PODGORICA – A top-level meeting in Montenegro on Friday promised tough measures to curb illegal weapons after a gunman fatally shot 12 people in a second such tragedy in less than three years in the small Balkan country.
An emergency session of Montenegro's National Security Council announced a new, strict gun law and urgent actions to confiscate what are believed to be abundant illegal weapons in possession of Montenegro's 620,000 citizens.
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Prime Minister Milojko Spajić said that holders of registered guns will undergo new security and psychological checks while “draconian” punishment is planned for those who hold weapons illegally.
“There will be no mercy for these people,” Spajić said at a news conference after the council session. “They will end up in prison.”
Spajić specified that authorities would give people a period of two months to surrender illegal weapons without facing any consequences. After that, he said, “the law will be explicit and even minimal sentences handed by judges will be drastic.”
The Adriatic Sea nation has a deeply-rooted gun culture. State television broadcaster RTCG reported that Montenegro is sixth in the world when it comes to the number of illegal weapons per capita.
The gunman who killed a dozen people in a shooting rampage in the western town of Cetinje on Wednesday did so with an illegal 9 mm gun. Police have said they found 37 casings at the shooting locations, and more than 80 additional pieces of ammunition in the gunman's possession.
The 45-year-old man, identified as Aco Martinović, eventually shot himself in the head and died shortly after. He is believed to have snapped after a bar brawl, and went home to get his weapon before launching a bloody rampage at several locations late Wednesday afternoon.
Martinović's victims included seven men, three women — among them his sister — and two children, born in 2011 and 2016. Four more people were seriously wounded and remain hospitalized.
Police Commissioner Lazar Šćepanović has described Wednesday’s shooting as “one of the biggest tragedies in the history of Montenegro.”
The shooting has fueled concerns about the level of violence in Montenegrin society, which is politically divided. It also raised questions about the readiness of state institutions to tackle the problems, including gun ownership.
Hundreds of people throughout Montenegro lit candles in silence on Thursday evening in memory of the victims, while also calling for answers as to why the shooting happened. Many were angry at the authorities for not doing more to prevent such tragedies.
About 200 people protested outside government headquarters in Podgorica on Friday, demanding the resignations of top security officials over the tragedy and chanting “murderers.”
Mira Škorić, a retiree from Podgorica, said that “I can’t believe that we failed so much as a society. We failed as people too.”
In a separate massacre in August 2022, an attacker killed 10 people, including two children, before he was shot and killed by a passerby in Cetinje, which is Montenegro’s historic capital located about 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of the capital, Podgorica.
The shootings “require a serious examination of the responsibility and preparedness of the security system," the Human Rights Action and Women’s Rights Center groups said in a statement. “What has changed in the security system in Cetinje since 2022?"
Police have said that Martinović’s actions weren't planned and were impossible to predict and prevent, though he had been convicted in the past for violent behavior and illegal weapons possession, and had received psychiatric treatment.
Vesna Pejović, a Cetinje resident who lost her daughter and two grandchildren in the shooting back in 2022, said police had to do more to protect the citizens after the first killing.
“What kind of state and system is this where children are getting killed? Are we at war?” she asked. "Where were the police?”
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Jovana Gec and Dušan Stojanović contributed to this report from Belgrade, Serbia.