10 ms·

My dad's family is Swiss. Three things I've picked up visiting them: 1) various members are affiliated with different parties across the political spectrum and

by glup 6y ago

My dad's family is Swiss. Three things I've picked up visiting them: 1) various members are affiliated with different parties across the political spectrum and there's a lot of interesting, productive conversation (over wine) about domestic policy, in a way most US families couldn't manage 2) even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane (esp. regarding the need for social services and market regulations) 3) they are perplexed by gun violence... while there's a very strong culture of gun ownership (tied to (generally?) compulsory military service) I get the feeling they'd ban them in an instant if they had incidents in schools

skinkestek 6y ago
About the gun part: I grew up in a gun owning family. On the other hand my dad wouldn't even let is have toy guns or water guns as he was afraid of us picking up the habit of pointing guns at fellow humans. Much of my childhood I also shared house with an actual (full auto, large caliber) assault rifle, but my dad was always very careful to point out that war was not cool. In fact, from my childhood, the gun owning part of the family were simultaneously the mild mannered, book reading part of the family. My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.) My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem.
- underlines 6y ago
  "My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem." I would strongly argue against this. Swiss gun law is very different from US, please read my five points above. Do you think US gun violence would decrease if they adopted those points? In my opinion yes. In my opinion the conservatives, nationalists and the National Rifle Association fight against any tighter regulations that would probably save thousands of lives.
  - adsjhdashkj 6y ago
    I very likely agree with you on every gun ppoint, but i do have a question / counter often raised to me - that i don't have to answer to: How would tight regulations like that look in a large country already flooded with weapons of all shapes and sizes? I know multiple pro-gun people who seem to compose a large percentage of their pro-gun belief system around the foundation of the inability to remove them. Ie any bad guy who ever wants a gun will always have it (because there's so many), so give more guns to the good people. What are your thoughts there? I don't really have a counter.
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      You need political will. - Refuse sales of ammunition without proof of gun purchase and registration. - Refuse gun purchase for specific gun types and if a person already has a certain number of guns. - Mandate and enforce training before gun purchases, with obligatory re-training every X years. Checked at every purchase of ammo and guns. No training, no sale. - Mandatory licensing for open carry. Mandatory army-level training for concealed carry. With mandatory re-training. - Buyback and exchange plans for existing weapons. - Huge fines (not jail time, fines) for non-compliance. Money is a much bigger deterrent than jail time.
      - Mirioron 6y ago
        You do all this and then find out that gun violence didn't decrease. Everyone will say it worked, but upon closer inspection it is mostly massaged stats. You'll find things like suicides being counted in the statistics for gun violence. Then what? Do you think anyone would be willing to roll back something like this?
        dmitriid 6y ago
        Europe: 500 million people.
      - refurb 6y ago
        CA has most of these already. They just instituted a requirement for a background check for ammo purchases. One of the biggest problems is your last point - non-compliance isn’t really enforced. If you ask your friend to buy a gun for you because you’re not eligible, the dealer might stop the transaction, but there is a very low likelihood there will be any police follow up.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Also, if the army thinks someone is getting a bit extreme, they will say "congratulations! you don't need to pass the shooting test next year ... and, by the way, please return your service rifle." https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/extremism_swiss-army-takes-measures-against-right-wing-extremism/44068724 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/extremism_swiss-army-t... (fun fact: until the cavalry was disbanded, troopers would not only keep their rifles at home, but also their horse.) I agree on culture. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211 , footnote 1. Not entirely serious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYJ5V2HYy4&t=222 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYJ5V2HYy4&t=222 (but then again, life should be sympa, gemütlich, simpatica, shouldn't it?)
- Mirioron 6y ago
  I would say that most social problems are cultural. The culture is what defines what kinds of options people think that have in their life. When something isn't part of your culture you're less likely to think of it. Ie gun violence being very common somewhere means that people are more likely to resort to gun violence. We observe this effect with suicide too. I believe that gun violence, stabbings, acid attacks, bombings, terror attacks with cars etc are all like this.
- abc03 6y ago
  "My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)" That's new law due to Schengen. If you had a gun before, you don't need to do this. Three weeks is probably the compulsory military service.
underlines 6y ago
I'm Swiss. US pro-gun people (ab)use our liberal gun rights to proof their point. But there are huge differences: 1. Concealed and unconcealed carrying is not allowed. You have to transport your weapon in a very specific way, without ammo etc. Also anyone with a gun in public would trigger a police intervention within minutes. 2. Active military personnel are allowed to stored their gun at home, but almost nobody does that. Those who do get 5 bullets, in a sealed box. They're not allowed to open it, except in war. The seal gets checked every time you go back for service. 3. Storage of legal weapons at home is very strictly regulated. Loaded guns are basically forbidden, ammunition has to be stored separately etc. 4. If you don't have a very clean history, it's almost impossible to get the right to buy guns. 5. Automatic weapons are illegal. PS: Those "facts" are from my memory, as I don't live in Switzerland anymore. Fellow Swiss users, if there's anything wrong please correct me.
- microtherion 6y ago
  I mostly agree, except for some details. Back when I was of military age, some 25 years ago, it was not unusual to see military rifles carried openly, because each reservist had to attend mandatory target practice once a year, you had to transport your rifle to the shooting range, and many people used public transportation to do so. Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other? Back then, storing your army rifle at home was mandatory, and, while those rifles had automatic mode disabled by default, converting them back to automatic took 5 minutes and a screwdriver, with an official, documented, procedure. Some of this has changed in the meantime. Rifles are not necessarily stored at home anymore, and it's been years since I've seen anybody but uniformed military or police carrying openly.
  - soziawa 6y ago
    > Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other? You're mandated to carry it without the trigger mechanism and without magazine. It's quite easy to spot the difference.
    - 6y ago
RajuVarghese 6y ago
You are spot on. Swiss males having gone through military training at the age of 18, are used to guns. Though they keep their weapons in the basement or under their beds they do not treat it like a toy. When soldiers go for their training it is common to see a bunch of fairly young men boarding trains with heavy backpacks and a gun. A certain amount of respect for guns is drilled into them: you do not use a weapon carelessly.
rayiner 6y ago
Folks on opposite sides of the pond have caricatured ideas about each other, because their impressions are based on anecdotal media representations. Compounding that is the fact that “parties” are very different things in the US system versus the parliamentary system. Parties in Europe have a lot of control over who runs under their banner. American parties do not. If the Republican Party operated like European parties, where the leadership selects candidates, the 2016 candidate would have been Jeb Bush of Marco Rubio, not Trump. But in an objective analysis, the Republican Party is solidly to the left of the SVP: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda.... It’s on the right edge of the mass of European center-right parties. (I would argue that this analysis somewhat overstates how far right the Republican Party is. As the article notes: “The Republican platform does not include the same bigoted policies, and its score is pushed to the right because of its emphasis on traditional morality and a ‘national way of life.’” Americans are by far the most religious developed country. In France, arguing for the maintenance of traditional French social norms is something you can do in a secular framework. Under the analysis of this survey, that doesn’t count as right wing. But there is really no way to express that same idea in the American framework while leaving religion out of it. But in this analysis, that counts as right wing.) I’ll add that Americans are in a different stage of the same overall trend we’re seeing in the developed world. Even right-wing platforms in France or Germany have never needed to call for adherence to traditional French or German values, because it was taken for granted. 80% of Germany is still ethnic Germans. Another 10% are other kinds of Europeans. In the United States in the United States only 60% is of European ancestry, and even among those people you’ve got a mix of British, Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. European countries aren’t really multi-cultural the way America is, so there is no need even for right wing parties to make culture an issues. French being the national language of France has overwhelming acceptance (90%+). There was never a reason for right wing parties to even bring it up. But in America, making English the national language is a right-wing talking point, because Americans don’t take it for granted. But taking culture for granted is something that is rapidly changing in Europe. Le Pen got 30% in the last French election. Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron. The dominant CDU in Germany is bleeding members to AfD. The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage, and declared the 2015 acceptance of refugees as “a mistake” that they’ve “learnt from and won’t repeat.”
vinay427 6y ago
> even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane This cuts both ways. I live in Switzerland and I find some conservative Swiss policies unabashedly insane in their xenophobia to a degree that the US Republican party wouldn't dare consider, by my estimation. Very loosely speaking, US conservativism seems to be skewed fiscally and religiously while Swiss conservatism is generally skewed socially. There are a few towns in Switzerland that have actually banned asylum seekers (who are legally in Switzerland) access to public places such as public libraries or pools. [1] [1] Swiss introduce apartheid-like restrictions: Local authorities ban asylum seekers from public places https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-introduce-apartheid-like-restrictions-local-authorities-ban-asylum-seekers-from-public-places-8750765.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-introd...
mnm1 6y ago
I don't think there is any chance in hell that the US adopts and of the mechanisms described in the article, but the one thing we could adopt is a culture that discusses politics. Of course our politics are such shit when no one discusses them. Three months away from a presidential election and still no issues have been discussed by the candidates. Come to think of it, we don't actually have issues to discuss. We have a ton of problems but no one wants to discuss solving them. The problems don't become issues. They just stay perpetual problems. It's just vote for this one guy who won't address your issues and maybe won't fuck shit up too badly or vote for another guy who won't address your issues and will try to make life as miserable as possible for almost everyone. It's taboo to discuss issues, in fact, so it's no wonder things only get worse. The people have so little power, it's really just theatre. Issues with 60%, 70%, or more public support routinely get ignored by the so called representatives. And as a culture we don't use the one tool we do have: discussion of issues. I suppose it fits in nicely with our tendency to have theoretical rights that only exist on paper. What good is the first amendment when there's nothing to discuss and no one willing to discuss things even if there was?

by glup 6y ago

skinkestek 6y ago

About the gun part: I grew up in a gun owning family. On the other hand my dad wouldn't even let is have toy guns or water guns as he was afraid of us picking up the habit of pointing guns at fellow humans. Much of my childhood I also shared house with an actual (full auto, large caliber) assault rifle, but my dad was always very careful to point out that war was not cool. In fact, from my childhood, the gun owning part of the family were simultaneously the mild mannered, book reading part of the family. My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.) My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem.

underlines 6y ago
"My conclusion has always been that the gun violence problems in US is largely a culture problem." I would strongly argue against this. Swiss gun law is very different from US, please read my five points above. Do you think US gun violence would decrease if they adopted those points? In my opinion yes. In my opinion the conservatives, nationalists and the National Rifle Association fight against any tighter regulations that would probably save thousands of lives.
- adsjhdashkj 6y ago
  I very likely agree with you on every gun ppoint, but i do have a question / counter often raised to me - that i don't have to answer to: How would tight regulations like that look in a large country already flooded with weapons of all shapes and sizes? I know multiple pro-gun people who seem to compose a large percentage of their pro-gun belief system around the foundation of the inability to remove them. Ie any bad guy who ever wants a gun will always have it (because there's so many), so give more guns to the good people. What are your thoughts there? I don't really have a counter.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    You need political will. - Refuse sales of ammunition without proof of gun purchase and registration. - Refuse gun purchase for specific gun types and if a person already has a certain number of guns. - Mandate and enforce training before gun purchases, with obligatory re-training every X years. Checked at every purchase of ammo and guns. No training, no sale. - Mandatory licensing for open carry. Mandatory army-level training for concealed carry. With mandatory re-training. - Buyback and exchange plans for existing weapons. - Huge fines (not jail time, fines) for non-compliance. Money is a much bigger deterrent than jail time.
    - Mirioron 6y ago
      You do all this and then find out that gun violence didn't decrease. Everyone will say it worked, but upon closer inspection it is mostly massaged stats. You'll find things like suicides being counted in the statistics for gun violence. Then what? Do you think anyone would be willing to roll back something like this?
      - dmitriid 6y ago
        Europe: 500 million people.
    - refurb 6y ago
      CA has most of these already. They just instituted a requirement for a background check for ammo purchases. One of the biggest problems is your last point - non-compliance isn’t really enforced. If you ask your friend to buy a gun for you because you’re not eligible, the dealer might stop the transaction, but there is a very low likelihood there will be any police follow up.
082349872349872 6y ago
Also, if the army thinks someone is getting a bit extreme, they will say "congratulations! you don't need to pass the shooting test next year ... and, by the way, please return your service rifle." https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/extremism_swiss-army-takes-measures-against-right-wing-extremism/44068724 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/extremism_swiss-army-t... (fun fact: until the cavalry was disbanded, troopers would not only keep their rifles at home, but also their horse.) I agree on culture. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809211 , footnote 1. Not entirely serious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYJ5V2HYy4&t=222 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYJ5V2HYy4&t=222 (but then again, life should be sympa, gemütlich, simpatica, shouldn't it?)
Mirioron 6y ago
I would say that most social problems are cultural. The culture is what defines what kinds of options people think that have in their life. When something isn't part of your culture you're less likely to think of it. Ie gun violence being very common somewhere means that people are more likely to resort to gun violence. We observe this effect with suicide too. I believe that gun violence, stabbings, acid attacks, bombings, terror attacks with cars etc are all like this.
abc03 6y ago
"My Swiss friend in town told me as far as he knew Switzerland still people keep fully functional assault rifles at home but those who have them need to show up for three weeks of training each year and show up at a shooting range twice a year. (He left a few years ago so anyone actually living there now should feel free to correct this.)" That's new law due to Schengen. If you had a gun before, you don't need to do this. Three weeks is probably the compulsory military service.

underlines 6y ago

I'm Swiss. US pro-gun people (ab)use our liberal gun rights to proof their point. But there are huge differences: 1. Concealed and unconcealed carrying is not allowed. You have to transport your weapon in a very specific way, without ammo etc. Also anyone with a gun in public would trigger a police intervention within minutes. 2. Active military personnel are allowed to stored their gun at home, but almost nobody does that. Those who do get 5 bullets, in a sealed box. They're not allowed to open it, except in war. The seal gets checked every time you go back for service. 3. Storage of legal weapons at home is very strictly regulated. Loaded guns are basically forbidden, ammunition has to be stored separately etc. 4. If you don't have a very clean history, it's almost impossible to get the right to buy guns. 5. Automatic weapons are illegal. PS: Those "facts" are from my memory, as I don't live in Switzerland anymore. Fellow Swiss users, if there's anything wrong please correct me.

microtherion 6y ago
I mostly agree, except for some details. Back when I was of military age, some 25 years ago, it was not unusual to see military rifles carried openly, because each reservist had to attend mandatory target practice once a year, you had to transport your rifle to the shooting range, and many people used public transportation to do so. Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other? Back then, storing your army rifle at home was mandatory, and, while those rifles had automatic mode disabled by default, converting them back to automatic took 5 minutes and a screwdriver, with an official, documented, procedure. Some of this has changed in the meantime. Rifles are not necessarily stored at home anymore, and it's been years since I've seen anybody but uniformed military or police carrying openly.
- soziawa 6y ago
  > Carrying a loaded rifle was illegal, but how would the public know one way or the other? You're mandated to carry it without the trigger mechanism and without magazine. It's quite easy to spot the difference.
  - 6y ago

RajuVarghese 6y ago

You are spot on. Swiss males having gone through military training at the age of 18, are used to guns. Though they keep their weapons in the basement or under their beds they do not treat it like a toy. When soldiers go for their training it is common to see a bunch of fairly young men boarding trains with heavy backpacks and a gun. A certain amount of respect for guns is drilled into them: you do not use a weapon carelessly.

rayiner 6y ago

Folks on opposite sides of the pond have caricatured ideas about each other, because their impressions are based on anecdotal media representations. Compounding that is the fact that “parties” are very different things in the US system versus the parliamentary system. Parties in Europe have a lot of control over who runs under their banner. American parties do not. If the Republican Party operated like European parties, where the leadership selects candidates, the 2016 candidate would have been Jeb Bush of Marco Rubio, not Trump. But in an objective analysis, the Republican Party is solidly to the left of the SVP: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda.... It’s on the right edge of the mass of European center-right parties. (I would argue that this analysis somewhat overstates how far right the Republican Party is. As the article notes: “The Republican platform does not include the same bigoted policies, and its score is pushed to the right because of its emphasis on traditional morality and a ‘national way of life.’” Americans are by far the most religious developed country. In France, arguing for the maintenance of traditional French social norms is something you can do in a secular framework. Under the analysis of this survey, that doesn’t count as right wing. But there is really no way to express that same idea in the American framework while leaving religion out of it. But in this analysis, that counts as right wing.) I’ll add that Americans are in a different stage of the same overall trend we’re seeing in the developed world. Even right-wing platforms in France or Germany have never needed to call for adherence to traditional French or German values, because it was taken for granted. 80% of Germany is still ethnic Germans. Another 10% are other kinds of Europeans. In the United States in the United States only 60% is of European ancestry, and even among those people you’ve got a mix of British, Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. European countries aren’t really multi-cultural the way America is, so there is no need even for right wing parties to make culture an issues. French being the national language of France has overwhelming acceptance (90%+). There was never a reason for right wing parties to even bring it up. But in America, making English the national language is a right-wing talking point, because Americans don’t take it for granted. But taking culture for granted is something that is rapidly changing in Europe. Le Pen got 30% in the last French election. Now she’s polling at 45% in a head-to-head with Macron. The dominant CDU in Germany is bleeding members to AfD. The new leader of the CDU is significantly further right than Merkel: she opposes abortion and gay marriage, and declared the 2015 acceptance of refugees as “a mistake” that they’ve “learnt from and won’t repeat.”

vinay427 6y ago

> even the most conservative family members (SVP supporters) find the US Republican Party completely, unabashedly insane This cuts both ways. I live in Switzerland and I find some conservative Swiss policies unabashedly insane in their xenophobia to a degree that the US Republican party wouldn't dare consider, by my estimation. Very loosely speaking, US conservativism seems to be skewed fiscally and religiously while Swiss conservatism is generally skewed socially. There are a few towns in Switzerland that have actually banned asylum seekers (who are legally in Switzerland) access to public places such as public libraries or pools. [1] [1] Swiss introduce apartheid-like restrictions: Local authorities ban asylum seekers from public places https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-introduce-apartheid-like-restrictions-local-authorities-ban-asylum-seekers-from-public-places-8750765.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swiss-introd...

mnm1 6y ago

I don't think there is any chance in hell that the US adopts and of the mechanisms described in the article, but the one thing we could adopt is a culture that discusses politics. Of course our politics are such shit when no one discusses them. Three months away from a presidential election and still no issues have been discussed by the candidates. Come to think of it, we don't actually have issues to discuss. We have a ton of problems but no one wants to discuss solving them. The problems don't become issues. They just stay perpetual problems. It's just vote for this one guy who won't address your issues and maybe won't fuck shit up too badly or vote for another guy who won't address your issues and will try to make life as miserable as possible for almost everyone. It's taboo to discuss issues, in fact, so it's no wonder things only get worse. The people have so little power, it's really just theatre. Issues with 60%, 70%, or more public support routinely get ignored by the so called representatives. And as a culture we don't use the one tool we do have: discussion of issues. I suppose it fits in nicely with our tendency to have theoretical rights that only exist on paper. What good is the first amendment when there's nothing to discuss and no one willing to discuss things even if there was?