Posted on 09/20/2006 11:51:22 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
A women's magazine has collected 17,400 signatures in a bid to rid Swiss households of hundreds of thousands of weapons.
The petition comes amid discussions in parliament over whether to scrap the country's militia army tradition requiring guns and ammunition to be kept at home.
Staff at Annabelle handed over the signatures to a parliamentary committee in Bern on Tuesday.
The petition, "No weapons at home", is calling for a ban on shotguns at home, for army rifles to be kept in military storage instead of at home and for people not to be able to hold on to army guns after their period of service expires. It is also campaigning for a national weapons register to be created as soon as possible.
Annabelle told swissinfo that it had received a large response to the petition, most of which was supportive.
Guns are firmly entrenched in Swiss culture. All able-bodied Swiss men aged 20-30 are conscripted for about three months and issued with a rifle, to be used only in the event of an alert.
After initial training, the conscripts are required to do three or four weeks of army service every year until they have served a total of 260 days or reached the age of 34.
Throughout this time they keep their rifles and 50 rounds of sealed ammunition at home.
Family murders
The magazine says it launched the petition in response to the increasing number of family murders in Switzerland, most involving women and children being shot by husbands.
In the first half of 2006 there were at least six incidents where a man shot his wife or partner before turning the gun on himself. In a highly publicised case the husband of former women's ski champion Corinne Rey-Bellet killed her and her brother with his army pistol before shooting himself.
Earlier this month the government said family tragedies and suicides are not valid reasons to stop soldiers from keeping their army weapons at home.
Swiss Defence Minister Samuel Schmid argued that Switzerland's militia army needed to be able to mobilise rapidly, "for example to protect airports and railway stations quickly".
On Monday the Senate said it needed time to look into a motion proposed by Anita Fetz, a senator from the centre-left Social Democratic Party, calling for army ammunition to be kept in military storage as opposed to at home. No date was set for any decisions on the motion.
Right out of the UN playbook. Of course they do not say how many opposed the same "petition".
More math... that's 17,400 for a publication that has an office circulation of 100,015 (up 8 people from the year before). That's about 17%.
Of course, if you throw in the sister publication (another 100,000 or so) that's 17,400 for 200,000, or 8.5%.
I wonder how many Limbaugh Letter subs would sign a petition if Rush asked them to?
So Switzerland should have invaded Germany?
A 0.0000178% incidence of violence.
Thing is, their armed forces are too small to be effective as an offensive force; their doctrine, training, and equipment is oriented towards defensive warfare only. Their idea has been to make Switzerland as unappetizing a target as possible.
During WW2, Hitler considered invading Switzerland but stopped when he got the loss estimates back. Germany could have successfully invaded Switzerland, but only with extreme losses and for little to no gain; the Swiss terrain is perfect ambush country, and land access is restricted to some few mountain passes that are easily guarded. The half-million man (including 15,000 women) army the Swiss mobilized after he invaded Belgium made it even more unappealing. He decided to move on to other targets instead.
How do you think they make Swiss cheese? Real Swiss cheese always tastes like lead and gunpowder. :-)
Every decent country in the world should have invaded Germany in 1939.
For serious crimes, very, very low, and many of those are committed by non-resident foreigners.
BTTT
This is smart.
The Swiss seem to be getting more intelligent all the time.
They have an ememy invading them, loudly protesting and threatening to kill them and take over their country.
What to do, oh, what to do?
Ahhh that's it!! get rid of our last line of defence, disarm the militia!!!
From the past:
Swiss Gun Laws- and some rebuttal to HCI "spin"-- Thread II
Published: 04/01/1999 Author: David B. Kopel and Stephen D'Andrilli
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b0c45ad34c7.htm
17,400 signitures...
7,489,370 in the population.
That's.... .2 percent. Point-two percent. 2/10 of one percent.
OMG, this is hugh and series! One of the last bastions against universal wussification is crumbling.
"1971 Finally on February, 7th women's right to vote is accepted in Switzerland with a majority of 621,109 (66%) yes vs. 323,882 (34%) no. But in central and eastern Switzerland there are still seven cantons with a no-majority. Four more cantons introduce women's right to vote on cantonal and local level by referendums: Fribourg, Schaffhausen, Zug and Aargau. "
It takes a while for the female voter to bring down a nation, by the way in 2002 they became an official member of the UN.
Given time the women voters will destroy the golden goose.
Of course. How do you think they make those holes in the cheese.
;-)
Sometimes women can be really stupid.
I hate to say this but this was all predicted several years ago when they gave women the vote.
I'd venture that Swiss women kill more kids in a week than guys do in 5 years.
A friend of mine stationed overseas would send me German gun magazines. Neat technical articles, but lots of griping (justified!) about loss of gun rights in Germany.
Then I got some Swiss gun magazines in the mail. Holy moly, any automatic weapon you could think of was for sale `to any Swiss citizen in good standing with the militia'. AKs, Skorpions, submachine guns, Beretta machine pistols, etc.
I think the Swiss gun culture is still going strong.
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