The tradition is part of Switzerland’s national character, he said.Īs a measure of Switzerland’s attachment to weapons, Suter pointed to an annual shooting contest and weapons fair that draws more than 100,000 enthusiasts, most of them veterans of annual military training. Suter said Switzerland’s attitude toward gun possession stems from its long tradition of citizen soldiers, ordinary Swiss who are required to suit up and report for military training every year and who get their own weapon to keep at home in case of emergency. “The current law is altogether sufficient.” “We are against any attempt to change the law from what it is now,” he said. Hermann Suter, vice president of ProTell, a powerful lobby similar to the National Rifle Association in the United States, said his organization would fight the proposal for a referendum.
#Swiss number to call random people registration#
In any case, cantonal authorities often do not enforce registration requirements vigorously. Switzerland’s 26 cantons have individual registries, but they do not share information, making tracking even more difficult. But used weapons often change hands several times in informal purchases that are not tracked. Those who buy handguns or semiautomatic rifles from Swiss firearms retailers must undergo a background check, which can take more than a month. This is in line with a Swiss law, similar to that in the United States, allowing assault rifles such as AK-47s or M-16s, but only in the semiautomatic mode, in which the trigger must be pulled for each shot, instead of the fully automatic military mode, in which the weapon can fire bursts that last as long as the trigger is held down. The army weapons are fully automatic SIG assault rifles but must be adjusted to semiautomatic before being taken home, he said. The bill, he said, will include a requirement that Switzerland’s citizen soldiers leave their army-issued weapons in a military arsenal after annual training rather than storing them at home.
The most notorious occurred in September 2001, when a man opened fire on the regional parliament in the Zug canton, killing 14 people before taking his own life.Įric Voruz, a member of the Swiss parliament’s Security Policy Committee, said he and his Socialist Party colleagues decided after the Daillon shooting to introduce legislation for a referendum on the creation of a national gun registry. Sixteen have been recorded since 1990, most accounting for only a few deaths. Americans were found to have about 270 million firearms in a population of about 314 million, or 89 for every 100 people.Īlthough Switzerland ranks third in gun possession, its history has not been stained with as many random killings as the United States. The United States, the survey’s estimates showed, leads the world, rivaled only by Yemen. France, which lies next door, was found to have about 19 million firearms among a population of about 65 million, or 31 for every 100 people, and it surrounds ownership of all weapons with strict registration requirements. The Small Arms Survey, in a study conducted in 2007 by researchers attached to the University of Geneva, estimated that Switzerland has about 3.4 million firearms of all kinds among a population of about 8 million, or 46 for every 100 people.
View Graphic Among Swiss, a high number of weapons Behind Switzerland’s image of whispering bankers and scrubbed chalets, it also has, like the United States, a strong and vocal segment of the population that considers attempts to tighten gun laws as attacks on individual liberties and the national character.
Their conservative opponents have maintained that more laws would do nothing to prevent such shooting attacks.Īlthough separated by thousands of miles and the Atlantic Ocean, the United States and Switzerland have in common long-standing traditions of unusually high levels of weapons possession among their citizens. Liberal Swiss politicians, following a script shared by American counterparts, have vowed to push for new restrictions. The Swiss debate has closely resembled the arms-control controversy that has boiled up in the United States after the Newtown killings. It immediately revived their perennial debate over the danger posed by large numbers of unregistered weapons in private hands and the tradition of off-duty troops storing their guns at home in a closet. The shooting in Daillon, on a steep slope in snow-covered Alpine foothills about 50 miles southeast of Lausanne, shocked the Swiss people because it seemed so senseless. Berthouzoz was brought down by a police officer’s bullet in the chest. 3, the day Sandy Hook Elementary students returned to school in Newtown, Conn., Florian Berthouzoz leaned out his window and opened fire on this tranquil Swiss village with an old military carbine and a 12-gauge shotgun.īy the time he finished shooting, three women were killed, apparently at random, and two men were wounded.
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