In Switzerland, EVERYBODY has a gun, but there are no mass-shootings. Here's why.

[DetlefK]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21379912

According to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, there are about 89 civilian-owned guns for every 100 people who live in the United States. Switzerland ranks third in terms of gun ownership, the Survey estimates, with 3.4 million guns among its population of nearly eight million.

Target shooting is a popular national sport but many of the firearms in Switzerland are military weapons.

All healthy Swiss men aged between 18 and 34 are obliged to do military service and all are issued with assault rifles or pistols which they are supposed to keep at home.

Twenty years ago the Swiss militia was a sizeable force of around 600,000 soldiers. Today it is only a third of that size but until recently most former soldiers used to keep their guns after they had completed their military duties, leading to lots of weapons being stored in the attics or cupboards of private Swiss households.

...

"The gun is not given to me to protect me or my family," he says. "I have been given this gun by my country to serve my country - and for me it is an honour to take care of it. I think it is a good thing for the state to give this responsibility to people."

In America then, gun ownership is about self-defence whereas in Switzerland it is seen more in terms of national security. To many traditionalists, a gun in the home has become a metaphor for an independent, well-fortified Switzerland which has helped to keep the country out of two world wars.




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A well-regulated militia.

Switzerland has a well-regulated militia where people treat their firearm as a means of serving their country, not as a means of personal goals.

It's the mentality.

In the US, your gun serves you. In Switzerland, your gun serves the country.

[safeinOhio]

1. Not just guns

even bullets have to be registered.

[treestar]

2. I recall talking to a Swede years ago

He said that they have the guns buried. They know where to go and get them if needed to defend the country.

Interesting, the true "patriots" who support individual gun ownership talk of defending themselves, not the country.

[NewJeffCT]

7. Yes

some "patriots" here envision a "Red Dawn" type scenario where a rag tag group of high school students defeat the invading Soviet army... only these days, it would be invading hordes of brown skinned Middle Easterners and Latin Americans since these RWers now love Mother Russia.

Or else, they're defending themselves from Obama's hordes of jack-booted thugs coming to take their white children and convert them to homosexuality, atheism, Islam and MSNBC watchers while forcing them to marry outside the white race. (And, yes, I know that atheism and Islam are not exactly compatible, but remember Obama was at once a radical secular humanist/atheist, a member of a radical black Christian church and also Islamic...)

[treestar]

11. lol too true

And that operation Obama was going to do in Texas, putting them all in camps.

[world wide wally]

3. IF we wer ever going to need our guns to fight tyranny, as the NJs like to say,

It seems like that time is now. If we are waiting for a Russian invasion, it looks like they will be throwing them a parade instead.
So run that reason we all need guns by me again, please.

[Squinch]

4. The obligatory military service probably also prevents the compensatory

"I'm-doing-tactical-stuff-just-like-GI-joe" play in the fields behind mom's house by doughy men in their twenties and thirties who are irate because no one takes them seriously.

[lostnfound]

9. Well put. Nt

[Pachamama]

5. In towns across Germany and where I have family, the vast majority of the citizenry participate in

....Schützenfest and are Schützen....and they all have guns.

Many of my family members have been generationally Schützenkonig.... on our family houses there are signs showing they are the Schützenkonig winner with a bullseye mark and the year they won. It is a sign of pride and they throw a big party for the club and town....I was even as a teenage girl in Bavaria a "Kinderkönigen"

They too are a well-regulated militia if they were needed....perhaps not with AR-15's or more powerful pistols, but the point is they are a self-defense and people feel safe. I don't know where Germany ranks in comparison, but I feel it is a safer place and that the citizenry takes safety and protecting their country and citizenry seriously.

I agree with what you just posted about Switzerland and I feel too that Germany is a safe place....I don't feel that in the US....

[rainin]

6. So we can require a 3 year licensing program called military service. n/t

[lostnfound]

8. Obliged to do military service between aged 18 and 34 issued with assault rifles OR pistols

1) young men seeing a path ahead of them with order, that entrusts them with an important and well disciplined obligation. -Vs- a population with certain segment of young men seeing themselves as failures and outcasts expected to chart their own path forward, when most of the paths open to them lead to destitution and isolation?

2) which ones get the assault rifles? The ones that prove themselves to be capable? Or an 18 year old loser that walks in and buys one because he is angry?

There are cultural issues warping some young American males in ways that may be less prevalent in Switzerland.

Perhaps the very idea of serving the country is an elevating value shared by most in Switzerland. What elevating values are shared across America? There is a great divide as to what those should be.

[Squinch]

10. This is kind of huge, isn't it? I wonder what a "improve American infrastructure" corps,

18-15 years old, with no salary but room and board paid for, would do...