In a stunning display of continental common sense that will surely baffle the British political class, a Serbian court has actually jailed the parents of a teenage school shooter. Yes, you read that right. Parents. Jailed. For their child’s actions. This is not a satirical fever dream but a real event in a country where the legal system has evidently not been neutered by human rights lawyers and a pathological fear of offending the electorate.
Let us rewind. In May 2023, a 13-year-old boy in Belgrade took his father’s guns, walked into his school, and killed nine children and a guard. The father now faces eight years for reckless storage and child neglect. The mother, a doctor, got three years for failing to report her husband’s obvious negligence. The boy, of course, is too young to prosecute. So the law did the next sensible thing: it went after the enablers.
Now, compare this to the United Kingdom, a country where gun laws are already among the strictest in the world, yet where the response to any tragedy is invariably a round of solemn head-shaking, a minutes’ silence, and a promise to ‘look into it’. The last major school shooting in the UK was Dunblane in 1996, which led to a ban on handguns. But the lesson here is not about gun control per se. It is about accountability. In Serbia, the parents are being held responsible for their son’s access to weapons. In the UK, we prefer to blame the guns, the video games, the mental health system, the weather, anything but the adults who failed to secure their firearms.
Of course, the British legal system is far too sophisticated for such crude notions of parental liability. Imagine a British court jailing a middle-class father from Surrey because his son took his licensed shotgun and murdered classmates. The tabloids would have a field day. The human rights lawyers would be queuing up to argue that the father’s right to a private life had been violated. And the government would set up a public inquiry that would cost millions and produce a report that would gather dust on a shelf while the next tragedy unfolds.
But let us not be too harsh on our political masters. They have a busy schedule of photo ops and ribbon-cutting. They cannot be expected to actually enforce laws that might inconvenience the chattering classes. Instead, they will continue to issue stern warnings about safe storage, while knowing full well that the only people who will be punished are those who already follow the rules. Meanwhile, the parents of Timothy Spall, a hypothetical school shooter from Tunbridge Wells, will be at home polishing their shotguns and muttering about ‘elf and safety’.
The Serbian case is a reminder that justice is not just about punishing the offender but about deterring those who enable the offence. By jailing the parents, the court has sent a clear message: if you own a gun, you are responsible for keeping it out of the hands of children. Full stop. No excuses. In the UK, we prefer a softer, more nuanced approach. We call it ‘learning lessons’. It involves a lot of talk, a lot of tears, and a complete absence of consequences.
So, as the parents of the Serbian shooter begin their sentences in a Belgrade prison, let us raise a glass of cheap gin to the British establishment. They have once again proven that they would rather debate the semantics of gun control than actually do something about it. And while they debate, somewhere in Britain, a child is probably already planning the next tragedy, confident in the knowledge that no one will be held accountable but themselves.
Biff Thistlethwaite, out.
