Low estimate: 31 guns per person
High estimate: 61 guns
With 3.4 million registered guns, Switzerland is perhaps a surprise on the list of countries with the highest rates of gun ownership. But the historically neutral country loves its guns. According the survey, firearms are more readily available in Switzerland than in most European countries, and one consequence attributed to that is a suicide rate that has grown 25 percent in recent years.
The wide range in ownership estimates is a result of inconsistent ways of measuring ownership in Switzerland. One area with major discrepancies in estimates is ownership among military reservists – Switzerland allows reservists to keep their military rifles for a fee and there are very inconsistent measurements of the number of people who opted to do this.
