Posted on 05/02/2007 3:27:52 PM PDT by neverdem
Each September the hills around Zurich are alive — with the sound of gunfire. Nobody is alarmed, however, because they know it emanates from a bunch of teenagers doing what comes naturally to nearly every Swiss: sharpshooting. And there's nothing random about it: The 12- to 16-year-olds are participating in Knabenschiessen, the world's largest youth rifle competition, which blends the jarring report of rifle fire with the melodious ringing of cow bells.
There's a paradox in this peaceful and neutral country that would make the NRA drool with envy: Firearms are as ubiquitous as chocolate and edelweiss. Weapons and ammunition — not multitasking pocket knives — are routinely issued to, and kept at home by, all able-bodied Swiss men for their annual military service. This custom is tied to the long-held belief that enemies could invade tiny Switzerland fairly quickly, so every reservist had to be able to fight his way to his regiment's assembly point.
The Swiss learn to shoot from an early age, and develop a deep sense of responsibility toward their firearms. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of military arms are retrieved from closets and attics, slung over shoulders, and taken on bikes, buses and trains to compulsory shooting practices held in nearly every village and town. In fact, firearms are so anchored in Swiss society, and the crime rate so low, that gun control has never been an issue. "We feel it's our patriotic and civic duty to use the guns wisely," explains Felix Endrich, a spokesman for the Swiss Armed Forces. "We respect this tradition."
A 1999 law regulates the sale and licensing of private guns, including a ban on carrying concealed weapons, but the tradition allowing military rifles and 50 rounds of ammunition in private homes — dispersing an estimated 2 million firearms and...
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
There was a time when America was like that. Where did it all go?
Ummm, no, actually Gary Kleck's exhaustive research on this topic has shown that there is a 100% substitution rate for modes of suicides. Take away the guns and you get fewer suicides by guns, but exactly the same number of suicides.
The “American” Civil Liberties Union ACLU took it away, piece by piece.
Outdated and useless? What about when his home is burglarized?
You can’t make this stuff up!
I hope my generation sees an America reborn to those ideals that were prevalent in 1776.
I was in an NRA Junior Rifle Club in junior high back in the early 1960's. We shot .22 target rifles in four positions at fifty feet, and boy was it tough to work up the classification list. This club was located at NAS Millington, near Memphis. I don't know if they still do that any more.
Substitution? Yep. In countries like Japan where essentially no privately owned firearms exist the suicide rate per 100,000 is 24 (2005), and here in the US it is 11 (2004) (where of course we have more guns than citizens [not really]).
Hell, I used to take a school rifle home on weekends to practice at a local range. ON THE BUS! (1977)
Got a source?
"CONCLUSIONS: Based on the assumption that the greatest reductions in fatal violence would be within states that were required to institute waiting periods and background checks, implementation of the Brady Act appears to have been associated with reductions in the firearm suicide rate for persons aged 55 years or older but not with reductions in homicide rates or overall suicide rates. However, the pattern of implementation of the Brady Act does not permit a reliable analysis of a potential effect of reductions in the flow of guns from treatment-state gun dealers into secondary markets. JAMA. 2000;284:585-591"
Enter Gary Kleck suicide substitution into a search engine. It jumps out. Paste this URL, http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvsuic.html in your browser, and you can check my link in comment# 13.
There’s a bit of the info here:
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvsuic.html
This is the link to the Amazon page re his book that covered suicide stats (among other topics):
http://www.amazon.com/Targeting-Guns-Firearms-Control-Institutions/dp/0202305694
Some googling might turn up more of the substantive details.
I shot competitively at the YMCA in Portland Maine, as a Gannett newsboy, in 1968 or 1969. Much has changed, and most of it not for the better...
the infowarrior
This is the real sin of socialism, or any encroaching form of government. When we replace these organically grown rules and all their complex incentive structures with simple laws, we literally undo "the fabric of society". We replace the very thing that gives society it's cohesion, with a bunch of proclamations from an individual or government, which cannot possibly address all the same issues.
Take the example of "Listen to your mother." When a teenage boy does it, particularly if he does it over his objections, he's credited with behaving more mature by elders, but ridiculed later by his peers. Based on these incentives, the next time he'll weigh each of those costs and benefits and decide what to do, so that the rule is constantly adapting to his circumstance of the moment. Where if there was simply a law to obey your mother, we would replace the benefit of being more respected by the elders with the simply acknowledgment of adhering to the law. In the meantime we would still have the negative incentive of being ridiculed by his peers so by making it a law to obey your mother, we've actually made it less likely to occur.
It's the same thing here.
Liberals rail against the cognitive rules of society because they believe they know better. But they recognize that society must have some rules so they try to rewrite them one piece at a time with results similar to the above. As an example, the catholic prohibition on divorce was largely eliminated by the women's movement. But the prohibition was never constructed to keep women enslaved as they often said, but to protect them from men who would otherwise abandon them. Once they took the teeth out of the prohibition, the results were as expected.
I can't site specifics, but I'm sure the shooting issue is related. Somehow, Swiss society has been changed so that an area which used to be about personal responsibility is not codified into law, and in the process they've removed an incentive for people to behave responsibly with firearms.
I don't what what it is, but I'm sure a socialist was responsible for it.
See post 11 above...that was just 20 years ago.
What changed between then and now was not so much a demographic shift (sure, there was some, but the new people did not bring hoplophobia with them) as an attitudinal shift such that the attitude of the population at large has become unrecognizable to some.
My very conservative girlfriend is concerned about having "guns in the house". I'm trying to disabuse her of that...
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