The right answers.(gun-crime in Switzerland vs. UK, other questions and answers)(Brief Article)(Column)

Q. Is there a higher gun-crime rate in Switzerland, with all its weapons, or in Britain?

L.R.R., Mesa, Ariz.

A. Using a 1996 massacre in a school as an excuse, British authorities cracked down even further on legal gun owners. Even though all privately owned handguns "are now officially illegal," as the BBC has noted, "the tightened rules seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Estimates of illegal firearms range from 200,000 to several million.

Armed crime has grown in London, as well as other U.K. cities. In the Metropolitan Police Area, murders committed with a firearm jumped nearly 90 percent between April and November 2001 over the previous year. Similarly, during the same period the number of armed street robberies in the capital rose by 53 percent.

Meanwhile, Switzerland, with its population of six million, has at least two million publicly owned firearms -- including 600,000 automatic rifles and a half-million pistols. The rate of gun crimes, reported the BBC on September 27, 2001, "is so low that statistics are not even kept."

Instead of a large standing army, Switzerland "requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks throughout most of their lives. Between the ages of 21 and 32 men serve as frontline troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition, which they are required to keep at home. Once discharged, men serve in the Swiss equivalent of the U.S. National Guard, but still have to train occasionally and are given bolt rifles."

The Swiss have long been proud of their armed and independent traditions. For example, 19th-century Austrian statesman Klemens Metternich reportedly said: "Switzerland does not have an army; it is an army:' And Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that the Swiss were "armatissimi e liberissimi," or very well armed and very free.