C’mon over for a look at the states. Live here for a while. You’ll see how stupid and naive your comment is.

Shooting is tricky enough when you’re on a range & shooting at a paper target, it gets extremely hard when you’re target is running around shooting at you. All police are trained to aim for the torso because it’s the biggest target & easiest to hit; if you aim for any other part of the body you run the risk of missing and either hitting someone else or giving the gunman another chance to kill you. There’s plenty of cases where shooters have been wounded in shootouts with American police. To suggest that either the killing of armed persons is something peculiar to the US, or that it’s possible to shoot to wound & guarantee that it’ll be effective is ridiculous.

Where are all you “only in America” commenters.

The majority of shooting incidents occur within six feet. In most occasions there is no time to aim properly. Shooting to wound is for the movies and TV.

If only it were that simple!

Trite comment

Actually there was an attack in 2001 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zug_massacre however the Swiss took a mature approach to things rather than the usual knee jerk, hysterical reaction of the Ban all guns and wrap me up in Bubble Wrap Brigade. Swiss culture is more mature than US culture in that every person of fighting age knows how to shoot to protect their country in time of war. There is a national pride in gun ownership and the ability to protect their country from foreign enemies. Perhaps the best way to sum up the difference between Switzerland and other countries is a quote from this article

“One of the reasons the crime rate in Switzerland is low despite the prevalence of weapons — and also why the Swiss mentality can’t be transposed to the current American reality — is the culture of responsibility and safety that is anchored in society and passed from generation to generation…….“Social conditions are fundamental in deterring crime,” says Peter Squires, professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Brighton in Great Britain, who has studied gun violence in different countries and concluded that a “culture of support” rather than focus on individualism, can deter mass killings.

“If people have a responsible, disciplined and organized introduction into an activity like shooting, there will be less risk of gun violence,” he tells TIME.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/#ixzz2Gu6nAORL

It doesn’t really. The irony is that the Swiss have a well run militia, issue military assault rifles to adult males that are kept at home and yet have a relatively low gun homicide rate given the number of guns in circulation.

I have family living in switzerland and neither they nor any of their friends own a gun – where are people getting their info that every male has a gun in the house?

Every Swiss citizen has a gun. I presume that your family are not from Switzerland.

Did you mean that most adult males have been trained how to use assault rifles? Cause I really doubt, that every adult male has one at home. Not sure bout it, but don’t they have a compulsory military service like Austria and Germany? Which means every adult male is trained by the military (as long as they didn’t opt for the alternative civilian service) but that doesn’t mean they all own guns! And even if they did, the mentality about guns would be a different one compared to the US or even Ireland!

Every Swiss male does national service and remains in the military deserve upon completion of it. They take their kit & rifle home with them, regularly taking them to the range & on exercise. It’s a common enough site to see men coming & going in public places with rifles. Up until the Troubles, members of the FCA here would bring their rifles home too.

Thanks for the info! As I said I wasn’t sure how their compulsory military service works, as I only know about the Austrian one. But they do offer a civilian service instead too, don’t they?
Well, considering that Switzerland is a neutral country (real compared to other so called neutral countries) it makes sense. Which does bring me back to my actual point: the difference in mentality!