Again....But it's never the guns!

[Darth]

The fact is that everything I've suggested is that guns don't kill people; Americans do. Even though countries like Switzerland have alarmingly high gun possession rates, they seem to have far fewer murders with guns than we do; in fact, in 2006 the entire Swiss nation had a total of 34 gun-related homicides. The US? 12,632. Hell, in my home state of Illinois alone there were 625. Hell, in Chicago there were 373.

Probably the Swiss actually know how to use their guns and respect them for what they are. Different lifestyles necessitate the need for different things, in practise guns don't have a place in our cities. That's not to say they can't be used in war, in hunting and in sport - but that's a far cry short of carrying them in society and public use. Something like 80-90 yanks a year die in hunting accidents. That just goes to show that even with their indended use the yanks don't know how to use the guns properly!

As I understand it: the swiss train every man (and any woman who wants to do it) who is found suitable to be part of their army*, (else you have to do community service/pay more tax or something) which explains the high gun ownership rate, the government actually gives them their gun. The training lasts a year (though not all at once I don't think). They all learn how to shoot.

Switzerland has france to it's west, germany to it's north, italy to it's south and austria (and liechtenstein) to it's east, it's easy to see how this policy came about and why they might take it seriously.

Wikipedia says switzerland has 8million people, lets look at deaths and gun crime per capita, ay? My quick math (360mil/8mill = 45 times more people. 34 deaths x 45 = 1530 deaths if switzerland had as many people as the US, still doing a lot better than the US, but saying they only had 34 seems like cheating.

And to be fair I do know switzerland has a rather high suicide rate...