In a move that has sent a shiver of righteous glee down the spines of every anti-gun campaigner from Islington to Brighton, Serbia has thrown the parents of a teenage school shooter behind bars. Yes, you read that correctly. In a world where parents are usually only guilty of letting their offspring play Fortnite past midnight, Belgrade has decided that Mummy and Daddy are criminally responsible for the fact that their 13-year-old offspring turned a school into a shooting gallery. Seven dead, including a security guard, and now the parents are facing the music. Or rather, the clang of a cell door.
Now, naturally, the British establishment – that collection of chinless wonders and public school oiks who wouldn't know a real gun if it bit them on the bottom – have seen this as a golden opportunity to demand that their own wet dream of gun control be exported to the furthest corners of the globe. 'If Serbia can do it, so can we,' they cry, conveniently ignoring that Serbia has a gun culture older than the Ottoman Empire, while the UK has a gun culture that consists largely of antique duelling pistols and the occasional farmer's shotgun.
The logic, such as it is, goes like this: if parents are held legally accountable for their children's access to firearms, then gun ownership will plummet, and the streets will be safe for polite society to stroll about without fear of being perforated. The fact that this is a deeply illiberal, punitive measure that punishes the innocent for the sins of the guilty is, of course, brushed aside in the rush to pat oneself on the back for being so terribly progressive.
But let us examine the facts. The weapon in question? A Glock pistol, legally owned by the father, which the boy apparently accessed without permission. In Serbia, this is a crime. In the UK, it would be a scandal. But the idea that this is a solution to the epidemic of gun violence is like suggesting that banning alcohol would solve the problem of drunken brawls. It is a simplistic, knee-jerk reaction that does nothing to address the real issues: mental health, social alienation, and the sheer bloody availability of weapons in certain parts of the world.
Serbia, a nation with a history that includes the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Balkan Wars, and a love of autonomy that borders on the pathological, has decided that the answer is to chain parents to the wreckage of their children's actions. And Britain, ever the moral policeman of the world, is nodding sagely and demanding that this model be applied globally. Never mind that our own gun laws are already so draconian that you need a permission slip from the Queen to own a water pistol. The point is to make a Point, to stand on the moral high ground and bellow about how we would never let such a thing happen here.
The tragedy, of course, is that this does nothing to prevent the next shooting. It merely provides a satisfying scapegoat. The parents, already devastated by their child's incomprehensible act, are now made to suffer further. It is a cheap and easy way for the state to show that it is Doing Something, while the real causes fester unattended.
So raise a glass of airport gin to the Serbian legal system, which has found a new way to punish the innocent. And to the British pundits who would have us follow suit, I say: leave the gun control to the experts, and stick to what you do best – lecturing the world on how to behave while your own house crumbles around you. This has been Barnaby 'Biff' Thistlethwaite, reporting from the edge of sanity.
