Gun politics in Switzerland

Firearms legislation in Switzerland is comparatively liberal, more similar to gun politics in the United States than to that in most European Union countries. The reason is a long tradition of shooting (tirs) as a formative element of national identity in the post-Napoleonic Restoration of the Confederacy, and the long-standing practice of a militia organization of the Swiss Army in which soldiers' service rifles are stored privately at home. Switzerland has a statutory right to bear arms under the "Federal Law on Arms, Arms Accessories and Ammunitions" (WG, LArm) of 20 June 1997. In addition to this, many cantons (notably the alpine cantons of Grisons and Valais) have strong traditions of hunting, accounting for a large but unknown number of privately held hunting rifles. This liberal attitude, however, does not extend to carrying of firearms in public, to which restrictive rules apply (compared to for example the Czech Republic).

Switzerland thus has a relatively high gun ownership rate. There are no official statistics, and estimates vary considerably. The Small Arms Survey of 2007 placed Swiss gun ownership per capita at between 30% and 60%, with a 2014 estimate ranging as low as 25%. In 2016, the defence ministry estimated that 2 million privately owned guns are in circulation, which given a population of 8.3 million corresponds to a gun ownership rate of around 24 guns per 100 residents. This is roughly a quarter of the rate in the United States, and lower than that in the neighbouring countries of Germany, and Austria, but about the double of Italy and France. Gun ownership appears to have declined during the 2000s and early 2010s, and again surged after 2015.

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