April 13, 2007
by Larry Pratt

Switzerland is a low crime, low murder rate place that is under attack from the anti-self defense crowd among their European neighbors. Switzerland's neighbors are clamoring for Switzerland to toughen up its restrictions on firearms.

In the name of economic prosperity, Switzerland has opened its borders to the European Union. That has opened Switzerland up to the movement of many more people across its borders.

Now European governments are hurling at Switzerland the same accusation we hear from many city mayors in the United States. They want to blame their high murder rates on those jurisdictions where guns are much easier to get and to carry. They allege that guns "flow" from the low crime/high gun ownership areas.

Of course, their whining should be received with no sympathy. The fact is, even if the guns were "flowing" from places where gun laws are less burdensome, they have no explanation for why crime is low there but high where they rule.

Switzerland has year after year turned in one of the world's lowest murder rates even while sending machine guns to every home of every member of their citizen army. And they do not keep their machine guns in safes or encumbered with trigger locks. They keep them at the ready.

But Switzerland can now expect its crime rate to begin to increase. Now, you may be thinking, I am contradicting myself. No, unfortunately, Switzerland has fallen to many of the foreign pressures for gun control.

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Six years ago a gun could be purchased in Switzerland without a background check. Half of the population lived in cantons where they could carry a concealed firearm as a matter of right. They needed no concealed carry license or permit. Half of Switzerland was as free as Vermont.

Now Switzerland imposes a background check on all gun purchasers. Naturally, this law is disregarded by the crooks. And now they can only carry a concealed firearm if they convince a bureaucrat that they have a need. Of course, bureaucrats surrounded by armed guards seldom understand why the rest of us who do not have the funds for private bodyguards might chose to protect ourselves with our own gun.

I correctly predicted that if Britain moved to their now virtually total gun ban that crime would increase. Indeed it did, often carried out by thugs wielding the estimated 3,000,000 illegal guns in that island nation.

Sad to say, I can now predict that Switzerland will see its crime rate increase. Switzerland will be joining that European chorus that has been singing "Hello gun control, bye bye safety."

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Larry Pratt [send him email] has been Executive Director of Gun Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.  He published a book, Armed People Victorious, in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense of Liberty was published in 2001.