He promised increased prison terms, up to 15 years, fines for having unregistered firearms, and a police officer in every school. People who own guns illegally would be given a month to surrender them, he said. Of the roughly 400,000 legal, registered guns in Serbia, excluding hunting weapons, he said he expected just 10 percent, at most, to remain in private hands. To own a gun legally, he said, a person would have to pass a full audit, including psychological and drug screening. Vucic announced a stricter gun control agenda. On Friday, after the second mass shooting, Mr. At a news conference on Friday he said, “We’ve been walking around like zombies the last 24 hours, looking for a reason something like this could happen.” President Aleksandar Vucic vowed sweeping changes to Serbia’s gun laws, saying he was aiming for the “almost complete disarmament” of the country, something rarely attempted - and a sharp contrast to the United States, where mass shootings have mostly been followed by official inaction. Neither the officials nor the people of the area could offer a coherent motive for the massacre. This small Balkan nation, which had not had a mass shooting in seven years, had suffered two of them in as many days.Įarly Friday, after an overnight manhunt involving hundreds of officers, with helicopters swarming overhead, the police captured a man who officials said was the gunman, a 21-year-old wearing a white supremacist symbol. Already deeply shaken, Serbia once again had to confront the unthinkable. Just one day after a 13-year-old shot to death nine people at his school in the capital, Belgrade, eight more victims lay dead or dying Thursday night, with at least 14 others newly wounded. He fired on another group outside a schoolyard. He drove to a halt at a soccer field near a Serbian farming village, where young people were enjoying drinks and music, opened fire with an assault rifle, and sped off.

DUBONA, Serbia - The killer seemed to mark people for death at random.

The Deadly Caress by O.N. Stefan