Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic speaks during a public address in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, May 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

By Jovana Gec and Dustan Stojanovic, AP

The first shooting left Serbia weeping. The second set off waves of soul-searching in a deeply divided nation, awash in weaponry, where war criminals are glorified and memories run deep of years of civil war.

Two mass killings in two days. Nineteen people dead and 21 injured.

“We walked around like zombies for 24 hours, not believing what has happened and looking for reasons,” President Aleksandar Vucic, a populist authoritarian who began his political career as a far-right Serbian nationalist during the Yugoslav civil wars, said Friday in a nationwide TV address.

In Thursday’s attack, a gunman apparently firing at random killed eight people and wounded 14 in two Serbian villages, authorities said, shaking a nation still in the throes of grief over another mass shooting a day earlier. Police arrested a suspect Friday after an all-night search.

Vucic called the shootings an attack on the whole nation — and said the person arrested wore a T-shirt bearing a pro-Nazi slogan although he did not shed light on a motive.

The slayings came a day after a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns to kill eight fellow students and a guard at a school in Belgrade, the capital.

Public figures, politicians and experts appeared successively on TV Friday, desperately trying to explain the tragedies.

“This is a moment when a nation decides whether it will go along a healing path,” actor Srdjan Timarov said on N1 television. “The only other way is to declare capitulation.”

People donate blood for mass shooting victims in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, May 5, 2023. The bloodshed sent shockwaves through a Balkan nation scarred by wars, but unused to mass murders. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

As a nationwide period of mourning began, TV screens were filled with people wearing black and music was banned from the airwaves as well as in cafes and restaurants. People lined up in Belgrade to donate blood, responding to an appeal for supplies needed to treat the wounded.

The assailant in Thursday’s attack shot people in two villages near Mladenovac, a municipality located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital, police said. Vucic said the gunman targeted people “wherever they were.”

In the village of Dubona, blood stained a schoolyard where some of the shots were fired and also the ground near a bench where residents often sit to share a beer and chat.

Blood is seen on the ground at the site of a shooting in the village of Dubona, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, May 5, 2023. A shooter killed multiple people and wounded more in a drive-by attack late Thursday in Serbia’s second such mass killing in two days, state television reported. (AP Photo/Armin Durgut)

“I heard some tak-tak-tak sounds,” recalled Milan Prokic, a Dubona resident. Prokic said he first thought people were shooting to celebrate a birth, as is tradition in Serbia.

“But it wasn’t that. Shame, great shame,” Prokic added.

Police said a suspect, identified by the initials U.B., was arrested in Vinjiste, a village 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of Belgrade. Officers searching a relative’s home found a large stash of illegal weapons and ammunition, state broadcaster RTS reported.

Authorities released a photo showing a young man in a police car in a blue T-shirt with the slogan “Generation 88” on it. The double eights are often used as shorthand for “Heil Hitler” since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Vucic said the suspect repeated the word “disparagement” but it wasn’t clear what he meant.

The president vowed in an address to the nation that the suspect “will never again see the light of the day.” He referred to the attack as an act of terror and announced tougher gun-control measures, in addition to those proposed by the government a day earlier.

He called for a moratorium on new licenses for all weapons in the next two years, a review of all current licenses, longer prison sentences for those who break the rules and “fierce” punishment for anyone caught with illegal weapons. But first, police will offer an amnesty to encourage people to hand over illegal guns — an action that has had limited success in the past.

“We will disarm Serbia,” Vucic promised, saying the government would outline the new rules later Friday.

 

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98 COMMENTS

  2. yeah that’s real smart dummy. disarm the Law Abiding Citizen so the criminals can run around shoot people some more. what the heck is wrong with these people’s brains?

    • They know what they’re doing. A disarmed populace is controllable. If criminals take out a few innocents, does that affect those in charge? Nope. They don’t care about anything but being in charge.

        • It would be nice, but history proves that humans rarely ever wake up, or if they do, they can’t do anything about it because it’s too late. It happened with the founding of the USA, but first we had to kill enough British to kick them out, and even then we had to emphasize gun rights, among others, on a piece of paper because they couldn’t pass the Constitution otherwise – and look how it’s reverting back to the Eurotrash bullshit we fled 400 years ago.

          Freedom and liberty are difficult to have.

  3. Look how well ” we will disarm” worked for the Germans citizens circa 1939.

    • MB
      To be precise 1938 gun control. Round up of “dissidents” kicked into high gear from late 1940 after the easy victory in France.

  4. Well, at least we’ll know which country is next on the “descending into despotism” list. I’m sure the left will celebrate his enlightened status.

  5. “…police will offer an amnesty to encourage people to hand over illegal guns…”

    In other words, “give us your guns we don’t know about.”

  6. That whole area is primed for 90’s style infighting and unrest and has been nudged hard by the NATO/Russia conflict.

    This gesture, totalitarianism aside, will be completely negated soon enough.

  7. I remind my “Conservative” Friends to stop idolizing Europe. “Common Good”, and the powers of The State only exist to centralize and consolidate power.

    Serbia is at best only one Generation removed from the Despotism that plagued it in the from the 1970s through the 1990s.

    Ironically (but censored by US Media as Usual), these 2 School Shootings seem to be inspired to carry out Religious Persecution, and are also laced with evidence of Racial and Ethnic Violence.

        • Careful with DDG, or any of the others for that matter. NoScript’s intercepting & flagging their redirects as linking to tracking servers. Started about 4 months ago.

          Probably had to capitulate to Gewgle/B!ng to keep their “whitelisted” results. Only what I suspect, and only because it has precedent from both.

          Most of the other alt search engines, afaik, inclusive of IXQuick & Startpage are too. Why I believe it’s trickle down from the top level providers.

    • Exactly. There are reasons our forefathers thought enough of private ownership of arms to protect it in the Constitution, mostly rooted in European dysfunction.

    • “I remind my “Conservative” Friends to stop idolizing Europe.”

      I don’t know of anyone of my political bent that ‘idolizes’ Europe, we all pretty much hold those Euro-Cucks in contempt.

      The ones that keep telling everyone how wonderful it is there are the Leftist Scum ™ that I personally wish would all die of cancer alone… 🙂

      • Yep, if I run across someone idolizing europe, that’s a sure bet that they’re leftist, not conservative. Of course, he did say “conservative” and not conservative.

      • That’s unnecessarily cruel. I’d be perfectly happy to have them all die of cancer together.

  8. When the muslims start killing christians and burning their churches to the ground. As they did back of the 1990s. Will the Democrat Biden administration start bombing Serbia again? The way the Democrat Bill Clinton bombed Serbia back then. Something that I believe senator Joe Biden. Also supported.
    And senator Bernie Sanders and I believe senator Barbara boxer also supported the bombing of Serbia as well..

    • WTF? Over.

      They have been doing that in France and Germany for years and no one cars or says anything.

    • It’ll all depend on whether or not Joe needs a convenient distraction from problems at home like war criminal Clinton did.

      American’s are already fed up with Ukraine so that won’t cut it. Something new will be needed and as we’ve seen over and over again what’s old is new again with Joe.

      • I think Joe will be tough to beat (seriously). It doesn’t matter that everything his admin has touched is a complete disaster. It doesn’t matter that he’s practically a drooling idiot. The fact that they’re governing the way they are is proof they aren’t concerned about elections.

  9. the three step plan for tyrants:
    1 dont ever let good naturally occurring crises go to waste
    2 in the absence of good naturally occurring crises – CREATE THEM
    3 seize the oppurtunity to do whatever you want to the people all the while telling them youre doing it to them for their own good

  11. “We will disarm Serbia,”

    Then we’ll have a current, concrete example of confiscation to point towards.

    I’m certain that this will not end well.

  12. RE: “Vucic called the shootings an attack on the whole nation — and said the person arrested wore a T-shirt bearing a pro-Nazi slogan although he did not shed light on a motive.”

    Worrying about a pro nazi t-shirt and at the same time calling to fix the criminal problem with an insane pro nazi agenda called Gun Control…He sounds as pathetic and as history illiterate as cato.

    • My view on history, past and current, is what’s winning the pro 2A argument in courts and state houses across the country. It’s the pro-Constitution view.

      Unlike you, I have results based proof on my side.

  13. Considering their history I see far more stuff getting buried than turned in…..

  14. Servia is just like Shitcongo, Detroilet, St. Loose, and any other lefty city, only on a larger scale…. one big gang turfwar aided by the powers that be until things get out of hand. Then the powers that be will DO SOMETHING. Same shit, different despot.
    Same result.

  16. They suffered through communism and a civil war. If they disarm they are the dumbest people on earth.

    • “If they disarm they are the dumbest people on earth.”

      Pretty much proves the point that Leftist Scum ™ voting Jews are brain-damaged…

    • The region is awash with guns. During the civil war area the range and type of guns being seen would be a gun nerds dream. Thompsons, Mausers, SKS, AKs, former East German weapons, and more. And that’s just small arms. In tanks there was everything from local T72 variants, T34, T54/55, M4 Sherman, M10s, M18s, and more.

      Good luck trying to take those in. Almost everyone has a gun and ammunition to settle scores when the time comes.

  18. In spite of the proliferation of guns as a legacy of the civil war, Serbia has a homicide rate of about one death per one-hundred-thousand people per year. This is lower than the actual homicide rate for jolly old England where guns are banned. I suspect that the Croatians and Bosnians will be delighted as this will make it easier for them to exterminate the Serbians in a second, Yugoslavian civil war.

    just FYI, Serbians should remember their history:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Serbia

    It should not be that difficult for Serbians to remember this 80,000 to 100,000 Serbians who were systematically exterminated by the communists.

  19. Ironically Serbia has stricter gun ownership laws than California, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington. Plus the fact that because the scumbag who shot up his school is 13. He can’t be held criminally liable. His parents have been arrested and will take the fall.

  20. A mass shooting that wasn’t in the US? Fake news, mass shootings only happen America, everyone knows that.

  22. It certainly is strange how a country that doesn’t generally have such mass killings has one and then another immediately afterwards.

    I’m not suggesting a conspiracy- no, it’s much more banal than that. It’s that when you plaster the news of such an event all over society and make a celebrity of the killer, IT MAKES OTHER PEOPLE DO IT TO EMULATE THAT ATTENTION.

  23. I love the predictions of an inescapable despotic country in the wake of confiscation.

    You’re projecting your fear and anger onto an entirely different situation. Australia went through the same thing some 20 odd years ago, and yet their people are still free and the government democratic.

    If the people of Serbia agree to disarm, well it just might work for them.

      • NY gov was still fighting the courts to allow them a few months ago last I heard. Will have to check on that one.

      • Ah yes, the great wave of Aussie asylum seekers heading across the Pacific in a flotilla of boats, ships and anything else that floats. When will her people be free?

        By the way, Australia increased its legal immigration quota to nearly 200,000 for 2023 — that’s for a country of 26 million.

        • When will her people be free? Like everywhere else, when they decide to be.

          They enjoy their leash you say? You commend them on their fine taste for boot leather?

          Couldn’t be me.

    • Serbians Will Decide For Themselves

      No, their authoritarian leader is going to force this on his people. The Serbians won’t have a say in the matter.

      “Australia went through the same thing…”

      Total disarmament? All firearms? Every one of them? Don’t look now, but there are more guns in Australia now than there were before the “ban.”

      “If the people of Serbia agree to disarm …”

      And what if the Serbians don’t agree to be disarmed?

      ” …it just might work for them.”

      They might reduce the number of shootings from two to zero? You mean, like it was in Serbia last week before the two nutcases went off?

      Let me guess — you think it’s good strategy to burn 40 acres of corn if you found bugs on two of the plants.

      • The Serbian President can’t force anything on the people because the position is largely ceremonial. Instead it’s the unicameral National Assembly, which is elected by the people, which will enact any new laws regarding guns.

        • Care to quote what the Serbian president said about disarming his country, Liar49er?

          Here: “We will disarm Serbia,” Vucic promised.

          So, what you’re actually saying is that the Serbian president is no different than a typical Donk politician here in the States — promising results that he is unable to deliver.

  24. Australia confiscated all semi auto.
    They may have pump, lever, etc.
    Many Australians were forced to be mRNA, now have a lot of complications and higher death rate.

    • Australia
      Historical Rate Data
      Year . . Death Rate . . Growth Rate
      2023 . . 6.720 . . 0.360%
      2022 . . 6.696 . . 0.370%
      2021 . . 6.671 . . 0.360%
      2020 . . 6.647 . . 0.380%
      2019 . . 6.622 . . 0.360%
      2018 . . 6.598 . . 0.180%
      2017 . . 6.586 . . 0.200%
      2016 . . 6.573 . . 0.180%
      2015 . . 6.561 . . 0.200%
      2014 . . 6.548 . . 0.180%

      • You can read here gaslight comments about how there’s no evidence that the mRNA is responsible for the excess deaths. It’s the ischemic heart disease increase (known side effect of mRNA which I am victim). Also they don’t publish vaccination status of the dead. Hmm. Read here for modality; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9012513/

        • What I see when I go looking is instead of publishing raw data on deaths, the government liars “normalize m” the data. For example if the population grew we expect also more to die so “death rate, or deaths per thousand”, then somehow the excess deaths change by 40%. Another fascinating thing is that as soon as a freedom of information access finds horrific numbers the data is corrected, in sone cases to show that suddenly miscarriages have dropped 30%, sort of magically.

      • 2019 . . 6.622 . . 0.360%

        What explains the doubling of the death rate in 2019 and its continuance to the present? Why are you quoting 2023 stats when only a quarter of the year has passed?

        And where did you source your data?

        Brings to mind an old adage: “Figures lie when liars figure.”

        • 6.5 deaths to 6.7 per 100,000 people. The doubling was minuscule. Do you know how to read?

        • I beg a thousand pardons, sahib. Allow me to correct my error:

          2019 . . 6.622 . . 0.360%
          2018 . . 6.598 . . 0.180%

          What explains the doubling of the growth in the death rate in 2019 and its continuance to the present? Why are you quoting 2023 stats when only a quarter of the year has passed?

          And where did you source your data?

          C’mon, Liar49er, you can do better — oh, wait. No, you can’t.

      • I found it. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/death-rate

        There’s a small problem, though —

        NOTE: All death rate data after 2019 are United Nations projections and therefore DO NOT include any impacts from COVID-19.

        Using skewed statistics to promote a narrative. Nice try, Liar49er. I see why you didn’t cite your course.

        As I said — “Figures lie when liars figure.”

  25. Just because someone is called “far right”, mostly because he was a nationalist, does not make him “far right” in Americans’ eyes.
    I really wonder if this was not set up, so that the people that listen to the media will go along with a gun grab(and snitch on their neighbors like they did under communism).
    Remember that Hitler was a Nationalist and was called “far right”.
    The main difference between Nazism and communism then was that the state controlled capitalism in one case and capitalism controlled the state in the other – same result for the citizens, a jackboot on their collective necks.

  27. Aleksandar Vucic is anything but a right wing populist. He is an EU lackey. He’s been selling out Serbians his entire time in office. His statements these last few days are no surprise.

  28. Unlike Capitalvania U.S. where life is considered cheap and expendable the Serbs will do something about mass murders and it will happen quickly.

    In Capitalvania it is nor longer safe to go to church, go to a parade, send your kids to go to school or go simply shopping. As of April 10th 200 American men, women and children have died in a pool of blood from gun homicides.

    AND THINK ABOUT THIS ONE: Since 1968 over 1 1/2 million Americans have been gunned down which is more than the 1.2 million Americans killed in all U.S. Wars combined.

    Last year there were more U.S. school shootings than in any year since 1999. And since 1999 over 350,000 children at school have experienced the terror of gun violence.

    Since 1980, 36 children and 180 people have been slaughtered at church.

    There were 420 people gunned down at Los Vegas

    There were 49 people killed at a Florida nigh club.

    Since 2012 456 cops have been gunned down and cops have become so jumpy they regularly gun down people they have stopped just for a burned out tail light bulb.

    THE U.S. IS NOW RANKED 128TH AS THE SAFEST COUNTRY TO LIVE IN PROVING MORE GUNS HAVE NOT MADE US SAFER IN FACT JUST THE OPPOSITE.

    Despite Far Right Wing bold face lies Anthony Scalia said:

    “We do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.”

    THE SUPREME COURT HAS FURTHER STATED:

    Gun rights don’t allow “bodies of men to associate together as military organizations,” to carry firearms “in such manner as to strike terror to the people” or to openly carry weapons that are “dangerous and unusual” or intended for a “wicked purpose.”

    • In a dictatorship things can be done quickly. In a free nation sudden changes take the consent of the people. If gun control had the consent of the people it would have happened. Something you fascists don’t seem to grasp.

      The supreme course also brought us Dredd Scott. No doubt you approved of that one.

    • Too many cherry-picked stats, lack of citations, quotes out of context, and outright lies for me to respond point-by-point.

      Short version: Criminals don’t follow the laws. The actions of criminals do not determine my rights as a law-abiding citizen. Self-defense is an inherent human right and I will exercise that right as I see fit.

      (Required: “Dacian, you’re an asshole.”)

    • If guns cause crime how come Switzerland has such a high gun concentration and such low crime rates?
      Also, why does crime in usa show such profound association by age, gender, and race?

    • If life is cheap in Capitalvania, it was a lot cheaper in your s0cialist Rodina (motherland to save you translating), the FORMER USSR.

      Look up Kyshtym or Mayak (same location) where a Chornobyl scale disaster happened over a 30 year period. Even today roads have signs advising drivers to wind up their windows and to not stop for anything. Secrecy and paranoia stopped the government from telling anyone what happened and to take steps to prevent it happening again.

      Another incident for you. The release of weaponized anthrax from a bioweapons facility in Sverdelosk. The party blamed it on contaminated meat.

      And add environmental regulation was poor to nonexistent. Everything was done on the cheap so far that your evil Capitalvanians would be envious.

    • Still waiting to hear your solutions that don’t start with infringing on the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the 110 million law abiding gun owners who never harm anyone.

      Or with blaming inanimate objects.

      Or with ignoring societal root causes of homicidal acts.

      Go.

    • dacian, the DUNDERHEAD, What a surprise! Seems up are still up to your old twisting of the words of a great Supreme Court Justice. Where is this “Capitalvania U.S.”? Frankly other than you bemoaning the place, I’ve never heard of it.
      Of all those people you claim where gunned down, how many were gunned down by a law abiding citizen who was legally owning a firearm? I can give you the answer. Very few. The vast super majority of people who own a firearm, have never killed anyone illegally. But of course you want to include those who commit suicide, those who illegally have a gun, etc. Not to mention the mentally ill who you Leftists refuse to do anything about.
      How about banning all automobiles and trucks? Seems they kill more people in one year than are killed by guns in three?
      As to your SWISS “gun control laws”, here you go. they virtually don’t have any. Almost everyone in Switzerland have some kind of gun. And yet you want to do away with guns. How ar eyou going to stop your criminal bus from having a firearm? You can’t seem to control them on the simple things, like stealing, assault, etc? Soe how you are fixated on an inanimate object.
      Oh by the way, you still haven’t told us the firing sequence of a cartridge? And yet you still claim to a an “expert” on the subject of firearms. I doubt you know anything about firearms other than they fire bullets.

  30. Serbia: There’s a rapist on the loose. We will need to castrate everyone above the age of 12 to prevent any more rapes.

  31. Considering the history of Eastern and Central Europe, disarmament may not be such a good idea for Serbia.

  32. Mass shootings are a normal phenomenon in countries governed by internationalist bureaucrats, homosexuals and unhappy women. Democracy is an attempt to subvert the order of nature. Social animals, including homo-sapiens, naturally organize ourselves into hierarchical societies, with the most fit at the top. Democracy attempts to invert the natural social order by placing those whom nature rejects as leaders above the mass of the people.

  33. Ya know they’ll get em all just like they would here. Come and Take It M Fs.

  34. quote———Vucic called the shootings an attack on the whole nation — and said the person arrested wore a T-shirt bearing a pro-Nazi slogan although he did not shed light on a motive.———–quote

    Does this really surprise anyone, the last two mass murders in the U.S. were also right wing extremists and one even had a swastika tattoo on his body.

    • dacian, the DUNDERHEAD, so what? We all know that your Serbian buds have Nazi tendencies. Much like you.

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