“Serbian Shooting: Stricter Gun Laws and National Mourning Declared”

According to Serbian media, the shooter got into a fight on Thursday afternoon in a schoolyard in the village of Dubona. In the evening he is said to have returned with a rifle and shot at random people from a moving car in Dubona and two other villages.

Among the killed victims are a police officer and his sister. After a manhunt, the police arrested the fled man (21) who is suspected of the shooting. He was arrested in Kragujevac, about 60 kilometers from the place where the shooting took place.

Gun Possession

The Serbian government has already decided to introduce stricter gun restrictions after a shooting at a school in Belgrade, where a 13-year-old student opened fire last Wednesday. For the time being, no more gun permits will be issued and it should soon be possible to prosecute people who give children access to guns. The government also wants to lower the age at which perpetrators of violent crimes can be prosecuted from 14 to 12 years.

Possession of weapons is largely prohibited in Serbia, but as a result of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, many Serbs still have weapons illegally at home: 39 firearms per 100 inhabitants. Only Yemen and the United States have relatively more weapons. Yet mass shootings like this week in Serbia are very rare.

National mourning

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Wednesday declared three days of national mourning following the Belgrade school shooting that killed eight students and a security guard. Six students and a teacher were also injured. Two students remain in a critical condition in hospital.

The suspected perpetrator cannot be prosecuted due to his age, but is currently in a psychiatric clinic. He would have prepared his act for a month and made a list of students he wanted to kill.