High rates of suicide and easy access to firearms by suicidal people have a great deal to do with each other.

According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, the United States has almost 90 firearms for every 100 Americans, number 1 in the world. (Switzerland is 3rd with 46 guns per 100 Swiss.) www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/sas/publications/yearbpdf/2007/Annexe4gunownership.xls

By no coincidence at all - gun suicide attempts have a fatality rate of about 90% - over 50% of our suicides (some 17,000 every year) are committed with firearms.

As the Harvard School of Public Health has shown, “Means Matter”:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter

Doug Pennington BradyCampaign.org

As an Englishman, living in England, we as a nation have gone through the question of banning pistols, and restricting the use of military types of rifles. Since 1997, when all centre fire pistols from .22 upwards, were banned, gun crime in the UK as got out of control, with an increase in such occurances going up annualy by between 15% - 30%. We as people who do shoot, predicted this at the time, but the government did not want to listen. We have always looked upon Switzerland as a place with a sensible approach to the possession of Firearms. I am married to a Swiss, live in the UK, and have a son living in Switzerland [ Dual National]. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the possesion of firearms by sensible people, will increase gun crime. “If you outlaw guns, then only outlaws have guns”

Yes, in my view, guns have nothing to do in homes, whatsoever.

Mr. Pennington is disingenuous when he infers that firearms cause suicide. They do not. Countries with extremely high rates of suicide often outlaw all firearms. Countries such as Japan. If you follow the news, the “weapon” of choice in Japan is a mixture of commonly available chemicals that emit toxic fumes. The problem is that a suicidal person often takes out several people who are not suicidal.

Mr. Pennington is correct that guns are very effective if your goal is suicide. But then so is jumping off of tall buildings or driving very fast into a bridge abutment.

Mr. Dexter is absolutely correct that outlawing guns enables criminals. The areas in the US where the Brady Victim Disarmament enablers give a very high rating for effective gun control also have higher crime that areas where the people carry firearms concealed. Citizens that have obtained a permit to carry are some of the safest most law abiding people in the country. I would say that they are safer than the police but I can’t make that argument because although the police keep statistics on the permit holders, they will not release the same data on the police. I wonder why?

I see one of the blood dancers from the Brady bunch are trying to score propaganda points. A remarkable hubris from an organization that is nothing but a few thousand neurotic petition signers and some wealthy sponsors. If any Swiss are reading this be warned: Sarah Brady and her entourage rank about as high with decent Americans as Vidkun Quisling does with the Norwegians.

” marie-France Robert Sunday, 14 June, 2009 09:11 [ 3 ] Yes, in my view, guns have nothing to do in homes, whatsoever. “

Marie, While I respect your view that guns have nothing to do in homes, I suggest that you not keep any firearms in your home then. I also suggest that you keep your views and politics out of my home.

Doug, While firearms effectively kill those people who desperately want to die, there are many other ways that they can, and do, take their own lives. It is sad, I know. However, over 30,000 instances of violence (assault, rape, death) are stopped & prevented each year with the use of firearms in the U.S. It is a human right for me to protect myself as I wish. Accidental death by firearm is below swimming pool drownings.

I have never seen any argument supporting any gun bans which has not done more harm than good. In short - if you don’t like guns, don’t get one.

http://www.a-human-right.com/

there’s just no way any anti-gun hoplophobe can be mistaken in this day and age. each and every one is either thoroughly ignorant or agenda-driven, intentionally misleading.

in america, there will be no more backing up from the human right to self-defense. there will be no more tolerance of “gun control” laws that only serve to get innocent people killed by criminals who obviously weren’t obeying any laws to begin with.

“gun suicides” are still just suicides. “gun crime” is still just crime. why don’t you ask the victims of violent crimes if they care whether they were shot or stabbed to death? oh, that’s right. you can’t. they didn’t have the means to survive.

The lights have gone out in England, and they are going out in the rest of Europe. How dare the Swiss refuse to become sheep! How do you expect bureaucrats in Brussels to be able to dictate every aspect of your life if you are able to tell them to go pound sand?

They should emulate England, where feral children and travelers wield absolute control of the smaller hamlets.

Along with the Brady Campaign, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence group in the US is actively disseminating misinformation on guns and crime. Their laeder has published a book entitiled “Guns’ Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea” that attempts to “debunk” the myths of Swiss gun ownership and their resistance to Nazis invasion in WWII, as well as the lack of guns by Jews and their mass-murder by Nazis in WWII.

For the anti-gun mongers, their ends justfy any means, including writing guns out of the history of freedom.

I for one hope the Swiss keep their rifles. I wish it were easier for us here in the US to keep rifles of military utility (read fully automatic assault rifles), but that ability has been handicapped since the 1930’s and severely handicapped since the 1960’s, and unfortunately a right extinguished for a generation and forgotten and very unlikely to be regained. Doug Pennington is a moron. The presence of an inanimate object does not cause anyone to commit suicide although he’s right that perhaps people can commit suicide more effectively with a firearm than other easily available methods. However, would it be any better if the same number of people died jumping out of buildings or an equal number attempted suicide, but only half died leaving the other half permanently disabled? Doug, just admit that it has nothing to do with crime or suicide. You don’t like guns and you don’t trust people therefore you attempt to control people and take away their guns simply as an aside because it’s easy to rile the useful idiots into a lather about ’assault weapons’ and the such and it confirms your hoplophobic tendencies.

The gun confiscators always cite bogus studies that universally omit one glaring flaw with their “statistical analysis”: they have no way of quantifying the use (or disuse) of personal firearms as a daily deterrent to criminal assault, insurrection/terrorism or foreign invasion. They conveniently fail to come to grips with the fact that even though a shot may never be fired, the firearm on the wall is actually being used. It is providing a service by giving peace of mind to his owner and by placing a strong disincentive to potential assailants who ultimately refrain from hostile acts because of the mere possibility their victim may kill them.

To the Swiss people: KEEP YOUR GUNS NO MATTER WHAT! Civilian gun ownership = Freedom from oppression.

Well there you go: some dolt from the Brady Campaign thinks its a bad idea to have the freedom and ability to protect yourself. Surely several hundred suicide cases per year is enough reason to give up your freedom, isn’t it?

The only countries that have been taken by tyranny were done just after they were ordered to disarm.Most constitutions have a pro weapons clause for this reason specifically.So one,everyone must….MUST…Stand and ask why when a government request so.

Odds are this is a conspiracy perpetrated by EU nations to try to disarm the proud Swiss people. Do not give in, do not allow your rights to be squashed. The first and most important step to removing a people’s freedom is to remove their ability to defend themselves from tyranny.

I fail to understand why people seem to want to focus on guns rather than the person using it. In Toronto the other day, an impaired driver driving a BMW killed 3 people and seriously injured 2 others, yet there is no call to ban either cars, BMWs or alcohol.

The Swiss are a shining example of a free state.

Do not buy into the cult ideology of the Nanny State socialists.

They are little more than social parasites who seek to keep our hospitals, psychologists, jailers and lawyers fat from with business of recidivist criminal parasites and revolving door ’justice’ cough cough.

As with WWII Germany, the price is ever paid for by the blood of those incapable of protecting themselves.

The important question I am obligated to answer is why someone would want to commit suicide in the first place. Is it because of the excesses of Western civilization and the constant attack on the nuclear family by the media and others? When the question is framed this way, which to me seems the most honest and objective view, then the firearm is the means to a very tragic end.
Life is cheapened more and more all of the time. I’ll keep my guns, and keep my freedom. It is no coincidence that despots like Hitler and Stalin preferred their citizenry unarmed and helpless. Anyone can promise you anything on a piece of paper. I despair when I see our freedoms in America eroded in an insidious manner by the self serving political body that is our congress.

Excellent video with excellent examples of why the private ownership of firearms by decent citizens is so important. People bent on suicide will do it regardless of available means.

Disarming the populations of the world will only lead to tyranny on a scale never before seen.

I intend to keep my guns and will NOT give them up just because some insane, power hungry people think I should.

Yes if there are fewer guns then there are fewer suicide by guns but a number of studies have demonstrated that if there are fewer guns then “substitution” occurs and in the end the net number of suicide remains the same.

So the argument that fewer guns equates to fewer suicides is patently false and in no way is valid when trying to take away the right of people to self defence.

To those who do not wish to keep guns in their homes, good for you, no gun owner will ever force you to keep a firearm in your home.

It would be nice if you had the same courtesy and kept your opinions out of other peoples homes also.

Shortly after stricter gun control was enacted here in Canada (in 1995), the number of suicides with firearms did drop significantly; However, the overall number of suicides per year actually increased. So what does this say? It says that someone who is determined to kill themselves will find a way to do it.

It’s a good thing the Swiss have guns. If they didn’t, their crime rate would be out of control just like in the UK and other places where gun ownership and self-defense are discouraged. There are so many people out there who lacked the means to defend themselves and died needlessly, all because someone behind a desk decided it was for their own safety. In my mind, organizations like the Brady Campaign and the Coalition for Gun Control are no better than the criminals who refuse to abide by their gun control schemes.

The gun control debate goes round and round but I think we are missing an important point. In societies which are healthy there is an freedom of acceptance for other points of view. I do not agree with you but will defend your right to have that belief. When you decide that only you are right and every one else is wrong, now we have problems. Our Western societies are ill. We have gone so far to the side of individual freedoms that we forgot all about how we got that freedom. We did not ask for it, we fought and died for it. It is not a right that is granted by some benevolent BIg Brother. We as individuals must accept responsibility for ourselves. If we loose the right to our firearms, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We must ALWAYS speak up when our rights are threatened. We have enough examples of what happens if we don’t.

I found this article very interesting as the Swiss have one of the lowest murder rates in the world with firearm in most homes..Do people really think that it will go even lower if they take their gun away from them ?? The British did that years ago and it did not help..Now they are wanting to make kitchen knives without points..beer mugs that can’t be broken and used for weapons as these are now what is used to kill and injury . It is not the weapon of choice that kills it is the person that kills.. no matter what you ban they will find a way to kill themselves or others. Why not teach people how to deal with there anger through non violent means even then some people will go over the edge.. there can not be a perfect world..

Doug is right-if we ban guns because people misuse them, why don’t we ban alcohol because people misuse it? Oh, wait, that’s right-we tried that already, and if I remember correctly, that didn’t go over too well, now did it? As for keeping this freedom, one way I can see improving this is by requiring a valid certificate of sanity before getting a permit. In effect, this would rule out the suicidal and the insane, and would, in my opinion, be a lot more effective than banning guns altogether. Frankly, if we ban guns, crime will increase, just like it did when alcohol was banned.

Yep, even the anti-gunners use guns to keep themselves alive. Case in point: http://forums.goupstate.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8661098265/m/2761035429/r/2261086429

Some how I missed this article back in August??

RALEIGH — Long time Anti-Gun Advocate State Senator R.C. Soles, 74, shot one of two intruders at his home Sunday…

Doug

you are confusing causation and correlation.

Please retake statisitics before trying to mislead the public.

-Finch

Keep Your Laws Off My Guns KYLOMG.com

What a lame story to bring up the debate. I doubt the Swiss will change to storing guns in barracks unless the barracks can be accessed by the civilians. But if I were an invading army I would know which buildings to secure first….

Would it prevent suicide? I think not. Either way, I could walk up to the barracks, get my rifle and shoot myself. Maybe you could make someone wear a mood ring before they access their firearm. If I am determined to die you can’t stop me. But I am not, and if I was I would hope that someone would refer me to a psychologist and therapy….which I believe is much more useful than trying to get rid of “all things dangerous”….like windows, poison, guns, knives, and very nasty sharp paper cuts.

There is room for all opinions. I wouldn’t put someone down because they don’t agree with me. They can keep guns out of their house. Others can keep their guns in the house. Common sense dictates that the guns should be locked, or disabled and the only one who should have access to the gun is the owner/user. If you can’t secure your firearm and pony up a few bucks to buy and use a lock or a safe then you really don’t deserve to have a gun.

I can already hear the counter-argument (slightly exagerrated for effect).

“But….but….I want to have a loaded firearm in every drawer of my kitchen, my bathroom needs one, under my pillow, and by the couch in the living room, one in the care….one in the garage….” That is just downright paranoia in it’s worst form. Why on Earth would you need that? I hope you aren’t my neighbor because in the rare event you might actually use it, I would have to dodge the projectiles that go through walls when you finally unleash your barrage of firepower. I also would hate to have you inadvertently arm the local neighborhood burglars with a loaded gun….

My two cents….

There is a reason that Switzerland was not occupied by the Nazis - an army of militiamen that would cause great damage to the invader. My hat is off to the Swiss - I respect a country and government that is not afraid of its people. The government should fear the citizen, the citizen should not fear the government…and ALL tyrants should continue to fear the armed citizen that he wants to make into a subject.

There is, after all, only one real reason why some don’t want you to have firearms. They don’t want you to have the means to defend yourself against whatever plans they have for you; be that robbery, rape or government action.

More guns might conceivably (but I doubt it) lead to more suicide however more citezen possessed guns definitely leads to more freedom, less tyrrany and fewer civilians murdered by governments.

Swiss people, keep your guns.

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

I have always admired you folks in Switzerland. I live in the Rocky Mountain west of America. I have a high opinion of your military and your firearms’ policy regarding having your military weapons in your home, and your government providing ammunition for your practice. Do not be influenced by those from America who try to incite you to give up your firearms.

Gotta love them gun grabbers, trying to turn everyone into sheep to be preyed on by wolves. An armed society is a polite society. I applaud those that arm themselves, for they are the sheepdogs, and I like sheepdogs.

Clearly, the problem isn’t the guns, but the criminals (and mentally ill) using them. You don’t blame the car when a drunk driver runs down a kid walking home: you blame the driver. You don’t blame the gun when a shooter walks into a store and lays waste to a family, you blame the shooter.

What’s this, people are blaming the gun? Ridiculous.

To paraphrase a quote from Aaron Zelman (a great American and founder of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership)…Never forget, the one and only reason that anyone will ever try to take your gun away is to make you weaker than he, so that he can do something to you that you would not allow if you possesed the tools to prevent it…

The simple, honest truth.

“Obey Congress & defend yourself with kitchen knives & BB guns while congratulating yourself for being a good slave—I mean, ’citizen’.—Boston T. Party author of ’Boston’s Gun Bible’

“The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.”-Sam Cohen, inventor of the Neutron Bomb

”You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”—Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

(Robert Fister Friday, 18 September, 2009 19:11 [ 6 ]) Thank you! That’s all that needed to be said. Semper Fi!

-People saying society will be safer without guns are afraid of weapons. -People who are afraid often cannot think in an objective way… -The only, ONLY reason politicians using scared people is to gain more power.

The question that never seems to get an answer by the prohibitionists is - What happens when governments and their institutions go bad? History is littered with examples of the results. but do they want to listen and learn?

How soon we forget.

The Holocaust was Real.

And it will never happen to an armed populace.

You sheep can quietly go to slaughter if you want, but we wolves will fight.

Great idea ! Let the Government take away your guns ! it worked out so well in Germany ! and every other country that has disarmed its people ! For the Government that is ! not for the Millions of people SLAUGHTERED ! I’ll never understand the mindset of a Liberal Moron…Sheep for the slaughter..

Japan has no guns, and a high suicide rate.

If your reading this & you believe in gun ownership by civilians, it’s important that you join the NRA or if you think that they are to tame—Gun Owners of America. AND also your home state’s gun organization—a great one for NY is SCOPEny. Once a right is lost, it’s very hard to get it back. thank you

As a retired military man and currently serving LEO, Switzerland, please DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR WEAPONS! Freud said, “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” Every person on this planet has a fundamental right to self-defense.

Originally posted by Doug Pennington (Friday, 12 June, 2009 19:12 [ 1 ]) “High rates of suicide and easy access to firearms by suicidal people have a great deal to do with each other.

According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, the United States has almost 90 firearms for every 100 Americans, number 1 in the world. (Switzerland is 3rd with 46 guns per 100 Swiss.) www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/sas/publications/yearbpdf/2007/Annexe4gunownership.xls

By no coincidence at all - gun suicide attempts have a fatality rate of about 90% - over 50% of our suicides (some 17,000 every year) are committed with firearms.”

This is utter nonsense. Canada anticipated that as a result of it’s restrictions on (and in some cases confiscations of), privately owned firearms there would be a reduction in their suicide rate. (Frankly, I anticipated they would see at least a small reduction, too.) They have not experienced one. People intent on committing suicide will do so, regardless of the availability of firearms. Japan has very few privately owned firearms and an astonishingly high suicide rate.

In the U.S. firearms are used approximately 2.5 million times a year to deter or prevent violent crime (see the work of Prof. Gary Kleck at the University of Florida), which works out to their being used roughly twice as often in defense as in committing any sort of violent crime.

Additionally, John Lott has demonstrated that their is a close and consistent correlation between the issuance of permits to carry concealed weapons and the rate of violent crime.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) examined fifty one studies of various “gun control” measures (including registration, waiting periods, banning certain types of weapons, etc.), and determined that none could be shown to reduce gun violence.

“Gun control” is an anaethema. People have the right to defend themselves and this, in turn means they have the right to the means with which to best do so. The great majority of people will act responsibly, and an armed citizenry is a stablizing force in society and a deterrant to both criminal violence and government tyranny. It is no coincidence that Switzerland and the U.S., nations that have long recognized the value of an armed citizenry are the envy of so much of the world.

“This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!” - Adolf Hitler Swiss! Dont be fooled!

Personally, I’d like to see just one person show some evidence that a gun has ever made a single person commit suicide.

The fact that people commit suicide with guns is due to several things, all based on the fact that most people who want to kill themselves are serious.

1) The most likely way to succeed is the preferred one - A person has the best chance of successfully killing themselves with a gun.

2) People who want to commit suicide don’t want to maim themselves & keep on living - they want to die. As such, methods that pose a risk of leaving you alive but in a disabled state (disfigured or brain damaged) are not typically used.

3) While people who want to commit suicide want to die, they typically don’t want to experience pain or fear while doing so. (Which is the reason you don’t see as many people setting themselves on fire, or throwing themselves under heavy machinery or into traffic.)

Robert, you can say that “guns have nothing to do in homes”, but that ignores the reality that “criminals have nothing to do in homes” either, a fact that doesn’t seem to stop them.

To the people of Switzerland. Armed people are free people. Now you have the means to secure your freedom. After you are disarmed you will be at the mercy of the state. Democracy does not ensure freedom. Democracy is tyranny of the majority. Only an armed and diligent populace can ensure freedom. Protect your rights, protect your heritage and protect your freedom.

God bless the Swiss! They set a shining example for the rest of the world!

Don’t tread on me!

Mr. Pennington is not disingenuous. He’s trying to conflate apples and oranges. He’s taken two entirely separate items, and tried to create a spurious connection between two separate items.

He’s making the same logical suggestion as someone who argues that children eating apples are a leading cause of on-the-job incidents amongst automobile mechanics.

It is important to remember that a weapon of any kind is not the cause of violence. Guns are no more to blame for violence than chisels are for sculpture.

I love the Swiss tradition of keeping firearms in the home. I believe that the more guns in the hands of responsible people, the lower the violent crime rate.

Also to say that weapons cause suicide is to miss the point. Youth, unending pain, short sightedness and mental instability are the causes of suicide. Guns merely provide an easy method of carrying out the desire. Instead of focusing efforts on removing guns from society, when they do so much good, why not try and increase awareness of the warning signs of the suicidal? Maybe try and get them the help you believe they need?

Note: I’m a US Citizen, ex military and I carry a weapon with a permit and extensive training.

At the beginning of WWII Hitler would have liked to have access through Switzerland to his Ally in Italy.

He approached the Swiss Chancelor and asked for right of passage and was denied because Switzerland was Neutral.

He indicated that he could simply invade in reply ro which the Chancelor said he could have 250,000 men mobilised in 2 hours.

Hitler replied he could have 500,000 soldiers on the boarder in 24 hours.

To which the Swiss Chancelor remarked:

“Oh! …. each of my men would have to fire twice.

Such is the regard for Swiss markmanship that they remaimed neutral - and uninvaded.

You think the Swiss will ever voluntarily give up that advantage?

The Swiss are to be applauded. They are the example of how gun ownership works when combined with proper training and discipline. I do not see the Brady “Bunch” making an argument stick against the Swiss at all.

Actually people do throw themselves on railway tracks, especially on the underground. You just don’t read about. The media don’t write about it to prevent copycat suicides. And it is very hard on the drivers. It is too late for emergency brakes to stop the train by the time the suicidal person can be seen, so they can only watch.

School shootings could also be reduced by not providing international TV coverage and 15 minutes of fame to the perpetrators.

Oh, BTW, the really dangerous guns are those in the hands of governments. Genocide against its own citizens caused more deaths than war casualties and both outrank criminal depredation by orders of magnitude, and guess whose guns are used to cause the first two kinds?

Doug Pennington: so no one has ever committed suicide other than with a gun? You need to watch this video again, with an open mind. Use your brain, not your emotions.

Real “genuine grass root organisations” have big problems surviving because they are not funded by the foundations, via the banks, via the governments, from OUR taxation.

We need a new system, this corrupt “tower of babble” needs to be dismantled and a new system built by the people for the people.

Surrender your guns and this will be a heck of a lot harder. You can not reason with a psychopath, unfortunately most folk running the banks, governments etc. are psychopaths.

I was horrified when the British were ordered to surrender their pistols. (and back in the 80’s their full bore semi automatic rifles).

It is all done by “Fabian style” slow, incrementally, small steps forward over many years. Now they can see their goal coming into view and it is speeding up. That is why this vote will take place in a “couple of years”, and you can bet all the propaganda techniques will be used, financed by our own taxes, to diss-arm the Swiss people.

Challenge every politician and demand to know what societies they are members of. A man can not serve two masters.

Check out “cutting through the matrix” the website of Alan Watt, but hurry we have little time left.

Blackie.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, advisor to many presidents, said that soon the public will not be able to think for themselves, all they will be able to do is to “repeat ” last nights “download” of news.

Since they can’t even “see” the “massive spraying operation” above their heads, I can only conclude that this has happened.

Switzerland NEVER relinquish your right to possess arms ! The worldwide “Guncontrol” lobby, is merely an extension of the Bilderberg group’s “New World Order”. They, through all national governments need to disarm the citizens of the world prior to enslaving them. Any armed section would cause them many problems in the plan for world government. As has been often stated in the many postings here, a disarmed nation, firstly becomes the victim of whomsoever wishes to cause harm, secondly ends up with no freedoms at all.

I gave up hope for the Swiss to stay neutral and free when they voted to join the United Nations a few years ago. Any who want to associate themselves with that slave loving freedom hating bunch of criminals are too far down the totalitarian path to save.

Why the Brady Center for gun control is here, sticking its nose in other peoples business is the real question. You people cannot and will not disarm us in the United States. And so, you try and come here to piss off the Swiss? Get a life and go away. Read the Second Amendment to the American Constitution and learn to live by it. Otherwise, find another Country to live in. You may want to live under Obama’s dictatorship, but most of us will never bow down to a dictator.

Respectfully, I disagree with Doug Pennington’s comments.

Suicide attempts with firearms are indeed more likely to succeed. But to say that restricting access to firearms will lower suicide rates is untrue, as suicidal individuals have shown a marked persistence; those who wish to kill themselves can and will find a way, regardless of what options are most easily available. Guns or no guns, people who seek death will find it. I know; my brother did it this January.

As for the stat on gun ownership, the “90 guns for every 100 Americans” suggests nearly American is armed, when that is very much not the case. Most gun owners own more than one firearm, and firearm ownership is very much concentrated to different degrees by state, usually according to the gun laws of each state.

As for Switzerland’s philosophy on an armed citizenry, I think it is spot on. And this is coming from a guy who owns no guns, thinks gun control is a generally good idea and lives on the liberal East Coast. If you think the Swiss approach to a citizen military is out of whack, do your homework on the subject. The Swiss have thought this out, and for them, it strikes me as a really smart way to maintain their sovereignty and their neutrality. Bottom line: it’s a good plan and Switzerland should not get rid of it.

P.S.: All of you New World Order guys need to try decaf.

You should familiarize yourself with what you’re arguing against before you formulate an argument you may find that you had prior misconceptions. Additionally a trajectory is the path of a moving object, unless you’re suggesting that the Sig 550 is typically thrown as a projectile weapon, I think you mean effective range

Murderers prefer defenseless victims. They always have and always will.

Southern Man,

While I think that we are on the same side of this argument, your tale of Hitler threatening to invade and the Swiss response is a corruption of the actual event. Kaiser Willie was reviewing an honor guard during a state visit and spoke to the Sergeant and mentioned that he could send a half million men into battle. It was the sergeant who uttered the line, “Well, I guess we’d have to shoot twice, then.”

If you do not have a firearm in your house please post that info on a sign in your front yard. That way your neighbors can respect your views if they ever need to come to your rescue from a criminal. If you think 911 is the hot set up just go to the phone and call them then time their arrival and imagine what a nut with a baseball bat could have done to you and yours before they got there. On the side of their cars it says to PROTECT and serve, call up the local cop shop and ask if they are required to protect you?

I hate to lower the brow of this rather civil (by internet standards especially) but I just gotta say; SWITZERLAND IS AWESOME.

For many years while in the US military I was a huge proponent of the idea that every new soldier be issued their own M4 Colt carbine and M9 Beretta pistol that they keep with them during there military careers. I had never even think to extend this issuance as far as the the Swiss have to make the rifle a part of ones own life, permanently it would seem. So, Once again, I may hate to lower the bar here to the level of ’the mob’, but SWITZERLAND IS AWESOME.

If getting citizenship wasn’t so hard though…

Everything’s going to be just fine - go back to your T.V.’s

No one wants your guns… it’s your personal freedom that must be done away with. “You are not responsible enough to think for yourself you dumb twit, so we in the government will do it for you.”

The implication that Switzerland’s high firearms crime rate per capita is a true reflection of the misuse of legally held firearms is disingenuous as their statistics generally include the use of firearms as blunt intruments/weapons. In this case, to be effective one would not only have to ban firearms, but also baseball bats, hammers, large rocks and other heavy objects.

As the ban on handguns and self-loading rifles in the UK has shown, criminals will simply make their own firearms (it is not difficult with a lathe and a few other simple workshop machines), or else smuggle them into the country. The criminal faction do not concern themselves overly with any sort of legslative action as they - by definition - will ignore it. This means firearms legislation can only be effective against otherwise law-abiding people who for some reason have lost control.

For this reason, taking guns out of the home may at most prevent a small handful of “crimes of passion”, but that is it. If you are dead set on murdering someone, then a knife never jams or runs out of ammunition and rarely misses. As for suicides, the statistics would merely see a shift towards hangings, jumpers and drug overdoses.

There can be little doubt that for Switzerland, the ability to raise the citizenry swiftly to augment their relatively small standing army is important. Any invasion attempt will likely encounter citizens before the regular army has even been mobilised. If those citizens are armed and able to defend themselves, then the invasion will become all the more difficult. Plus, as the 2nd Amendment reacers in the states like to constantly recall, it protects the citizenry should the government go bad. In WW2, the east european partisans - otherwise normal people living in the forests with what weapons they could lay their hands on - were wildly successful in bogging down the German forces. Just imagine if every country the Germans had tried to invade had a fully armed populace supporting the army or engaging guerilla tactics. The war would have been over far sooner, and the Nazis would have successfully occupied far less of Europe.

As for me, being a native born American, I say this. We have a law within our Constituiton which states “…A well regulated militia, being necessary to a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The words “well regulated” militia meant then, and means now, that the militia be well timed, well trained, coordinated, and capable of repelling agents of tyranny. The words “…shall not be infringed” means (and has been confirmed by our Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison and Miranda v. Arizona) that any law not in pursuance of the Constitution, is not a law, and invalid. Thus, attempting to halt the right to keep and bear arms by “regulating” arms, (rather than “regulating” (i.e., training) the militia) is not a valid law. Period.

So as for the United States, we will be keeping our arms, and if need be, bearing them in purusance of the Constitution of the United States.

I hope Switzerland’s people are not stupid enough to go the way of England and other countries, which are now shivering in their pajamas each night as they attempt to get some sleep.

Doug Pennington’s bad math of dividing the total number of firearms by the population and then saying that 90% of Americans own a firearm is just another example of the anti-self protection people turning facts into non-facts. The rest of their arguments are filled with this nonsense. Suicide has to be the weakest argument I have ever heard for banning firearms! While each suicide is devastating to the family it should not be basis to prevent an entire people from defending themselves from criminals and ultimately, the government. Of course, they are also very effective; they are designed to kill things – either animals or people. Got any other brilliant updates for us, Doug? Maybe that sports cars are also very effective for getting from one place to another quickly?

Amy Wong wrote: “This is a SIG 550. It’s designed to destroy anything standing within its 400 m trajectory.”

This is yet another example of journalists writing about something they have no knowledge about, simply substituting sensationalistic nonsense in place of proper research. 1)Firearms are not designed to destroy “anything standing” in its path. They are designed to propel a small projectile from the barrel. Nothing more, nothing less. Whether that projectile is aimed at a paper target, a food source (an animal) or an oncoming attacker/rapist is up to the user. The firearms in question shoots a 5.56x45mm NATO/.223 Remington cartridge. This is a very small calibre weapon, especially when compared to “normal” hunting rifles. It’s only acceptable hunting use is for animals in the size range of rabbits to (at the extreme end) deer. Even with deer, it is a risky choice as shot placement needs to be very precise and within close range. So, you see, it won’t “destroy anything”, unless by anything you mean animals smaller than a deer. 2) The “within its 400 m trajectory” part also reeks of ignorance and laziness with respect to researching the subject matter. If the author knew even the definition of trajectory, other than it is a “cool” sounding word, she would know that the flight path of the bullet, not the SIG 550, depends on what angle the rifle is being aimed at. In any case, the 5.56/.223 will easily travel more than 400m, but it drastically loses speed, reducing its energy. The 400m, I assume, she got from the often cited range at which it is no longer considered to be effective.

So some mentally ill person who suicides is excuse enough to take away a sane person’s right to defend his/her home and family, yea that makes sense if you also believe the police will come to your rescue in a rape or home invasion, the communists and fascists love gun control as shown historically and it was not because they wanted to prevent suicides.

In states where gun ownership is permitted, violent crime is down nearly 40% as opposed to states where gun ownership is controlled. We are a free nation—not like England. They banned all guns, even for collectors, and their crime rate skyrocketed. The bad guys will always get the guns. We need to be an impediment in deter their lawlessness. People kill people, whether it is with a knife, a club, a car, a hammer, or a gun. The implement isn’t evil—the person who violates the law is. Let freedom ring. We don’t want another holocaust, and yes England and Iran—IT DID HAPPEN…

In regards to the first comment by Doug Pennington:

“High rates of suicide and easy access to firearms by suicidal people have a great deal to do with each other.

According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, the United States has almost 90 firearms for every 100 Americans, number 1 in the world. (Switzerland is 3rd with 46 guns per 100 Swiss.) www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/sas/publications/yearbpdf/2007/Annexe4gunownership.xls

By no coincidence at all - gun suicide attempts have a fatality rate of about 90% - over 50% of our suicides (some 17,000 every year) are committed with firearms.

As the Harvard School of Public Health has shown, “Means Matter”:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter

Doug Pennington BradyCampaign.org”

Of course there is a direct correlation with the number of suicides committed with firearms and the number of firearms available. The reason the idiot that killed himself did so with a firearm is because it was readily available and as stated above, it has a 90% fatality rate. By removing a firearm you aren’t removing the desire or will to commit a crime, you are simply removing the tool. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Currently the United States has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Why? To prevent attacks from other nations just by them knowing we have them and are willing to use them if our freedoms are in jeopardy. What do you think would happen if the United States had none? I keep guns in my home for the same reason. Never wanting to use them, but having them if and when the need should arise!

“It’s designed to destroy anything standing within its 400 m trajectory.”

Do some research. It’s an infantry rifle, not a howitzer. The author is either uneducated or biased.

I noticed the ammo was issued by the government and military training was mandatory. Once trained in the safe use of military weapons, armed citizens become useful tools for and of freedom.

Gun laws are for law abiding citizens, not criminals. Criminals never consider the illegality of gun possession before using one in their endeavors. The poor people of the UK are sleep for the slaughter with NO right to even defend themselves with a gun, knife, bat or stick. And rest assured, my Suisse friends, Next they WILL come for your pistols, airguns, bayonets and kitchen knives (Just ask the English). A disarmed citizenry means one thing to criminals, socialists and politicians: no hindrance to power.

To Heywood and other friends, Hi, I’m the guy in the interview. Aside the choice of words (“destroy anything in it’s path…”) I can tell you the “miserly” 223/5.56 will work way further out than even 400m. If any of you get to Switzerland, and want to have some fun, contact me, and I’ll get you to shoot at 500~600m and hit targets. We tried what we called “harassing fire” out to 1000m, and it will work.

By the way: Amy Wong, the reporter of this piece, did a pretty good job at doing an objective report. I was a bit concerned when we started, but find she presented both sides in a neutral way. MUCH better than most reporters would have! In addition, we had her shoot both rifle and pistol, and she did VERY WELL, especially for a first time shooter! But then, most women shoot well! 8-) CHeers from Switzerland! Marc Heim, protell.ticino@gmail.com