Serbians have begun handing over firearms, ammunition, and “pieces of mines and explosive devices” following President Aleksandar Aleksandar Vučić’s May 5 announcement of “almost total disarmament.”
The Washington Post reported that nearly “6,000 unregistered weapons, 300,000 rounds of ammunition, and 470 pieces of mines and explosive devices have been voluntarily surrendered” so far this week.
Serbia’s Ministry of the Interior used a May 11, 2023, Instagram post to say, “Surrender your weapons!”
Reuters noted that an amnesty period to hand over firearms to authorities began on Monday.
The Serbian gun control push comes after two mass shootings, one carried out by a seventh grader and a second by a terrorist, earlier this month.
The first of the two shootings occurred on the morning of May 3 when a seventh grader with two handguns opened fire in a school. Eight students and a security guard were killed in the attack.
The The New York Times noted that the seventh grader also had four Molotov cocktails. Belgrade police chief Veselin Miljic indicated the seventh grader had “planned the execution of this criminal offense for a long period of time.”
The second shooting occurred May 4, when a man opened fire on members of the public from inside his car, killing eight and wounding 14.
Reuters pointed out this is not the first time the Serbian government has demanded its citizens hand over their guns. There have been other gun amnesties enacted “over [the] past two decades” in which “people handed over banned military-grade arms, hunting weapons, handguns, and also barrels, locking mechanisms and other parts.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
Read the full article here
Discussion about this post