Will suicidal Swiss stick to their guns

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070501/...iss_suicide_dc

Switzerland is one of the world's richest and most tranquil countries, but it also has more suicides than most. This may show that money doesn't buy happiness, but some Swiss also blame the guns.

Now the country is debating whether it should continue to arm its citizens, a practice which has helped it escape the need for a large standing army but flooded the country with weapons.

"Compared to countries abroad, a large number of suicides involve firearms ... And that's of course because it is easier to get hold of guns here," said Boris Banga, a socialist member of parliament who wants stricter laws.

Using his army pistol, private banker Gerold Stadler last year put an end to his own life, after killing his pregnant wife -- World Cup ski champion Corinne Rey-Bellet -- and her brother, in the French-speaking Swiss hamlet of Les Crosets.

Just as parliament was discussing arms legislation, a random shooter emptied his rifle in a bar in Baden, killing one and wounding four. Weeks earlier, a young man had shot his girlfriend. Both cases involved army guns.

A survey by the Blick popular newspaper last month showed 66 percent wanted guns out of Swiss attics, while 77 percent said there was no need to store both guns and ammunition at home in order to defend the country.

And more...

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Wouldn't it make more sense to identify the causes and signs of a potential suicide and work on fixing those? This is another case of blaming technology for a human problem needing a human fix; not getting rid of the technology.

Unless the Swiss are expecting to be invanded by the Taliban, does the current army guns arrangement fill a recognised need? And how significant are a couple of examples against the hundreds of thousands of guns with no problems?

In the cases above, if it was not an army gun it would be a kitchen knife, so what can we infer?

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No Rest for the Wicked!

T.A. hit the nail-on-the-head and I completely agree with his posting.

I know the following will sound stupid but, I speak the truth.

Last I heard, a firearm cannot pick-n-choose when or where it will be fired. Last I heard, a firearm has no thought capacity and cannot pull its own trigger and fire itself. Last I heard, a firearm cannot load cartridges into a magazine and load the magazine into the magazine housing in itself. And lastly, a firearm is made up of steel--which comes as an ore that is embedded within dirt and rock. That ore has to be mined, shipped to a facility in order to be turned into refined ore that in turn is purified through a number of steps taken, into the raw metal-like substance itself.

After that, that substance is turned into a raw metal product that has to be finely engineered into soemthing usable in order to be made into metal parts to make a firearm. Then one (if this weapon is going to have a wooden furniture) one will have to get wood, which many steps had to be taken in order for a more finished porduct that can be used in order to be a component in making a firearm.

At any rate, neither that wood, or the metals used, can have a thought process in thinking: Hmmmm, I wonder who I can shoot and kill today.

All that gentlemen, has to come from some human who is mentally ill, and should have had their background checked, before being allower to; purchase a firearm. Like in that recent university killing spree, that cho-jerk, somehow slipped through the cracks and was able to purchase weapons. That "SLIP" was because someone along the line, did not fully do their job in checking for such info. However, the Guvnuh of Virginia, changed and made that into law as of last week.

At any rate, noone anywhere will ever be able to convince me that guns are evil thinking items with the capability of being able to hate someone of loading and firing itself at someone. THE only way that is possible, is of course by some sicko-""human being"" that is hellbent on destroying as many lives as it can.

I for one, will always own at least one gun. The last one I bought, I was able to take home the same day--after my background was checked by the ATF/FBI-at the very gun show I had attended - instead of that 10 day waiting period that one normally had to go through. If I had something wrong in my background, I would not have been able to take home my Walther P-38 that very afternoon. If I remember, I was told at time of purchase, to come back in about 2 hrs and see the status of my background check. At worst, I expected to have had to come back to that gunshow the next day to pick up my purchase ~~or~~ to have to wait that 10 day waiting period and to have to have my purchase sent to a licensed gun dealer for me to pick up my weapon from.

At any rate, the FBI/ATF guys, had no problem with anything I have ever done and I had my purchase in hand, in slightly less than 2 hrs after signing the forums and paying for it.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

Nobody in his right mind will suggest guns are sentient or have decision powers. It's more of a matter of convenience. If I for a number of reasons go berserk and decide to murder my family and a few neighbours too and shoot myself in the end, it will be much more expedient if I have easy access to a gun of a decent calibre and sufficient ammunition; I will be able to do much more limited damage if all I can use is a bread knife.

How big would the butcher's bill have been if the Columbine boys had been able to procure only two nail clippers, a swiss pocket knife and a crowbar?

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No Rest for the Wicked!

Yes, I agree with Za. Ta´s idea is good but the problem is that mostly these actions are done quite fast so there is no thinking time or anything, and nobody can really figure it out what was going to happen until it is all over. So trying to prevent things from happening can be pretty tough, especially as modern society is going for policlinical treating methods mostly for saving money.

As an example the medication for depressed people has changed to more atoxic versions during the last 10 years and figures for suicide death have gone down due to that. The funny thing is that at the same time , at least in Finland, treament methods for acutle ill people have gotten truly worse, but the reports claim that the better figures are due to better treatment planning and system...

What does by the way unexplained and suicidal behaviour mean? For instance one person took 200 pills and claimed it was an accident. You believe that? Another tried to get under a big truck, got her legs broken, and tried to drag herself under another car. Well, try to imagine how much they can control themselves in any condition if they get the sudden urge to do it...

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The answer is simple. Those two sicko boys who did the murders at Columbine were hell bent to do as much damage as possible and had to steal their weapons from their parents in oder to do so. All the time as I was gropwing up, I had easy access to all the guns my family owned. My brothers and I used to go to where they were kept and we would simply look at them and pick them up etc--never playing with them as ""we were tought better"" and all we were doing; was simply looking at them.

Once in awhile, my father took us out to go shoot bottles and paper targets and we had our fun with them. I also grew up having BB an dPellet Guns. I used to nail a bag full of plastic toy soldier to the backyard fence and shoot them to bits. This of course, was not thay I was trying to practice to shoot people--we simply had nothing else to shoot at, except the fence itself. It used to piss off my father to have to go back there and pry out all the BBs stuck in the fence--but he accepted that as they really did no damage and we kept out of trouble.

Anyway, back to those columbine murderers: They were dead set to kill as many as possible. They could still hav ekilled many with said Butcher Knives as those have very large blades. Just try to stop some jerk from using full force in slashing at you with one of those baby's and you will lose your hand or whatever. Also, if they did not have those, then I suppose they could have grabbed a few large Screwdrivers from their Father's tool chests.

At any rate--you AINT going to stop jerks like these mentioned unless your very lucky or unless you have better weapons (or more) than they do. There would have still been several people killed at columbine regardless of what weapons they chose.

Also, if someone is armed, unarmed bystanders are not likely to intervene. I forget the term that Law Enforcement uses that lables that.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

Hasher and swifter punishment is the BEST deterent to violent crimes. Texas' express lane on death row is a good example.

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Do you have any figures to support that statement?

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No Rest for the Wicked!

Carl, you still haven't got away from the fact that if there weren't guns available they couldn't have shot people.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Hi Stefan, that is all too true. However, if they had baseball bats, knives, steel pipes or rocks, they still would have been hell bent to do harm in the first place. So the point is moot because nothing can be done about what happened anyway. Do I speak the truth? ;-)

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

I "figure" on common sense. Why does the U.S. have the largest prison population in the world? Because criminals often have more rights than their victims. There is no other way to explain why, after recieving the death penalty, a convict has the seemingly inexhaustible means/rights to file repeal adinfinitum for years and years and years after his/her sentencing. The problem, in this country, is not that we do not have enough laws to deal with the problem but, rather, that the existing ones are not enforced as they should be.

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In Norway we have had incidents of this kind before. Home Guard men using their service rifle to end it all. Now the ammo has been stored elsewhere, and people have to rely on rope, knives and perhaps the worst: speeding into oncoming traffic.

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'We march. The enemy is retreating in transport. We follow on foot.' Lt.Neil McCallum 5/7 Gordons 19th November 1942

To some extent Carl, however it seems pretty clear to me that if (for example) Harris and Klebold turned up at the school with a baseball bat or a knife they might have hurt someone but would have ultimately got the living daylights kicked out of them. The fact they had firearms was what allowed them to kill so many people and prevented others from restraining them. So sure, if they had baseball bats they could have smashed a couple of windows or something, not killed 12 people.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

And even so you managed to find 120 people since 1973 were executed and later found innocent

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No Rest for the Wicked!

And in war we have deaths due to friendly fire. What would you have us do,
lay down our weapons and invite the taliban over for a big hug?

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Just commenting as it seems that plain warfare is not going to make anyone win this or any war like we wanted to think. During war never did the strategic bombing win the war alone, and no artillery barrage destroyed all the men in the enemy frontline....just some myths that were believed to be correct.

On paper death penalty sounds "good" decision for getting rid of the problem, however like the stats seems to show, too many innocent are killed instead. How will you get that fixed?

Killing Talibans seemed to work. Now they are back at it again. What are you gonna do about it now?

Keeping Iraq under control does not even seem to work? Another 8 US soldiers and 20 civilians died in a couple of days. How long can you take it?

If the go-get -them does not work then what will you do? Do we just consider them acceptable losses or should we consider changing tactics? And if not is the only answer " veto " like Bush does.

I´m just happy I´m not there to decide what should be done....

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I support President Bush's veto. He not only has a tough job as President but, now has to battle Congress more than ever as well. Any military appropriations made by Congress for our troops should not contain any add-on legislation such as a withdrawl date. That's just plain asinine! But, then again, that's just the way of liberals in this country. They'll have the nerve to stand up and say that the war is unwinable all the while blasting away at McCain for making an IED joke. The Democrat party is the most despicable, malevolent, twisted, idiotic, crazy, stupid, slick sliding pit of snake sinners this side of hell. So, it is not President Bush who is to blame, it is a Democratic controlled Congress which has, however unknowingly (although most of them know good and well what they're doing since a great number of them hate the military anyway), allied itself with the very enemy we have been fighting against all this time.

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No, I'd advice you have a look at the training problems in your military that result in pilots disobeying direct orders so they can take on easier targets, officers ordering soldiers to engage targets they hadn't properly identified and soldiers taking pot shots at unidentified targets to get their first kill.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.