Analysis-After two mass shootings, can Serbia rid itself of guns?

A police officer stands guard in front of the weapons handed over to police in the first ten days of gun amnesty in police storage following mass shootings in the country, near Smederevo, Serbia, May 14, 2023. REUTERS/Marko Djurica

BELGRADE (Reuters) - After Serbia was rocked by two mass shootings in two days earlier in May, Branko, 54, surrendered his unlicensed arms under a government amnesty: four assault rifles, nine handguns, eight grenades and many boxes of ammunition.

The huge cache of weapons handed over by just one veteran of the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s highlights the scale of the task facing the nation, where arms from a 19th century uprising against Ottoman rule and old British Bren machine guns parachuted to partisans in World War Two are also still hoarded.