party then followed up with a plan to counter increasing segregation.

A state housing company should be able to buy apartments in problem areas and develop the areas.

Language requirements are also to be introduced for permanent residence permits – other parties had previously requested this.

Ulf Kristersson, who as leader of the moderates wants to become the next prime minister, said after Andersson's announcement that harsher punishments are good.

He just wants to introduce much tougher penalties.

Membership in a gang is said to be punishable - and anyone who comes to Sweden to join a gang is immediately deported.

The legal policy spokesman for his party, Johan Forssell, presented the plans on Monday – and said, with regard to the shots in Rinkeby on Sunday, that they are reminiscent of mafia Italy.