Switzerland Debates Gun Laws in Shootings' Aftermath

On a snowy late-February morning, a man walked into the cafeteria of a wood-processing plant in the Swiss village of Menznau and opened fire with a Sphinx AT .380 pistol. Four people died, including the gunman. Six others were wounded. It was Switzerland’s second mass shooting in less than two months. In January a man with a history of mental illness fired a rifle from his window in the Alpine village of Daillon, killing three and injuring two. The shootings have rekindled the debate over gun control in Switzerland, where an estimated one in four households has a gun. “This act has touched us all deeply and made us aware what incredible suffering can be inflicted by weapons,” Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said in Bern on Feb. 27, the day after the Menznau killings.

This month, Parliament is set to vote on legislation that would require Switzerland’s 26 states to share data in their local gun registries with each other. After languishing for two years, the plan was revived after the shooting in January. For years, Switzerland’s experience seemed to support the argument that widespread gun ownership doesn’t lead to increased murders. Its homicide rate of 0.7 per 100,000 people is among the world’s lowest, and less than one-sixth the rate in the U.S. But its 8 million citizens own 3.4 million firearms, the world’s third-highest rate after the U.S. and Yemen, according to Small Arms Survey, a research group in Geneva. “A law-abiding citizen must have the right to defend himself,” says Hermann Suter, vice president of the Swiss gun-rights lobbying group ProTell, named after the legendary Swiss archer William Tell.