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In Serbia, where guns are so prolific a regular part of weddings and birthdays, two mass shootings in two days have sparked a reckoning about the role of deadly weapons in the culture.
The shooting, in which 17 people were killed and 21 wounded, led the country’s president this week to call for sweeping changes to Serbia’s gun laws. But many Serbs say that crackdown, in a country with a long tradition of illegal gun ownership and weapons, is unlikely.
“In our culture, sons inherit guns from their fathers and grandfathers,” said Miriana Marinkovic, 39, adding that people will not give up their firearms easily. “People will dig holes and buy weapons; they will hide them in wells and in graves.”
The widespread possession of weapons is largely a legacy of the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. About 400,000 people, about 6 percent of the population, own legal weapons, not including hunting weapons, according to authorities. Despite having one of the highest rates of firearms ownership in the world, mass shootings have – until now – been rare.
After killings at the end of this week – one at a school in Belgrade, the capital, and another in a nearby farming village – President Aleksandar Vucic vowed “almost complete disarmament” of the country. On Friday, he said authorities would reduce the number of legal gun owners by 90 percent, to about 40,000 people.
Mr. Vucic’s call for gun control resonated with residents of Malo Orasje, one of the two villages where the second massacre occurred. “No one needs guns, there are just too many weapons in this country,” said 56-year-old Branka Mitrovic.
Mrs. Mitrovic left the cemetery where five murder victims in Malo Osraje had just been buried. Earlier in the day, hundreds of residents flocked to the village’s small Orthodox Christian church to pay their last respects, queuing for candles.
For more than an hour, the moving scene was repeated five times: The church bells rang and the mourners made the sign of the cross as they watched the pallbearers carry the wooden coffin into the church. Later, the coffin was placed on a pew facing the church while a tearful relative remained nearby, holding a cross bearing the date of the victim’s birth and death. All birth dates are from the 2000s.
“What they took from us!” screamed the woman in distress.
Another funeral was held in Belgrade on Friday for several victims of the school shooting. Thousands of people in the capital have paid their respects in recent days, laying flowers and lighting candles that now cover many of the roads leading to the school.
“We can’t believe it’s happening here,” said Milana Vanovac, 56, as she watched the impromptu commemoration on Saturday. “We think mass shootings are a problem for other countries, not for us.”
Confusion Ms. Vanovac said to the Serbs suddenly calculated the problem of guns. The country ranks third in the world for gun ownership along with Montenegro, with about 39 firearms per 100 people, following the United States with 121 and Yemen with 53, according to the 2018 Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research group.
The high rate of gun ownership, a legacy of the country’s war, also stems from a “tough guy” culture, said Bojan Elek, deputy director at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy.
To tackle a gun problem that experts say has gone unaddressed for a long time, Mr. Vucic, Serbia’s president, has promised comprehensive background checks on gun owners, including drug and psychological tests, better supervision of shooting ranges and a two-year moratorium on new ones. license. He also called for a month-long amnesty for gun owners to surrender illegal weapons without penalty, ahead of tougher measures.
But many in Serbia are skeptical that the move will work.
Mr. Elek noted that those affected will be legal gun owners who are ready to deliver their firearms. “People who have illegal weapons will not be affected,” he said.
In Dubona, one of the two villages where the next shooting took place, residents also expressed doubts about the state’s disarmament — and their own willingness to participate.
“There is no way we can implement this,” Stefan Markovic, 29, a construction worker from Dubona, said of the Serbian president’s promise. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
Mr. Markovic, who lost several friends in the shooting, said the rate of gun ownership was too high to be significantly reduced. He estimates that many Dubona residents own guns, although few are licensed. Asked if he had a gun, he smiled in agreement.
Several weapons were found during searches of homes linked to the gunman accused of carrying out Thursday’s shooting, police said. They include an unregistered automatic rifle, a carbine with optics, a pistol and four hand grenades. Mr Markovic, who lives near the suspect’s family home, said the suspect’s father, a deputy colonel in the Serbian Army, had “an entire arsenal” of weapons.
The exact number of guns in Serbia, a small country of 6.8 million people, is difficult to determine. Mr. Elek of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy said the number had been decreasing over the years. But there were still an estimated 2.7 million firearms in civilian hands at the end of 2017, with less than half registered with the government, according to the Small Arms Survey.
Like some other mourners in Malo Osraje, Ms. Marinkovic said he opposes the widespread presence of guns. “I hope people’s minds will change after the murder,” he said. “But I’m a pessimist.”
In Dubona, residents on Friday seemed hesitant about turning in their weapons. Some say that the gunman’s rampage even persuaded them to keep their guns for self-protection.
“Imagine if they came to our house and we didn’t have a gun to protect ourselves,” said Milos Todorovic, who lives with his family on the village’s main street, where bloodstains from the shooting were still visible Friday. “They come to your door and kill you.”
Sitting around a garden table, strewn with snacks and small glasses of rakija, a popular fruit spirit in the Balkans, the father nodded in agreement.
Mr. Elek said the culture of gun ownership for self-protection dates back hundreds of years, when the population of the region tried to resist the Ottoman Empire. It has been further entrenched by the legacy of two world wars and the conflict around the breakup of Yugoslavia.
He added that guns are also part of a tradition that has long since disappeared in big cities but lives on in the countryside, with people firing into the air to commemorate special occasions. Mr. Elek said that one of the traditions, during a wedding, is to put an apple on top of the house and shoot it with a gun.
In Dubona, Maria Todorovic, Mr. Todorovic’s sister, recognized the need for change. “Something has to be done about guns,” he said. “If not, where will it lead us?”
But he added that guns are so ingrained in his culture that he sometimes forgets how dangerous they can be.
Mrs. Todorovic said he was in the family’s front garden when the gunman started shooting a few yards away. He said he wasn’t worried at first. “When we heard the shots, we thought it was someone celebrating a birthday.”
Alisa Doramadzieva contribute reports.
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