Switzerland
Further information: Gun politics in SwitzerlandRules regarding firearms in Switzerland differ markedly from those in other European countries. Under Swiss law, all adult males who have received training in the Swiss armed forces are reservists who are required under law to keep their official firearms at home. According to the gun law of 1999 (larm99), automatic weapons like the Swiss army assault rifle have to be stocked separately of the bolt, which has to be in a locked place.
Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, and one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. In recent times political opposition has expressed a desire for tighter gun regulations. However in 2011, Swiss voters overwhelmingly defeated tighter controls that would have required all guns (including privately owned guns) to be kept in government arsenals.
Read more about this topic: Right To Keep And Bear Arms
Famous quotes containing the word switzerland:
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)
“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)