In just a few months, over 400 guns have been stolen from Swiss gun shops; robbers break in, loot the weapons, and then escape through mountain passes across the border into France. These guns end up in the hands of criminals who use them for armed robberies and hijacking cash-in-transit vans. Police are tracing how these weapons end up being sold on the dark web or used in as part of the inner workings of drug mafia circles. ‘Before, there were levels, gang members would steal scooters, then cars, then jewellery stores. Now, an offender who is unknown to the police could attack a van in Switzerland’, says Richard Schittly, a journalist who has investigated gangs in Lyon for decades. In Switzerland, the gun shops are less guarded than elsewhere, leaving them vulnerable to robberies: ‘in France, weapons of this nature are stored in a vault’, says Thibaut Fontaine, a police commissioner in Lyon. ‘The borders are permeable’, says Christian Varone, head of the Valais police force, ‘it is easy to get in and out of the country. We have to find a solution.’