Serbian Residents Hand Over 3,000 Gun Pucuks After Mass Shooting Last Week

Illustration of Wikimedia Commons West Midlands Police

JAKARTA - Serbians handed over more than 3,000 illegal weapons and parts, in the first two days of an imposed arms amnesty, after two mass shootings that killed 17 people, President Aleksandar Vucic said on Wednesday.

The amnesty was launched on Monday, after a 13-year-old school student with two pistols allegedly killed eight students and a security guard last Wednesday. Meanwhile, six students and another teacher were injured.

The student was detained and underwent a psychological evaluation, but could not be held criminally responsible for his young age. Police said he had admitted the shooting.

The next day, a man brandishing an assault rifle and a gun killed eight people and injured 14 people in two villages in central Serbia. The 21-year-old suspect has now been detained.

President Vucic said that so far the public had handed over more than 3,000 weapons, without elaborating on the type.

In the previous amnesty of weapons launched over the past two decades, people handed over banned military class weapons, hunting weapons, pistols, and also rifles, lockdown mechanisms, and other parts. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition have also been handed over.

"That's good news, because the risks posed are much smaller," President Vucic said while speaking on television.

Under amnesty provisions, people are invited to surrender illegal weapons including military-class weapons, legally owned weapons they no longer want, ammunition, and weapons, anonymously and without fear of prosecution.

Meanwhile, the police department urged people with explosives or weapons not to take them to police stations, but to wait for trained officers to move and dispose of them.

Earlier, President Vucic announced additional investigations of registered firearms owners and shooting ground, greater police presence in schools, and changes to criminal law that envision a longer prison sentence, for crimes related to firearms.

Also on Wednesday, police said they detained the father of a suspected shooting last week in central Serbia, the Tanjug news agency reported.

Serbia has a strong-rooted weapons culture and along with other Western Balkan countries, flooded with military-class weapons and weapons in private hands, after the 1990s war that torn apart the former state oftensively.