Posted on 03/25/2018 8:04:06 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
Geneva is French, Zurich is German and Ticino is Italian.
Those who support the 2nd Amendment in the U.S. frame the argument completely wrong.
It is a fact, not politically correct and not that I do not find the loss of life in the inner city as tragic, that if you remove inner city violence and suicides from our “gun crime” statistics that the numbers are completely different. Far different than what is being portrayed every day in the media.
If we are going to have a conversation about the 2nd Amendment we should at least force them to use the correct numbers.
If I recall from my visit in the 1980s all men have military service and are all available and on call (or were at that time) the joke we were told were the Swiss house wives were so clean when all was done would clean their husbands gun.
I don’t like when someone from the pro gun side starts citing Switzerland as something we could/should emulate. Just a little research shows it is not the firearm utopia some think. But, a lot better than the rest of the EU. Thanks for the info.
I don’t think immigrants from India, over 2 million of them, have done many mass shootings, armed robberies, gun murders. Indians do not fit the definition of “white” which is synonym for people of European ancestry. Ditto with Oriental immigrants.
So it has more to do with culture. On the other hand “white” people belonging to Cosa Nostra did plenty of mass shootings (for example St Valentines day massacre in Chicago) and innumerable contract hits with guns.
If you want to have fun with numbers - remove the suicides from the Swiss and the U.S. statistics.
Then add four cities to the Swiss numbers complete with population....
Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and New Orleans for example........ you will be SHOCKED at the difference.
I don't know why you brought the idea of 'minorities' into the discussion. But, even if you take away the 'minorities', Switzerland still has less shootings and murder.
America has always been different.
Marksmanship is practically the Swiss national sport, they have a nationwide shooting festival every five years with thousands of teams and tens of thousands of individual competitors. Big corporate sponsors, too (including local brewing companies). That said, the Swiss are all about rifle shooting, as it a skill they are expected to nurture as part of the armed forces. They really don't understand American fascination with handguns and seem to view the idea of owning and shooting handguns as puzzling and strange (despite their manufacturing some of the finest handguns around).
Swiss armament is not smoke and mirrors, but the topic does not easily compare to the American RKBA. It's a very different "gun culture" than ours.
If someone as an individual wants to segregate themselves fine, I really do not have the patience nor tolerance to hang with someone who probably just cares about skin color anyways, however as long as government and society does not interfere with who I’m around and who I marry regardless of skin color then I’m fine with it.
The Swiss are fortunate to have a decentralized government. Most decisions are made by the Canton, which is the size of US counties. Moreover, being a small country, people are therefore much more directly connected to their government and feel both empowered, and responsible.
Contrast that with the feeling that America’s Deep State in Washington DC gives citizens in fly-over country.
and let’s not forget the huge number of Asian Americans ( non Indian ) who are by far the most successful people in the country.
I can think of one mass shooting involving an Asian American.
Violent crime for this demographic is very small.
Because te govt wants it that way, at the moment. But its on the whim of the govt, not that they are free to have them because the govt recognizes their inherent right to self defense.
And guess what, all of those weapons issued to their citizens by the Swiss government would be considered assault weapons here.
We can do that too... Ask the NRA to set it up.
They’re only talking about privately owned firearms. Swiss soldiers also keep full auto rifles at their home (or used to, anyway). The Swiss don’t have cities like St Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, etc. where gang-bangers kill each other on a daily basis. They don’t have open borders either.
Re the Mafia and “plenty of mass shootings”. Don’t think so Don Entropy 12.
Most of their shootings were of each other, esp. in barbershops and restaurants (bad Italian food can kill you).
Most Italians/Americans were not Mafioso but they didn’t have the guns to protect themselves and the police, until the “Untouchables” came into being, were either too weak or too corrupt to take them on.
Just for shits and grins, entropy 12, I worked on an Organized Crime Task Force. You can see their stories on TV all the time. Stop bloviating and learn some history.
PSS: I always did some private work with the IRS agent who brought down Scarface Al Capone, but that is a story for another day.
PSSS: I did go swimming with the daughter of a local Mafia leader but I didn’t know about her father at the time. I just thought her was in the undertaking business.
Spend a day walking through the 'hood -- and report back to us about impulse control. If you manage not to "dis" anyone, you may survive to report...
Die Hausfrauen did not get the vote until 1971.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.