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The Swiss men who (still) have a compulsory army service, which consisits of a 17 weeks basic training and repeating service periods of 2-3 weeks untill they are about 40 years old. Since decades this meant that every member  of the military keeps a machine gun with ammunition at their home.

Surprisingly there are relatively few incidents involving abuse of this practice (at least compared to the US...) even though they are used to threaten women and/or to comitt suicide every so often.

As the cold war is over and the Russians are not waltzing across the borders anytime soon there is really no need for this outdated practice even though it is a 'holy cow' issue for many men...

On February 13th the Swiss are now voting on a national initiative to abolish this and have all army issued guns stored in central military depots. Of course this has provoked very emotional and often irrational discussions all over the country and the US is often used as an example for both sides of the issue.

As a dual citizen and a longtime peace activist, I of course hope for a positive outcome of the vote...but at the moment it looks like it may be a very tight race.

posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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