Gun ownership is MAD? or is it?

The Unstoppable Offensive
Neighbouring Austria succumbed to Nazi intrigues and threats and fell without a shot being fired in 1938. Czechoslovakia was likewise bullied and threatened into giving up without a fight. Albania was occupied by Fascist Italy. Poland fell after just 20 days of intense fighting in September 1939. Denmark surrendered within 4 hours of receiving an ultimatum. The Danish King and his government capitulated and prohibited any resistance to the Nazi occupation. The Norwegians put up a spirited resistance, aided by British and French troops, but were quickly outmaneuvered by German paratroopers and mountain divisions. Sweden allowed the Nazi's to transport troops over its soil to Norway. It would later allow the transportation of an entire German army division across its “neutral” territory, to be used in the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941.

Holland fell before the German Blitzkrieg in just 5 days. Belgium held out for almost 17 days before surrendering to the invading German army. France was conquered in under 6 weeks. Paris fell without a shot being fired.

Yet, despite Hitler's frequently repeated threats to invade, “liquidate” and annex Switzerland to his Grossdeutschland, (with maps even being printed on the day of the Anschluss of Austria, showing Switzerland as incorporated into the 3rd Reich), Switzerland succeeded where all other neutral nations failed. Switzerland remained a heroic island of freedom in a sea of Nazi tyranny, throughout Europe. It was to answer this question of how Switzerland so effectively resisted tyranny during a time when every surrounding nation failed, that this incredibly timely book Target Switzerland was written.

Sharpshooters on Skis
The spiritual and military strength and resolve of the tiny Swiss nation to resist the overwhelming totalitarian threat should continue to inspire freedom-loving people everywhere. This great land of the Reformation, with its long tradition of a decentralised, constitutional Republic, has long been renowned as a nation of marksmen on skis. Every man in Switzerland has at least one rifle in his home. Switzerland was the only European nation which proclaimed that, in the event of an invasion, any announcement of surrender was to be regarded as enemy propaganda, and that every soldier must fight to the last cartridge, and then with the bayonet. Their published and openly proclaimed military strategy was to make any invader pay a severe penalty for violating their neutrality. The order was: Keep Fighting. No surrender. No retreat. Fight to the last bullet and blade.
A Legacy of Liberty
With the large number of totalitarian dictatorships, vicious wars and lack of freedom in large parts of the world today, the lessons and example of Switzerland should be carefully studied and learnt from. Switzerland is the oldest democracy in the world. It also has the distinction of having the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world. In contrast to the rest of Europe, which had highly centralised governments, Switzerland had a very weak central government. The first unit of authority in Switzerland was the individual and the family. Then came the village or city, then the canton and finally the federal government. As a direct democracy, power was decentralised. Power was exercised from the bottom up, not from the top down. Therefore, whereas Hitler was able to conquer much of Europe by bluffing and bullying the central authority of various governments into capitulation, in Switzerland there was no central authority, which could betray or surrender the nation. The Swiss solution to Hitler's total war was total resistance by the entire population.

Many would be surprised to hear that Switzerland achieved the highest military mobilisation of any population in World War II. A full 20% of the total Swiss population was mobilised to resist the Nazi threat in WW II. Some Swiss towns were bombed. Swiss pilots shot down at least 11 Luftwaffe planes in dog-fights during WW II, to the loss of only 3 of their own aircraft. Repeatedly through WW II, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy mobilised hundreds of thousands of troops, including mechanised divisions, on the border of Switzerland in preparation for invasion; unleashing intensive journalistic barrages of anti-Swiss articles, in preparation for occupation. Only to be faced down by hundreds of thousands of incredibly determined and well-trained Swiss troops, ready to repel any invaders.

While Hitler attacked every super-power of the time, France, Britain, Soviet Union and the USA, and every neighbouring neutral country, including Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Austria, Switzerland was the only nation which successfully deterred the Nazi war machine from invading.

Swiss Sanctuary
The extraordinary courageous efforts of the Swiss military to prevent invasion and preserve a haven in which individuals were protected, enabled many thousands of refugees and escaped prisoners of war to find sanctuary in Switzerland, in the midst of the savagery of WW II. Switzerland protected 50 000 Jews and over 100 000 interned soldiers during the war. Most of these soldiers were allies, 1 700 were American pilots who had been shot down over Europe and escaped to Switzerland.

Surrounded
On 25 July 1940, General Henry Guisan, commander of the Swiss Army, summoned 600 of his senior officers to a jagged mountainside in central Switzerland, near Lake Lucerne. During the preceding weeks, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France had fallen to the forces of Nazi Germany. The British Army had evacuated the continent, leaving its heavy equipment behind. Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Albania had fallen in the preceding two years. Hundreds of thousands of German troops were massing on Switzerland's northern border, and fascist Italy threatened Switzerland's southern border. Surrounded by totalitarian aggressors and occupied lands, the Swiss stood alone.
Standing on the Rütli Meadow, overshadowed by the Alpine peaks, General Guisan addressed his officers: “I decided to reunite you in this historic place, the symbolic ground of our independence, to explain the urgency of the situation and to speak to you as a soldier to soldiers. We are at a turning point in our history. The survival of Switzerland is at stake.” His order was to fight to the last man - never surrender.

Resistance to Tyranny
It was on the Rütli Meadow that the Swiss Confederation was first formed on 1 August 1291. For 650 years, Swiss fighting men had earned the reputation as the most ferocious in Europe. Their determined refusal to live under the rule of foreign kings, was legendary. Most people know the story of William Tell, the hero who refused to bow before the Austrian governor Gessler. He was condemned to shoot an apple off the head of his 6-year old son at 120 paces. If he refused, both father and son would be executed. In a remarkable display of archery skill, William Tell succeeded in hitting the apple and missing his son. Congratulating Tell, Gessler asked why he had another arrow in his quiver. Tell responded that, had he injured the child, he would have sent the remaining arrow into the governor's heart. Tell was condemned to life imprisonment for his insolence, but he escaped while being transported across Lake Lucerne.

Later he ambushed the governor and shot the reserved arrow into his heart. This instigated the rebellion in which the Swiss successfully overthrew the Austrians, who had been ruling them, and it was on this Rütli Meadow that the Swiss cantons swore loyalty to each other.

 

While Hitler attacked every super-power of the time, France, Britain, Soviet Union and the USA, and every neighbouring neutral country, including Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Austria, Switzerland was the only nation which successfully deterred the Nazi war machine from invading

 

Resistance to Tyranny
It was on the Rütli Meadow that the Swiss Confederation was first formed on 1 August 1291. For 650 years, Swiss fighting men had earned the reputation as the most ferocious in Europe. Their determined refusal to live under the rule of foreign kings, was legendary

 

The Nazi Threat
From the moment Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, a reign of terror began. All rights to assemble and to a free press were removed. The Nazi's began house searches, seizing firearms from private citizens on a wide scale. Random searches and seizures were authorised. By March, Hitler was an absolute dictator and the regional German states had been overwhelmed by the central government.

From the beginning, the press in neighbouring Switzerland was the most vocal in exposing the dangerous trends and threats of the Nazi regime. The Nazi professor of military science, Ewald Banse, openly published his assertion that in a war against France, Germany would need to invade through Switzerland to outflank the French fortified Maginot Line, punching through the Geneva gap. Despite its majority German-speaking population, Banse used Nazi racial theories to describe the Swiss as “inferior.”
While most of the world paid little attention to the disturbing trends of national socialism in Germany, the Swiss were repelled from the start. On 12 May 1933, the Swiss Federal Council prohibited the wearing of Hitlerite uniforms and insignia, and subjected violators to imprisonment or deportation.
The 1933 military manual issued to every Swiss citizen stated: “it is every man's duty to constantly maintain his rifle, and to practise constantly in both prone and kneeling positions at their local shooting society. To fire accurately, one should not shoot fast, but pull the trigger slowly using intelligence and judgement, remembering that the victor always has another cartridge in his rifle. The trigger was only to be pulled if the target will be hit. One has to shoot more accurately than the enemy and more skillfully use the terrain.”

Their SSV came out strongly in its publications against totalitarianism of both the right and the left. Swiss shooting matches were extended to 400 metres. Considering that the German army only trained up to 100 metres, the Swiss marksmen would have a serious advantage over any invader.
In September 1993, “A plan for the invasion of Switzerland” was published. The theme was: Geneva is the gateway to France and particularly important for the seizure of Lyons with its surrounding arms and ammunition factories. With violation of Swiss neutrality being publicly discussed, the Swiss massively increased appropriations for armaments.


On the first page of “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler had declared that “common blood must belong to a common Reich.” He made it clear that one of his main goals was to reunite Austria and Germany into one Reich, and he also alluded to the integration of Switzerland into his Grossdeutschland. During the Middle Ages, Switzerland had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, the first Reich in Nazi terminology. The Nazi's now were proclaiming that they intended to expand Germany's boundaries “to the furtherest limits of the old Holy Roman Empire and even beyond.” Prof. Banse wrote: “We count you Swiss as offshoots of the German nation; … one day we will group ourselves around a single banner and whoever wishes to separate us, we will extermina

 

Their SSV came out strongly in its publications against totalitarianism of both the right and the left. Swiss shooting matches were extended to 400 metres. Considering that the German army only trained up to 100 metres, the Swiss marksmen would have a serious advantage over any invader.
In September 1993, “A plan for the invasion of Switzerland” was published. The theme was: Geneva is the gateway to France and particularly important for the seizure of Lyons with its surrounding arms and ammunition factories. With violation of Swiss neutrality being publicly discussed, the Swiss massively increased appropriations for armaments.

 

Executive Summary: Widely televised firearm murders in many
countries during the 20th Century have spurred politicians to
introduce restrictive gun laws. The politicians then promise that
the new restrictions will reduce criminal violence and "create a
safer society." It is time to pause and ask if gun laws actually
do reduce criminal violence.

Gun laws must be demonstrated to cut violent crime or gun control
is no more than a hollow promise. What makes gun control so
compelling for many is the belief that violent crime is driven by
the availability of guns and, more importantly, that criminal
violence in general may be reduced by limiting access to
firearms.

In this study, the author examines crime trends in Commonwealth
countries that have recently introduced firearm regulations:
i.e., Great Britain, Australia, and Canada. The widely ignored
key to evaluating firearm regulations is to examine trends in
total violent crime, not just firearms crime. Since firearms are
only a small fraction of criminal violence, the public would not
be safer if the new law could reduce firearm violence but had no
effect on total criminal violence.

The United States provides a valuable point of comparison for
assessing crime rates because the criminal justice system there
differs so drastically from those in Europe and the Commonwealth.
Not only are criminal penalties typically more severe in the
United States, often much more severe, but also conviction and
incarceration rates are usually much higer. Perhaps the most
striking difference is that qualified citizens in the United
States can carry concealed handguns for self-defence. During the
past few decades, more than 25 states in the United States passed
laws allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed handguns.
In 2003, there are 35 states where citizens can get such a
permit.

The upshot is that violent crime rates, and homicide rates in
particular, have been falling in the United States. The drop in
the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared
with the rest of the world.

 

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