Si vis pacem, para bellum.

The weed of idiocy sprouts eternal:

A coalition led by [Switzerland's] Social Democrat party and the Greens has collected nearly 120,000 signatures to force a national referendum on whether the weapons should be stored at military bases...

Service in the militia is compulsory for men aged between 19 and 31 and in between call-ups they store their weapons at home. There are currently around 220,000 conscripts.

However, a 2007 law change banned the storage of ammunition in homes. The coalition is looking to extend this, control the purchase of military weapons and set up a national gun register.

Green lawmaker Josef Lang said more than 1.5 million unused weapons were kept in Swiss homes.

Lang said their presence "at the heart" of the population could not be justified.

Lies, lies, and damned lies.

Switzerland has enjoyed some unique benefits from widespread firearms-ownership in the previous centuries: non-participation in warfare directly attributed to the promise of horrific casualties to the invading force and extremely low crime-rates. Ideally, this is what the United States should have been had it followed the advice given by Washington in his Farewell Address (1796):

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

As observed of late, increased third-world immigration, strict firearms-control measures and draconian edicts regarding civil liberties have done much to enrich the member-nations of the EU; perhaps a good riot and some knife-trauma will enlighten the Swiss to the "shining future" that the collectivists are pushing.

Personally, the only shine I see is that of the collectivists' knives. The Swiss would do well to remember their history, the history of their neighbors, and laugh the quislings out of the country.

May you remain forever armed and forever free, Switzerland.