Comment by glup
5 years ago
My dad's family is Swiss. Three things I've picked up visiting them: 1) various members are affiliated with different parties across the political spectrum and there's a lot of interesting, productive conversation (over wine) about domestic policy, in a way most US families couldn't manage 2) even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane (esp. regarding the need for social services and market regulations) 3) they are perplexed by gun violence... while there's a very strong culture of gun ownership (tied to (generally?) compulsory military service) I get the feeling they'd ban them in an instant if they had incidents in schools
I'm Swiss. US pro-gun people (ab)use our liberal gun rights to proof their point.
But there are huge differences:
1. Concealed and unconcealed carrying is not allowed. You have to transport your weapon in a very specific way, without ammo etc. Also anyone with a gun in public would trigger a police intervention within minutes.
2. Active military personnel are allowed to stored their gun at home, but almost nobody does that. Those who do get 5 bullets, in a sealed box. They're not allowed to open it, except in war. The seal gets checked every time you go back for service.
3. Storage of legal weapons at home is very strictly regulated. Loaded guns are basically forbidden, ammunition has to be stored separately etc.
4. If you don't have a very clean history, it's almost impossible to get the right to buy guns.
5. Automatic weapons are illegal.
PS: Those "facts" are from my memory, as I don't live in Switzerland anymore. Fellow Swiss users, if there's anything wrong please correct me.
I'd like to add what I think is the most important contributing factor; a sane gun culture.
In Switzerland, every gun enthusiast expected to be a member of one local Schützenverein. While you get to meet some really crazy nuts there, these Schützenvereins are very much interested that there is a space for guns in Switzerland's culture, so they are very considerate about training of handling of weapons, maintenance and gun safety. This creates an environment where it's save to be enthusiastic about gun while still being aware that these are weapons and not just and toy.
I have read that this is how the NRA used to be. Focusing on training and safe practices. Only in the last decades that changed to where we are now.
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In the US there is a good, quick test to determine if a gun range is 'up to snuff'. Such tests are very important, as you don't want to be shooting with wackos or idiots. It tests the range master and their discipline and attentiveness to range users too. It's also important that it's a quick test, so you know to get out of there fast. If the test is failed, you leave and never come back. The test is as such:
Go up to the firing line, turn around, and look for any bullet holes/marks.
I've found all but two ranges of 15 near me that pass this test.
I mostly agree, except for some details. Back when I was of military age, some 25 years ago, it was not unusual to see military rifles carried openly, because each reservist had to attend mandatory target practice once a year, you had to transport your rifle to the shooting range, and many people used public transportation to do so.
Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other?
Back then, storing your army rifle at home was mandatory, and, while those rifles had automatic mode disabled by default, converting them back to automatic took 5 minutes and a screwdriver, with an official, documented, procedure.
Some of this has changed in the meantime. Rifles are not necessarily stored at home anymore, and it's been years since I've seen anybody but uniformed military or police carrying openly.
> Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other?
You're mandated to carry it without the trigger mechanism and without magazine. It's quite easy to spot the difference.
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One correction
2. Most active military personnel store their guns at home. The sealed ammunition box doesn't exists anymore so most don't posses bullets at home. Nonetheless, it is not that hard to buy ammunition.
Your fellow Swiss user
1. A Sturmgewehr doesnt' trigger police intervention. I see sometimes people carrying the military assault rifle on a bike or in the tram. Probably tourists/foreigners are shocked but no Swiss would call the police. 3. Not really. Swiss are generally responsible people but the truth is nobody checks this. In Germany, the police comes and checks if you store it in a weapon safe. I have guns and nobody has showed up. However, I store the ammunition in a safe.
In Switzerland, people are properly trained. My father showed me how to use guns (he was a border guard), went to a club and I did military service. It's not as easy as in the US to get a gun (i.e. without paper) but if you take the time and do the paper work, have a clean record you can get a gun without a problem.
> A Sturmgewehr doesnt' trigger police intervention. I see sometimes people carrying the military assault rifle on a bike or in the tram.
While carrying around the government-issued rifle in public under certain conditions (IIRC it's only permitted when you're travelling to/from duty) is perfectly normal, I think what your parent comment was referring to was someone carrying a gun "to exercise their rights", as might be normal in America.
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Machine guns are actually quite rare in the US. All new machine guns were banned for civilian ownership in 1983, meaning that if you want to get one it has to be one of a small number of pre-1983 registered examples. They also come with some pretty intense storage, transit, and transfer requirements that wouldn’t surprise most Europeans. The end result is that legal machine guns are a rare collectors item, with examples starting at about $5,000 for a low quality sub-machine gun, with automatic rifles costing more than $20,0000.
I’d actually argue that the regulation of machine guns, suppressors, and short barreled rifles has been extremely effective, as it’s extremely rare to hear about any of these items being used criminally.
These differences are real but most probably don't make the difference you expect.
For example, concealed carry holders in the USA (about 5% of adults) are much less likely than the general population to be involved in a crime of any kind, and much less likely to be involved in a shooting.
Fully automatic weapons in the US are certainly more widespread than in other countries, and there are even privately owned artillery pieces and grenade launchers; but these weapons are never used to kill anyone. Eliminating or regulating them further serves no public safety purpose at all.
New York City has similar regulations about legal gun ownership and storage and transportation.
Sounds very similar to the Canadian regulations.
> even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane
This cuts both ways. I live in Switzerland and I find some conservative Swiss policies unabashedly insane in their xenophobia to a degree that the US Republican party wouldn't dare consider, by my estimation. Very loosely speaking, US conservativism seems to be skewed fiscally and religiously while Swiss conservatism is generally skewed socially.
There are a few towns in Switzerland that have actually banned asylum seekers (who are legally in Switzerland) access to public places such as public libraries or pools. [1]
[1] Swiss introduce apartheid-like restrictions: Local authorities ban asylum seekers from public places https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-introd...
About the gun part: I grew up in a gun owning family. On the other hand my dad wouldn't even let is have toy guns or water guns as he was afraid of us picking up the habit of pointing guns at fellow humans.
Much of my childhood I also shared house with an actual (full auto, large caliber) assault rifle, but my dad was always very careful to point out that war was not cool.
In fact, from my childhood, the gun owning part of the family were simultaneously the mild mannered, book reading part of the family.
My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)
My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem.
"My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem."
I would strongly argue against this. Swiss gun law is very different from US, please read my five points above. Do you think US gun violence would decrease if they adopted those points? In my opinion yes.
In my opinion the conservatives, nationalists and the National Rifle Association fight against any tighter regulations that would probably save thousands of lives.
How do you square that opinion with the observation that some of the places with the loosest gun regulations (Oregon, Idaho) also have some of the lowest homicide rates? In Idaho, something like 60%+ of households own guns. But the homicide rate in the capital city of Boise is at Scandinavian levels, 1/10 of the US average. Utah also has high gun ownership and low gun homicides. (Note that this way of looking at the data gets around the notion that you can’t draw conclusions from homicide rates in cities with high control because guns freely flow into them from elsewhere.)
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Most law-abiding gun owners do not end up misusing them. Aside from sensationalized media coverage, much of the gun violence in our most violent cities (Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc) would not go down with new laws, because many of the crimes are perpetrated by people who are already violating gun laws (not allowed to posses them, illegal modifications, etc).
Unfortunately, with police departments being defunded or restricted, illegal gun ownership and use will only rise over time.
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Your points are reasonable.
But remember: the US is what it is. There is an insane amount of guns floating around already.
My suggestion is the "Norwegian model" from now on and going forward: to get anything except a manually reloaded rifle or a (max 2 cartridge) shotgun you need a clean record with the police + (and here comes the interesting part:) you need a recommendation from a local shooting club. Oh, and before buying any hunting gun at all there's a mandatory 50 hours training.
I'd recommend trying something similar in the US: tell NRA "we want you to help us".
Parts of HN might hate NRA all they want but my understanding is a good chunk of the people in NRA would love to keep weapons out of the hands of crazy people as every criminal shooting hurts peaceful owners as well.
I very likely agree with you on every gun ppoint, but i do have a question / counter often raised to me - that i don't have to answer to:
How would tight regulations like that look in a large country already flooded with weapons of all shapes and sizes?
I know multiple pro-gun people who seem to compose a large percentage of their pro-gun belief system around the foundation of the inability to remove them. Ie any bad guy who ever wants a gun will always have it (because there's so many), so give more guns to the good people.
What are your thoughts there? I don't really have a counter.
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Compare the level of violence in the (religiously-motivated) swiss Civil War (mid nineteenth century) with the level of violence in the (slavery-motivated) US Civil War (mid nineteenth century). That's part of my argument for culture.
US gun violence probably would decrease if they adopted the swiss system, but good luck getting people who think a two-day hunting license course infringes their 2A rights to agree to a two-year process involving written, oral, and practical tests.
One of the talking points of the NRA is that the US has many gun laws that aren’t really enforced all that well.
The NRA agrees that you shouldn’t be able to buy a guy if you have mental problems, drug problems, aren’t in the US legally, criminal history, etc.
The only one restriction that is strongly enforced is the criminal history because it’s easy to do a check. But the system for mental health checks is a patchwork across states.
And to layer on, if someone does violate these laws, there is often no punishment. Straw purchases are a good example - it usually falls on the dealer to stop the transaction, but there is rarely any police follow-up.
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I wonder how much of the US gun violence is a problem with guns, and how much of it is a problem with crime.
Despair and poverty without a perspective breeds crime. Switzerland doesn't have much of that.
"My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)"
That's new law due to Schengen. If you had a gun before, you don't need to do this. Three weeks is probably the compulsory military service.
I would say that most social problems are cultural. The culture is what defines what kinds of options people think that have in their life. When something isn't part of your culture you're less likely to think of it. Ie gun violence being very common somewhere means that people are more likely to resort to gun violence. We observe this effect with suicide too. I believe that gun violence, stabbings, acid attacks, bombings, terror attacks with cars etc are all like this.
Also, if the army thinks someone is getting a bit extreme, they will say "congratulations! you don't need to pass the shooting test next year ... and, by the way, please return your service rifle."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYJ5V2HYy4&t=222
(but then again, life should be sympa, gemütlich, simpatica, shouldn't it?)
You are spot on. Swiss males having gone through military training at the age of 18, are used to guns. Though they keep their weapons in the basement or under their beds they do not treat it like a toy. When soldiers go for their training it is common to see a bunch of fairly young men boarding trains with heavy backpacks and a gun. A certain amount of respect for guns is drilled into them: you do not use a weapon carelessly.
I don't think there is any chance in hell that the US adopts and of the mechanisms described in the article, but the one thing we could adopt is a culture that discusses politics. Of course our politics are such shit when no one discusses them. Three months away from a presidential election and still no issues have been discussed by the candidates. Come to think of it, we don't actually have issues to discuss. We have a ton of problems but no one wants to discuss solving them. The problems don't become issues. They just stay perpetual problems. It's just vote for this one guy who won't address your issues and maybe won't fuck shit up too badly or vote for another guy who won't address your issues and will try to make life as miserable as possible for almost everyone.
It's taboo to discuss issues, in fact, so it's no wonder things only get worse. The people have so little power, it's really just theatre. Issues with 60%, 70%, or more public support routinely get ignored by the so called representatives. And as a culture we don't use the one tool we do have: discussion of issues. I suppose it fits in nicely with our tendency to have theoretical rights that only exist on paper. What good is the first amendment when there's nothing to discuss and no one willing to discuss things even if there was?
Folks on opposite sides of the pond have caricatured ideas about each other, because their impressions are based on anecdotal media representations. Compounding that is the fact that “parties” are very different things in the US system versus the parliamentary system. Parties in Europe have a lot of control over who runs under their banner. American parties do not. If the Republican Party operated like European parties, where the leadership selects candidates, the 2016 candidate would have been Jeb Bush of Marco Rubio, not Trump. But in an objective analysis, the Republican Party is solidly to the left of the SVP: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda.... It’s on the right edge of the mass of European center-right parties. (I would argue that this analysis somewhat overstates how far right the Republican Party is. As the article notes: “The Republican platform does not include the same bigoted policies, and its score is pushed to the right because of its emphasis on traditional morality and a ‘national way of life.’” Americans are by far the most religious developed country. In France, arguing for the maintenance of traditional French social norms is something you can do in a secular framework. Under the analysis of this survey, that doesn’t count as right wing. But there is really no way to express that same idea in the American framework while leaving religion out of it. But in this analysis, that counts as right wing.)
I’ll add that Americans are in a different stage of the same overall trend we’re seeing in the developed world. Even right-wing platforms in France or Germany have never needed to call for adherence to traditional French or German values, because it was taken for granted. 80% of Germany is still ethnic Germans. Another 10% are other kinds of Europeans. In the United States in the United States only 60% is of European ancestry, and even among those people you’ve got a mix of British, Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. European countries aren’t really multi-cultural the way America is, so there is no need even for right wing parties to make culture an issues. French being the national language of France has overwhelming acceptance (90%+). There was never a reason for right wing parties to even bring it up. But in America, making English the national language is a right-wing talking point, because Americans don’t take it for granted.
But taking culture for granted is something that is rapidly changing in Europe. Le Pen got 30% in the last French election. Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron. The dominant CDU in Germany is bleeding members to AfD. The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage, and declared the 2015 acceptance of refugees as “a mistake” that they’ve “learnt from and won’t repeat.”
I don't think the rise of the AfD in Germany has much to do with a reduction in ethnic or cultural 'purity'.
The general political consensus position in Germany has shifted considerably to the left over the last 30 or so years. This has alienated some people and the AfD is the recepticle.
Much of the rethoric employed by the AfD could have been found in the CDU just 10 or so years ago, including appeals to German culture as you mentioned. "Leitkultur" was one famous topic of debate. Other classics include "Kinder statt Inder", and "Das boot ist voll".
The influx of immigrants tends to precipitate disagreements within parties that to date were theoretical up to that point. That's what happened with the Republican Party. The George W. Bush/Romney/Jeb Bush wing courted Hispanic voters, with W. winning 40% in 2004, and Jeb carrying 60% in his Florida gubernatorial election. Then, the more nativist elements upset the applecart in 2016 by nominating Trump, who was opposed by the Republican establishment. Those nativist elements were always there--but the undocumented immigrant population increased 40% during Bush's tenure and changed the internal dynamics significantly.
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https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-election--2019-resu...
To determine where the US parties are through their manifestos seems flawed since they are so candidate-platform centric.
> Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron.
This is still a bullshit cherry-picked figure. The village baker would likely get 45% h2h too. Macron is deeply unpopular due to his "reforms".
> The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage,
The one that got so unpopular that she's already announced her resignation earlier this year?
> This is still a bullshit cherry-picked figure. The village baker would likely get 45% h2h too. Macron is deeply unpopular due to his "reforms".
Macron and Le Pen are by far the two front-runners in a multi-way first round matchup: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Op.... If the election were held today, it would go to a head-to-head between those two.
> The one that got so unpopular that she's already announced her resignation earlier this year?
AKK's resignation was not due to her conservative views, but rather because CDU cooperated with AfD in Thungria to keep a left candidate from being elected, which is taboo within CDU. She was seen as being unable to maintain party discipline. The current front-runner appears to be Markus Söder, from CDU's even-more-conservative Bavarian sister party. Söder has taken hard-line immigration positions, ordered public buildings in Bavaria to display Christian crosses, and oh showed up to a party a few years ago dressed up like Ghandi in full brown face: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/markus-soede...
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True: in the United States only 1,6% is of American ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United...