FOF - Guns

[Democracyinkind]

10. some answers from the front

1. It is not true.

http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/14/02/04/key/01.html

(in german)

Some picks:

1995: 436 gun-related deaths, of which 392 were suicides.

2009: 277 ditto, 253 suicides.

(Edit: Somewhere between 6 and 7 million inhabitants during 1995-2009)

Statistics are kept.

Almost every male citizen of Switzerland has a fully automatic assault rifle somewhere in his appartment. It comes with military service which is universal (although more and more do "civilian service" w/o guns). Back in 1995, members of the armed forces (almost everyone) was issued a 50-shot pack of ammo, then they stopped that, and thereby cut gun-related deaths into half.

As to exporting jobs to other countries:

50 years ago, Switzerland was an industrial hothouse: Textiles, Machines, Weapons, precisions instruments, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, clocks.

Only a couple of those industries remain. Off-shoring has hit Switzerland just as hard as any country in the "First World". Active politics and a willingness to invest in education helped to offest the layoffs - Switzerland was able to undergo the industrial-to-service-economy-switch without depriving large segments of the population of realistic prospects of future livelihood.

That is not to say that the transition didn't hurt alot of people or that the service economy was able to absorb 100% of industrial workers.