Swiss vote to tighten gun laws, safeguard EU relations

GENEVA: The Swiss voted Sunday to toughen their gun laws and bring them in line with EU legislation, heeding warnings that rejecting the change could have threatened relations with the bloc.

Final results showed that voters overwhelmingly supported reforming Swiss gun laws, with a full 63.7 percent casting their ballot in favour. A majority of voters in all but one of Switzerland's 26 cantons backed the reform, with the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland the only outlier.

A demand from the neighbouring European Union that the Swiss toughen their gun laws prompted a rare national debate over firearm ownership in the wealthy Alpine nation, which has a deeply-rooted gun culture.

While the government cautioned that the new legislation was crucial to the non-EU country maintaining its treaties with the bloc, the proposal sparked a fierce pushback from the gun lobby and shooting enthusiasts, who gathered enough signatures to trigger a vote under Switzerland´s famous direct democratic system.

Brussels changed its own weapons laws two years ago following a wave of deadly terrorist attacks across Europe, slapping bans on certain types of semi-automatic firearms. While not an EU member, Switzerland is bound to the bloc through an array of intricately connected bilateral agreements.

Bern had cautioned that a "No" vote would lead to Switzerland´s exclusion from the visa-free Schengen travel region and also the Dublin accords regulating Europe´s asylum-seeking process. This would have far-reaching consequences for security, asylum and even tourism, and would cost the country "several billion Swiss francs each year," it said.