Every five years the Swiss get together for a month long shooting competition / party. This year the Eidgenössische (Federal) Schützenfest was held in the city of Aarau. There were 2300 teams made up over over 45,000 individual shooters!

Swiss reader Laurent, who competed in the event this year, explained …

The infrastructure is mainly provided by Army and they were very friendly. This year the competition was held in Aarau (about 25 miles from Zuerich), with four shooting location, Rupperswil (the main one, with 120 shooting lines), Buchs, Suhr and Linsburg. You can shoot with anything that is or was army issued (“Schmidt-Rubin” Mousqueton 11 or 31, FASS57 or FASS90 for rifles at 300 meters, and swiss Luger, SIG P210, SIG-Sauer P22x, SIGPro, Glocks in 9 x 19 and Sphinx for pistols at 25 meters).

Main Entrance

Beer advertisement featuring a gun!

Gun control Swiss style: a yellow sticker

Locker room with assault rifles

McDonalds advertisment featuring targets

Main shooting hall with 120 lanes.

Targets at 300 meters

I have to say that I love the Swiss! Schützenfest is high on my list of things to see before I die.

[ Many thanks to Laurent for sending me the photos. ]