The Swiss Militia vs. “If I were a Tutsi, I'd Emigrate..”

The Swiss Militia: The First Defenders of Liberty...

Since the origins of the Swiss Confederation in 1291, it has been the duty of every male Swiss citizen to be armed and to serve in the militia. Today, that arm is an 'assault rifle,' which is issued to every Swiss male and which must be kept in the home. During Germany's Third Reich (1933-1945), that arm was a bolt-action repeating rifle, which was highly effective in the hands of Switzerland's many sharpshooters.

Americans of the wartime generation were familiar with the fact that brave and armed little Switzerland stood up to Hitler and made him blink.

As a map of Europe in 1942 shows, the Nazis had swallowed up most of everything on the continent but this tiny speck that Hitler called 'a pimple on the face of Europe.' The Fuhrer boasted that he would be 'the butcher of the Swiss,' but the Wehrmacht was dissuaded by a fully armed populace in the Alpine terrain. ...

The Swiss federal shooting festival, which remains the largest rifle competition in the world, was held in Luzern in June 1939. Hitler's takeover of Austria and Czechoslovakia was complete, both countries had been surrendered by tiny political elites who guaranteed that there would be no resistance.

Swiss President Philipp Etter spoke at the festival, stressing that something far more serious than sport was the purpose of their activity. His comments demonstrated the connection between nationaldefense and the armed citizen:

'There is probably no other country that, like Switzerland, gives the soldier his weapon to keep in the home. The Swiss always has his rifle at hand. It belongs to the furnishings of his home. ... That corresponds to ancient Swiss tradition.

As the citizen with his sword steps into the ring in the cantons which have the Landsgemeinde (government by public meeting), so the Swiss soldier lives in constant companionship with his rifle. He knows what that means. With this rifle, he is liable every hour, if the country calls, to defend his hearth, his home, his family, his birthplace. The weapon is to him a pledge and sign of honor and freedom. The Swiss does not part with his rifle.'

On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched World War II by attacking Poland. Within a day or two, Switzerland had about half a million militiamen mobilized out of a population of just over four million.

In 1940, after the rest of central Europe collapsed before the German army, Swiss Commander in Chief Henri Guisan assembled his officers at the Rotli meadow near the Lake of Lucerne. He reminded them that, at this sacred spot, in the year 1291, the Swiss Confederation was born as an alliance against despotism. Guisan admonished that the Swiss would always stand up to any invader. One has only to recall the medieval battle of Morgarten, where 1400 Swiss peasants ambushed and defeated 20,000 Austrian knights.

In World War II, the Swiss had defenses no other country had. Let's begin with the rifle in every home combined with the Alpine terrain. When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home. Switzerland also had a decentralized, direct democracy which could not be surrendered to a foreign enemy by a political elite. Some governments surrendered to Hitler without resistance based on the decision of a king or dictator; this was institutionally impossible in Switzerland. If an ordinary Swiss citizen was told that the Federal President--a relatively powerless official--had surrendered the country, the citizen might not even know the president's name, and would have held any "surrender" order in contempt.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Swiss feared an invasion and began military preparations like no other European nation. On Hitler's 1938 “Anchluss” or annexation of Austria, the Swiss Parliament declared that the Swiss were prepared to defend themselves "to the last drop of their blood.

When the Fuehrer attacked Poland in 1939, General Guisan ordered the citizen army to resist any attack to the last cartridge. After Denmark and Norway fell in 1940, Guisan and the Federal Council gave the order to the populace: Aggressively attack invaders; act on your own initiative; regard any surrender broadcast or announcement as enemy propaganda; resist to the end. This was published as a message to the Swiss and a warning to the Germans; surrender was impossible, even if ordered by the government, for the prior order mandated that it be treated as an enemy lie.

Even old men and children were issued armbands, identifying them as Ortswehren (local defense) so they could not be shot as partisans under international law, when the time came for them to shoot any invader they saw. Hitler never invaded Switzerland. Would you have? Nor has any dictator -- military or otherwise -- ever attempted to rule the Swiss cantons by "executive order".

There was no holocaust on Swiss soil. Swiss Jews served in the militia side by side with their fellow citizens, and kept rifles in their homes just like everyone else. It is hard to believe that there could have been a holocaust had the Jews of Germany, Poland, and France had the same privilege.

» » » » [Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II, by Stephen P. Halbrook]

Why Switzerland Has the Lowest Crime Rate in the World

When thinking about the mass extermination camps of a holocaust think....

The key to freedom is to be able to have the ability to defend yourself &, if you dont have the tools to do that, then youre going to be at the mercy of whomever wants to put you away.

Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.

The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.

This is in a very large part due to Switzerland's unique system of national defence, developed over the centuries.

Instead of a standing, full-time army, the country requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks a year 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 US National Guard, but still have to train occasionally and are given bolt rifles. Women do not have to own firearms, but are encouraged to.

» » » » [Youtube (03:13)]

Death by “Gun Control”

Why must all decent non-violent people fight against "gun control"? Why is the right to keep and bear arms truly a fundamental individual right? You can find the answers in this new book.

The message is simple: Disarmed people are neither free nor safe - they become the criminals' prey and the tyrants' playthings. When the civilians are defenseless and their government goes bad, however, thousands and millions of innocents die.

Professor R.J. Rummel, author of the monumental book Death by Government, said: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth." For power to concentrate and become dangerous, the citizens must be disarmed.

What disarms the citizens? The idea of "gun control." It's the idea that only the government has the right to possess firearms, and that citizens have no unalienable right to use force to defend against aggression.

Death by Gun Control carefully examines the "gun control" idea: its meaning, its purposes, its effects. It comes in many forms, but in every form it enables the evildoers and works against righteous defense.

The Mother of All Stats

The Human Cost of “Gun Control” Ideas

When the gun prohibitionists quote a statistic about how many people are killed by firearms misuse, the discussion sometimes bogs down into whose crime stats to believe and how to count crimes vs. the defensive firearm uses. Death by Gun Control works on a level that nobody can dispute: documented world history.

In the 20th Century:

• Governments murdered four times as many civilians as were killed in all the international and domestic wars combined.
  
• Governments murdered millions more people than were killed by common criminals.
  How could governments kill so many people? The governments had the power - and the people, the victims, were unable to resist. The victims were unarmed.

Truth They Cannot Refute

Death by Gun Control delivers the essential - and gut wrenching -- truth that the anti-self defense "gun control" advocates never try to refute. They simply cannot refute the facts or the formula.

Here's the Formula: Hatred + Government + Disarmed Civilians = Genocide

What makes the argument so powerful? Two factors. First, it makes common sense: unarmed defenseless people have no hope against armed aggressors. Second, it states the historical truth: evil governments did wipe out 170,000,000 innocent non-military lives in the 20th Century alone.

» » » » [Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership]

Gun Control = Genocide

The Gunrunner

All creatures, from the largest whale down to the smallest bacteria, have the innate ability and willingness, to defend themselves. Contrary to the perversion preached by psychiatrists (that man's basic urge is for sex), “survival” is the basic goal of all living things.

To suppress this most basic instinct will ensure the destruction of that group, race or society. Yet that is exactly what certain humans who have political or social power over other humans have been doing for thousands of years. They do so because they “know what's best for you” and can justify killing you to prove it.

Today, most of the American species of these deviant creatures suffer from the genetic disorder called “Democrat.” However political hybrids who identify themselves as has “Republicans” and “Libertarians” have also been heard recently speaking in favor of restrictions on one's ability to defend oneself.

Where self-defense is restricted, to the same degree survival is also restricted. If a certain class of people is denied the right to defend itself, then that class will die off. This is called “genocide.”


ALL ACTS OF GENOCIDE ARE PRECEDED BY GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS OF PERSONAL WEAPONS.

Not one time in the history of this planet have mass murders occurred without the above axiom occurring first. Here's a small list of the deaths attributed directly to a government restriction on personal ownership of weapons and the ability to defend oneself:

1.5 million Armenians, 3 million Ukrainians, 6 million (?) Jews, 250,000 Gypsies, 6 million Slavs, 25 million Russians, 25 million Chinese, 1 million Ibos, 1.5 million Bengalis, 200,000 Guatemalans, 1.7 million Cambodians, 500,000 Indonesians, 200,000 East Timorese, 250,000 Burundians, 500,000 Ugandans, 2 million Sudanese, 800,000 Rwandans, 2 million North Koreans, 10,000 Kosovars.

» » » » [Idaho Observer]

Gun Control and Genocide, by Gary North

Sunday, April 24th marked the 90th anniversary of the first genocide of the twentieth century: the Turkish government’s slaughter of over a million unarmed Armenians. The key word is "unarmed."

The Turks got away with it under the cover of wartime. They suffered no greater postwar reprisals for this act of genocide than if they had not conducted mass murder of a peaceful people.

Other governments soon took note of this fact. It seemed like such a convenient international precedent.

Seventy-nine years after that genocide began, Hotel Rwanda opened for business.

The Hutus also got away with it. Ironically, at least a decade before – I wish I could remember the date – Harper’s ran an article predicting this genocide for this reason: the Hutus had machine guns. The Tutsis didn’t. The article was written as a kind of parable, not a politically specific forecast. I remember reading it at the time and thinking, “If I were a Tutsi, I’d emigrate.”

It did not pay to be a civilian in the twentieth century. The odds were against you.


BAD NEWS FOR CIVILIANS

The twentieth century, more than any century in recorded history, was the century of man’s inhumanity to man. A memorable phrase, that. But it is misleading. It should be modified: "Governments’ inhumanity to unarmed civilians." In the case of genocide, however, this is not easily dismissed as collateral damage on a wartime enemy. It is deliberate extermination.

The twentieth century began officially on January 1, 1901. At that time, one major war was in full swing, so let us begin with it. That was the United States’ war against the Philippines, whose citizens had the naïve notion that liberation from Spain did not imply colonization by the United States. McKinley and then Roosevelt sent 126,000 troops to the Philippines to teach them a lesson in modern geopolitics. We had bought the Philippines fair and square from Spain for $20 million in December, 1898. The fact that the Philippines had declared independence six months earlier was irrelevant. A deal’s a deal. Those being purchased had nothing to say about it.

Back then, we did body counts of enemy combatants. The official estimate was 16,000 dead. Some unofficial estimates place this closer to 20,000. As for civilians, then as now, there were no official U.S.-reported figures. The low-ball estimate is 250,000 dead. The high estimate is one million.

Then World War I opened the floodgates – or, more accurately, the bloodgates.

» » » » [Lew Rockwell.com]

Sources: JPFO :: JPFO (PDF) :: Lew Rockwell.com :: Idaho Observer :: S. Halbrook: Target Switzerland

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