Similarities are most in the shooting sport culture, and in a general cultural disdain to too much control or prohibition. Swiss shooting is pretty similar to NRA high-power from what I’ve seen, and the type of shooting club culture we have here in this part of the country is similar.

Difference is that American gun culture tends to be heavily self-defense oriented, and the Swiss still use a militia system we long ago abandoned, and their gun culture is intimately wrapped up in that. The current Swiss gun culture is probably closer to what ours was before the 19th century, and the slow abandonment of the universal militia in favor of a standing army.

But I think most Americans wouldn’t find Swiss gun laws too odd or onerous, and I doubt most Swiss would find ours to be insane. It’s easier to get a license to carry a gun here, but my understanding is that it’s not impossible in Switzerland either. Carry permits in Switzerland are issued more along the lines of Delaware and Iowa, with it varying jurisdiction to jurisdiction a bit, but not being impossible, or particularly difficult to get.

Swiss laws on automatic weapons are actually fairly similar to ours, though the universal militia system dispenses full automatic assault weapons to its male population. Though my understand is when your term of service is up, you can only keep your weapon if you convert it to semi-automatic. They don’t follow ATF’s one a machine gun always a machine gun philosophy.

Not to mention that the Schengen Agreement on European trade is effecting Swiss gun laws.

Anyone care to discuss this?

The Schengen treaty also includes gun control measures.

http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_security/free_movement_of_persons_asylum_immigration/l33020_en.htm

Guav, it’s a REQUIREMENT. Ever wonder why you and I are near polar opposites on the political spectrum….but somehow we see eye-to-eye on the gun issue? Meanwhile you don’t have to dig to deep on ANY person who advocates gun control before you can find that they are a) Clueless, b) Dishonest, or c) hypocrites.

Flat Earthers don’t own Globes, Gun-banners don’t acknowledge reality. Just how it is.

Pump shotguns, automatic weapons, revolvers, scoped bolt rifles … hell, they are all just guns to me, and should all be just guns to everyone but those who wish for political purposes to brand “types” of guns as “particularly dangerous.”

This is something the antis have done rather successfully, and a concept that gun owners have been particularly poor about, in regard to educating the public. Even many strong gun owners have fallen for the hype about semi-autos, .50s, and “junk” handguns. We as a second amendment community need to figure out how to bring this message to gun owners … “they are all just guns, and the antis would like to ban them all.”