I am sorry about this, ladies of Blogmocracy. It appears that your sisters in Switzerland are driving an initiative to disarm the Swiss public. the Swiss have a proud history of arms, independence, and don’t get invaded because of two things, the mountains and the fact that military weapons are at hand in most houses and the male residents are trained to use them. The males are required to be trained at the age of 18.
The rest of Europe has disarmed themselves and have been PC’ed to death and been made ready for the take over by the muzz minority, are the Swiss next? A populace without guns is a slave population. This is step one to disarm the population of Switzerland, we know that the left wont stop on this initiative. We have seen this play before, in England and Australia. Act One begins on Sunday with claims that this law will prevent suicides, stop domestic violence, make happier children, and make the laundry whiter and brighter .
“This poster against an initiative to round up military-issue guns in Switzerland reads: ‘A weapons monopoly for criminals? No.’ But increased gun control is favored by a slight majority of the Swiss.”
And women may tip the election. Recent polls suggest that a narrow majority support the initiative — 52 percent, according to a January poll by the gfs.bern institute — but the discrepancy between men and women is stark.
According to Claude Longchamp, who heads gfs.bern, there’s a 24 percentage point difference between male and female voters, which represents the widest gender-based difference his institute has seen in 10 years of research.
“Many women believe that it is unnecessary to keep a firearm at home nowadays,” he told the website swissinfo.ch, “whereas men typically fear for cherished Swiss traditions, and therefore tend to oppose the initiative.”
“The real purpose of this initiative is to weaken the militia army and withdraw the state’s confidence in its citizens,” said Markus Müller, spokesman for a group of Swiss military officers called ASMZ, according to AP. “Only a disarmed people can be oppressed.”
Switzerland is an exception to many clichés about Europe, but gun control is one of the most unexpected. In stark contrast to the neighboring European Union, and in spite of the country’s placid image of cow pastures, Alpine landscapes and official neutrality in war, every third Swiss household owns a gun.
That may, however, change on Sunday, when Swiss voters decide on a measure to end a tradition of sending military-issue rifles home with reserve soldiers. Most Swiss men are reservists because Switzerland has a mandatory draft and only a small standing army. Sunday’s “weapons initiative” is aimed at rounding up those weapons and storing them in public arsenals. The idea is that the weapons can be retrieved in case of war, but not used for impulsive domestic violence.
The measure, surprisingly, may pass. The country’s stout tradition of gun ownership has been rattled by a persistently high suicide rate and a number of mass murders, including a 2001 incident involving a commercial version of the Swiss army’s SG 550 assault rifle. Doctors and women’s groups have also argued that guns in the closet lead to more bloody accidents and lethal disputes at home.
“If you make firearms less accessible, there will be fewer suicides. It’s that simple,” Elsa Kurz, from the Geneva-based group Stop Suicide, told the Associated Press. Switzerland has the highest rate of suicide by firearm of any European nation — about 26 percent, compared to 2.8 percent in the UK and about 1 percent in Germany.
Only a disarmed population can be oppressed, indeed.
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Background:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,744837,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/world/europe/11iht-swiss11.html?_r=1&
Tags: gun control, Switzerland
