The Autonomous Women's Center submitted its comments and proposals on the Draft Program for the Control of Small and Light Weapons, Ammunition and Explosive Substances in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2025-2030 with the accompanying Action Plan.

It was pointed out that the proposed Program and accompanying Action Plan omitted to cover the following areas:

- stricter conditions for the acquisition and possession of category B weapons when it comes to natural persons

- notifying the household members with whom the person lives about submitting a request to possess weapons and obtaining their opinion

- the introduction of more frequent periodic checks of the physical person's health capacity to hold and use weapons, as well as the introduction of the possibility for the competent authority in certain cases to require an extraordinary check of health capacity

- regulation of training, possession and use of replica weapons, primarily replicas used for AirSoft

- regulation of organizing military-tactical training using firearms or firearm replicas

- prohibition of training of minors not only for the use of firearms but also for other military-tactical training with replicas of weapons that in their appearance, size and weight are the same as real weapons, such as Airsoft

- ban on shooting ranges, hunting clubs, hunting grounds, and other institutions, organizations and societies from allowing minors access to firearms or replicas of firearms,

- ban on hunting societies, hunting grounds, and other institutions, organizations and societies that minors go hunting

and that, in order to regulate these areas, proposals for amendments to the Law were submitted by the AWC to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in December 2022 during the public hearing on the draft Law on Amendments to the Law on Weapons and Ammunition, and to the Ministry of Justice in November 2024 and October 2025 to the Ministry of Justice during the public hearing on the draft Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code.

It was especially noted that although the previous National Strategy also provided for the improvement of the method of storing returned illegal weapons, it is disappointing that the same improvement did not occur, but that after the last call for the surrender of weapons in 2023, almost 800 pieces of surrendered weapons disappeared from the warehouses of the Police department Niš – Police stations Pantelejmon and Doljevac, and that the issue of storing weapons in the premises of police stations and police outposts must be a priority over the priorities of the MoI and without the adoption and adoption of this Program.

You can read the comments and proposals of the AWC regarding the drafting of the Program for the control of small and light weapons, ammunition and explosive substances in the Republic of

Serbia for the period 2025-2030 with the accompanying Action Plan HERE.