How Switzerland’s Obsession with Guns is Different Americans and Swiss citizens have some of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, but their gun cultures differ wildly. One country has seen over 500 mass shootings in 2023 alone, while the other has had less than a handful over the past twenty years. To understand why there’s such a stark difference between these two countries’ gun cultures, we traveled to Switzerland to see how each of these cultures started, and where they began to part ways. Special Thanks to Stephen Halbrook, Rudolf Jaun, Patrick Schmitter , Rita Burch, and Sven Paulin.