Nice going Guerilla. On One hand you just tout "Switzerland" as an example of gun ownership gone right, on the other hand you say one can't compare countries....
As far as the Switzerland thing goes, here is a lengthy post from reddit, which I copied because it explains the situation very well.
I live in Switzerland and I can expand on this if you need me to.
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Quote:
Well, most men (are forced to) have a military gun at home. However, they don't have any munition. Munition is provided when you have to do the mandatory shooting each year or when you have to use the gun in the military service. However, it's strictly forbidden to take munition home from there. People who go shooting in a shooting club can buy the munition they need there.
So yes, most men have a gun, but can't use it. Of course, if somebody really wants, he could get some munition. It's legal to buy it, but there aren't a lot of places where you can.
This was about the military guns. To own a civil gun, you need a permit "Waffenerwebsschein", which usually gets everybody who is at least 18 years old, is Swiss and doesn't have any criminal records. However, this is only for owning a gun.
For carrying a gun, you need another permit "Waffentragschein", which is valid for 5 years and then must be renewed. This permit is usually only granted to people who work in security and they have to do a test before they get it. Hunter don't need this permit, but they need another license, which also includes a test.
There's no need for owning or even carrying a gun in Switzerland though. I recently saw that video about an American watchmaker who was the victim of armed robberies several times and each time he shot the robbers. This is just unthinkable here. We don't have any gangs, like you have in the USA. And only very, very few armed robberies and even in those we have, usually nobody gets hurt, because those people are just robbers, not murders. I think knives are used more often in robberies than guns and for such situations, we could buy pepper spray to defend ourselves.
So, Switzerland isn't safe because because of the guns, most guns belong to people who went through the military training and those guns are locked-in in the wardrobe without any available ammunition. The key is to provide a good education for everybody, provide job opportunities and security and social welfare and health care for everybody. This way, nobody is forced into criminality because he hasn't any options left.
Here, young people have usually very good job opportunities after hi-school. Only people who want to become a scientist or want to work in a job where they need a scientific degree, like lawyer or doctor, continue school (which costs about $2000 a year). Everybody else does a apprenticeship in a job he likes (there's one for anything, shop assistant, computer scientist, nurse, hairdresser, etc...). This means 2 to 5 year training, which includes theory in school and practical work at the work place and then they get a degree in that job. But, sorry, this is off topic, we were discussing guns.
