Switzerland has lots of guns. But its gun culture takes different path from US.
Marksmen fill the recreation hall of this sand-colored shooting club in the wooded hills outside Bern, capping off a weekend competition to commemorate the 1798 Battle of Grauholz in the French Revolutionary Wars.
There is no shortage of patriotism here – there is even a yodeling club dressed in traditional red-trimmed black felt jackets – and indeed, for many Swiss citizens, guns are as central to their identity as the Alps. Switzerland has one of the highest per capita rates of guns in the world. “Every Swiss village has a range just like this one,” says Renato Steffen, a top official of the Swiss Shooting Sports Association, representing the group at the event. The association counts 2,800 such clubs across the country, with a youth wing for children as young as 10.
If this seems like a scene that belongs in gun-loving America, there the similarities end. The Swiss’s historic relationship to their arms as members of a standing militia, their motives for keeping them,
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