Firearm offences in Switzerland: Expert warns against hasty conclusions
Attempted killings with firearms doubled in Switzerland in 2025. However, a criminologist from the University of St. Gallen urges caution.
Rise in firearm offences – criminologist recommends restraint
According to SRF, Switzerland recorded a marked increase in firearm offences in 2025: police crime statistics show 32 attempted killings with firearms – twice as many as in the previous year. Figures for aggravated assault also rose: 13 cases were registered, significantly more than in previous years.
The data coincide with recent events in Aarau, where a firearm attack on Sunday resulted in one death and several seriously injured.
Nora Markwalder, professor of criminal law and criminology at the University of St. Gallen, puts the figures into perspective, however. "To really be able to identify an increase, one must look at a longer observation period," she says. Individual years could be distorted by coincidences or cases with multiple victims. "This means there is no need to sound the alarm now."
It is also crucial that the number of completed killings with firearms did not increase in 2025 compared to the previous year.
Markwalder points to earlier conditions: "We had far more firearm killings in the 1990s than we do now." Since then, a constant decline has been observed, followed by stabilisation over the past ten years. As a point of comparison, she cites 2009, when 55 killings with firearms were registered – a figure that is far from being reached today.
The causes of the long-term decline cannot be definitively proven. "One hypothesis would be, for example, that there are fewer firearms in households," says the criminologist. Survey studies suggested that fewer private individuals kept firearms in their homes – possibly because the armed forces were reduced or because fewer soldiers wanted to take their service weapons home.
A shift in the choice of weapon is also striking: "We can see in the figures that there have actually been more knife killings than firearm killings since 2016," explains Markwalder.
Cases like that in Aarau – with multiple victims in public space – are statistically rare. "We can see in our database that over recent decades, there have actually only been isolated instances of firearm killings in public spaces with multiple victims." Typically there is one victim, and perpetrator and victim know each other.
Whether this also applies in the Aarau case remains unclear. The Aargau cantonal police have announced a press conference for Wednesday afternoon.
Source: SRF