Quote from 377OHMS:
Nearly every home in Switzerland has a fully automatic assault weapon and they have a very low incidence of violent crime.
Its the culture, not merely the presence of firearms.
Do you remember there ever being a mass killing in a school, mall or public place before 1981?
That was the year the federal government withdrew funding for state mental institutions and patients were dumped out into the street. Since then it is very difficult to commit a crazy person to a mental hospital. I think that is what must change. We need to identify and institutionalize dangerously ill people when it is appropriate to do so.
[The UT clock tower incident comes immediately to mind, mid sixties, killed over a dozen and wounded many more. There are other incidents as well.]
The earlier incidents were rare, and I agree completely with your post. But I'm still not in favor of either semi-automatic or automatic weapons being sold in the U.S. because we are culturally not Switzerland and our gun laws are much less strict than the Swiss laws and haphazard from State to State. I could change my mind if the U.S. were to copy the Swiss gun laws exactly with strict enforcement and strict rules regarding access to ammunition etc., and of course that would require universal registration of all firearms..
I don't see any indication that you can go to a gun show in Switzerland and walk out with a semi-automatic pistol!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
