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.
Agreed. :) I sure wouldn't wanna go in there! Course if these crazy women get their way, they may have more people interested in their country (interested in taking it away that is).
Yeah, and then they go back to being idiotic.
Why do sane men listen to them?
Swizerland pop stats
0-14 years: 16.3% (male 637,585/female 591,297)
15-64 years: 68.1% (male 2,585,062/female 2,539,345)
65 years and over: 15.6% (male 480,198/female 690,447) (2006 est.)
The 17400 Ws are 0.69% of the female pop. 15-64 yrs old. That's not a significant number. I don't wonder why they didn't mention that at all. They have their agenda and BS counts when it comes to herding idiots.
I saw a compact car today with a lot of anti-Bush bumper stickers all over it. It was driven by an extremely fat female headed to the local greasy spoon.
On the other side of the bumper was a sticker that read, "Parents with Teens In Crisis". Gee, you think?
That is just seemingly a myth, in Academe, because when I used that as an answer in history a few decades ago, the teacher laughed derisively.
He then pointed out that Germany had the world's most modern and powerful forces of the time, and could have taken Switzerland with no problem.
The "answer" he wanted was that Hitler most reasonably realized that Switzerland was too valuable as neutral territory, because some place everybody trusted was necessary for both sides to use for holding diplomatic talks!
Need I mention he also had a few "interesting theories" that would have been less than welcome here, concerning the Soviet Union?
My own theory was to give the required answer to pass, then add that particular person to my personal "better dead" list, in case future needs and opportunities presented themselves.
Yeah, sounds like he was on hallucinogens.
Yes, Germany had the world's most modern and powerful forces in Continental Europe. The problem was that the Swiss were about as numerous, were almost as well equipped, far better trained, and could only be assaulted through narrow mountain passes - which favored the defenders.
If memory serves, the casualty estimates that the Wehrmacht gave Hitler ranged as high as 90% casualties in the first wave, with successive waves taking only slightly lower casualties. The amount of manpower that Hitler would have had to bring to bear to crack the Swiss would have been enormous, and would have drained manpower from all over the Nazi empire. After the Brits opened the North African campaign in 1940 and the Soviets opened the Eastern Front in 1941 Hitler no longer had the manpower to spare.
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