Switzerland's Mandatory Assault Rifles

Only one other country examined in The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy has a murder rate as low as Japan. That country is Switzerland, where gun control laws are also strict, but in a rather different way.

Every Swiss male aged 20 to 50 is strictly required to spend several weeks a year in militia training. Switzerland has no professional standing army, and has always relied for defense on having its entire male population trained in warfare and ready to mobilise. As part of the militia duty, every militiaman (that is, every male aged 20-50) is given a fully automatic assault rifle, required to keep it in his home, and obliged to periodically demonstrate his marksmanship proficiency.

Swiss policy makes the acquisition of other weapons simple for everyone, including women and men who are too old for militia service. Ammunition sales are subsidised; three thousand shooting ranges flourish in a nation two-thirds the size of West Virginia. Many long guns may be bought with no restrictions at all (whereas federal US law requires all gun purchases to be registered at the point of sale). Most handguns and some rifles require a simple permit to purchase, which is given freely to any adult who is not a criminal, alcoholic, or otherwise disqualified. Even antitank weapons, howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, and cannons may be purchased with a readily obtained license.

Firearms, shooting competitions, and survival training pervade Swiss life in a way that would startle many suburban Americans, who see guns mainly on television. And yet for all the machine guns and other weapons in Switzerland, the country is as safe as Japan, and significantly safer than countries with much more restrictive gun control laws, such as Great Britain or Australia.

What Japan and Switzerland have in common (and what is conspicuously absent in most of the metropolitan United States) is a very strong family structure, tightly-knit communities, stable residential patterns, and good relationships across generational lines. The crucial variable is not the presence of firearms, but the degree to which young people are successfully socialised into non-criminal, responsible behaviour patterns.

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Written Testimony of David B. Kopel
Select Committee Investigating the Use of Automatic and Semiautomatic Firearms, September 8, 1994, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania