Children at a memorial for the first shooting. AP.
Serbia has had a 2nd mass shooting that ended with eight people dead and 13 wounded a day after a school shooting left eight children and a security guard dead. AP. The 1st attack involved a man committing a drive by shooting with an "automatic" weapon. The suspect is on the run and the incident is considered an act of terrorism by authorities. Yesterday a 13 year old boy stole his fathers guns and attacked a school in Belgrade. The attack was motivated by revenge and the attacker had made lists and sketched out plans for a month. The attacker will not be charged due to his age. Mass killings are rare in Serbia with the school shooting yesterday being the first in the country's history.
My Comment:
Fairly bizarre series of events in Serbia. The country goes from having no mass shootings in 10 years to having two in as many days. Serbia is not a country you think of when you think of mass shootings and they tend to be reasonably rare in Eastern Europe, excluding Russia.
There isn't much information about the 2nd attack. It does not seem like a typical mass shooting. Indeed, drive by shootings tend to be either terror attacks or gang warfare. With little information to go on it's hard to tell which it is. Serbia doesn't have too much of a history with Islamic insurgency or more conventional terrorists, despite obvious racial and ethnic tensions. It wouldn't surprise me if terrorism was the motive.
It's also very possible that the incident was just a criminal attack. That's usually what I think of when I hear a drive by shooting. That would also explain how they could have gotten ahold of a fully automatic weapon. I guess it is possible that there is some other motive, like this being a copycat attack after the school shooting, but it's not easy to tell with so little information. Indeed, it was pretty hard to find a source for this incident even though having two mass shootings in two days is kind of a big deal.
As for the school shooting, I do think that the Serbs have a point. Instead of blaming video games or TV shows they are blaming degenerate western values or the lack thereof. Indeed, mass shootings are becoming more common globally and I doubt it's because of access to firearms. But the same problems that drive American mass shootings are now effecting other countries, including Serbia.
The school shooting appears to have been a pretty terrible one. It's not every day you see a 13 year old shooter and it seems as though the child had some experience with guns. His father really screwed up by somehow letting his son have access to his gun safe. From what I understand the child was able to figure out the code for the safe and that's how he was able to retrieve the firearms.
It's insane to me that not only a 13 year old shot up a school but the fact that he won't be punished for it. Under Serbian law he cannot be charged even though he killed nine people. That's insane to me even if he is a child. Nine people are dead and the only punishment he's getting is being sent to an insane asylum.
Serbia is of course tightening up gun control laws again because of this shooting. From what I understand they did that before the shooting as well and they hadn't had a mass shooting in years. Some people are saying this was a false flag to further erode gun rights in Serbia but I don't buy it. But I do think that the Serbian government is using this as an excuse to further crack down on the right to bear arms. And it's fairly useless because the country has large stockpiles of weapons left over from the wars in the 1990's.
I also think that it does show that America isn't the only country that has this problem. Serbia didn't have one until very recently, but I always like to point out that it's insane to argue that mass shootings are an American problem only. I do think that it's due in part to our culture, and we have spread that culture globally, but it's not like we are the only ones that have these kinds of attacks.
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