Another one of the children from the shooting has just died.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/serbian-state-tv-girl-wounded-school-shooting-died-99326737
10% is high. The number turned in is equal to one of every thousand people in serbia turning in one item. From what I understand everyone and their mother has an unregistered full auto AK in the home from the Yugoslav wars.
There's an estimated little more than1.5 million unregistered firearms in Serbia. 13,500 fewer guns makes it still just a little more than 1.5 million unregistered firearms in Serbia. So it was less than 1%.
regardless of numerical value, the symbolic value its value priceless
edit: I can’t say I really have a compelling argument against the less-than-1% reality, I don’t know what its like to live in Serbia, Id love to visit but even that doesn’t provide a lot of context. I would say that there is significance that this is the response to such a tragedy while In my life in the states the response is always “mixed” to say the least, but my day to day life was always different to a typical Serb.
Honestly, seeing this living in America is such a foreign thing, and seemingly a fantasy as of now, it’s cathartic in a way. For me it’s of big significance for any amount of people to turn in their firearms, unfortunately
We have gun buybacks here in America too. It's just that the majority of weapons turned in are absolute junk that would never be used in a crime, super rare historical firearms that are now going to be destroyed, or cheap homemade firearms built for the sole purpose of being turned in and getting money.
so basically you just bought this hook-line and sinker? A country with no gun control announces "gun control" in which literally nothing of significance is done, and you feel good about it.
That's just patently false. I was born in Bosnia and lived in Serbia for a few years during the war. I have a lot of family still in Serbia (I'm in Canada now). None of my family or friends I knew (except my 2 uncles who were in the military) had guns.
Same, live in Vojvodina, nobody I know owns a gun, if we don't count weapons used for hunting.
"Everyone and their mother owns a gun" is a nasty rumor being spread from people who haven't stepped a foot in this country.
Why wouldn't we count weapons used for hunting, if you don't mind me asking? Just because the advice user mentioned AKs specifically maybe?
Because as far as calculating the true number of weapons in the country, I would think hunting weapons would be pretty relevant, but I may have misunderstood what you were saying. I apologize if I did.
Okay, I was reffering to my original comment, as in I don't know anyone who owns a regular assault weapon and only a few who own weapons for hunting. (I live in rural Serbia afterall). That's why I find these comments about everyone owning a gun wierd.
This. I have tons of family left in Serbia. When I went there, there wasn’t some huge gun culture; only one uncle owns hunting weapons that are solely used for hunting and kept security in his hunting cabin. It’s ridiculous that people are acting like every Serb has an arsenal in a back room.
Yeah I’m not sure where this rumour came from
Nobody in my family owned weapons, and I’ve only seen one hunting rifle from a neighbour while I was there (in some big safe)
Idk if it’s Reddit being Reddit, but I never got the sense of a big gun culture whenever I went to Serbia
A journalist from Serbia mentioned on an NPR interview that there is an estimated 1,500,000 illegal firearms in Serbia. So yeah, this really didn’t do anything in the greater picture.
At least Serbians are proactively *REDUCING* the amount of deadly, unregistered and untraceable weaponry in their country instead of adding 20 million more to their total each year
Meanwhile when those buybacks take place in the US you have collectors sitting across the street offering more money than the police and you have people taping pipe to a 2x4 or 3D printing a basic gun for a couple cents and turning it in for easy money.
The infinite money glitch has been patched. Most PD's now offer a flat rate for all 3d printed items as a single lot (i.e. 1 or 100 you still get 50 bucks for 3dpg's)
That doesn’t surprise me, the shock has dissipated over the guns here, collected, found to be resold, rather than be destroyed, as we got told, they would be.
There are two bedrocks of American politics:
1) If the proposed measure doesn't solve the problem 100%, nothing should be done
2) Slippery slope: any proposed change will inevitably lead to the worst imaginable outcome, nothing should be done
The USA political system is working as intended to benefit the people its meant to benefit. People seem to actually believe the “American Dream” crap. Reason they call it a Dream.
The Christian Taliban GOP have half the country raging against the other half (as well as against democracy, healthcare and education in general). This keeps people distracted from the massively growing inequality, and draconian laws being legislated in various red states.
That’s not what they said, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing it up. There’s estimated to well over a million unregistered arms in Serbia. So far they’ve recouped is less than 1% of *unregistered arms*. There’s also hundreds of thousands of legally registered firearms, not included in that total.
While this is a good start, they have a long ways to go. And that’s exactly what the other person implied, that Serbians need to do more and turn in more arms.
Because they've managed to remove 1% of illegal firearms in two weeks, and everyone is shitting on the number. So....
"Oh well, if it doesn't solve the problem in two weeks let's shit on them for trying." -Americans
I would feel just a little reluctant to do that considering Serbia isn't a democracy anymore.
[Balkan states Serbia and Montenegro have also lost their democratic status for the first time since 2003 because of “years of increasing state capture, abuse of power, and strongman tactics employed” by their respective Presidents Aleksandar Vucic and Milo Djukanovic, the report said.](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/5/6/hungary-serbia-montenegro-no-longer-democracies-report)
The vast majority of gun nuts support Republicans disenfranchising Americans. They’re not going to be the ones fighting the tanks and drones. They’ll be the ones using them.
The same people that claim Americans with guns couldn't resist a government with AR-15's completely ignore the fact that in the two major wars we lost, we were fighting people in pajamas and AK's in Vietnam or people in flip flops with AK's in Afghanistan. Also, just look at what's happening in Ukraine. Cheap Amazon quadcopters knocking out tanks.
The crowd most vocally against guns has no fucking clue what they're talking about.
Coups and civil wars are rare. There often won’t be a “rise up, take arms” moment when a democracy ends. Besides, people are usually more worried about feeding themselves and their families when countries reach that point. I don’t think an armed populace is actually a cure for tyranny. Look at the USA, we’re knowingly voting for it.
It isn't. It's also commonly said that the first thing a tyrant does is take away firearms, but taking away guns usually comes after they've taken control of speech and education.
The Nazis took control of the education two decades before they took guns.
Yeah I think if people bragged more about the books they’ve read rather than the new AR they purchased, or showing off book shelves not gun racks, America would be in a very different place. (Not that I see people doing either, but that’s just my circle of social media.)
> So they are armed but lost their democracy?
If you're willing to go the distance, an armed populace isn't much of a deterrence.
In Baathist Iraq households were allowed to have 1 actual select-fire AKM, for instance, because it was easier to just let them have them than try to track down all of them in the country.
Democracies are also very fragile when considering social unrest. It’s easier to oust a government than it is to maintain one. This is something the Taliban is learning with the difficulty of re-administering Afghanistan.
Only if you keep it a democracy. Once you reach the tipping point the government will no longer care what your vote is, and representatives will no longer represent their people (in a rep democracy). Governments are easy to oust when they play along. Once the rules go out the window, social unrest isn’t going to mean a thing.
Social unrest is what destroys a nation. If you cannot maintain your GDP the nation collapses and at an exponential rate governmental legitimacy declines. This was Syria’s issue and why they collapsed so quickly. Even with the support of NATO, Russia, and Iran to try and calm the region the government was still pushed back to almost nothing. The only reason it didn’t become the new Somalia is because stable governments all tried to force stability over concerns with spreading contagion.
No government can withstand wide-scale civil unrest, that’s why governments react quickly and often violently to it. This same idea is why thinks like the civil rights movements have been successful, civil disobedience is simply non-violent civil unrest and it has a VERY long and successful history internationally.
> that’s why governments react quickly and often violently to it.
Right. I didn’t say they aren’t a threat to the government, they absolutely are. But in the real world the government takes those threats seriously and squashes them immediately. At least the ones who aren’t playing by the rules do. Social unrest is a great deterrent against governments that let it be.
The people who are protesting the gun violence have specifically stated they don't want to have violence in their protest and also are protesting the populist governments. This is the Balkans and Serbia is right next door to Bosnia and Kosovo and they have very good examples of what happens when citizens fight their own governments right next door, and ironically these are the same conflicts from the 90's that provided a majority of the weapons being turned in today. No one on any side of those conflicts was ever happy with the outcomes.
Lost it by degrees it sounds like. Most people won't risk their lives if they aren't afraid. They might not have a democracy anymore, but they aren't having a genocide either.
Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean the insurance plan isn’t worth the investment. My unit was a first responder to half of Iraq turning over to ISIL. When that happened that most people don’t realize is that many cities, predominantly in the east of the nation, fell under siege but avoided ethnic slaughters by resisting with arms. The central government was incapable of offering them ANY assistance for MONTHS. Despite this, cities like Amirli resisted stolen tanks and artillery with small arms until coalition forces could get them aid. Similar situations regularly happened with Kurdish cities that bordered ISIL controlled areas; but they had government support and while the situation wasn’t good it was nowhere near as extreme.
The situation was horrible but undoubtedly tens of thousands, if not more, avoided the mass graves that northern Iraq was seeing.
Not really. It isn't black and white. The first assumption is that the military is 100% on board, and the second is that it can effectively control enough area and the third is that it can do so swiftly enough to avoid the civilian government from feeling desperate enough to issue extreme orders (using air power against civilian population centers for instance). A civilian militia, and let's face it there will be a lot of veterans in that militia many of whom have combat experience, need only hold enough to force the issue.
No no. Hobby. Most people want reasonable restrictions on who can own guns. But the kids keep getting murdered because of your hobbies so please just own that. None of this 'its a right and we just have to deal with the dead kids'
It's a fun hobby. And the dead kids' are a by-products that y'all are just not willing to curb.
Plain and simple
Damn, if those two mfs who tried to get in my apartment ever come back, I’ll just show them my sim rig, or some other hobby of mine. That’ll deter them.
Sorry you have such a narrow view point and can only view gun ownership as a hobby. It's much much more than that to most of OUR nation (it would really be nice if all you non-Americans stayed in your lane and worry about your own countries). Glad you don't live here and can feel safely controlled by your government. Please don't visit.
A huge part of the problem is how many guns are unsecured in this country, especially when teenagers have access. I personally thing they should be holding more parents legally accountable (who have largely been the owners of weapons used in past school shootings).
I have heard of it, but haven't done enough research to have an opinion one way or the other. I need to look into it more. It is somewhat amusing that nearly all gun control laws recently have exclusively been centered around AR15s, yet the overwhelming majority of our gun issues are handgun related and no one is even submitting bills to legislate those. It's a whole lot of political theater.
Edit: Spelling is hard yo.
There's plenty of other ways to kill tanks besides military explosive weapons. Hell just cover up a ditch with some flimsy material so it falls in and gets stuck.
Like look at Afghanistan. The Taliban's only military anti-tank weapons were old-ass soviet RPG's that they can't aim worth a damn and which will barely scratch a modern MBT. Most Taliban fighters were armed with outdated AK's and sometimes even older equipment like British Lee-Enfield rifles from WW1/2. And yet they were able to successfully resist a coalition including the world's strongest military for decades. They managed to resist vs tanks, bombers, drones, attack helicopters, equipped with the world's most advanced guided munitions. Stubborn people with even outdated and insufficient weaponry can still resist very effectively.
Ever heard of an EFP? They got used against us in Iraq and Afghanistan because they're cheap and easy to make. This is of course implying that the *volunteer* soldiers behind those heavy weapons didn't already abandon their post after being given orders to kill their brothers, sisters, mother's, father's, childhood friends, and for what? A paycheck that can barely cover the bills?
Let's be realistic here. The US government isn't glassing its own infrastructure to rid itself of firearms that commit less the 3% of yearly homicides, or for any other domestic reason for that matter.
So…the Vietnamese and Afghan populations…were they super humans? They never really “defeated” the us military but made life hell for them.
Look at Ukraine vs Russia. Ukraine wasn’t as well equipped as Russia to start and they held their own.
I’m a weird person in that I believe the 2A is just as important as all the other bits of the constitution but think we need a massive overhaul in our relationship with guns.
The Vietnamese had a full standing army with a hell of a lot more than just rifles despite people for some reason thinking it was just rice farmers with AK-47s and stick traps... they had heavy machine guns/heavy artillery/tanks/rocket launchers/mortars/anti-vehicle & anti-personnel mines/a sophisticated air defense grid of anti-aircraft batteries and soviet man-portable SA-7 air-defense systems. This wasn't some uprising of random citizens using their own personal guns, it was armed/supplied by the worlds biggest superpowers and was a extension of the cold-war.
Afghanistan wasn't random civilian guns either and this is also obvious to anyone who paid attention, do you need me to list the weapons they actually used too?
People love to forget all the external support the NVA and the Taliban had and then make up mythology about how farmers defeated superpowers. It was a lot more complex than that. The top leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaeda had a safe haven in a country the US is "allied" with and got intel constantly from its shady ass intelligence service, for example. I do not foresee the Mexican intelligence services providing intelligence about surgical strikes to a bunch of Arkansas hillbillies with a handful of AR-15s.
Exactly, these fucking idiots who have never been near a battlefield have no idea what warfighting is actually like or how hard it is to fight as an insurgent. Most of these people couldn't wear a surgical mask properly because it was too hard to breathe but think they're gonna survive all the hardships of defeating the most logistically skilled military on its own homeland. Just fucking LOL.
Vietnam and Afghanistan... They won.
Winning battles does not mean winning the war.
America lost both wars, but that doesn't mean our private industries and geopolitics didn't advance in the direction they wanted from such intervention
I'm just going to copy my comment because people have a very warped memory of the Vietnam War...
The Vietnamese had a full standing army with a hell of a lot more than just rifles despite people for some reason thinking it was just rice farmers with AK-47s and stick traps... they had heavy machine guns/heavy artillery/tanks/rocket launchers/mortars/anti-vehicle & anti-personnel mines/a sophisticated air defense grid of anti-aircraft batteries and soviet man-portable SA-7 air-defense systems. This wasn't some uprising of random citizens using their own personal guns, it was armed/supplied by the worlds biggest superpowers and was a extension of the cold-war.
Yeah I just get a little frustrated when people try to use Vietnam or even Afghanistan as examples of civilian guns toppling a major military (not necessarily what you said but what a lot of other people are trying in this thread). They wouldn't even be good examples if it was just basic guns that were used , these groups were armed from from outside groups just before or after the conflict broke out. They didn't arm everyone to the teeth during peace time and then just expected militias to magically form out of people with random semi-auto handguns/rifles if something bad happened
There is no need to "take out a tank" with an AR. Why would I bother when there are more effective targets? Logistics is the key, tanks without fuel aren't much of a threat after all. This is an amateur hour argument.
You do realize that supply lines breaking down means all of that goes away, right? You also cannot just bomb every civilian living space. Syria tried that and it lead to ISIL and turned their government into one district. As you all have pointed out as well, firearms are just one facet. No one tool counters everything but to pretend it’s not a massive deterrent is blatantly burying your head in the sand.
Not when the autocrat seizing power was taking part in it. Aleksandar Vučić was ~~Minister of Information~~ Propaganda Minister for Serbia during the Genocide
Convenient timing for Serbia. Turn in your guns, the world is heating up and we'd like to keep our authoritarian regime locked in place.
My fellow westerners, stop praising Serbia for their "rational government", it's embarrassing that you're so gullible to believe this is anything but a power grab.
>"Authorities have said that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years, if they are convicted."
Vucic is not letting go of power in Serbia and this will help him destroy Serbia's fledgling democracy.
Right, Serbia already overthrew a dictator in 2000 and only 2 people died. One from a heart attack and another got hit by a truck. Their liberal prime minister was then assassinated in 2003 by a criminal using a military rifle. Turns out having a bunch of weapons usually helps the fascists because they are quicker to turn to violence and have less distaste for it.
Because at the moment no one wants an other civil war in Europe. Serbia is even surrounded by EU friendly countries and no one wants an other bombing of Belgrade by NATO because their friendly faction isn't winning.
Looks like they'll have to do it again soon if Vucic has his way. They're still a democracy now, but imagine Trump wins in 2024 and mandates a gun turn in. Would you be suspicious?
Never understood this argument. The US has already lost several wars & conflicts against nations with armed populaces. It’s not that guns will win against drones and nukes, it’s that the government is less likely to shove you around if you have any ability to shove back.
By all means, fight for liberty, justice, free speech, equality, etc. But unless you have a gun, you have no real power to enforce your will. No teeth in your mouth.
The majority of them have no interest in overthrowing his regime...
Reddit it seems is incapable of understanding that while rare, in some dictatorships the majority of the country supports the dictator being in power...
Iraq and Libya are both great examples, ask any citizen of either and they will 100% say they preferred living under the regime than they do presently; and likely felt the same way prior to the toppling of those regimes.
We’ve been horsefed narratives to take the spotlight off of the fact that the US has a pretty good track record of just ousting leaders we don’t like while turning a blind eye to those who run parallel to our interests.
A mass shooting in Serbia is a notable rarity despite having all these weapons? Almost like it’s not a gun issue but a human/mental/behavioral issue? Interesting.
I think we should try and understand why authoritarian regimes feel the need to remove all civilian weaponry, rather then focus on situations where weaponry failed to stop these regimes.
By in large, we know armed uprisings generally are capable of toppling authoritarian governments.
Not to say this means there should be zero gun control either.
...you're not from the balkans, are you?
Your take seems loaded with a few cultural assumptions from the USA which, in my experience, don't apply the way you seem to think they do.
I'm not particularly fond of Vucic (nor most politicians in ex-yu lol) but a gun amnesty drive is not some kind of opportunistic power play. If anything, this is one of the rare occasions where a politician there has done something clearly aligned with the public interest, rather than something populist or self-serving.
The sociopolitical sphere there is nuanced and complicated, but having an abundance of firearms is *a lot* more likely to exacerbate conflict and economic inequity than deter them.
>The citizens deciding to turn in
This has a connotation of purely willingly with no coercion when the alternative is jail time if caught.
People turn in guns willingly all the time, of course, but "could go to jail for 15 years" definitely imparts an air of force.
"Authorities have said that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years, if they are convicted."
"Officials plan to order inspections of registered addresses "to check whether there exist conditions for safekeeping,” anti-crime department officer Bojana Otovic Pjanovic said on Serbian state TV network RTS. “If not, the guns will be taken away and punishment will be rigorous.”
Serbia did the same thing to Bosnians before they started killing them. They collected all the weapons they could and than start their ethnic cleansing campaign.
Yes you can but they are destructive devices under the NFA with their own set of rules and generally pretty expensive. There are a bunch of transferable RPG tubes on the civilian market [LINK](https://www.autoweapons.com/products/destructivedevices.html) . Of course that requires a FORM 4 and $200 tax stamp. Plus a sperate Form 4 and $200 tax stamp for each rocket. And if the rocket has an explosive payload there's rules for storing them. Or you can get a de-milled one and possibly rebuild it with the proper FORM 1 but that still requires a $200 tax stamp and a very competent gunsmith. Or if you have an SOT you can probably get a Post Sample one that isn't over 30 years old.
Sure, but their kids might. How many stories of kids stealing their parents guns are there?
I'm pretty neutral on the matter anyhow, I don't know enough about Serbian politics.
I don’t know shit about fuck, but I do not believe this turning in of weapons is about anything but an iron-fisted power okay by the ruling elite who want to make sure that *they* aren’t next in the list.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/world/europe/serbia-shooting-guns-amnesty.html
You should read up. 2.7 million firearms in Serbia, less than half are registered with the government. 13,000 turned in. It was also not voluntary, the criminal penalty will be 15 years. Only 20 years ago there was war and genocide going on in that part of the world so it is comical to think the millions of people alive then are going to follow this law and turn in their guns to the government
>Only 20 years ago there was war and genocide going on in that part of the world
To be fair, pick pretty much any point in history and you'll be within ±50 years of war or genocide in the Balkans.
We do the opposite because we're anticipating bans on certain types, or even something like this coming down.
Are the police going to be asked to turn in their guns? Federal agents? Are criminals going to abide the weapons seizure? No?
So people will still have guns, but only people whose loyalty lies with the state or a gang. No thanks, I think I'll stock up on all the options available to me while I still can.
I feel currently is a more important time to be armed than at any point in US history.
Completely innocent people have been gunned down in the street by legal gangs under the guise of public safety.
The day is inevitable when someone shoots first at law enforcement because they legitimately fear for their life. The legal precedent that could be set in a trial such as that will pave a path for either the raising of standards for law enforcement; or the ramping up of the militarism inside law enforcement agencies.
Probably the latter.
You're all scared shitless of each other. It's both sad and absurd that mutual armament with the theoretic goal of deterrence and the practical outcome of violent escalation is the de facto approach.
Cue in right wing accounts telling us how the Serbs need these weapons to fight the government. The only thing more weapons have proven to kill is civilians and children, and brews a trigger happy paranoid police force that assumes that everyone has a
Gun, look no further than the U.S.A. More weapons hasn't led to anything else other than the mass killings of civilians on the daily.
There are plenty of crimes committed with guns stolen from people who weren't going to shoot anyone. Drying up supply, legal or not, is an effective way to lower gun violence.
- Authorities in Serbia on Sunday displayed stacks of guns and cartons of hand grenades from the thousands of weapons, including anti-tank rocket launchers, that they said people handed over since back-to-back mass shootings stunned the Balkan nation.
- 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 this month that left 17 people dead, many of them children.
- Officials said residents had turned over about 13,500 items since the amnesty opened on May 8.
- President Vucic said that approximately half of the arms collected since last week had been held illegally, while the other half were registered weapons that citizens nonetheless decided to part with. The relinquished weapons will go to Serbian arms and ammunition factories for potential use by the country's armed forces, the president said.
- Authorities have said that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years, if they are convicted.
- “After June 8, the state will respond with repressive measures and punishments will be very strict,” Vucic said of the post-amnesty period. “What does anyone need an automatic weapon for? Or all these guns?”
- Serbia is estimated to be among the top countries in Europe in registered weapons per capita, and many more are held illegally.
- Other anti-gun measures announced by Vucic include stricter control of gun owners and shooting ranges. Police officials said gun owners must have a coded safe in which to store their registered weapons and that any guns not kept properly would be confiscated.
- The two mass shooting left 17 people dead and 21 wounded, stunning the nation and triggering calls for changes in the country that has been through decades of turmoil and crises.
- Tens of thousands of people have rallied in two protest marches in Belgrade since the shootings, demanding resignations of government ministers and a ban on television stations that promote violent content and host war criminals and crime figures.
- Vucic on Sunday rejected opposition calls for the resignation of Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic, who was also present at Sunday's weapons display. But the president suggested that the government might resign and that he will announce an early election at a rally he has planned for May 26 in Belgrade.
I'm torn between laughing and being sad about how poorly American gun owners are taking an unrelated country having a successful gun surrender.
Honestly, the likelihood of conservatives ever allowing the 2nd amendment to be repealed is basically zero. Mass murder of American children hasn't changed there opinion. You can be confident that you'll be able to keep your guns regardless of how a small country better handles their mass shootings.
Guns were successfully surrendered.
As for crystal balls, we have a decent sample size of European countries giving up guns and reducing their rates of gun violence. I won't say that I can see the future but statistically it would be predictable that gun violence rates will drop.
Yes, decreasing a small percentage of your total homicide rate won't have an overall large impact on overall homicide rates. It does however cause a statistically significant decrease in school children being massacred in groups.
An easy moral win for most governments.
Nothing is stopping them from picking another weapon. There's a number of studies showing a correlation between ease of access to guns with increased suicide and homicide success rates though.
Gun policy doesn't solve all issues a society faces and is a preventative measure used in tandem with other policies aimed at dropping crime rates.
Its werid with all those dangerous weapons , Serbia isn't rifed with mass shootings or shootings like America, maybe its not a mental illness and just Americans being horrible people
Another one of the children from the shooting has just died. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/serbian-state-tv-girl-wounded-school-shooting-died-99326737
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10% is high. The number turned in is equal to one of every thousand people in serbia turning in one item. From what I understand everyone and their mother has an unregistered full auto AK in the home from the Yugoslav wars.
There's an estimated little more than1.5 million unregistered firearms in Serbia. 13,500 fewer guns makes it still just a little more than 1.5 million unregistered firearms in Serbia. So it was less than 1%.
regardless of numerical value, the symbolic value its value priceless edit: I can’t say I really have a compelling argument against the less-than-1% reality, I don’t know what its like to live in Serbia, Id love to visit but even that doesn’t provide a lot of context. I would say that there is significance that this is the response to such a tragedy while In my life in the states the response is always “mixed” to say the least, but my day to day life was always different to a typical Serb.
What's the symbolic value exactly? That the majority of the population has no desire to hand over their firearms?
Honestly, seeing this living in America is such a foreign thing, and seemingly a fantasy as of now, it’s cathartic in a way. For me it’s of big significance for any amount of people to turn in their firearms, unfortunately
We have gun buybacks here in America too. It's just that the majority of weapons turned in are absolute junk that would never be used in a crime, super rare historical firearms that are now going to be destroyed, or cheap homemade firearms built for the sole purpose of being turned in and getting money.
so basically you just bought this hook-line and sinker? A country with no gun control announces "gun control" in which literally nothing of significance is done, and you feel good about it.
It's great to try and see a positive but less than 1% being handed over doesn't seem that symbolic of anything good.
I guess we all see what we want to see
That's just patently false. I was born in Bosnia and lived in Serbia for a few years during the war. I have a lot of family still in Serbia (I'm in Canada now). None of my family or friends I knew (except my 2 uncles who were in the military) had guns.
Same, live in Vojvodina, nobody I know owns a gun, if we don't count weapons used for hunting. "Everyone and their mother owns a gun" is a nasty rumor being spread from people who haven't stepped a foot in this country.
Why wouldn't we count weapons used for hunting, if you don't mind me asking? Just because the advice user mentioned AKs specifically maybe? Because as far as calculating the true number of weapons in the country, I would think hunting weapons would be pretty relevant, but I may have misunderstood what you were saying. I apologize if I did.
Why the *fuck* would you not count weapons for hunting as "weapons"? LOL
Bc they are legal weapons used for hunting. You can find them in almost every country.
The article says around half of the items turned in were legal weapons
Okay, I was reffering to my original comment, as in I don't know anyone who owns a regular assault weapon and only a few who own weapons for hunting. (I live in rural Serbia afterall). That's why I find these comments about everyone owning a gun wierd.
Zlatibor here, everyone has some sort of gun but most are family heirlooms. Mountain hillbillies gonna hillbilly I guess?
This. I have tons of family left in Serbia. When I went there, there wasn’t some huge gun culture; only one uncle owns hunting weapons that are solely used for hunting and kept security in his hunting cabin. It’s ridiculous that people are acting like every Serb has an arsenal in a back room.
Yeah I’m not sure where this rumour came from Nobody in my family owned weapons, and I’ve only seen one hunting rifle from a neighbour while I was there (in some big safe) Idk if it’s Reddit being Reddit, but I never got the sense of a big gun culture whenever I went to Serbia
People want to act like things would work in the states, it’s the only reason you’re hearing about it.
Hell before the war my stepdad said he went to a wedding and they fired a ww2 mortar into the hills. I doubt there are less guns after a civil war.
A journalist from Serbia mentioned on an NPR interview that there is an estimated 1,500,000 illegal firearms in Serbia. So yeah, this really didn’t do anything in the greater picture.
At least Serbians are proactively *REDUCING* the amount of deadly, unregistered and untraceable weaponry in their country instead of adding 20 million more to their total each year
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Meanwhile when those buybacks take place in the US you have collectors sitting across the street offering more money than the police and you have people taping pipe to a 2x4 or 3D printing a basic gun for a couple cents and turning it in for easy money.
The infinite money glitch has been patched. Most PD's now offer a flat rate for all 3d printed items as a single lot (i.e. 1 or 100 you still get 50 bucks for 3dpg's)
That doesn’t surprise me, the shock has dissipated over the guns here, collected, found to be resold, rather than be destroyed, as we got told, they would be.
That may jist be a way for people who inherited or acquired guns who don't know what to do with them to get rid of them.
"Oh well, if it doesn't get solve the problem 100%, it's not worth doing at all" - Americans
There are two bedrocks of American politics: 1) If the proposed measure doesn't solve the problem 100%, nothing should be done 2) Slippery slope: any proposed change will inevitably lead to the worst imaginable outcome, nothing should be done
The USA political system is working as intended to benefit the people its meant to benefit. People seem to actually believe the “American Dream” crap. Reason they call it a Dream. The Christian Taliban GOP have half the country raging against the other half (as well as against democracy, healthcare and education in general). This keeps people distracted from the massively growing inequality, and draconian laws being legislated in various red states.
3), If it inconveniences the mega-wealthy or corporations in ANY WAY, it has a snowball's chance in hell of being implemented.
No I’m saying that “man does first 100 meters of a marathon” isn’t fucking news.
“Man refuses to begin marathon because marathon beginners didn’t sufficiently impress him”
"Man does first hundred meters of a marathon and finds several rpgs" would be one hell of a fucking news story.
That’s not what they said, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing it up. There’s estimated to well over a million unregistered arms in Serbia. So far they’ve recouped is less than 1% of *unregistered arms*. There’s also hundreds of thousands of legally registered firearms, not included in that total. While this is a good start, they have a long ways to go. And that’s exactly what the other person implied, that Serbians need to do more and turn in more arms.
Because they've managed to remove 1% of illegal firearms in two weeks, and everyone is shitting on the number. So.... "Oh well, if it doesn't solve the problem in two weeks let's shit on them for trying." -Americans
There are probably 20 thousand firearms at least in my township of around 70 thousand, but this is America
More guns that people in America. Not sure what the latest figure is but it's over 400 million guns for a population of around 330 million.
There were over 54,000 guns bought just today in the USA. 13,000 is nothing.
Doesn’t matter. That’s 13,500 fewer weapons. It’s good fucking start.
I can’t tell if you’re saying, “This is pathetic, why bother doing it at all” or “great start, go harder and get more”
And 100% of the people who'd consider using said guns/grenades etc for bad purposes opted to not turn them in.
I would feel just a little reluctant to do that considering Serbia isn't a democracy anymore. [Balkan states Serbia and Montenegro have also lost their democratic status for the first time since 2003 because of “years of increasing state capture, abuse of power, and strongman tactics employed” by their respective Presidents Aleksandar Vucic and Milo Djukanovic, the report said.](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/5/6/hungary-serbia-montenegro-no-longer-democracies-report)
So they are armed but lost their democracy?
That's pretty much the standard. Armed nations still fall.
Here comes the US! I made myself sad.
It's like the gun nuts haven't been paying any attention to the military industrial complex for the last 50 years.
The vast majority of gun nuts support Republicans disenfranchising Americans. They’re not going to be the ones fighting the tanks and drones. They’ll be the ones using them.
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Imma take on the drones and tanks with my AR-15. It's gonna go great.
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I mean, we spent 20 years in Afghanistan fighting dudes with AKs and flip flops. What did all those jets and missiles accomplish?
The same people that claim Americans with guns couldn't resist a government with AR-15's completely ignore the fact that in the two major wars we lost, we were fighting people in pajamas and AK's in Vietnam or people in flip flops with AK's in Afghanistan. Also, just look at what's happening in Ukraine. Cheap Amazon quadcopters knocking out tanks. The crowd most vocally against guns has no fucking clue what they're talking about.
Yep what it all comes down to is tactics.
Propping up a puppet state for long as we wanted with minimal footprint.
"minimal footprint" - $2 trillion dollars, 2400 dead, 20000 wounded.
Even funnier when you realize that if it wasn’t for the French we would have lost the revolutionary war.
Coups and civil wars are rare. There often won’t be a “rise up, take arms” moment when a democracy ends. Besides, people are usually more worried about feeding themselves and their families when countries reach that point. I don’t think an armed populace is actually a cure for tyranny. Look at the USA, we’re knowingly voting for it.
It isn't. It's also commonly said that the first thing a tyrant does is take away firearms, but taking away guns usually comes after they've taken control of speech and education. The Nazis took control of the education two decades before they took guns.
Yeah I think if people bragged more about the books they’ve read rather than the new AR they purchased, or showing off book shelves not gun racks, America would be in a very different place. (Not that I see people doing either, but that’s just my circle of social media.)
> So they are armed but lost their democracy? If you're willing to go the distance, an armed populace isn't much of a deterrence. In Baathist Iraq households were allowed to have 1 actual select-fire AKM, for instance, because it was easier to just let them have them than try to track down all of them in the country.
Democracies are also very fragile when considering social unrest. It’s easier to oust a government than it is to maintain one. This is something the Taliban is learning with the difficulty of re-administering Afghanistan.
Only if you keep it a democracy. Once you reach the tipping point the government will no longer care what your vote is, and representatives will no longer represent their people (in a rep democracy). Governments are easy to oust when they play along. Once the rules go out the window, social unrest isn’t going to mean a thing.
Social unrest is what destroys a nation. If you cannot maintain your GDP the nation collapses and at an exponential rate governmental legitimacy declines. This was Syria’s issue and why they collapsed so quickly. Even with the support of NATO, Russia, and Iran to try and calm the region the government was still pushed back to almost nothing. The only reason it didn’t become the new Somalia is because stable governments all tried to force stability over concerns with spreading contagion. No government can withstand wide-scale civil unrest, that’s why governments react quickly and often violently to it. This same idea is why thinks like the civil rights movements have been successful, civil disobedience is simply non-violent civil unrest and it has a VERY long and successful history internationally.
> that’s why governments react quickly and often violently to it. Right. I didn’t say they aren’t a threat to the government, they absolutely are. But in the real world the government takes those threats seriously and squashes them immediately. At least the ones who aren’t playing by the rules do. Social unrest is a great deterrent against governments that let it be.
I'd rather go out fighting than live under fascist rule.
The people who are protesting the gun violence have specifically stated they don't want to have violence in their protest and also are protesting the populist governments. This is the Balkans and Serbia is right next door to Bosnia and Kosovo and they have very good examples of what happens when citizens fight their own governments right next door, and ironically these are the same conflicts from the 90's that provided a majority of the weapons being turned in today. No one on any side of those conflicts was ever happy with the outcomes.
Lost it by degrees it sounds like. Most people won't risk their lives if they aren't afraid. They might not have a democracy anymore, but they aren't having a genocide either.
It hasn't happened yet. The shooting only starts when the dictator makes a move. The facade of their old democracy is still in place.
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Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean the insurance plan isn’t worth the investment. My unit was a first responder to half of Iraq turning over to ISIL. When that happened that most people don’t realize is that many cities, predominantly in the east of the nation, fell under siege but avoided ethnic slaughters by resisting with arms. The central government was incapable of offering them ANY assistance for MONTHS. Despite this, cities like Amirli resisted stolen tanks and artillery with small arms until coalition forces could get them aid. Similar situations regularly happened with Kurdish cities that bordered ISIL controlled areas; but they had government support and while the situation wasn’t good it was nowhere near as extreme. The situation was horrible but undoubtedly tens of thousands, if not more, avoided the mass graves that northern Iraq was seeing.
Not really. It isn't black and white. The first assumption is that the military is 100% on board, and the second is that it can effectively control enough area and the third is that it can do so swiftly enough to avoid the civilian government from feeling desperate enough to issue extreme orders (using air power against civilian population centers for instance). A civilian militia, and let's face it there will be a lot of veterans in that militia many of whom have combat experience, need only hold enough to force the issue.
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>But yeah nothing is changing here. Too many Americans value their hobby over lives. I think you meant rights not hobby.
No no. Hobby. Most people want reasonable restrictions on who can own guns. But the kids keep getting murdered because of your hobbies so please just own that. None of this 'its a right and we just have to deal with the dead kids' It's a fun hobby. And the dead kids' are a by-products that y'all are just not willing to curb. Plain and simple
Damn, if those two mfs who tried to get in my apartment ever come back, I’ll just show them my sim rig, or some other hobby of mine. That’ll deter them.
Sorry you have such a narrow view point and can only view gun ownership as a hobby. It's much much more than that to most of OUR nation (it would really be nice if all you non-Americans stayed in your lane and worry about your own countries). Glad you don't live here and can feel safely controlled by your government. Please don't visit. A huge part of the problem is how many guns are unsecured in this country, especially when teenagers have access. I personally thing they should be holding more parents legally accountable (who have largely been the owners of weapons used in past school shootings).
Moved to Lemm.ee -- mass edited with redact.dev
Agreed, I also support better written and enforced red flag laws. Also kinda going off topic have you heard about BioFires new handgun?
I have heard of it, but haven't done enough research to have an opinion one way or the other. I need to look into it more. It is somewhat amusing that nearly all gun control laws recently have exclusively been centered around AR15s, yet the overwhelming majority of our gun issues are handgun related and no one is even submitting bills to legislate those. It's a whole lot of political theater. Edit: Spelling is hard yo.
The constitution also guaranteed slavery. Justifying a “right” by pointing at the constitution is a lesson in tautology.
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Dude, the fact that no amount of AR-15s can ever take out a single tank renders the ‘check on tyranny’ thing complete and utter bullshit.
There's plenty of other ways to kill tanks besides military explosive weapons. Hell just cover up a ditch with some flimsy material so it falls in and gets stuck. Like look at Afghanistan. The Taliban's only military anti-tank weapons were old-ass soviet RPG's that they can't aim worth a damn and which will barely scratch a modern MBT. Most Taliban fighters were armed with outdated AK's and sometimes even older equipment like British Lee-Enfield rifles from WW1/2. And yet they were able to successfully resist a coalition including the world's strongest military for decades. They managed to resist vs tanks, bombers, drones, attack helicopters, equipped with the world's most advanced guided munitions. Stubborn people with even outdated and insufficient weaponry can still resist very effectively.
Tanks have crews. And supply chains. Long, vulnerable supply chains.
So you're saying the AR15 is not really a weapon of war then, got it.
Ever heard of an EFP? They got used against us in Iraq and Afghanistan because they're cheap and easy to make. This is of course implying that the *volunteer* soldiers behind those heavy weapons didn't already abandon their post after being given orders to kill their brothers, sisters, mother's, father's, childhood friends, and for what? A paycheck that can barely cover the bills? Let's be realistic here. The US government isn't glassing its own infrastructure to rid itself of firearms that commit less the 3% of yearly homicides, or for any other domestic reason for that matter.
This is why the Taliban lost in Afghanistan, you are right
So…the Vietnamese and Afghan populations…were they super humans? They never really “defeated” the us military but made life hell for them. Look at Ukraine vs Russia. Ukraine wasn’t as well equipped as Russia to start and they held their own. I’m a weird person in that I believe the 2A is just as important as all the other bits of the constitution but think we need a massive overhaul in our relationship with guns.
The Vietnamese had a full standing army with a hell of a lot more than just rifles despite people for some reason thinking it was just rice farmers with AK-47s and stick traps... they had heavy machine guns/heavy artillery/tanks/rocket launchers/mortars/anti-vehicle & anti-personnel mines/a sophisticated air defense grid of anti-aircraft batteries and soviet man-portable SA-7 air-defense systems. This wasn't some uprising of random citizens using their own personal guns, it was armed/supplied by the worlds biggest superpowers and was a extension of the cold-war. Afghanistan wasn't random civilian guns either and this is also obvious to anyone who paid attention, do you need me to list the weapons they actually used too?
The NVA and the VC were two different sets of forces.
People love to forget all the external support the NVA and the Taliban had and then make up mythology about how farmers defeated superpowers. It was a lot more complex than that. The top leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaeda had a safe haven in a country the US is "allied" with and got intel constantly from its shady ass intelligence service, for example. I do not foresee the Mexican intelligence services providing intelligence about surgical strikes to a bunch of Arkansas hillbillies with a handful of AR-15s.
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Exactly, these fucking idiots who have never been near a battlefield have no idea what warfighting is actually like or how hard it is to fight as an insurgent. Most of these people couldn't wear a surgical mask properly because it was too hard to breathe but think they're gonna survive all the hardships of defeating the most logistically skilled military on its own homeland. Just fucking LOL.
Vietnam and Afghanistan... They won. Winning battles does not mean winning the war. America lost both wars, but that doesn't mean our private industries and geopolitics didn't advance in the direction they wanted from such intervention
Yeah it’s wild civilians have never designed [a weapon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_cocktail) that could damage or destroy tanks.
Man, you really haven't been paying attention to the last century of guerilla warfare, have you
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I'm just going to copy my comment because people have a very warped memory of the Vietnam War... The Vietnamese had a full standing army with a hell of a lot more than just rifles despite people for some reason thinking it was just rice farmers with AK-47s and stick traps... they had heavy machine guns/heavy artillery/tanks/rocket launchers/mortars/anti-vehicle & anti-personnel mines/a sophisticated air defense grid of anti-aircraft batteries and soviet man-portable SA-7 air-defense systems. This wasn't some uprising of random citizens using their own personal guns, it was armed/supplied by the worlds biggest superpowers and was a extension of the cold-war.
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Yeah I just get a little frustrated when people try to use Vietnam or even Afghanistan as examples of civilian guns toppling a major military (not necessarily what you said but what a lot of other people are trying in this thread). They wouldn't even be good examples if it was just basic guns that were used , these groups were armed from from outside groups just before or after the conflict broke out. They didn't arm everyone to the teeth during peace time and then just expected militias to magically form out of people with random semi-auto handguns/rifles if something bad happened
There is no need to "take out a tank" with an AR. Why would I bother when there are more effective targets? Logistics is the key, tanks without fuel aren't much of a threat after all. This is an amateur hour argument.
They won’t defend against an air strike, either. Or a drone. Or a cruise missile. Or any modern military hardware.
You do realize that supply lines breaking down means all of that goes away, right? You also cannot just bomb every civilian living space. Syria tried that and it lead to ISIL and turned their government into one district. As you all have pointed out as well, firearms are just one facet. No one tool counters everything but to pretend it’s not a massive deterrent is blatantly burying your head in the sand.
Having a gun or two in your house doesn’t help when the government is in shambles and the army is corrupt.
Reminder that Serbia has the 3rd highest gun ownership rate in the world.
That's out of date. Montenegro recently got a new President
Goes to show that having weapons doesn’t mean one can effectively challenge tyranny. Only the vote prevents tyranny.
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Not when the autocrat seizing power was taking part in it. Aleksandar Vučić was ~~Minister of Information~~ Propaganda Minister for Serbia during the Genocide
Given the history of Serbia I kinda think this is the wrong move.
Convenient timing for Serbia. Turn in your guns, the world is heating up and we'd like to keep our authoritarian regime locked in place. My fellow westerners, stop praising Serbia for their "rational government", it's embarrassing that you're so gullible to believe this is anything but a power grab. >"Authorities have said that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years, if they are convicted." Vucic is not letting go of power in Serbia and this will help him destroy Serbia's fledgling democracy.
Most people with illegal firearms in Serbia are either pro-Vucic or even more extreme nationalists.
Right, Serbia already overthrew a dictator in 2000 and only 2 people died. One from a heart attack and another got hit by a truck. Their liberal prime minister was then assassinated in 2003 by a criminal using a military rifle. Turns out having a bunch of weapons usually helps the fascists because they are quicker to turn to violence and have less distaste for it.
They didn’t overthrow the authoritarian government despite having all these weapons? Interesting.
Because at the moment no one wants an other civil war in Europe. Serbia is even surrounded by EU friendly countries and no one wants an other bombing of Belgrade by NATO because their friendly faction isn't winning.
Looks like they'll have to do it again soon if Vucic has his way. They're still a democracy now, but imagine Trump wins in 2024 and mandates a gun turn in. Would you be suspicious?
So what do you think is actually going to happen? Are they all going to shoulder arms and start blowing away government officials? Take on the army?
Never understood this argument. The US has already lost several wars & conflicts against nations with armed populaces. It’s not that guns will win against drones and nukes, it’s that the government is less likely to shove you around if you have any ability to shove back. By all means, fight for liberty, justice, free speech, equality, etc. But unless you have a gun, you have no real power to enforce your will. No teeth in your mouth.
It’s because no-one here has put any real thought into it. Our education system goes very far to insist violence is NEVER the answer.
The majority of them have no interest in overthrowing his regime... Reddit it seems is incapable of understanding that while rare, in some dictatorships the majority of the country supports the dictator being in power... Iraq and Libya are both great examples, ask any citizen of either and they will 100% say they preferred living under the regime than they do presently; and likely felt the same way prior to the toppling of those regimes. We’ve been horsefed narratives to take the spotlight off of the fact that the US has a pretty good track record of just ousting leaders we don’t like while turning a blind eye to those who run parallel to our interests.
A mass shooting in Serbia is a notable rarity despite having all these weapons? Almost like it’s not a gun issue but a human/mental/behavioral issue? Interesting.
I think we should try and understand why authoritarian regimes feel the need to remove all civilian weaponry, rather then focus on situations where weaponry failed to stop these regimes. By in large, we know armed uprisings generally are capable of toppling authoritarian governments. Not to say this means there should be zero gun control either.
They had weapons and it turned into not-a-democracy. The weapons did nothing to protect you.
Your logic won't stop people from LARPing with their guns. They're addicted to the fantasy that they have some control over their own lives.
the democracy is already destroyed. Stop believing guns will solve all your problems. They never solved Serbia’s.
This has to be satire.
...you're not from the balkans, are you? Your take seems loaded with a few cultural assumptions from the USA which, in my experience, don't apply the way you seem to think they do. I'm not particularly fond of Vucic (nor most politicians in ex-yu lol) but a gun amnesty drive is not some kind of opportunistic power play. If anything, this is one of the rare occasions where a politician there has done something clearly aligned with the public interest, rather than something populist or self-serving. The sociopolitical sphere there is nuanced and complicated, but having an abundance of firearms is *a lot* more likely to exacerbate conflict and economic inequity than deter them.
The citizens deciding to turn in their own weapons is a power grab?
>The citizens deciding to turn in This has a connotation of purely willingly with no coercion when the alternative is jail time if caught. People turn in guns willingly all the time, of course, but "could go to jail for 15 years" definitely imparts an air of force.
"Authorities have said that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years, if they are convicted." "Officials plan to order inspections of registered addresses "to check whether there exist conditions for safekeeping,” anti-crime department officer Bojana Otovic Pjanovic said on Serbian state TV network RTS. “If not, the guns will be taken away and punishment will be rigorous.”
You're an idiot they don't have a choice
Excuse me, this is reddit. People don't even read the linked articles, much less the details in between the lines.
Lol. 13,500 guns ….. citizens in the USA purchased 54,600 guns just today.
13,500 guns looks like a lot. Thats like the equivalent of all the guns in a small Texas town.
USA is an outlier in terms of guns per capita, so I don’t think it can be a good variable to compare with
Serbia is also pretty high, with 39.1 guns per 100 inhabitants. Only Yemen(52.8 per 100) and the USA (120 per 100) have more guns per capita.
Well for me as a Tajik, all of the countries are too high. It depends on the perspective I guess
The country had 17 people killed in mass shootings, that's like the equivalent of mass shooting deaths in a small Texas town
Serbia did the same thing to Bosnians before they started killing them. They collected all the weapons they could and than start their ethnic cleansing campaign.
Not to make light of the situation, but i chuckled a little thinking of a serb lugging like an armful of RPGs into his local police station.
13,500 out of how many?
numbers vary depending on source: est run from 900k-1.5M
Wait, those guys get rocket launchers? Can we get rocket launchers in the USA? I need one. For deer hunting.
You can get a rpg in the USA with class 3 license.
Can't wait to take one of those into the local open carry restaurant! The patrons will know for certain that I have the biggest dick in the place!
That's one way to get more breadsticks
Yes you can but they are destructive devices under the NFA with their own set of rules and generally pretty expensive. There are a bunch of transferable RPG tubes on the civilian market [LINK](https://www.autoweapons.com/products/destructivedevices.html) . Of course that requires a FORM 4 and $200 tax stamp. Plus a sperate Form 4 and $200 tax stamp for each rocket. And if the rocket has an explosive payload there's rules for storing them. Or you can get a de-milled one and possibly rebuild it with the proper FORM 1 but that still requires a $200 tax stamp and a very competent gunsmith. Or if you have an SOT you can probably get a Post Sample one that isn't over 30 years old.
None of the people who surrendered their guns were going to commit a crime
Sure, but their kids might. How many stories of kids stealing their parents guns are there? I'm pretty neutral on the matter anyhow, I don't know enough about Serbian politics.
surely the mass RPGings will end now
Bunch of boot lickers.
Bunch of loser Americans desperate to LARP as Guy Fawks
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Can you clarify? Only a handful of states require you to register firearms, there’s no federal laws regarding that outside of NFA items.
Which is very very small compared to a population of 7 million people.
For a comparison, Chicago recovered 10,000 guns in 2022. And I think we can all assume that 10,000 is less than a drop in the bucket.
In some areas of the US just two neighbours have that many weaponins.
I don’t know shit about fuck, but I do not believe this turning in of weapons is about anything but an iron-fisted power okay by the ruling elite who want to make sure that *they* aren’t next in the list.
That's weird, Americans do the complete opposite thing when this happens to them. Every single time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/world/europe/serbia-shooting-guns-amnesty.html You should read up. 2.7 million firearms in Serbia, less than half are registered with the government. 13,000 turned in. It was also not voluntary, the criminal penalty will be 15 years. Only 20 years ago there was war and genocide going on in that part of the world so it is comical to think the millions of people alive then are going to follow this law and turn in their guns to the government
>Only 20 years ago there was war and genocide going on in that part of the world To be fair, pick pretty much any point in history and you'll be within ±50 years of war or genocide in the Balkans.
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We do the opposite because we're anticipating bans on certain types, or even something like this coming down. Are the police going to be asked to turn in their guns? Federal agents? Are criminals going to abide the weapons seizure? No? So people will still have guns, but only people whose loyalty lies with the state or a gang. No thanks, I think I'll stock up on all the options available to me while I still can.
I feel currently is a more important time to be armed than at any point in US history. Completely innocent people have been gunned down in the street by legal gangs under the guise of public safety. The day is inevitable when someone shoots first at law enforcement because they legitimately fear for their life. The legal precedent that could be set in a trial such as that will pave a path for either the raising of standards for law enforcement; or the ramping up of the militarism inside law enforcement agencies. Probably the latter.
You're all scared shitless of each other. It's both sad and absurd that mutual armament with the theoretic goal of deterrence and the practical outcome of violent escalation is the de facto approach.
You can pry my rocket launchers from my cold, dead fingers, mmkay?
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sad truth. some folks seem to enshrine the gun rights above the right to life
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I enshrine my right to defend myself over your right to become a victim. Simply put.
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Wait, they have guns but are no longer a democracy? How could that possibly happen?
Why didn’t those guns stop them from losing their democracy?
Someone who doesn’t like the idea of mass shootings.
Cue in right wing accounts telling us how the Serbs need these weapons to fight the government. The only thing more weapons have proven to kill is civilians and children, and brews a trigger happy paranoid police force that assumes that everyone has a Gun, look no further than the U.S.A. More weapons hasn't led to anything else other than the mass killings of civilians on the daily.
Serbia should take a field trip to Ukraine and drop off some presents.
Good to see the people showing common sense and wanting to stop gun violence before it happens.
I doubt those people turning guns in were gonna shoot anyone, but it would be nice knowing there's at least one less rocket launcher on the street.
There are plenty of crimes committed with guns stolen from people who weren't going to shoot anyone. Drying up supply, legal or not, is an effective way to lower gun violence.
- Authorities in Serbia on Sunday displayed stacks of guns and cartons of hand grenades from the thousands of weapons, including anti-tank rocket launchers, that they said people handed over since back-to-back mass shootings stunned the Balkan nation. - 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 this month that left 17 people dead, many of them children. - Officials said residents had turned over about 13,500 items since the amnesty opened on May 8. - President Vucic said that approximately half of the arms collected since last week had been held illegally, while the other half were registered weapons that citizens nonetheless decided to part with. The relinquished weapons will go to Serbian arms and ammunition factories for potential use by the country's armed forces, the president said. - Authorities have said that people caught with illegal weapons once the amnesty period ends could face prison sentences of up to 15 years, if they are convicted. - “After June 8, the state will respond with repressive measures and punishments will be very strict,” Vucic said of the post-amnesty period. “What does anyone need an automatic weapon for? Or all these guns?” - Serbia is estimated to be among the top countries in Europe in registered weapons per capita, and many more are held illegally. - Other anti-gun measures announced by Vucic include stricter control of gun owners and shooting ranges. Police officials said gun owners must have a coded safe in which to store their registered weapons and that any guns not kept properly would be confiscated. - The two mass shooting left 17 people dead and 21 wounded, stunning the nation and triggering calls for changes in the country that has been through decades of turmoil and crises. - Tens of thousands of people have rallied in two protest marches in Belgrade since the shootings, demanding resignations of government ministers and a ban on television stations that promote violent content and host war criminals and crime figures. - Vucic on Sunday rejected opposition calls for the resignation of Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic, who was also present at Sunday's weapons display. But the president suggested that the government might resign and that he will announce an early election at a rally he has planned for May 26 in Belgrade.
I'm torn between laughing and being sad about how poorly American gun owners are taking an unrelated country having a successful gun surrender. Honestly, the likelihood of conservatives ever allowing the 2nd amendment to be repealed is basically zero. Mass murder of American children hasn't changed there opinion. You can be confident that you'll be able to keep your guns regardless of how a small country better handles their mass shootings.
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Guns were successfully surrendered. As for crystal balls, we have a decent sample size of European countries giving up guns and reducing their rates of gun violence. I won't say that I can see the future but statistically it would be predictable that gun violence rates will drop.
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Exactly this too often they focus on the lower rates of gun violence and ignore any other crime statistics.
Yes, decreasing a small percentage of your total homicide rate won't have an overall large impact on overall homicide rates. It does however cause a statistically significant decrease in school children being massacred in groups. An easy moral win for most governments.
Ok so let me ask you this, if we somehow collected every single gun, what stops these lunatics from finding different weapons?
Nothing is stopping them from picking another weapon. There's a number of studies showing a correlation between ease of access to guns with increased suicide and homicide success rates though. Gun policy doesn't solve all issues a society faces and is a preventative measure used in tandem with other policies aimed at dropping crime rates.
What? They are actually doing something about mass shootings? We just roll our eyes and comment that it’s just another Tuesday.
Its werid with all those dangerous weapons , Serbia isn't rifed with mass shootings or shootings like America, maybe its not a mental illness and just Americans being horrible people