“Switzerland – Where five-year olds learn to shoot”
by Marc-André Miserez
April 6th, 2018
Learning how to shoot a gun has become a popular sport for many young Swiss teenagers. There has been a long history of the Swiss government subsidising shooting clubs to target the teenage youth in the hopes of increasing their future “weapon-savvy” recruits for the Swiss Army. Just two years ago in 2016, the Swiss government changed the legal age at which one can attend target shooting lessons at a range from seventeen years old to just fifteen years old. Christoph Petermann, the deputy chief of communications at the Swiss Target Shooting Federation, stated in the article that because the government lowered the legal age of access to shooting lessons, shooting as a sport has started to become popular again among the Swiss youth.
According to the NGO Small Arms survey, Switzerland has the third-highest rate of firearms per civilian in the world – behind the United States and Yemen. The Target Shooting Federation of Switzerland is the fourth-largest Swiss sports federation – behind football, tennis, and gymnastics, with 130,000 shooters [58,300 of these shooters are licensed among the 8.4 million people of Switzerland]. There has been a definite increase in the number of Swiss citizens who are registered and licensed shooters, since the government lowered the legal age limit – supporting Petermann’s observation of the sport becoming more and more popular among the youth. This article provides many different facts and statistics, some like the ones I mentioned above have been noted in the article with their references, but other stats appear in the article without any references. The facts and stats that are listed in the article without any references seem to be, in my opinion, all stats that would be in support of the young generation of Swiss citizens learning how to shoot and gaining a license to do so. For example, one stat in the article found on the swissinfo.ch website is, “Of countries not at war, only the United States has more guns per capita than Switzerland, according to the Small Arms Survey. Yet, Switzerland has far fewer gun deaths. In the US, there were 36,000 gun fatalities in 2015 (of which 22,000 were suicides), according to official statistics. That is 1.1 deaths per 10,000 inhabitants. In Switzerland, over the same period, there were 310 gun deaths (of which 300 were suicides): 0.4 victims per 10,000 inhabitants.” This statistic puts Switzerland in a very positive light to an outside reader, with no further knowledge about the country, especially since these statistics are being compared to those from America [who has had a lot of gun violence in the recent media]. Again though, I found it very interesting that within the article, there is no reference of where these statistics have come from, which makes it natural that I am to assume these statistics came from the Swissinfo.ch website.
I think also, because of all of the recent gun violence within the American media, there are many comments and statistics within this article about gun violence and how adversely different the Swiss gun atmosphere is compared to America’s. Throughout my time reading this article, I felt that I was reading an article, about guns and Swiss youth, while being persuaded by the author that it is okay and much more of a safe topic in Switzerland, because of how other countries [like America] are being compared to Switzerland throughout the entirety of the article. These details make me feel that this article does have some political influence and sway on the reader to favour what Switzerland is doing within their gun industry and to support the laws and bills the Swiss government has passed in favour of the gun industry. Even the title,”Switzerland – Where five-year olds learn to shoot”, is a pull to get the reader to indulge in this article, because no one would let a five-year-old learn how to shoot a gun if it wasn’t okay, right? Even though there is no mention of five-year-olds learning how to shoot, the youngest age legally allowed is fifteen-years-old within Switzerland.
Works Cited:
Miserez , Marc-André. “Switzerland: Where Five-Year-Olds Learn to Shoot.” SWI Swissinfo.ch, Swissinfo.ch, 6 Apr. 2018, www.swissinfo.ch/eng/gun-fun_switzerland–where-five-year-olds-learn-to-shoot/44018466.
Keystone Photo. “Switzerland: Where Five-Year-Olds Learn to Shoot.” SWI Swissinfo.ch, Photo Reference. Swissinfo.ch, 6 Apr. 2018, www.swissinfo.ch/eng/gun-fun_switzerland–where-five-year-olds-learn-to-shoot/44018466.