Zug massacre doesn’t faze Swiss love of guns
>
> By Michael Shields
>
> ZURICH, Switzerland (Reuters) – The crack of automatic rifle fire fills
> the air in Switzerland. It must be Saturday afternoon.
> That is when thousands of people — mostly men, but also teen-agers as
> young as 16 — pull their guns out of the closet and head to the local
> shooting range to blast away at targets.
> The sight of uniformed soldiers toting assault weapons on trains and
> trams merits hardly a second glance in a country where guns are
> commonplace.
> That is hardly likely to change despite the carnage wrought by a gunman
> with a grudge who killed 14 local politicians in the Swiss city of Zug
> Thursday and left 15 others wounded, before killing himself.
> A man executing members of a local assembly with an assault weapon and
> pistol before finishing off the job with an explosive device might
> prompt calls elsewhere for tighter gun controls.
> But most Swiss newspaper editorials and public officials did not even
> mention the subject, underscoring just how pervasive weapons are in
> Swiss society.
> “There is going to be a huge outcry, but if a drunk driver plows into a
> crowd of people, this is treated as no big deal. The tragic thing is
> that drunken drivers are far more dangerous than a weapon,” said Hubert
> Bonderer, president of the Swiss Association of Riflemakers and Arms
> Dealers.
> “This is tragic what happened (in Zug), but statistically very little
> happens with guns.”
> The pope’s Swiss Guard, his official army, may be the last vestige of
> Switzerland’s era as Europe’s hired gun, but the country’s martial
> tradition lives on in a national love of firearms.
> Compulsory military service means practically every able-bodied man has
> a gun — if not several — stored away at home.
> There are some 3,000 shooting clubs, and the national marksmanship
> contest held every five years draws about 80,000 competitors. Zurich,
> the financial capital, grinds to a halt once a year for the
> Knabenschiessen youth shooting festival.
> Speculation that Swiss gun owners would have to turn in their weapons if
> Switzerland joined the Schengen agreement, which allows unrestricted
> travel between many European countries, caused an uproar until the Berne
> government reassured them that was not so.
>
> HOUSEHOLDS STOCKED WITH WEAPONS
>
> Experts estimate Swiss households are stocked with at least 12 million
> weapons, more than one for every man, woman and child in the tranquil
> Alpine nation of 7.2 million where violent crime is rare compared to
> other countries.
> Some 300,000 to 400,000 assault weapons are in circulation. Soldiers in
> the militia army are allowed to keep their service weapons at home, even
> after they leave the military.
> “It is a tradition in Switzerland that you know how to handle weapons.
> People know what a weapon is. Boys and girls learn to shoot from the age
> of 16 in youth courses, and nothing ever happens,” Bonderer said.
> “The big problem is if someone has a psychological problem and runs
> amok. But if you look back, this has been relatively rare given the
> numbers of weapons there are.”
> Exact statistics on the number of incidents involving guns were not
> immediately available.
> Bonderer said current Swiss gun laws were stringent enough.
> People who want to buy handguns or semi-automatic weapons — modified so
> that they can fire only one shot at a time — need to show they have no
> criminal record and pass police checks showing they have no history of
> violence.
> Gun dealers are legally responsible for ensuring customers buying
> hunting and sports guns are of sound character. Dealers are supposed to
> demand criminal records from customers they do not know.
> 08:53 09-28-01
>