Should point out that in Switzerland that all men of 18 to something are issued a weapon and are considered on-call soldiers, but they are also given a sealed box of bullets, and should that box become untimely unsealed there's hell to pay. That along with the above- mentioned relative lack of interest, compared to the US, of expressing masculinity (or more to the point the lack of it) by brandishing weapons and occasionally using them, would help to explain some of the difference.

This may seem weird, but it struck me when I watched the movie Braveheart a few years ago (that showed battlefield scenes with hacking and spearing) that this was a much more civilized way to fight that with modern weaponry. If you're going to kill someone you should have to look at his eyes and smell his sweat and your own adrenaline, rather than firing the cowardly shot from a distance, which any depraved chicken shit can do for the price of a carton of smokes. Chet