" 

 Interesting choices of pompous capitalization (""Duty"" and ""State"" and ""People"" and ""Powers""), don't you think?  And if ""having a weapon is a Duty, an annoying one at that,"" what accounts for the high rates of private ownership - at each individual's own cost and upon such an individual's own voluntary election - of military battle rifles, modified assault rifles, service pistols, and semi-automatic carbines in Switzerland?  These are not sporting firearms (such as shotguns or hunting rifles), and yet their owners take pains to acquire them and to maintain proficiency in their use (which last effectively defines a member of a gun culture).   

 And where have I drawn a similarity between the American situation and circumstances prevailing in Switzerland?  Except for the fact that human nature is a universal constant, there need be no presumption of deliberate correspondence between civil society in the Confœderatio Helvetica and that which predominates in these United States of America.  Admittedly, the American Founding Fathers purposefully drew upon the Swiss experience when drawing up the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution, and the Swiss relied heavily upon the U.S. Constitution when undertaking revision of their own federal constitution in 1891, but it would be a mistake to conclude that the circumstances coloring the histories of these two nations are in any way identical.  Austrians and Burgundians coming across the borders to murder, rape, and loot are not Mohawk and Abenaki tribesmen coming across the frontier to murder, rape, and loot.   

 With regard to a Swiss citizen's use of a firearm in self-defense, please provide references proving that such utilization in extremis is prosecuted in the Swiss cantons so vigorously and so harshly as to effectively foreclose all exercise of such an option.  The ""social contract"" is not a suicide pact.   

 As for the Swiss federal constitution, initially adopted in 1848 following the Sonderbundskrieg and subsequently revised to keep the government of the Confederation under the control of direct democracy, you would do well yourself to review this charter.  Your statements thus far cast into grave doubt your appreciation of Swiss history and law - not to mention human nature itself."