Over 13,000 guns, grenades surrendered in Serbia amnesty after mass shootings

Serbian officials said Sunday that residents had turned over some 13,500 weapons since back-to-back mass shootings stunned the Balkan nation earlier this month. 

The government declared a one-month amnesty period for citizens to surrender unregistered weapons as part of a crackdown on guns following the two shootings in two days that left 17 people dead – many of them children.

Authorities displayed stacks of guns and cartons of hand grenades from the thousands of items collected, including anti-tank rocket launchers.

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic, whose government has faced public pressure in the wake of the shootings, accompanied police officials to view the assortment of arms. Photos from the scene showed lines of rifles, automatic weapons, and pistols stacked on the floor in a warehouse along with wooden boxes filled with grenades.

Authorities launched the gun crackdown after a 13-year-old boy took his father’s gun and opened fire on his fellow students in an elementary school in Belgrade. A day later, a 20-year-old man used an automatic weapon to shoot randomly in a rural area south of the capital.

Tens of thousands of people have protested since the shootings, demanding the resignations of government ministers and a ban on television stations that promote violent content and host war criminals and crime figures.

Serbia has tens of thousands of weapons brought in from the battlefields of the 1990s Balkan wars. Similar amnesties were held in the past with only limited success.

Vucic said about half of the arms collected had been held illegally, while the other half were registered weapons that citizens decided to part with. The relinquished weapons will go to Serbian arms and ammunition factories for potential use by the country’s military.

Authorities warned that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years if they are convicted.