As a lot of you know, the Swiss keep their military rifle after finishing their military service. A certain political party had proposed to ban this very old rule. But today in a official and nationwide referendum the swiss people have voted to keep their arms! Just an exemple of the sentiment of citizens toward gunownership in one of the safest countries in Europe!

Just keepin' an eye on this thread.
Just a reminder we have a "No Politics" rule.

-Blast

Not really, you are around about 10 times more likely to killed in Switzerland every year as the result of a gunshot than you are in Scotland (which is generally much much more violent than Switzerland to the point of being a recreational sport especially in some of the wilderness parts of Glasgow). Swiss gunshot murder and death rates per capita only look good when compared to the USA.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-switzerland.htm

Does anyone know if military service is a standard requirement there ... as in some other countries?

If so I can see where that would provide an ongoing "militia" of sorts (using the term militia in the sense of the US constitution - with no negative connotations).

Not to hijack this thread, but wow!!! ... I'd never seen the country-by-country rates. Any idea why the U.S. homicide numbers are so much higher than other 1st world countries (in Europe, Japan ...)?

A search on the web shows that these rates pretty much hold regardless of weapon (looking just at pure homicide rates).

The so-called 3rd world countries can have up to 3-5X that of the U.S. for the homicide rate, but still ...

First, there are actually proportionally fewer firearms in Switzerland than the US. The proportion of handguns is even smaller. The total Swiss military/police force isn't actually that large. Roughly between 1 in 6 and 1 in 8. Second, service members have the option of keeping their weapons. Many chose not to. Weapons kept after demobilizing have the full auto function removed. Which, by definition, converts the assault-rifle to a plain semi-auto rifle. The main issues in both the US and Switzerland are with handguns. Outside Mexico, which in effect has no controls, rifles are not a major issue.

It also has to be noted that the Swiss gun laws are actually far stricter than US laws in terms of licensing, registration, allowed amounts of firearms and ammunition, and restrictions on how firearms are transported and stored.

If anyone wishes to institute Swiss legal controls they are going to have to fight it out with the NRA to tighten the laws and controls. Until that time I fail to see how Switzerland is an example of less gun control.

I Alway's Wondered Where those Chocolate Bullets came from!:)

Blast: sorry I didn't want to get into politics! Besides, the swiss feminists were highly involved too!

Am Fear Liath: It is very hard to find good an accurate statistics on this matter. For me, I would not rely on a site called "huppi kangaroo" with a twirling hippie peace-sign. You fail to see how Switzerland is an example of less gun control! Well it certainly is an exemple of "not even more gun control".

KenK: murder rate in the US has less to do with guns and more with a number social issues i believe....

If I'm treading on politics unintentionally then I apologize in advance and I won't take offense if its deleted, as that wasn;t the intent.
The US is very diverse due to its size so statistics over the whole country are pretty much meaningless. We have states that are the size of whole countries with laws relating to guns/knives and/or self defense as varied as different countries. So you have to look at a smaller slice to get anythng meaningful.
Looking at murder statistcs the higher the rate is usually around larger cities such as NY, Chicago, etc and lower when you get into smaller towns and rural areas. So murder/crime is higher in part just due to more population density. Then there are the higher rates due to more strict self defense laws which do allow some more crime to happen because weather you agree with those laws or not, having guns or other means of self defense is a crime deterrant and having one more was to deter crime can help to reduce it.

Not sure I'd say this is a political issue really. In the UK all the politicians are in favour of bans and that isn't going to change. And despite making noises about it; no political parties in the US actually change anything either. But those are the rules of this site so I'm not discussing it.
I can't find any figures to back up this claim that Switzerland has a high shooting rate. Also note comparing shootings is the wrong comparison. There's no benefit if people kill others and themselves (a lot of 'shootings' are actually suicide) by a different method.
qjs

The main concern in Swiss, was the percentage of suicides using millitary rifles and pistols. Having these millitary weapons stored centrally, instead of at people's home would reduce this percentage. Ofcorse doing so, might not help suicides, since their are more ways to kill yourself.

This has nothing to do with criminal use or self defence (individually).

Exactly. So where is the benefit if someone kills themselves by stepping off a cliff instead of using a gun?
qjs

There are plenty of stats related to gun deaths such that either side (anti-gun and pro-gun) may support their cause. I've come to realize there are thousands of causal factors that influence crime and deviance. To take a single variable and promote it as the prime mediating variable of the resultant data, in spite of hundreds of other functioning independent variables, is beyond misleading. A small, wealthy, homogenized country like Switzerland cannot be compared directly to the open bordered melting pot of the U.S. by using a Tic-Tac-Toe type of analysis. We'd have to graduate to a 3-D Chess type of analysis, but then how many people would understand it?