Posted on 12/10/2012 11:39:16 AM PST by marktwain
The Germans did not invade Switzerland because they needed the banking angle, governmentally and privately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Sauer
Unique Swiss gun laws indeed.
Never mind the massive violence problems that Switzerland has with immigrant criminals from (mostly) Turkey, the Balkans and (more recently) northern Africa. And all those guns in private hands have so far proven to be useless in the face of the reality of political correctness - which prevents the Swiss people from actually doing something about it. Now there is a lesson to be learned...
bflr
I spent 10 days in Switzerland and southern Germany a couple of weeks ago. In Zurich there was a small but well inventoried gun shop about a block from my hotel. They had everything from swiss made super heavy 22lr bolt action competition target rifles to every type of “assault” rifle and pistol. I felt a breath of freedom just going into the shop.
I also noticed a distinct lack of foam bike helmets on casual bicycle riders. Only the “racer” types in spandex suits had the obligatory helmets. I used to think that this area had more of the nanny stuff than the US but we have them totally beaten in terms of useless fretting and trying to force everyone to do what the “smart” people say.
It looks like creeping regulation to me. They should have never allowed their federal government to get involved.
True, once anything becomes “federal” there is no competition between the cantons (states) and the only way to escape the rules is to totally leave the country.
Wrong.
Thirty percent of their population is either immigrants, or children of immigrants.
Don't know what sort of agenda you are pushing, but please do it with facts.
my point is we have a problem with urban gun crime... take out urban gun crime and we have as low a gun crime rate as anywhere in europe with several orders of magnitude more guns
Are you sure? Can you imagine a poster like the one below in American politics? And did you know that they recently approved a law at the federal level for the automatic expulsion of any foreigner who commits any but the most minor crimes?
It also is nearly evenly split between Catholics and Protestants and they had a civil war in the 1800s over this when the Protestant cantons invaded the Catholic ones
The German speakers also are not a monolithic bloc but see their individual dialects as separate
4.5% of residents are Moslems
Sorry, that's wrong
1653: The Swiss Peasant's war: Lucerne, Berna, Basel etc. who were agricultural revolted against the urban cantons of Zurich etc. Bern and Lucerne were beseiged
1798: Switzerland was conquered by the French and converted into the "Helvetic Republic" which was really a French proxy. And it remained as such until 1815 and the Congress of Vienna
Then in 1847 there was the Swiss Civil war -- the Sonderbundskreig which started after seven Catholic cantons formed the Sonderbund ("separate alliance") in 1845 to protect their interests against a centralization of power. The Catholic cantons wanted a federal state, the Calvinist counties wanted a strong central government and started to shut down monasteries etc.
THIS, 1847 is what made Switzerland that island of neutrality. Earlier it was a consquence of location, but post this, it was national imperative.
Yes, they changed a formula that had worked well for a hundred and fifty years.
Yes, it is my apologies...I was checking out Switzerland as a possible re-location place for my wife and I. One of the websites I went to made that claim. They are rated more free than we are now...and they do have a substantial Christian population...
“Thirty percent of their population is either immigrants, or children of immigrants.”
That does not mean that they are not homogenuous...so, what is your point?
they have a lot of freedoms, but with that, there is responsibility -- the communities take an interest in ensuring that their members care for each other -- like the joke that you can't flush the loo between 10pm and 6 am.
Also, if you are an immigrant to one of the smaller cantons, you need to get the entire canton to vote to say they are ok with you joining. And this is by a show of hands, not a secret ballot.
So, true libertarian
they all are homogenuous in the sense that they have a strong sense of community and individuality with care for others -- what I mean for that is that they work on their own, but think about others :)
Geeez....do a little research fer crissakes.
The EU is pissed at them for recently reacting to their problems by announcing restrictions on immigration from certain groups (Amish,Mennonite, etc).
The late Colonel Cooper did indeed popularize the term, if not coin it. But I sent him a letter correcting him: the unnatural fear of weapons is indeed hoplo-phobia, but it is hatred of guns and those who have skill-at-arms that is actually at play here, so the correct term should be hoplomisophia. Col. Cooper passed away before noting the point in print.
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