The Interior Ministry received cabinet approval on August 20 for another amnesty on unregistered weapons that should come into effect from December 2014.
“Even if a single weapon is surrendered, this legislative plan will make sense," said Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák, as quoted by the SITA newswire, when the draft bill was submitted for interdepartmental review some time ago.
This would be the third gun amnesty and it should last for six months. During the first two weapon amnesties, people in Slovakia surrender almost 8,000 unregistered weapons. “We feel that we could round up that number to 10,000 and withdraw several hundred weapons from the illegal market,” said Kaliňák, adding that since the first weapon amnesty, the number of crimes with guns has decreased by 50 percent.
In 2004, there were 440 crimes with a gun; while in 2013 police registered 214 such crimes. During the first weapons amnesty which was announced in
2005, people handed over 3,463 weapons. In the second weapons amnesty from November 2009 to May 2010, people handed over 4,367 weapons. In the third round of the amnesty, the ministry will be faster with assessing the surrendered
weapons, as experts are now using a new ballistics system, according to Kaliňák.
(Source: SITA)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
