Iceland is a sparsely populated island in the northern Atlantic. Its tiny population of some 330,000 live on a landmass around the size of Kentucky.

St. Louis, Missouri, which has a population slightly smaller than Iceland's, had 193 homicides linked to firearms last year.

Icelanders believe the rigorous gun laws on this small, remote volcanic rock can offer lessons to the United States.

"The system here works," said Gunnar Rúnar Sveinbjörnsson, a flip-flop-wearing spokesman for Reykjavik's police department. "We would be glad to help."

Like many outside the U.S., Sveinbjörnsson struggles to comprehend the extent of American gun violence.

"It's just madness," he says. "We just cannot understand why this isn't stopped and why something isn't being done."

No other country in the developed world comes close to the U.S. when it comes to gun ownership, gun homicides, mass shootings and police killings.

After the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the "Enough is Enough" movement led to laws tightening gun restrictions in the state, including raising the legal age to buy a gun to 21. But that has not been repeated in other states nor on a national level.

In many places in the U.S., it's still possible to buy a semi-automatic rifle in minutes with only patchy background checks.