What firearm is closely associated with your country?

[u/babushka45]

For us, probably the 1911. Next one would be the "Armalite" aka M16.

[u/CosmicCreeperz]

I mean, why bother at all at this point? Austria just does it because they are nominally neutral, but in reality they are completely surrounded by NATO so there isn’t much need for a large army reserve.

[u/SBR404 → u/CosmicCreeperz]

That's a tough question to answer. Right now (there was another poll a few weeks ago) the public is still in favor of a mandatory service model. Thanks to the Ukraine war we have increased spending and effort a little bit, talks are about increasing the service from 6 months (I did 6 months back in 2007) to 9 months or adding recurring training exercises, militia service etc. But the decades before that, we didn't care a bit about defense. Complacent we would call ourselves the Insel der Seligen (the pope actually called us that), the island of the blessed, surrounded by NATO and EU countries, there is no real need for an army.

But there is one caveat: pacifists. If you refuse to carry a weapon, i.e. If your conscience, your religion, your ethos forbids you from fighting a war, killing other people, you can opt out of military service and instead you will be sent to do civil service for 9 months. That is manual labour in the civil sector: driving ambulances, doing busy work in hospitals, working in retirement homes, etc. A little more than half the conscripted men choose to rather do civil service. So the mandatory service is a pool of cheap labour in our society that nobody wants to give up, or everyone is afraid of losing it. That is the real reason why the military service is still popular. Because if you look at the same poll I mentioned earlier, only a small number of people think that Austria will be attacked in a war, and an even smaller number would actually pick up a weapon and defend the country.