Swiss considering draconian gun control ...

[spin]

Emotions and tradition clash over anti-gun move
Dec 22, 2010 - 08:57
by Urs Geiser and Olivier Pauchard, swissinfo.ch


Hands off my gun! warn opponents of the initiative (Keystone)

Supporters and opponents of a proposal aimed at limiting access to guns have launched their campaigns ahead of a nationwide vote in February.

Switzerland has the highest number of arms per capita, with estimates varying between 1.2 million and 2.3 million. But exact data are not available as there is no central arms register.

Shaken by a number of high-profile killings over the past decade a broad alliance of human rights groups, churches, women’s organisations, trade unions and centre-left political parties has succeeded in forcing a nationwide ballot on an anti-gun initiative.

***snip***

It is a long tradition that carbines, pistols and even assault rifles - a standard infantry weapon - are kept in Swiss households.

For decades the high number of firearms in the public sphere appeared to give little cause for concern. The problems only came to the fore in the context of a series of attacks and family killings, including the attack by a lone gunman on a cantonal parliament in 2001 and the murder of a former Swiss ski star by her husband four years ago.

A recent survey by criminologist Martin Killias estimates that up to 300 people are killed by army-issue firearms annually in Switzerland.

***snip***

Yvan Perrin, a parliamentarian for the rightwing Swiss People’s Party argues that a central database is a first step towards banning firearms altogether.

Perrin adds that a ban to keep army-issue guns in households is tantamount to disarming soldiers and would seriously undermine mandatory shooting practice and traditional shooting competitions.

“Allowing members of the armed forces to keep their guns at home is a sign of respect by the state for its citizens,” Perrin said.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/internal_affairs/Emotions_and_tradition_clash_over_anti-gun_move.html?cid=29083616

[wtmusic]

1. If there truly is a "a broad alliance of human rights groups,

churches, women’s organisations, trade unions and centre-left political parties" just how is the ballot being "forced"?

[X_Digger]

4. Broad != Deep

I can find many different spokemen for any claptrap you wish to name. Doesn't mean it represents anything more than a bunch of nuts.

[wtmusic]

17. Ah, ok.

Should we give gun fanatics an extra vote? Surely they deserve it, for their deep, deep support.

Ooh, I can almost feel it. :rofl:

[X_Digger]

32. 4 million, you mean? (And that's just the NRA members)..

How many members does the brady bunch have, again?

If I remember correctly, the last time the 'million mom march' put feet to ground, they couldn't rustle up 10,000...

[friendly_iconoclast]

41. The Bradys (including the Million Mom March!) claim +/- 50K members, IIRC.

And now that I think about it, isn't that blatant consumer fraud?

By the way- by their lights, I am a member for giving them $25. That should demonstrate the depth of their support...

[oneshooter]

42. Yet thy are $250,000 in debt! n/t

[damntexdem]

2. An idiotic policy in an urbanized society ends up killing people.

Hopefully the Swiss WILL impose more-rigorous gun control -- as should also be adopted in the U.S.

[SoCalNative]

3. Indeed

eom

[spin]

5. Some would point out that the Swiss policy ...

of allowing the personal weapons of members, including assault rifles, to be stored at home has been amazingly successful.

The crime rate in Switzerland is extremely low and the fact that the Swiss are so well armed and trained may even be the reason the Swiss were not invaded in WWII.

Military of Switzerland

The Swiss Armed Forces perform the roles of Switzerland's militia and regular army. Under the country's militia system, professional soldiers constitute about 5 percent of military personnel; the rest are conscript citizens 18 to 34 (in some cases up to 50) years old. Because of a long history of neutrality, the army does not take part in armed conflicts in other countries, but is part of several peacekeeping missions around the world.

The structure of the Swiss militia system stipulates that the soldiers keep their own personal equipment, including all personal weapons, at home. Compulsory military service concerns all male Swiss citizens, with women serving voluntarily. They usually receive initial training orders at the age of 18 for military conscription. About two-thirds of young Swiss men are found suitable for service, while alternative service exists for those found unsuitable.<3> Annually, approximately 20,000 persons are trained in basic training for a duration from 18 to 21 weeks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Switzerland

Girl Beats Guys: A Swiss Teen Rifle Festival
Das Zürcher Knabenschiessen



The greatest shooting festival in the world for youngsters takes place every year in Zurich, Switzerland. Imagine thousands of boys and girls shooting military service rifle over three days amid an enormous fair with ferris wheels and wild rides of all kinds. You’re at the Knabenschiessen (boys’ shooting contest).

Held since the year 1657, the competition traditionally has been both a sport and a way of encouraging marksmanship in a country where every male serves in the militia army. Today, girls compete along side the boys. In fact, girls are now winning the competition.

It’s September 13, 2004. In the U.S. on this date, the Clinton fake “assault weapon” ban sunsets. In Zurich, some 5,631 teens – 4,046 boys and 1,585 girls, aged 13-17 – have finished firing the Swiss service rifle, and it’s time for the shootoff.

That rifle is the SIG Strumgeweher (assault rifle) model 1990 (Stgw 90), a selective fire, 5.6 mm rifle with folding skeleton stock, bayonet lug, bipod, and grenade launcher. The Stgw 90 is a real assault rifle in that it is fully automatic, although that feature is disabled during the competition. Every Swiss man, on reaching age 20, is issued one to keep at home. Imagine all those teenagers firing this real assault rifle while their moms and dads look on with approval, anxiously awaiting the scores.



***snip***

In most years, the winner is a Schützenkönig – Shooting King. However, females at all ages are excelling in rifle and pistol competition. In the year 2000, in the Swiss Federal Shooting Festival held once every five years – the largest rifle competition in the world – a woman won first place in the military rifle competition, beating out all the males who serve in the Swiss militia army.

***snip***

Zurich’s youngsters who shoot military rifles have a lesson to teach Americans. It is a lesson of peace, family values, and responsibility, while gaining the ability to defend oneself and one’s community from aggression. As was well known to America’s Founders, who were enamored of the Swiss model, teaching the young to shoot is both a civic virtue and a wonderful sport.
http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/articles/swiss_teen_rifle_festival.html

[safeinOhio]

7. Why there laws have been so successful

Conditions for getting a Carrying Permit
There are three conditions:
• fulfilling the conditions for a buying permit (see section below)
• stating plausibly the need to carry firearms to protect oneself, other people, or real property from a specified danger
• passing an examination proving both weapon handling skills and knowledge regarding lawful use of the weapon
The carrying permit remains valid for a term of five years (unless otherwise surrendered or revoked), and applies only to the type of firearm for which the permit was issued. Additional constraints may be invoked to modify any specific permit. Neither hunters nor game wardens require a carrying permit.
• Transporting guns
• Guns may be transported in public as long as an appropriate justification is present. This means to transport a gun in public, the following requirements apply:
• The ammunition must be separated from the gun, no ammunition in a magazine.
• The transport has to be direct, i.e.:
• For courses or exercises hosted by marksmanship, hunting or military organisations,
• To an army warehouse and back,
• To and from a holder of a valid arms trade permit,
• To and from a specific event, e.g. gun shows.<9>
• • To purchase a firearm in a commercial shop, one needs to have a Waffenerwerbsschein (weapon acquisition permit). A permit allows the purchase of three firearms. Everyone over the age of 18 who is not psychiatrically disabled (such as having had a history of endangering his own life or the lives of others) or identified as posing security problems, and who has a clean criminal record (requires a Criminal Records Bureau check) can request such a permit.
• To buy a gun from an individual, no permit is needed, but the seller is expected to establish a reasonable certainty that the purchaser will fulfill the above-mentioned conditions (usually done through a Criminal Records Bureau check). The participants in such a transaction are required to prepare a written contract detailing the identities of both vendor and purchaser, the weapon's type, manufacturer, and serial number. The law requires the written contract to be kept for ten years by the buyer and seller. The seller is also required to see some official ID from the purchaser, for such sales are only allowed to Swiss nationals and foreigners with a valid residence permit, with the exception of those foreigners that come from certain countries (Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Albania, Algeria), to whom such sales are not allowed even if they do have a residence permit. Foreigners without a residence permit or from countries on the ban list must ask for a special permit.
• After turning 18, any individual can buy singleshot or semiautomatic long arms (breech-loading or muzzle-loading) without a permit (so-called "free arms"). Likewise, members of a recognized rifle association do not need a buying permit for purchasing antique repeaters, and hunters do not need one for buying typical hunting rifles.
• Basically, the sale of automatic firearms, selective fire weapons and certain accessoires such as sound suppressors ("silencers") is forbidden (as is the sale of certain disabled automatic firearms which have been identified as easily restored to fully automatic capability). The purchase of such items is however legal with a special permit issued by cantonal police. The issuance of such a permit requires additional requirements to be met, e.g. the possession of a specific gun locker.

• Most types of ammunition are available for commercial sale, including full metal jacket bullet calibres for military-issue weapons; hollow point rounds are only permitted for hunters. Ammunition sales are registered only at the point of sale by recording the buyer's name in a bound book.

[spin]

9. I can agree with some of these laws but not all ...

For example, I strongly disagree with the requirement that an individual has to state "plausibly the need to carry firearms to protect oneself, other people, or real property from a specified danger" before he can obtain a carry permit.

If you have a good reason to carry a firearm concealed it may be too late to go through the process of obtaining a license. By the time you get the license, your heirs may be dividing up your estate.

Also if you carry a weapon you should be a proficient as possible with it. This requires practice. Better to have the license and five or ten years of practice with your carry weapon than to have a new carry license and perhaps only a box or two of ammo through your weapon.

I also see no problem with having a firearm in your vehicle for self defense. Florida has allowed residents to carry a loaded firearm in their vehicle without a license for years. It has to be "securely encased" which basically means in your glove box.

I notice there is a requirement for a license to buy a firearm in a commercial shop which allows up to three weapons.

• • To purchase a firearm in a commercial shop, one needs to have a Waffenerwerbsschein (weapon acquisition permit). A permit allows the purchase of three firearms. Everyone over the age of 18 who is not psychiatrically disabled (such as having had a history of endangering his own life or the lives of others) or identified as posing security problems, and who has a clean criminal record (requires a Criminal Records Bureau check) can request such a permit.

However,

• After turning 18, any individual can buy singleshot or semiautomatic long arms (breech-loading or muzzle-loading) without a permit (so-called "free arms"). Likewise, members of a recognized rifle association do not need a buying permit for purchasing antique repeaters, and hunters do not need one for buying typical hunting rifles.

This is confusing. What type of weapons can you buy with the permit?

[Euromutt]

27. Or maybe the laws have been "successful" because...

...because Switzerland is, by western/central European standards, a pastoral, not particularly urbanized country with a high degree of social control, and crime just wouldn't be very high with or without these laws.

[spin]

29. True. It's hard to compare the crime rate between different countries ...

because of historical, environmental and cultural differences

[friendly_iconoclast]

24. So what about urbanized societies with higher murder rates- and stricter gun laws?

Notably, Russia and several other Eastern European countries...

[Euromutt]

36. That must be why Switzerland has one of the lowest homicide rates in Europe

Lower than those (in ascending order) of Denmark, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, the UK, Belgium and France. And ten years ago, Switzerland's homicide rate was also lower than those of Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. All countries with tighter guns laws and lower rates of private firearms ownership than Switzerland, particularly Ireland and the UK.

Honestly, hasn't the hypothesis of "more privately owned guns => more homicides" (let alone "more privately owned firearm => more violent crime") been more than adequately discredited by means of empirical evidence?

[safeinOhio]

38. Somalia, no gun laws, no government?

Extremes tell a lot. Should be an example for extreme libertarian types to explain.

[safeinOhio]

39. Pretty mixed bag on rate of gun ownership and crime

No. Country Guns per
100 residents Year Comment
1 United States 90.0 2007
2 Yemen 61.0 2007
3 Switzerland 46.0 2007
4 Iraq 39.0 2007
5 Serbia 37.5 2007
6 France 32.0 2007
7 Finland<5> 32.0 2008
8 Greece 31.8 2010
9 Canada 31.5 2007
10 Sweden 31.5 2007
11 Austria 31.0 2007
12 Germany 30.0 2007
13 New Zealand<2> 26.8 1993
14 Saudi Arabia 26.3 2007
15 Angola 20.5 2007
16 Thailand 16.0 2007
17 Australia 15.5 2007
18 Mexico 15.0 2007
19 South Africa 13.1 2007
20 Turkey 13.0 2007
21 Argentina 12.6 2007
22 Italy 12.1 2007
23 Pakistan 12.0 2007
24 Spain 11.0 2007
25 Russia 9.0 2007
26 Ukraine 9.0 2007
27 Brazil 8.8 2007
28 Colombia 7.2 2007
29 United Kingdom 5.6 2007
30 Iran 5.3 2007
31 Philippines 4.7 2007
32 India 4.0 2007
33 China 3.5 2007
34 Nigeria 1.0 2007

[Euromutt]

44. There's no correlation between privately owned firearms per capita and overall violent crime

That, at least, was the finding of a study conducted by Killias et al. published in the Canadian Journal of Criminology in 2001: http://rechten.uvt.nl/icvs/pdffiles/Guns_Killias_vanKesteren.pdf

[Euromutt]

43. Which Somalia are you talking about: today's or that of 5-20 years ago?

Because Somalia does actually have an internationally recognized transitional government, presided over by Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. The Transitional Federal Government has been around for four years or so. Hell, during the past twenty years, Somalia's problem hasn't been that it didn't have a government, but that it had multiple groups all vying by force of arms to become the government, to the exclusion of the others (aka civil war). The state of anarchy/anomie in Somalia was an effect of the civil war, not the cause of it.

But that aside, I don't really see how that relates to my earlier statement regarding the lack of correlation between levels of legal private firearms ownership and levels of violent crime. The fact remains that Switzerland has lower levels of violent crime than many other countries in Europe in spite of the latters' more restrictive gun laws. That doesn't prove that "more guns, less crime" (Somalia is something of a "black swan" in that regard), but then, that's not what I claimed. What I said was that "more guns ≠> more violent crime."

The assertion that Swiss firearms policy has been "idiotic" and "in an urbanized society end<ed> up killing people" is plainly ludicrous given the existence of countries with much more stringent gun laws that nevertheless have higher rates of violent crime, including homicide.

And actually, there's not really any reason to assume that "extremes tell a lot"; they don't tell you any more than any other data point in the collection, and taken by themselves, they're just anecdotal evidence.

[SteveM]

45. Solution searching for a problem...

Is the Swiss homicide rate (using guns) particularly high? If not, how does this relate to the high per capita gun ownership rate?

Prohibitions: many are the advocates, varied are the philosophies, failure is the common outcome.

[safeinOhio]

6. forget principles,

events drive public opinions and laws. If the Hutaree Militia's plan to murder a cop and then kill a hundred more at the funeral had worked out for them, our laws would have changed in a minute. I'm not saying that is good or bad, it just is. As of now, our crime rates have been going down, so there is support for relaxed regulations. If that were to drastically change, so would state and federal laws.

Those assault weapons in the homes are already regulated and all new hand gun sales are registered by the Swiss.

[spin]

8. The gun laws in Switzerland tightened up considerably after Switzerland signed...

the Schengen Treaty.

Changes due to the Schengen treaty

The rules laid out above were changed on 1 December 2008 as Switzerland joined the Schengen treaty; and all member countries must adapt some of their laws to a common standard. Following the draft of the Swiss government for the new Waffengesetz (weapons law), these points will change:

* Unlawful possession of guns will be punished.

* Gun trade among individuals will require a valid weapon acquisition permit: this is, from a Swiss point of view, a radical restriction that is assumed will undercut private gun trade dramatically.

* Every gun must be marked with a registered serial number.

* Airsoft guns and imitations of real guns will also be governed by the new law.

* Only one weapon may be purchased per weapon acquisition permit: Presumably, this will dry out the market for relatively cheap used guns, including popular collector's items such as Swiss army revolvers from the late 19th/early 20th century.

* Weapons acquired from an individual in the last ten years (which did not require a weapon acquisition permit) have to be registered. As a central weapons register was politically unfeasible, the authorities hope to get an overview of the market through this registration requirement.

* While the above mentioned "free arms" remain exempt from the weapon acquisition permit, the vendor is required to notify the local arms bureau of the sale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

[wikileaksfan]

10. Hopefully the Swiss will come up with some real strong gunlaws

This will take away the gun lobby's meme to always bring up Switzerland when when talking about "gun rights FREEDUMB". It is sickening how little respect for life Americans have, to think the gun lobby types brag about America being the worst nation in western culture for murder ands children killed by guns. :puke:

Here's one incident that may have broken the camels back. It sure seems like women and children bear a lot of the damage from this "sport"
"May 2, 2006

Top skier murdered at Alpine chalet
By Roger Boyes

Top skier murdered at Alpine chaletBy Roger Boyes CORINNE REY-BELLET, the former world champion skier, has been killed after a row with her Swiss banker husband ended in a fatal shooting in an Alpine chalet.
Swiss police yesterday began a nationwide manhunt for Gerold Stadler, the athlete’s husband, who was suspected of killing not only his 33-year-old wife but also her younger brother, Alain. Ms Rey-Bellet’s mother, Verena, was wounded and was said last night to be in a serious but stable condition.

The killing has shocked the international skiing community and condolences poured in yesterday from around the world for the Swiss former skier, who won the World Cup five times and took part in four Olympic Games.

Philippe Medico, an investigative judge, said that Mr Stadler, 34, had been seen leaving the chalet owned by the skier’s family with a weapon in his hand on Sunday night soon after the shootings. His car was later found 20km (12 miles) away, in the village of Ollon. “A handgun and an empty magazine were found on the passenger seat,” Mr Medico said."

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article712031.ece>

[spin]

11. Passng "real strong" gun laws will probably have little or no effect on cirme ...

In your story a firearm was used to murder, a crime that is already against the law. The fact that murder is illegal didn't appear to discourage the Swiss banker.

Considering the number of firearms in Switzerland and the fact that many homes have fully automatic assault rifles inside, the firearms murder rate is extremely low.

Just what changes would you like to see the Swiss make?

edited to add question

[safeinOhio]

13. One reason

"Considering the number of firearms in Switzerland and the fact that many homes have fully automatic assault rifles inside, the firearms murder rate is extremely low. " is that all of those full autos are only issued to trained members of the military..They are very regulated also. Must be locked in an approved storage unit and they must train with them regularly.
Some of there laws are very good and some might need to be changed to fit our culture. No law will stop all crime and I'm only in favor of those that will slow the possession of guns in the hands of criminals and other restricted people. There are crimes committed by people, usually crimes of passion like the example, that have never done anything illegal in their life. That is a small number of crimes and much less likely to affect me. Cross fire from drug gangs and stick ups are more likely and I'd like to see it harder for those involved in such activities to acquire handguns. I sometimes carry a concealed weapon, but I'd rather not have to. If any of you don't feel that way, that is fine with me. You are entitled to your feeling, just as the rest of the people are also. There is absolutely no reason to personally attack anyone for their view.

[spin]

16. You and I appear to agree that future gun control ...

should primarily focus on stopping violent criminals from obtaining and carrying firearms. I also worry about the organized drug cartels moving their war from Mexico into the United States. It's easy to say that Mexico has a corrupt and dysfunctional government which has led to their problems. The problem is that our government is also corrupt and dysfunctional. It's just a matter of degree.

That's why I favor admitting that our War on Drugs is and will continue to be a colossal and costly failure. We should legalize drugs such as marijuana and perhaps cocaine to take a high percentage of the profit motive out of drug smuggling. We could use the tax revenue to set up clinics to handle those who are addicted to strong drugs.

I can see no realistic reason why our country can't create a rational immigration policy to stop the human smuggling on our border. It appears that our government is willing to let big business profit from treating illegal immigrants as slave labor to be underpaid and oppressed. Once again our government represents big business rather that the people who vote at the polls.

I generally attempt to avoid using personal attacks against people for their opinions. I think the data favors my side of the debate, so logic and statistics are the only tools I need to argue my side of the debate. I have to admit that if I were anti-RKBA, I might have to use a different approach as my arguments would be so weak.

edited to improve statement

[safeinOhio]

21. Portugal has been having success.

•
• Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
• Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
•
•
• Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html#ixzz19LyGFc5E
•

[Euromutt]

40. The question of "which is most liberal?" very much depends on whether you look at laws or policies

It's entirely true that Dutch law doesn't permit personal possession, or possession with intent to traffic, but in practice, personal possession of any illegal drug is tolerated, and possession of a limited amount of cannabis is tolerated if within certain limits by a registered "coffeeshop." That's not the law, but it is policy.

The problem that we can identify from the Dutch experience of the past forty years, and which the Portuguese will undoubtedly discover in due course, is that while not treating consumers of drugs as offenders has some beneficial effects, as long as the production/import of, and trafficking in, drugs remain illegal, those aspects will remain under the control of organized crime, and the associated societal problems will persist. Because your non-criminalized consumers are going to want to buy their recreational narcotics from someone, and if the only source is the criminal circuit, that's who they're going to buy from.

If there's anything that defies logic more than drugs policy, I have yet to encounter it.

[Euromutt]

30. The "crime of passion" murder is pretty much entirely a myth

The murder of Ms Rey-Bellet, like just about every intimate partner homicide, didn't come out of the blue. In fact, spousal homicide is just about the most predictable form of homicide in existence. As the Times article states, "the couple separated ten days ago" (i.e. nine days before the murder), which almost certainly means that the conflict went much further back than that. In the United States, 75% of spousal murders occur after the woman leaves (as had happened in this case).

From the description of events in the article--the couple, plus Ms Rey-Bellet's parents and brother, were having "a family conference about their marital problems"--it strikes me as highly likely that Stadler brought the gun with the intention of killing Ms Rey-Bellet if she refused to come back, and the very fact that Ms Rey-Bellet had three family members present is a strong indication that she herself suspected Stadler would become violent upon being told that she wouldn't. Evidently, she underestimated how violent.

In just about every instance of men killing female family members, it's about the men protecting their self-image. It's men not being able to handle the idea that a female partner can be happier without him than with him; it's men worrying about the community's opinion of their worth as a man if they don't murder unfaithful spouses or nieces who have premarital sex. Frankly, cultural trappings of "honor" are at the root of an awfully large amount of homicide worldwide, from "honor killings" to capping some guy for "showing disrespect." The notion that your self-image isn't worth somebody else's life is one peculiar to the Enlightenment, and I doubt there's any culture that has fully accepted it. And until it is, all the gun laws in the world aren't going to stop people killing each other over seeming trivialities.

[PavePusher]

12. Yes, punishing the innocent majority for the transgressions of the criminal few...

has always made good political policy.

We should be doing it more, harder and faster.

[Straw Man]

14. Bragging?

It is sickening how little respect for life Americans have, to think the gun lobby types brag about America being the worst nation in western culture for murder ands children killed by guns. :puke:

Could you cite an example of that?

[safeinOhio]

19. Wasn't me.

Show the link.

[one-eyed fat man]

26. Here's the link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=352500&mesg_id=352518

You didn't have to look too hard.

[Straw Man]

34. Didn't say it was...

I was responding to #10.

[friendly_iconoclast]

22. He cannot provide an example- it's just another strawman argument.

And when someone points out the industrialized countries that do have higher murder rates than the States,

some of the contortions some go to in order to 'prove' that said countries aren't "advanced" or "industrialized"

are truly awesome to behold.

[Euromutt]

31. Note in addition the "killed by guns" clause

Because, you know, it's worse if someone gets shot to death than if he gets clubbed, knifed, beaten or strangled to death.

Or maybe because it allows the person making the claim to side-step that inconvenient fact that there are other countries with higher homicide rates and tighter gun laws, but people do their murdering with means other than guns.

[RSillsbee]

15. Funny

I thought the government's case against the hutarees was falling apart

[shadowrider]

18. It fell completely apart n/t

[safeinOhio]

20. Speculation

Trial start in Feb.

Show your link.

[safeinOhio]

23. Only google story confirming what you say

seems to be a blog by Andrew Breitbart.

Yes, if you follow Democratic Underground, that Andrew Breitbart.

[Ready4Change]

25. Crediblity?

From the article, in its very first paragraph:
"Switzerland has the highest number of arms per capita, with estimates varying between 1.2 million and 2.3 million. But exact data are not available as there is no central arms register."

I would read that as 1.2 to 2.3 millions arms per person. But maybe it's 1.2 millions arms between 2.3 millions persons? Or 1 million arms between 1.2 and 2.3 million persons? Or maybe they just mean there are between 1.2 and 2.3 million arms in the whole country? But clearly exact data really are not available, at least not from THIS article.

First paragraphs, in this day and age of readers who barely get past the title line, are crucial. If a news source can't get the grammar in that right, how much attention have they paid to getting anything else right?

[spin]

28. You are reading the english version of a page published in several different languages ...

which probably explains the grammar.

If you log on their site you have these choices:

Tuesday 28.12.2010
English | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Español | Português | 日本語 | عربي | 中文

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/index.html?cid=77490&WT.mc_id=ENG_adw_swissinfo&gclid=CMfaxpfijaYCFYtS2godIiNMXg

[Ready4Change]

33. Heheh on myself too.

I misspelled 'credibility.' :eyes: on me.

[Euromutt]

35. As spin notes, the article a (partial) translation

A bit of searching around the site indicates it's not a direct translation of a piece originally written in one of the languages of Switzerland (Switzerland has as official languages German, French, Italian and Romansh*), but appears to have been pieced together from earlier articles in German and French, with some background for non-Swiss readers.

The population of Switzerland was around 8 million last time I looked--actually 7.6 million according to the CIA's World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sz.html--so we're looking at 1.2-2.3 million firearms spread among that population. Which, incidentally, may mean that Switzerland has the highest number of firearms per capita in Europe, but they're well behind Yemen and the United States.

The article also misses clarifying a number of points.

The problems only came to the fore in the context of a series of attacks and family killings, including the attack by a lone gunman on a cantonal parliament in 2001 and the murder of a former Swiss ski star by her husband four years ago.

It's worth pointing out that "Zug massacre" was committed by a guy who had been rejected for compulsory military service (and thus did not have any army-issue firearms), and had prior criminal convictions and was drawing a disability pension for a personality disorder. Has he been American, he would very probably have been prohibited from possessing firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

A recent survey by criminologist Martin Killias estimates that up to 300 people are killed by army-issue firearms annually in Switzerland.

That's somewhat misleadingly presented, because the number of homicides in Switzerland is usually in the 70-90 range (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-07-015/EN/KS-SF-07-015-EN.PDF see Table 2), and not all of those involve army-issue firearms. Thus Killias has to also be counting suicides and unintentional shootings; for all I know he's counting fatalities resulting from accidents in military training as well.
(This is the same Killias who co-authored a paper published in 2001 http://rechten.uvt.nl/icvs/pdffiles/Guns_Killias_vanKesteren.pdf which found no statistically significant correlation between rates of private firearm ownership and total homicide and suicide rates. And as we all know, kids, while correlation is not a sufficient condition for establishing a causal relationship, it is a necessary condition.)

So yeah, it's not the best piece of journalism ever, even allowing for the fact the authors weren't writing in their native language.

* - Romansh is a Rhaeto-Romance language, which are spoken across the southern Alps; it is descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken in certain provinces of the Roman empire.

[benEzra]

37. Ummm, the UK's murder rate is HIGHER than Switzerland's...

and the UK has gun control laws that are extreme even by European standards.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

This just goes to show that the prohibitionists and moral crusaders will never say "enough", IMO. Even if your murder rate is lower than that of the most extreme gun-banning utopias in the world, they will still be calling for bans on lawful and responsible ownership.