Machine guns

Before I came here I read a book called Swiss watching that was written by a British man who has lived here for many years. It is brilliant and was really helpful in learning about Swiss culture. Of course it makes some fairly sweeping generalisations but over all it is fairly accurate. On Sunday's everything is closed and the streets are empty, it is extremely clean, people do wear red shoes, using water past a certain time is a no no, and recycling on Sunday is a no go, amongst many other things. And then there were some things that I could not quite really believe could still be true. One of those things is that every man at 18 is given a gun and by law has to keep it in his house. On Friday night Maria kindly had me for dinner along with her Swiss neighbours, who not only confirmed this but shocked me even more, it is actually a machine gun. So now for sure I will not be breaking any of the rules, as my maths suggests there are three in my building...