re: #215 Vicious Babushka

Speaking of Switzerland, there’s a photo that the wingnuts are spamming around, that shows two girls riding bikes, with rifles strapped to their backs, with the claim these are “typical Swiss girls.” I know that Switzerland has high gun ownership, but is this photo real or a stock photo taken somewhere else?

I don’t have the photo but you can google “Swiss girls with rifles” it’s not pr0n.

I will preface this by saying that I don’t know much about the specific laws regarding how weapons are allowed to be *transported* in Switzerland, but here’s my take on it:

Everyone (well, not everyone, but most men and now quite a few women since they extended voluntary military service to women) has a military-style rifle, keeps it at home and maintains it.

The kicker is that you can’t have any ammunition at home. That is kept at the depot and there are pretty strict penalties when people get hold of it, because that’s inevitably when accidents happen.

Personal gun ownership I know nothing about but I don’t think it’s any more or less than in other European countries, so I guess it’s pretty low. People aren’t “into guns” particularly (apart from the nutters of course - there are nutters everywhere).

Basically, people in military service own rifles and train with them every so often, but don’t have any bullets at home unless someone fucks up. If there were ever a national emergency requiring a military response, people would assemble at their local depots and load up, as regulated by the (fully professional) army leadership.