CSt: soldiers at home without ammunition in tow
Keystone-SDA
The Swiss Senate does not believe the current threat situation justifies allowing soldiers to take so-called ‘pocket’ amounts of ammunition home with them.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The Senate rejected a motion by Swiss People’s Party parliamentarian Werner Salzmann by 31 votes to 9 with 3 abstentions. For the majority, a return of pocket ammunition could wipe out progress made in recent years in preventing suicides and feminicides by firearms.
The vote result contradicts a Senate committee that recommended the storage of ammunition at home. According to the author of the motion, the time has come to go back on the 2007 decision, in which the gaovernment ordered the withdrawal of pocket ammunition while promising to review the situation if circumstances change.
For Salzmann, the circumstances have changed significantly in the meantime, and public awareness needs to be raised.
The handing over of pocket ammunition to the military would strengthen their security in the event of mobilisation and more generally the defence capability of the army, he said.
More
More
Swiss soldiers should take ammo home, says commission
Currently, the army carries out a careful psychological examination of future soldiers, discarding those who are unsuitable. Therefore, according to Salzmann, the distribution of pocket ammunition will have no impact on the number of murders and suicides committed with the service weapon.
But other Senators said that numerous Swiss studies show that the number of suicides and criminal acts with service weapons has fallen since the ban on taking ammunition home.
+ Soldiers prefer to keep guns at home than in barracks
A return to the past would undo such progress, according to the camp opposing the motion, and open the way for further dramas, especially family dramas, that could be avoided.
Several speakers went on to point out that the current threat level to Switzerland is not such that it is necessary to hand over ammunition to soldiers. In the event of mobilisation, the army will undoubtedly be able to mobilise in good time.
Defence minister Martin Pfister believes the ban on taking ammunition home does not undermine the state’s trust in soldiers, pointing out that they are allowed to keep their service weapons at home.
Translated from Italian by DeepL/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
