Lauren Boebert uses mass killing in Norway to argue against gun restrictions in US

The unrelated hashtag #LaurenBoebertIsSoDumb trended on Twitter

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert used a mass killing by bow and arrow in Norway to argue against gun control in the United States.

Hours after at least five people were killed and two were injured in the attack, the second amendment advocate said it showed gun control laws would not prevent mass killings.

"A man in Norway just killed a bunch of people with a bow and arrow. Norway has some of the strictest gun laws around, yet mass killings still occur," she said in a tweet.

"Liberals need to understand it is not the gun - it is the criminal who commits the act!”

Outgoing prime minister Erna Solberg noted in a press conference that mass killings in Norway were rare.

It has been more than a decade since extremist Anders Behring Breivik set a bomb off in Oslo’s government district before going on a shooting massacre at the summer camp of the country’s Labor Party’s youth organization on Utoya island.

He killed 77 people and shocked the country. Ms Solberg said the bow and arrow killing shortly after 6pm local time also shocked the country.

She said it was too early to identify a clear motive for the “gruesome” attack, and that police were working to determine if it was an act of terrorism.

The killing happened in Kongsberg, about 50 miles southwest of the country’s capital, Oslo. The suspect has been transported to a police station in Drammen, about 40 miles east of the attack in Kongsberg, but had not yet been questioned.

He was arrested after a "confrontation" with police about 30 minutes after the attack began. He is believed to have acted alone.

“The man who carried out the act has been arrested by the police, and there is no active search for more people. Based on the information we have, there is one person behind this,” Police Chief Oeying Aas said, according to the Associated Press.

Police said one of the two injured in the Norway attack was an off-duty police officer inside the shop where the attack took place. The two survivors of the attack were taken to a hospital and remain in intensive care undergoing treatment.

Shortly before Ms Boebert commented on the Norway attack, she was fending off the hashtag #LaurenBoebertIsSoDumb as an astroturfed political attack. It trended throughout the night.