Manhunt After Shooting at Swiss Rave Kills Woman, 22
A 22-year-old woman was killed and five others in their twenties injured when a gunman opened fire at an annual techno party in Aarau, near Zurich, overnight. The shooter fled the scene and a manhunt is under way; police said the motive remains unclear. Switzerland’s rarity of gun violence at public events made the attack front-page news across Europe.
Switzerland’s paradox — among Europe’s highest gun-ownership rates and lowest gun-crime rates — rests on a culture of militia discipline that makes an attack on a rave feel like a category violation, which is why a single shooting commands attention that larger tolls elsewhere would not. With the gunman loose and the motive unknown, everything else is speculation, and Swiss authorities are characteristically saying little. The questions queued behind the manhunt are the standard ones — targeted or indiscriminate, the weapon’s provenance, whether the militia system’s armoury rules held. Watch the arrest and the motive; in a country that votes on everything, a failure of its gun compact would eventually reach a ballot.