More or less every swiss man has an automatic rifle at home. There is no gun violence at all. How does that compare to the US?

27 comments

1. Sounds awesome. Very very very few Americans have automatic rifles (or guns of any kind).

2. The gun stuff drives people apeshit.

   People get angry but if you control for certain factors we have negligible gun violence as well. There are specific populations and things like Justice reform that ballon crime in specific places. Removing the gun vector won’t stop violent crime at all.

   We are one of the least violent countries in the Americas so we have that going for us which is nice.

3. Don’t the Swiss keep the ammo at centralized depots, though?

4. If you were allowed to sell ammunition in Switzerland and to carry these loaded guns around without a particular reason, then I expect the statistics would be a little different.

5. Root causes of gun violence are income inequality, poverty, underfunded public housing, under-resourced public services, underperforming schools, lack of opportunity, perception of hopelessness, easy access to firearms by high-risk people, and racism.

   (Source: EFSGV)

6. I suppose the answer to your question is far less gun ownership per capita but more people shoot other people

7. It more comes down to factors that don’t relate with firearms. Better healthcare access, more unified homogenous people, no glorifying of violence and gangs, and stuff like that. If you look at the areas with the highest gun crimes, it’s in specific neighborhoods that are always lower class, poorly funded by the government, and usually have a lot of gang presence. The number one deaths by guns in the states is by suicide. Solve that by funding suicide/mental health clinics and promoting helping others and helping yourselves. The number 1 reason people are shot (this includes injuries and deaths by firearms) in the US is gang or drug related.

8. Since it’s for military purposes, I’d imagine that every person who has a rifle has been trained for it, no? I’d also imagine that most people would have to qualify every year to retain their firearm.

   I don’t know much about Swiss gun culture, but it sounds like guns are still heavily regulated and only to be used in an emergency (i.e. invasion). It’s just not a real apples to apples comparison with us.

9. I always say that the main reason why a gun ban won’t work on much of the United States is that the sheer size of the underground market for guns is massive compared to Europe, where much of the underground market is in the hands of the more “moral” mafia.

10. When was the last time someone committed a crime with a legally purchased machine gun in the United States

11. They’re also required to serve in the military.

    It is a different society, with different values about individualism/community.
    It is a different situation, where every person with a gun undergoes training.
    Every gun is also registered & traceable.
    Handguns are a lot more portable and concealable than rifles.

    There are a lot of differences. Whether those differences directly contribute to results, who knows? There are far too many differences to isolate a few.

12. 100% of Americans do not own firearms. Rough estimates are about 1/3rd of households have a firearm.

13. The western hemisphere generally has more gun violence – possibly related to how colonial societies developed. I think this is a case where it makes more sense to compare the US to Latin America than it does to compare the US to Europe.

14. The Swiss don’t keep the ammo at home. If there was a military call up, they would collect the bullets from a central location.

    The US on the other hand you can buy and store ammo at home and buying large amounts of ammo doesn’t trigger any sort of law enforcement questions because of the lax gun laws.

15. Wealth disparity.

16. Few men in the US have automatic rifles at all.

17. The Swiss doesn’t have media like the US. Everything that happens in the US makes it feel like it’s everywhere.

    Millions of guns in the US. The law abiding, legal gun owner isn’t the one blowing away people but…you would think that. I would if I hadn’t lived all over the US. It’s a war zone in many major cities. Illegal guns and crazy people.

    May shootings? Seriously mentally ill people.

    The question to me isn’t guns since the have been around forever. It’s how are Americans so fat and crazy now?

    PS. Im American and politically independent if anyone tries to pull the political card.

18. I think it’s more about culture than availability of guns. Guns have always been available in the US. School shootings, for example, weren’t an issue before the Columbine event in the 90s.

19. Swiss have mandatory military training, which is a huge factor. There’s a natural vetting process there. They also don’t have access to ammo. Which is a pretty important aspect of the whole gun violence thing.

20. That’s a pretty loaded title, OP, very unlike all the rifles in your countrymen’s homes. 😂

21. Gangs and drugs and domestic violence. When I was in high school in the 70’s it was an everyday occurrence to see pickup trucks in the school parking lot with long guns in racks for hunting after school. We had no police on school grounds. In the 60’s we would call around on the weekend to get together down by the creek that fed into the Ohio River to shoot our BB guns. Cops never batted an eye as we walked down town streets carrying them. To this day no one has ever been shot or shot at in my small school system

22. Few if any people have an automatic rifle at home, and there’s a lot of gun violence, so I guess it’s more of an inverse comparison.

23. Women don’t?

24. Yes, there are very clear distinctions between the two countries. What more would you like to talk about? If you’re curious why there’s a culture of violence in the US there are encyclopedias of studies performed annually. Read the ones you want, form your own conclusions. Or just form your own opinions based on your current bias, whatever they are.

25. >There is no gun violence at all.

    Not exactly true, but they definitely have less than us.

    It’s important to note two things: First, even societies that have largely banned guns had much less gun violence than we do before they banned them. Second, *we* had much less — at least of a certain kind of violence — until the 90s. Shooting sprees were exceedingly rare until Columbine.

    So in regard to the first, what makes the US different from all these other societies, even when they had access to guns. And in regard to the second, what happened to cause this to start in the 90s?

    When guns were *much more* available, we didn’t see this. When people were much poorer, we didn’t see this. What’s our problem?

    I don’t know much about these other societies, but it seems like ours is getting worse and worse about one particular problem: We somehow got the idea that our life is supposed to be easy and comfortable and if it isn’t it’s because other people have wronged us. Past generations more or less embraced “life sucks and then you die”, but we think we’ve been deeply wronged if we can’t find the flavor of Slurpee we want. If you’re poor, it’s because “the man” has kept you down. If you can’t get a date, it’s because women are evil. Nothing is ever *your* fault. So when you can’t take it anymore, it somehow seems reasonable to punish as many of them as you can on your way out.

26. It’s part of their strategic goal of always being ready for an invasion. It’s not very comparable to American gun culture. This is Gun Debate 102.

27. I think there’s a general culture around guns and violence in the US too.

    Access to guns is definitely a massive issue in gun violence in the USA. But it’s not the only issue. Some folks will revolve their entire personality, power and masculinity around their guns.