Another Mass Shooting in Switzerland.

Yes, the Swiss do have gun crime. There was the 27 Sep 2001 Mass shooting in the Zug Parliament.

Today, Five people were shot in the village of Daillon in Valais canton with three deaths.

This will call into question Switzerland's relatively liberal gun laws (by European Standards).

More on this incident here.Here is a list of some of the most serious violent crimes involving firearms in Switzerland from this story:

24th May 2011: In Schafhausen BE the 35-year-old Swiss tenants shoots in eviction from housing a 39-year-old policeman with his army pistol. Another policeman he injured his arm. The offender was released on medical grounds from the army, but was not properly disarmed.

8th September 2010: The 67-year-old Hans Peter Bieler Kneubühl resisting the eviction of his house and barricaded himself inside. When police anrückt, he shoots at a policeman and seriously wounded him. The pensioner has a whole arsenal of weapons but no firearms license.

30th April 2006: The former skier Corinne Rey-Bellet and her younger brother Alain in Les Crosets VS from estranged husband shot himself with his service pistol. Then the offender commits suicide.

29th March 2004: A 43-year-old farmer in Escholzmatt LU shoots his wife, his brother, his wife and the social director. Then he directed himself Tathintergrund were family problems.

27th September 2001: The 57-year-old Friedrich Leibacher shoots out of anger at the authorities in the Zug cantonal parliament 14 people with an assault rifle and a pump action shotgun, then he shoots himself

Second April 1993: A 54-year-old employee of the Berne Bedag computer science at work runs amok and shoots two people before killing himself. Apparently he had family problems and difficulties at work.

31st August 1990: An engaging in financial difficulties Zurich Bijoutier shoots in a shooting spree in Zurich and Rickenbach TG five people, including his wife and two children. He also wounded four people before killing himself.

16th April 1986: The head of the City of Zurich Building Inspection, Günther Tschanun shoots, after tensions at work in the Zurich building department four colleagues and wounded a fifth. He is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The Third Man - Cuckoo Clock Speech against Democracy, Peace & Brotherly Love

Stick to William Tell and the myth of the Universal Military, the reality is mush more depressing.

Swiss Nazi Sympathies

What if the real reason Hitler didn't invade Switzerland wasn't that it was well armed, but that he really didn't have any need to invade?

I tried to get Dog Gone to address the issue of Nazi symapthisers in Switzerland, but she didn't think they were that important. Unfortunately, like most of Europe, Switzerland had its fascist movement, in this case the Schweizerischer Vaterländischer Verband (Swiss Patriotic Federation or SVV, French: Fédération patriotique suisse, Italian: Federazione patriottica svizzera) was a right wing organisation influential in Swiss politics before World War II.

Wikipedia discussess the SVV:

The SVV was set up in 1918 by Dr. Eugen Bircher to oppose 'international emigration', which in effect became anti-Semitism, with the group holding The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact, alongside a similar work Aufklärung zur Flüchtlingsfrage (Shedding Light on the Refugee Question).[2] Bircher's position as a colonel in the Swiss Army was such that he was able to bring many high ranking officers in to the SVV, with Henri Guisan amongst those to join up.[2] Although not specifically Nazi in its outlook it did nonetheless seek to maintain cordial relations with Nazi Germany.[2]

Effectively open in its existence its membership was largely a closely guarded secret and as such the group became influential in driving government policy.[2] Its influence was such that it was the only organisation with Nazi sympathies that was not closed down by the Swiss Federal Council in 1945.[2] It was not dissolved until after it got caught up in a bribery scandal in 1948.

High-ranking officers within the Swiss Army had pro-Nazi sympathies: Such as General Henri Guisan, Colonel Arthur Fonjallaz and Colonel Eugen Bircher. General Guisan being the commander of the Swiss military.

There was a Swiss Nazi movement which was quite small, numbering only a few thousand. The party was temporarily banned in 1936 to prevent disturbances after the assassination of Landesgruppenleiter Wilhelm Gustloff of the Swiss Nazi Party by a Jewish student. Many Swiss were quite sympathetic to the racial agenda of the National Socialists. There were a variety of indigenous fascist parties in Switzerland, such as the Nationale Front and the Eidgenössische Soziale Arbeiter-Partei. Additionally, the Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (Foreign Organization of the Nazi Party) was active in Switzerland, exploiting attitudes that were "anti-Jewish, anti-Free Mason, anti-Marxist, anti-pacifist, anti-democratic, and anti-liberal." And despite the paucity of support for the idea of joining Hitler's Reich, there were many Swiss who envisioned some kind of role for Switzerland in the Nazi New Order.

Also, Attempts by SVV to affect an Anschluss with Germany failed miserably, largely as a result of Switzerland's multicultural heritage, strong sense of national identity, and long tradition of direct democracy and civil liberties.

But, that didn't mean the Swiss were totally neutral, Donald Waters wrote a book on Swiss neutrality called "Hitler's Secret Ally". The Swiss bolstered the Nazi regime in many ways, ways that can be summarized by the following categories: border policies, opportunities for trade, and financial transactions. Behavior in all of these categories was either immoral or amoral, but Switzerland's closing of escape routes over its border is probably the most troubling. Because the Swiss feared that the appearance of "softness" with respect to its borders adjoining Nazi Germany would be an incentive for Hitler to attack (to undertake "Operation Tannenbaum"), they were highly vigilant in guarding against those attempting to cross those borders into Switzerland without the appropriate visas--in particular Jews.

Switzerland's pretend neutrality was useful to the Third Reich in that it could be used for trade and as a route for off loading its booty onto the world market. Because of the Germans' need for foreign currency and their hostility toward modern art, they were eager to dispatch impressionist and expressionist paintings to Switzerland. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of German-Swiss art trafficking involved works looted from French Jews by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (this was a plundering unit, under the leadership of the Nazi "philosopher" Alfred Rosenberg, that stole cultural property from "enemies" of National Socialism throughout occupied Europe.

But, it was far more important that Switzerland was also Germany's banker for its stolen gold. a December 10, 1941 report from the British embassy in Washington to the U.S. Treasury Department noted that "every leading member of the governing groups in all the Axis countries have funds in Switzerland. Some have fortunes." A Nazi official responsible for foreign exchanges estimated after the war that German assets worth 15 billion Reichsmarks entered Switzerland.

So, why did Germany need to invade Switzerland when it was pretty much on the side of the Germans?

See also:

• Co-Opting Nazi Germany: Neutrality in Europe During World War II
• Switzerland's Role in World War II

Swiss Guns under attack.

Switzerland is the best analogy to what the "gun culture" should be in that both were supposed to have universal amateur militaries (i.e., a militia system), yet the US has forgotten the true purpose of the Second Amendment which was to ensure the existance of that system. The Swiss have gone through a modernisation of their military. Almost two centuries have passed since Switzerland last fought in a war, yet the country's gun ownership rate remains the highest in Europe.

The Local, Switzerland's English Newpaper, has an article about Swiss questioning of their gun culture.

Every year, more than 300 people die in Switzerland in gun-related incidents. In many ways, the figure is quite low, when one considers the country has about 2.5 million weapons in private hands — giving it the highest per capita rate of gun ownership in Europe, and the fourth highest in the world.

In the last two months of 2011, however, shots rang out with alarming frequency in a country where around 30 percent of all households keep guns and rifles in their cabinets.

In early November, a 23-year-old man killed his girlfriend using his army assault rifle in the village of Saint-Leonard. The vicious crime sparked fervent debate about the lax monitoring of repeat offenders.

After that, the tragic tales began to tumble in thick and fast: Victim shot dead by stranger at Geneva shopping centre; Young man killed in accidental shooting; Evicted tenant kills neighbour with hunting rifle.

But in a country that cherishes its centuries-old firearms tradition, gun control is a touchy subject.

“The Swiss have this romantic idea of their culture, in the sense that they have to have the means to protect their independence, and everyone is like a citizen soldier,” explains Philip Jaffé, a Geneva-based psychologist who often works with the police in forensic crime investigations.

Interestingly enough, despite the Swiss attitude toward guns, their attitude toward gun violence is drastically different from the US.

The recent spate of killings has prompted Swiss politicians to rekindle the gun debate, and a parliamentary security commission is currently working on potential changes to the law.

“Every death is one too many, and every weapon that is lying around, whether controlled or not, is a potential danger,” says Christophe Barbey, political secretary of the Group for a Switzerland without Weapons (GSoA).

“How many deaths do we need before we change things,” he asks.

Amusingly enough, unlike the US, the Swiss demonstrate a more rational attitude toward firearms.

Experts agree that a surplus of army-issue guns is the most pressing problem, and many feel they should be kept in barracks. Every adult male must complete 260 days of military service before the age of 34, during which period he keeps his pistol or assault rifle at home.

“There is no strategic necessity anymore for soldiers to keep their weapons at home”, says Barbey. “Those times are over,” he adds.

After they are discharged, soldiers are entitled to keep the weapon for the rest of their lives for a small fee. Some 1.5 million of the estimated 2.5 million weapons in the country belong to, or have belonged to, the army.

All of the experts consulted for this article say Switzerland should institute a national gun register to replace the 26 cantonal registers.

The head of the Swiss Agency for Crime Prevention, Martin Boess, also stresses the need for improved information exchange procedures between social services, police, the judiciary, and the army. This would enable the authorities “to see what kind of people are in possession of weapons.”

I find it interesting that the Swiss, who are closer to the meaning of the "right to keep and bear arms" can express these sentiments without being labelled anti-freedom.

It's not anti-freedom, it's being sensible.

More Swiss Guns!

Several murders in Switzerland havce prompted its Parlimanet's Security Policy Committee to take steps to remove weapons from the hands of people with a history of violence. That committee said confiscating firearms was a matter of urgency for individuals known to have made threats or perpetrated acts of violence.

The Committee unanimously called for the National Assembly to pass a motion requiring the Federal Council to pass steps for combatting the possession arms by dangerous persons in cooperation with the cantons.

The committee's proposal calls for the police and prosecuting authorities to confiscate all civilian and military weapons held by violent individuals. Moreover, the committee says that military and judicial authorities should collaborate more effectively both at the cantonal and federal levels.

"The different authorities involved won’t move things forward by mutually abdicating their responsibilities or trying to justify themselves regarding the misuse [of weapons],” the commission said.

The Swiss news service ATS reported two fatal shootings of two people using Military weapons in western Switzerland since the beginning of November.

On November 4th, a man shot his 21-year-old girlfriend with his assault rifle in Saint Léonard, in the south of the country. The alleged murderer, a 23-year-old man, had several previous convictions for threatening behaviour and property damage.

A week later, a 37-year-old man died from injuries sustained in a shooting incident at a Geneva shopping centre.

On Sunday, November 13th, a young woman in Boudry killed a 23-year-old man with a military gun which she had believed to be a toy gun.

For more see this.

Swiss Guns

Normally, the Swiss are fairly law abiding, but in this case the service rifle was owned by a man who had several previous convictions for threatening behaviour and property damage before he shot his girlfriend in the head with his army assault rifle.

The Swiss have been debating the propriety of keeping the service rifles in the home for some time. There was a referendum held earlier this year about changing the law that resulted in a rejection of proposals to change the current laws.

"If the police have any doubts about how dangerous an individual is, there must be zero tolerance,” said police inspector and Swiss National Party national councillor Yvan Perrin to newspaper Le Matin.

"It's very simple: when someone is involved in a [criminal] case, the police have to determine whether this person is fit to own a gun. Then they must communicate their decision both to justice officials and the army," he said.

Denis Froidevaux, vice president of the Swiss Association of Military Officers, expressed a similar sentiment, saying people convicted on threat charges should not be allowed to possess firearms, “even if it’s just as a precaution.” But he said the decision should be made by justice officials rather than the police.

"This case raises questions about state responsibility”, criminologist Martin Killias told the newspaper, wondering if authorities have not been “negligent.” “Switzerland is too soft when it comes to weapons,” he said.

While the militia tradition still exists in Switzerland (unlike the US) and there is a similar attitude towards their guns to the US, the attitude there is much more pragmatic:

The issue of trust is key to the debate. “The Swiss system is based on trust,” so “someone who violates the law should not be rewarded with trust and, therefore, should be deprived of his [army] weapon,” said Liberal Party national councillor Isabel Morat.

The problem for inspector Perrin is that “there is still a taboo around army weapons.” And he added: “They say that every good solider should keep one at home, but above all, it is a weapon that can kill, let’s not forget that.”

Got that? but above all, it is a weapon that can kill, let’s not forget that.