Krieg wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 4:55 am
Doesn't Switzerland have some weird gun rules for their soldiers? Like they get to bring the gun home (no bullets?) during their (short) service? And when they finish if they choose to be in the reserve they keep the gun at home for several years?
Basically, yeah. You have to go in to do your service days every year and in between you can bring your weapon home with you, but no ammo (you can just buy ammo, though) - it used to be that you were required to store your weapon at home, but they did away with that a while back. And once you finish your service, you can keep the rifle, but you have to go through the same permit procedure as any regular purchase. They used to basically just give it to you at the end (modified to semiauto if it's your rifle, obviously), but now that you have to do the paperwork, most people don't bother unless they actually shoot guns as a hobby.
The thing about gun culture in Switzerland is that it's very closely tied to the military tradition - the ammo at the public ranges is subsidized by the government because they want to encourage people to practice with their service rifles, and so the big shooting competitions are all standard military issue only, etc. And carrying guns is all but illegal, so the self-defense angle doesn't really play into any of it, or at least for most people except a few smooth-brained gun nut morons who think the immigrants are coming for their fondue kettle or whatever. It's very different from the States.
But I also get that all of this is incredibly alien to Germans - you guys have far more restrictive gun laws, and it just isn't part of the culture over there.
THE KILL wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 7:49 am
spacehamster wrote: ↑Sun Sep 24, 2023 1:37 pm
I still play videogames deep into my 40s or that I build model kits and play Warhammer and draw comicbook stuff.
Nothing strange about those hobbies at all IMHO. I'm in the middle of disassembling a pinball machine, which is also totally normal for the average 42 year old German.
Well, no, of course that's not weird, I just don't think shooting guns is weird either