ALEX BRUMMER: Bank calls in big gun Ben Bernanke

By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail

Updated: 16:50 EDT, 28 July 2023

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BOOK OF THE WEEK

Winkle: The Extraordinary Life Of Britain’s Greatest Pilot  

by Paul Beaver (Michael Joseph £25, 544 pp)

Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown may not be a household name, but he certainly should be, and this thumping great biography by Britain’s leading aviation historian deserves to put that right.

In an enthralling career, Brown, a naval test pilot of exceptional skill and dedication, flew more hours (well over 6,000) than anyone else in 487 different planes and helicopters, numbers which will never be beaten.

His nerves of steel and limitless bravery in World War II, and later as a senior test pilot, will never be forgotten. 

It was an amazingly varied and busy life. He had a seemingly insatiable appetite for risk and, as an indefatigable senior aviator with the Fleet Air Arm, he helped to develop planes and aircraft carriers that proved crucial to winning the war.

A superb pilot and a pioneer of highly hazardous landings on the narrow deck of aircraft carriers (he still holds the world record for the most landings), he was, if you like, Britain’s very own Top Gun. 

He was showered with awards and accolades — the King, George VI, groaned: ‘What, you again?’ as he handed him yet another gong.

A fluent German speaker as well as a huge admirer of the German people, Brown — the ‘Winkle’ was an affectionate nickname for anyone in the Royal Navy on the shortish side; Brown was 5ft 7in — played a significant role in the final moments of the war.

Brown was able to identify a disguised Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler’s SS, when he was taken prisoner in 1945. 

He was also called in to talk to Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, who told him he thought the Battle of Britain was ‘a draw’. Goering trusted and liked ‘Winkle’ as a fellow fighter pilot.

And he was needed when Belsen was liberated, to interrogate the commandants of the Nazi death camp. He later said Irma Grese, brutal head of the women’s camp, was ‘the worst human being I have ever met’.

He was a vital part of Churchill’s plan to test all the German experimental jets captured at the end of the war.

Later, he also found time to chew the fat with Yuri Gagarin, the pioneering Soviet cosmonaut and one of the early heroes of space exploration, and became a close friend of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. 

Gagarin told him that he considered himself to be a test pilot rather than a space pilot because ‘I feel I have greater control over my fate’.

The story was similar with Armstrong, and the two men were close for nearly five decades. 

When asked if he envied the U.S. astronaut going to the moon, Brown would reply: ‘Why would I want to fly in a machine controlled by a computer? That’s not a pilot’s job. Neil achieved far greater success closer to Earth.’

True enough: among his many exploits, in 1962, Armstrong test flew the X-15 rocket plane, the fastest machine on Earth, to a world record 207,000ft above sea level, a feat Brown would have loved to emulate. 

‘We were both naval aviators, rocket ship pilots, test pilots . . .’ said Armstrong. 

He was friends with industrialists, statesmen and politicians. He even challenged Denis Healey, Britain’s new secretary of defence, in 1964.

The Labour grandee was opposed to aircraft carriers, which is where Brown had spent most of his working life, and didn’t want to start building new aircraft and ships which would have enabled the Royal Navy to challenge the growing Soviet submarine threat.

At a fractious meeting on the future of carriers, Brown could hold his tongue no longer: ‘Are you still a Communist?’ he shouted at an astonished Healey.

Such was his standing that he even made it on to the 3,000th edition of BBC Radio’s prestigious Desert Island Discs in 2014. He was 95 and revealed that he had just bought himself a new sports car. 

The presenter, Kirsty Young, said Brown was a ‘real-life daredevil’ who ‘makes James Bond look like a bit of a slacker’. Which was putting it mildly.

Brown was adopted, a fact he kept secret from more or less everyone he knew, including his wife, childhood sweetheart Lynn. 

His parents, from Edinburgh, were devout Presbyterians, and his father Robert was briefly in the Royal Air Force in 1918.

It is this that maybe led to one of the most important moments in young Eric’s life: an invitation to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and to a series of aviation events. He was already an excellent linguist and had shown a keen interest in flying. 

Somehow, Eric and his father were invited into the inner circle of the legendary Ernst Udet, the highest-scoring surviving German fighter ace of World War I, and renowned for his aerobatics around the world.

Clearly the celebrated aviator had taken a bit of a shine to the plane-crazy young Scot and offered to take him for a flight in his two-seat training biplane. 

For the next 30 minutes the crowd below was thrilled — and Brown’s stomach severely tested — as Udet showed off with a series of aerobatic feats.

As the plane was coming into land, Udet still had one trick left to play: at 100ft he turned the plane upside down and continued until the top wings were just 50ft above the ground. 

Then, he again flipped the biplane and slid on to the runway. Eric emerged grinning from the cockpit: it had been the flight of a lifetime. A love affair was born.

Udet was delighted: he slapped Eric heartily on the back and exclaimed ‘Hals-und Beinbruch’, the traditional German fighter pilot greeting to celebrate some great achievement in the air. It means, ominously, ‘break a neck and a leg’. 

To the end of his life, Eric always said that Udet was the finest aerobatic flyer the world had ever seen.

The Battle of the Atlantic, where air and sea forces protected the convoys bringing supplies to Britain, was for Churchill the most important engagement of World War II. Otherwise, the country could not continue fighting. 

It also marked a momentous period for Brown. After innumerable brushes with death and disaster — including being trapped, underwater and upside down, in the cockpit after a training accident (his diminutive stature helped him break free in the confined space) — the bulk of Brown’s active war service came flying Martlet fighters from the aircraft carrier HMS Audacity, a converted merchant ship.

Brown was on board in December 1941 when Audacity was spotted by a German U-Boat and hit by a torpedo. 

The ship was cut in half and, as it sank, Eric managed to scramble into his life jacket before jumping into the freezing ocean. He survived overnight, one of only two who managed to withstand hypothermia.

The Battle of the Atlantic was as significant for Brown’s career as it was for the Allied cause.

He had gained a high reputation for his exceptional skills: now he was to turn to something even more hazardous than combat. 

He was to be the country’s most senior test pilot, mastering difficult machines with great skill and judgment, helping the Americans, and working as a naval attache in Germany at the height of the Cold War.

Honoured and feted in his lifetime, despite a somewhat prickly nature — even he admitted he was not necessarily a ‘people person’ — Brown was a national treasure with a unique and unrepeatable story.

But he has now been given due recognition by Paul Beaver. As he says, there will never be another like ‘Winkle’.

Kai Kloepfer was in high school student in 2012 when 24-year-old James Holmes walked into an Aurora movie theater in, a half-hour drive from where Kloepfer lived.

Holmes shot and killed 12 and injured 70 more. The incident caused Kloepfer to want to stop accidental shootings and suicides. Now 26, he is about to ship the world’s first smart gun.

PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel’s fellowship program awarded Kloepfer $100,000 for dropping out of school to start his company. 

To date, Biofire raised $30 million and has about 40 employees.

Here’s how it works 

The smart gun’s barrel is twice the size of a regular handgun.  

The $1,499 pistol is 9mm, striker-fired and feeds from 10- or 15-round magazines. 

It packs infrared biometric sensors, laser sights and an electronic interface. 

The goal, Kloepfer said, was to create a high-tech gun that still felt familiar to experienced and novice shooters.

Biofire’s smart gun comes with a dock equipped with a touchscreen that pairs your face and fingerprint to the gun. 

Once the system detects an approved user’s fingerprint or face (whichever comes first), it quickly unlocks and can be fired like a regular handgun. 

Up to five people can be registered per gun.

‘If you’re the owner or someone that the owner has chosen to enroll in the firearm, then it unlocks and functions just like any other gun,’ Kloepfer said. 

‘But at the same time, it locks within a fraction of a second as soon as it leaves your control.’

He said that fingerprint and facial recognition technologies are well-understood and have their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Combining the two makes for a much more reliable system than just one method.

‘It has to be unlocked any time that you pick it up, and it needs to always be locked when it leaves your control,’ he said. ‘That reliability piece… is the key part of building a viable smart gun.’

But think about when your iPhone’s facial ID fails, and you have to enter your PIN. Authentication technology is far from perfect. 

Lawfully armed citizens protecting themselves and their families could be killed if their weapons failed to identify them and malfunction.

Smart gun proponents believe that police should carry these types of firearms too.

But imagine a police officer in a life-and-death situation, trying to reboot their gun.

And yes, semi-automatic pistols can jam. Trained firearm owners, especially law enforcement officers, can clear a jam in two to three seconds.

A gun that you have to charge

A lithium-ion battery powers the smart gun for months on a single charge. 

‘We’ve done a lot of work to ensure that that is not going to be something that you’d ever really have to think about,’ Kloepfer said.

He said that if the battery is low, there are many warnings and indications to alert you to charge it. That takes about 30 minutes to an hour on the included dock. 

Here’s a problem: If the battery dies, the gun won’t work.

Warning users of a low battery is insufficient. Many, perhaps most, gun owners who do not carry their weapons with them keep their guns locked up. They don’t check the batteries regularly and probably would not know until it is too late.

Anyone forced to use a firearm, in their home, in a clear case of self-defense, could find themselves in extreme danger if they draw the weapon on an armed intruder, only to find that its batteries are drained.

What about security?

Hackers find ways to break into just about everything in a world where everything is connected. That’s why the smart gun has no wireless communication, Kloepfer said. There’s no Wi-Fi, GPS or Bluetooth for security and privacy reasons.

The biometric data captured is stored only on the gun and is hashed. The information side of the gun is encrypted using credentials Kloepfer said not even he has access to.

‘That all sits in the hands of the owner, and only their biometrics can really access any of that data or cause any changes to the system. So it’s a very, very locked-down architecture,’ he said.

Undoubtedly, supporters of smart gun technology desperately want to reduce gun accidents and violence. No matter your Second Amendment position, we agree on that. Smart guns are a great idea, in theory.

But there is still much work that must be done to satisfy most gun owners and law enforcement agencies.

Biofire’s marketing statements estimate that its smart gun could avert the roughly two thirds of gun deaths attributed to suicide in the US each year, an estimate that would have amounted to 22,000 lives saved in 2018.

But Biofire’s estimate has been accused of being inflated.

An analysis by Engineering & Technology (E&T), the in-house publication for the not-for-profit Institution of Engineering and Technology in the UK, estimated that only about 6,109 annual gun deaths would likely be prevented. 

E&T based its findings on US Center for Disease Control data and other research reports.

In either case, of course, that’s only if the high-tech firearm makes it to market, on time, as planned.

‘Our goal is not just to start collecting orders, but to get this into full production and produce as many of these as people want to buy,’ Biofire’s 26-year-old founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer told the Denver Business Journal, ‘because it’s a great concept and one that I think is going to be a good thing for the world.’

‘It has the ability to have an incremental, immediate impact that sidesteps a lot of the gridlock politically,’ Kloepfer believes.

As a high schooler in 2012, Kloepfer lived about a half-hour drive from the Denver-suburb of Aurora, where a gunman killed 12 people and wounded many more at a midnight screening of Batman sequel The Dark Knight Rises.

The Gen Z entrepreneur immediately began toying with the idea of a biometric lock system that could make firearms safer from abuse, accidents and theft.

Soon, his concept for a fingerprint-scanning handgun went from science fair project to landing him a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

He then caught the attention of libertarian VC Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, which helped him raise more than $30 million for the start-up.

Biofire, alongside its competitors in the ‘smart gun’ space, such as LodeStar Works and SmartGunz, have boasted  for years that their products are nearly ready for market with launch dates still shimmering on the horizon. 

Last year, the senior vice president of firearms industry trade association the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), Lawrence Keane, expressed skepticism last year over these firms’ repeated promises.

‘If I had a nickel for every time in my career I heard somebody say they’re about to bring us a so-called smart gun on the market,’ Keane said, ‘I’d probably be retired now.’

Nevertheless, US customers ready for their pre-order can pay a $149 deposit, about one-tenth of the smart gun’s $1,499 price tag, to reserve their weapon via Biofire’s website. 

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said Sunday that attempts by the Supreme Court to block gun control could trigger a ‘popular revolt.’

He made his comments as President Joe Biden accused Republicans of caring more about gunmakers than their constituents as he again called on Congress to pass gun control legislation.

Democrats stepped up their arguments that a majority of Americans back tougher firearm regulation on the day that Buffalo, New York, was marking the anniversary of a racist gun attack that killed 10 people.

‘If the Supreme Court eventually says that states or the Congress can’t pass universal background checks or can’t take these assault weapons off the streets, I think there’s going to be a popular revolt over that policy,’ said Murphy, of Connecticut.

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that a federal law preventing the sale of guns to 18- to 20-year-olds was unconstitutional. 

Any further action could make it all the way to the Supreme Court, which has lost the confidence of a swath of Americans and faces fresh ethics allegations against justices.

‘A court that’s already pretty illegitimate, is going to be in full crisis mode,’ Murphy added on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’

He is an outspoken advocate of gun control and his words may be seen as a threat. 

Meanwhile, Biden marked the anniversary of the Buffalo mass shooting with an impassioned call to ban assault weapons and require gun owners to securely their firearms.

‘The majority of Americans – even the majority of gun owners – want Congress to take some commonsense action to reduce gun violence,’ he wrote in an op-ed published by USA Today.

‘But too many congressional Republicans are doing the bidding of gun manufacturers instead of their constituents.’

The city of Buffalo is marking the attack with a moment of silence to remember the 10 people killed when a gunman targeted black people at a supermarket.

It will be followed by bells tolling. 

‘The racially motivated mass shooting shook our community to its core. It was the day the unthinkable happened,’ Mayor Byron Brown said in announcing plans for the commemoration.

Biden pointed out the murders were followed 10 days later by an attack on a school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were shot dead.

‘Jill and I visited both communities, spending hours with hundreds of family members who lost pieces of their soul and whose lives will never be the same,’ he wrote. 

‘They had one message for all of us: Do something. For God’s sake, do something.’

In their aftermath, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It strengthens firearms background checks for young people and expands the use of red flag laws.

But more is needed, wrote Biden, pointing out that the toll since Buffalo last year included 650 mass shootings and more than 40,000 deaths due to gun violence.

‘Congress must act, including by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring gun owners to securely store their firearms, requiring background checks for all gun sales, and repealing gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability,’ he wrote. 

‘We also need more governors and state legislators to take these steps.’

The White House sent out a fact sheet describing actions taken by the Biden administration.

They include enhanced background checks, particularly for people under the age of 21; adding dating relationship status in domestic abuse cases to prevent guns falling into the hands of people with a history of abuse; and increased prosecutions over firearms trafficking and purchases of weapons for people banned from buying a gun.

Serbian police today arrested a suspect gunman who killed eight people and injured 14 others near the capital Belgrade last night – a day after a 13-year-old boy went on a killing spree at his school.

The 21-year-old suspect, identified only by his initials U.B., opened fire from a moving car on Thursday night, shooting his victims at random one by one as he drove through three villages, local media report.

An off-duty policeman and his sister were among those killed in the mass shooting near the town of Mladenovac, 26 miles south of Belgrade, reports state broadcaster RTS.

The gunman was arrested near the central town of Kragujevac, 60 miles south of Belgrade, after more than 600 officers launched a huge night-long manhunt.

The mass shooting comes on the heels of the worst school shooting in Serbia’s recent history, after Kosta Kecmanovic, 13, shot dead nine people, including eight fellow students, and injured seven at a school in Belgrade before turning himself in on Wednesday.

In the latest shooting, the suspect was involved in an altercation in a school yard on Thursday and left but then returned with an assault rifle and a handgun, local media report. 

The suspect opened fire and continued to shoot his victims at random one by one through three villages near the town of Mladenovac, 30 miles south of Belgrade, late on Thursday. 

One man in the village of Dubona said he heard gunshots late last night and came out of his home.

‘I could smell gunpowder. I heard noise from the direction of school. We saw people lying on the ground,’ said the man, who refused to give his name because he feared for his safety.

‘I heard some tak-tak-tak sounds,’ recalled Milan Prokic, a resident of Dubona, a village near the town of Mladenovac. Prokic said he first thought villagers were shooting to celebrate a childbirth, as is tradition in Serbia and the Balkans. 

‘But it wasn’t that. Shame, great shame,’ Prokic added. 

‘This is terrible for our state, this is a huge defeat. In two days so many … killed,’ said Ivan, a Dubona resident.

Worried relatives gathered outside the emergency medical centre in Belgrade, where at least eight injured people were hospitalised, N1 television reported. 

Around 600 Serbian police, including elite Special Antiterrorist Unit (SAJ) and Gendarmerie launched a manhunt following the shooting, setting up roadblocks around the villages.

Following the all-night manhunt, officers arrested the suspect in the town of Kragujevac.

Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic called the shooting a ‘terrorist act’, RTS reported.

The Balkan nation begins three days of official mourning on Friday following its first mass school shooting on Wednesday.

Kosta Kecmanovic, 13, confessed to opening fire on his screaming classmates inside their classroom in the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School, killing seven girls and a boy – all below the age of 14.

A security guard, identified as Dragon Vlahovic, in his early 50s, was also killed in the mass shooting, while a further six pupils and a history teacher were critically wounded in the attack on Wednesday morning.

The baby-faced teenager, who cannot be prosecuted because he is under the age of 14, was arrested by Serbian police in the school’s playground on Wednesday and led away with his face covered after he called police confessing to the murders.

Kecmanovic, described as a ‘star pupil’ who won prizes in maths, was armed with two guns and two petrol bombs and had drawn up plans for the massacre a month beforehand.

The plan included a list of children he wanted to kill and their classes and a map of the school layout, police said.

‘The sketch looks like something from a video game or a horror movie, which indicates that he planned in detail, by classes, who to liquidate,’ Belgrade’s police chief, Veselin Milic, said.

‘After the crime, he called the police. He worked out a plan for entering the school and leaving the school. He determined the priority targets,’ he added.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić said on Wednesday night that both the boy’s parents – both doctors – have been arrested, and that he is to be taken to a psychiatric institution. 

Terrified students hid under their desks amid ‘non-stop shooting’ at around 8.40am on Wednesday morning.

At least eight children and a security guard were killed in the gun rampage and there are fears that the death toll could rise even further, with some sustaining life-threatening injuries.

The shooter first killed a guard at the school in central Belgrade and then three students in a hallway, police said. 

He then entered a classroom – reportedly choosing it simply because it was close to the entrance – and opened fire again.

Kecmanovic then called police himself and as officers put handcuffs on him, he reportedly told local media he had shot his classmates ‘because I am a psychopath’.

Anxious parents rushed to the school after being told of the shooting, waiting for news of their children.

As mothers and fathers were told their children were among those killed, they staggered backwards in utter disbelief that their child who had left their home that morning was not coming back.

Their screams and wails tore through the silence, as many collapsed in grief at hearing the horrific fate of their children.

Two of the six children who were wounded in the attack are now fighting to stay alive after being shot in the neck and head. The injured teacher, Tatjana Stevanović, in her early 50s, was also ‘in danger’ after being shot in the stomach and hands.

Mass school shootings are extremely rare in Serbia and President Aleksandar Vucic called Wednesday’s tragedy ‘one of the most difficult days’ in recent history.

Serbia has an entrenched gun culture, especially in rural areas, but also strict gun control laws. Automatic weapons are illegal and over the years authorities have offered several amnesties to those who surrender them. 

After the school shooting in Belgrade, the Serbian government introduced a two-year ban on the issuing of new gun permits, a revision of existing permits and checks on how gun owners store their arms.

Still, the country, and the rest of Western Balkans, are awash with military-grade weapons and ordnance that remained in private hands after the wars of the 1990s. 

Americans can now pre-order a ‘Smart Gun’ that requires facial recognition and fingerprint technology to fire.

Start-up firearms manufacturer Biofire is selling the futuristic-looking 9mm handgun for $1,500 with orders due to ship in 2024. 

The smart gun scans two forms of biometric ID, an optical fingerprint sensor and 3D infrared facial recognition, to ensure that only the gun’s true owner can activate the firearm – cutting down on accidents and misused stolen weapons.

The Broomfield, Colorado-based company hopes its pistol will put a dent in America’s cycle of gun violence.

More than 13,900 people have already been killed by guns in the U.S. in the first four months of 2023 alone, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

Biofire’s marketing statements estimate that its smart smart gun could avert the roughly two thirds of gun deaths attributed to suicide in the US each year, an estimate that would have amounted to 22,000 lives saved in 2018.

But Biofire’s estimate has been accused of being inflated.

An analysis by Engineering & Technology (E&T), the in-house publication for the not-for-profit Institution of Engineering and Technology in the UK, estimated that only about 6,109 annual gun deaths would likely be prevented. 

E&T based its findings on US Center for Disease Control data and other research reports.

In either case, of course, that’s only if the high-tech firearm makes it to market, on time, as planned.

‘Our goal is not just to start collecting orders, but to get this into full production and produce as many of these as people want to buy,’ Biofire’s 26-year-old founder and CEO Kai Kloepfer told the Denver Business Journal, ‘because it’s a great concept and one that I think is going to be a good thing for the world.’

‘It has the ability to have an incremental, immediate impact that sidesteps a lot of the gridlock politically,’ Kloepfer believes.

As a high schooler in 2012, Kloepfer lived about a half-hour drive from the Denver-suburb of Aurora, where a gunman killed 12 people and wounded many more at a midnight screening of Batman sequel The Dark Knight Rises.

The Gen Z entrepreneur immediately began toying with the idea of a biometric lock system that could make firearms safer from abuse, accidents and theft.

Soon, his concept for a fingerprint-scanning handgun went from science fair project to landing him a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

He then caught the attention of libertarian VC Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, which helped him raise more than $30 million for the start-up.

Biofire, alongside its competitors in the ‘smart gun’ space, such as LodeStar Works and SmartGunz, have boasted  for years that their products are nearly ready for market with launch dates still shimmering on the horizon. 

Last year, the senior vice president of firearms industry trade association the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), Lawrence Keane, expressed skepticism last year over these firms repeated promises.

‘If I had a nickel for every time in my career I heard somebody say they’re about to bring us a so-called smart gun on the market,’ Keane said, ‘I’d probably be retired now.’

Nevertheless, U.S. customers ready for their pre-order can pay a $149 deposit, about one-tenth of the smart gun’s $1,499 price tag, to reserve their weapon via Biofire’s website. 

The 13-year-old ‘star pupil’ who confessed to shooting dead eight of his classmates at a school in Serbia was allegedly bullied and made a gun pose with his fingers in his last Instagram post before carrying out the massacre.

Kosta Kecmanovic, 13, allegedly opened fire on his screaming classmates inside their classroom in the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School, killing seven girls and a boy – all below the age of 14.

A security guard, identified as Dragon Vlahovic, in his early 50s, was also killed in the mass shooting, while a further six pupils and a history teacher were critically wounded in the attack on Wednesday morning.

The baby-faced teenager, who may not be legally responsible for his actions due to being under the age of 14, was arrested by Serbian police in the school’s playground and led away with his face covered after he called police confessing to the murders.

Hours before carrying out the attack, Kecmanovic posted a sinister photograph of himself smiling and making a gun pose with his fingers on Instagram.

Kecmanovic, described as a ‘star pupil’ who won prizes in maths, was armed with two guns and two petrol bombs had drawn up plans for the massacre a month beforehand. The plan included a list of children he wanted to kill and their classes and a map of the school layout, police said. 

‘The sketch looks like something from a video game or a horror movie, which indicates that he planned in detail, by classes, who to liquidate,’ Belgrade’s police chief, Veselin Milic, said.

‘After the crime, he called the police. He worked out a plan for entering the school and leaving the school. He determined the priority targets,’ he added.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić said on Wednesday night that both the boy’s parents – both doctors – have been arrested, and that he is to be taken to a psychiatric institution. 

Terrified students hid under their desks amid ‘non-stop shooting’ at around 8.40am on Wednesday morning.

At least eight children and a security guard were killed in the gun rampage and there are fears that the death toll could rise even further, with some sustaining life-threatening injuries.

The shooter first killed a guard at the school in central Belgrade and then three students in a hallway, police said. 

He then entered a classroom – reportedly choosing it simply because it was close to the entrance – and opened fire again.

Kecmanovic then called police himself and as officers put handcuffs on him, he reportedly told local media he had shot his classmates ‘because I am a psychopath’.

Anxious parents rushed to the school after being told of the shooting, waiting for news of their children.

As mothers and fathers were told their children were among those killed, they staggered backwards in utter disbelief that their child who had left their home that morning was not coming back.

Their screams and wails tore through the silence, as many collapsed in grief at hearing the horrific fate of their children.

Two of the six children who were wounded in the attack are now fighting to stay alive after being shot in the neck and head. The injured teacher, Tatjana Stevanović, in her early 50s, was also ‘in danger’ after being shot in the stomach and hands.

Kecmanovic stole his father’s two guns and assembled two petrol bombs in preparation of the attack. His father, a famous radiologist at a Belgrade private school, was arrested on suspicion of aggravated endangering of the public safety.

Police have not stated a motivation for the attack, but parents of children at the school have said he was bullied while Kecmanovic’s father, who has not been named, said the boy often told him he did not fit into society.

According to Serbian legal provisions, the 13-year-old boy ‘is deemed criminally irresponsible, because he has not reached the age of 14’, local media has reported. 

Gun ownership is widespread in Serbia, which has witnessed several mass shootings over the past decade, and President Aleksandar Vucic said checks would be stepped up.

As Serbia prepares for three days of national mourning, Vucic announced a moratorium on new gun licenses other than for hunting, revision of existing permits and surveillance of shooting ranges and how civilians store their weapons. School shootings are rare.

The shooter, who gave himself up to police and at 13 is below Serbia’s age of criminal responsibility, will be placed in a psychiatric institution, Vucic told reporters, adding that both his father and mother had been arrested.

‘He was waiting for this day. He was at the shooting range with his father three times,’ Vucic said. The boy had asked for a transfer to another class where he had three friends, he said.

A drawing by the alleged shooter, which was shown to reporters, looked like ‘something from a video game or a horror movie,’ Milic said, ‘which indicates that he planned in detail, by classes, whom to liquidate.’

Most students were able to flee through a back door, according to a local official. 

Milan Milosevic, a father of one of the pupils, said his daughter was in the history class where the shooter opened fire ‘randomly’ at other children as they cowered under their desks.

‘She managed to escape,’ the father told Serbian TV station N1.

‘He [the shooter] fired first at the teacher and then the children who ducked under the desks,’ Milosevic quoted his daughter as saying. 

‘They say he [the shooter] was quiet and a good pupil. He recently joined their class.’ 

Mr Milosevic said that he rushed out to the school when he heard what had happened.

‘I asked where is my child but no one could tell me anything at first,’ he said. ‘Then she called and we found out she was out.’

‘I saw the security guard lying under the table. I saw two girls with blood on their shirts,’ Mr Milosevic added.

Evgenija, 14, said she knew the suspected gunman and described him as ‘somehow silent… [he] appeared nice and had good grades’. 

‘[I] did not know much about him, he was not that open to everyone. I would never expect that this could happen,’ she told reporters.

‘I heard noises and I thought some boys, some kids were throwing firecrackers… But then I saw the security guard falling to the ground,’ she said, adding that she then ran away.

Serbia’s Interior Ministry said in an updated statement that eight children and a security guard were killed in the shooting, while six children and one school teacher were wounded. 

‘All police forces are still on the ground and are intensively working to shed light on all the facts and circumstances that led to this tragedy.’ 

A student who was in a sports class downstairs when the gunfire erupted said: ‘I was able to hear the shooting. It was non-stop.’

‘I didn’t know what was happening. We were receiving some messages on the phone.’ 

The student, who heard the violence unfold, identified only by her initials, E.M. because of her age, described the suspect as a ‘quiet guy’ who ‘looked nice.’

‘He was having good grades, but we didn’t know much about him,’ the student added. ‘He was not so open with everybody. Surely I wasn’t expecting this to happen. ‘

Milan Nedeljkovic, mayor of the central Vracar district where the school is located, said doctors were fighting to save a teacher’s life.

Mr Nedeljkovic said the school’s security guard likely prevented more deaths by putting himself in front of the shooter.

The guard ‘wanted to prevent the tragedy and he was the first victim,’ Nedeljkovic told reporters told journalists live on television outside the school.

‘I saw kids running out from the school, screaming. Parents came, they were in panic. Later I heard three shots,’ a girl who attends a high school adjacent to Vladislav Ribnikar told state TV RTS. 

Police sealed off the blocks around the school, in the center of Belgrade.

Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests cordoned off the area around the school, which is in the Vračar neighbourhood in central Belgrade.

Local media footage from the scene showed commotion outside the school as police removed the suspect, whose head was covered as officers led him to a car parked in the street.

An investigation into the motives behind the shooting is under way. 

Serbia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement: ‘The police sent all available patrols immediately to the spot and arrested a suspected minor – a seventh grade student who is suspected of firing several shots from his father’s gun in the direction of students and school security.’

Vračar is a wealthy area of the city and a number of embassies are based there. 

A row of ambulances were pictured parked on Kralja Milutin Street outside.

Police sealed off the blocks surrounding the school. Primary schools in Serbia have eight grades. 

Mass shootings in the country are extremely rare. In the last mass shooting, a Balkan war veteran in 2013 killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.

Experts, however, have repeatedly warned of the number of weapons left over in the country after the wars of the 1990s.

The western Balkans are awash with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons following the unrest there.

Serbian authorities have offered several amnesties for owners to hand in or register illegal guns.

The Tennessee House of Representatives has voted to expel two young, black, Democrat members of the state legislature – a week after they joined a protest against gun laws, bringing a bullhorn onto the House floor amid a noisy demonstration.

Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, both 27, were joined in their protest on March 30 by Gloria Johnson, 60, a veteran member of the legislature, who is white.

Jones and Pearson were voted out of the House on Thursday. Johnson was not.

Asked why she avoided expulsion, Johnson said it ‘might have to do with the color of my skin.’  

Until Thursday, only two people had been expelled from the Tennessee state legislature since the Civil War. 

Joe Biden called the vote ‘shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent’.

He tweeted: ‘Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action.

‘It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.’

Jones said after the vote that it showed Tennessee was ‘on a path toward authoritarianism’, and his lawyers were analyzing whether the expulsion vote was legal. 

‘This should sound the alarm across the nation, that we are entering some very dangerous territory,’ he said.

He said that the three ‘are in this together’, and he was heading to the public gallery to support the other two as he is no longer allowed to enter the House floor.

Jones said: ‘We are multiracial, intergenerational – we represent Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville. We stand united.

‘Because this is not the end.

‘But if we don’t act, we lose our democracy. Today was a signal that we have lost democracy in Tennessee and we are on a path toward authoritarianism, to be quite honest.’

He said he was not sure if he would run for office again, but would ‘stand with the people’, and added: ‘We were saying, let’s pass an assault weapons ban. And they assaulted democracy.’

He said expelling him from the House was ‘unconstitutional’, and said he is consulting his legal advisers for the next steps. 

The House was shown video of the March 30 demonstration, with the three Democrats joined by protestors. 

They used a bullhorn to lead supporters in the public gallery in chants for gun reform, and as a result were accused of ‘disorderly behavior’ in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

The three Democrats raised their fists in the air as video of the disruption played, during the vote to expel them. Cheers and applause were also heard as the video played. 

All three progressive representatives were seen speaking with one another as the short clip ended.

Heavy security was present as the vote was held.

Tennessee Republicans accused the protestors and the Democratic House members of disruption when they interrupted House proceedings March 30.

The resolution to expel the lawmakers says that they brought: ‘disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions.’ 

The trio had joined hundreds of protestors who marched to the State Capitol last week calling for stricter gun laws.

Six people, including three nine-year-old children, were killed when Nashville shooter Audrey Hale opened fire at The Covenant School on March 27.

Three adults – Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Michael Hill, 61 – were killed, along with three nine-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. 

Hundreds of people invaded the Capitol on March 30, demanding that the Republican-led Statehouse pass gun control measures. 

House leadership later described it as an ‘insurrection,’ aping language used around the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters in January 2021. 

Jones and Johnson were stripped of their committee assignments in the aftermath  by Republican leadership. 

Pearson, however, did not serve on a committee.

Expulsion votes are rare and in Tennessee. 

The House of Representatives has only voted to expel a member twice since the Civil War. 

One vote was to expel a sitting lawmaker who was convicted of soliciting a bribe, and another for a majority whip who was facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

Two-thirds of the House needed to vote in favor of the expulsion in order for it to pass. 

On Monday, three Republicans filed resolutions that the three Democrats be expelled and they successfully asked for an expedited process with a vote Thursday. 

The resolutions claim the three ‘did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,’ according to the Tennesseean newspaper. 

The result was fresh chaos on Monday when the first resolution, targeting Pearson, was introduced.

Protesters shouted from the galleries and Pearson raised his fist in salute, while other Democrats raised their hands to object.

Members of the public chanted: ‘Fascists! Fascists!’ and wagged their fingers and fists at members. 

Instead of taking a vote, the speaker called for state troopers to clear the House galleries. 

Johnson later said she would consider a lawsuit if expelled, saying their protest was constitutionally protected. 

‘We’re going to push back, and we’re going to fight this because it’s unprecedented and utterly ridiculous,’ she told the Tennessean. 

She accused Republicans of double standards. 

‘We had a child molester on the floor for years, they helped him get reelected and did nothing to expel him,’ she added.

‘We’ve had members pee in each other’s chairs and nothing happened. But talk on the floor without permission, and you’ll get expelled.’

House Democrats said they stood behind the three. 

‘The Democratic Caucus has unanimously, formally voted to oppose the baseless resolutions for expulsion and will zealously oppose them should they come up for a vote on the House floor,’ they said in a statement.

The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators also protested the resolutions.

‘This political retribution is unconstitutional and, in this moment, morally bankrupt,’ it said. 

‘The people who elected us are calling for meaningful action to end gun violence and the people have a right to be heard through their duly elected representatives.’

Democrats and Republicans have strongly disagreed about how to respond to the Nashville massacre.  

Biden reiterated his call for a ban on assault weapons. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, proposed $155m to place an armed security guard at every public school in Tennessee and to boost security presence at both public and private schools.

Two ousted Tennessee lawmakers who protested on the state’s House floor said the legislature has ‘always been toxic’ and accused the Republican Speaker of treating it like his ‘personal palace.’

Democratic former State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were voted to be expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives by their colleagues after using a bullhorn to protest gun violence on the floor.

It came following the latest shooting that left six dead at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

‘The Speaker, you know, I mean, he runs the Capitol like it’s his private palace and so there is no democracy in Tennessee. Tennessee is the most undemocratic state in the nation,’ former Rep. Jones told NBC News’ Meet the Press host Chuck Todd.

He also accused Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton of being an ‘autocrat.’

Jones, 27, previously represented Nashville – and the city’s Metropolitan Council is now tasked with selecting who will take his now-vacant seat.

But now, lawmakers in the state are looking to reinstate him after he led chants from anti-gun activists in the public gallery.

Twenty-three members of the 40-seat chamber confirmed last week that they will hold an emergency meeting Monday where they plan to vote him back to the House.

Republican leadership said they would work with Jones if he is returned to the body, just as any other member. But warned that they must observe ‘decorum’.

Pearson told Todd during their joint interview on NBC Sunday morning: ‘It has always been a toxic work environment to work in the Tennessee State Capitol.’

‘When you have people who make comments about hanging you on a tree and hanging black people on a tree as a form of capital punishment. When you wear a dashiki on the House floor and a member gets up and they talk about your dashiki saying it’s unprofessional,’ he listed. ‘They’re really sending signals that you don’t belong here and that is what the underlying and undergirding comment and responses that we heard on the House floor and the comments to myself and my brother, Representative Jones, was really about.’

‘It’s about us not belonging in the institution because they are afraid of the changes that are happening in our society and the voices that are being elevated,’ the former state lawmaker added.

Legislative leaders cannot stop an ousted member from running for office again, and they cannot expel them for the same offense if they are reelected.

Jones earlier said he would be back at the Capitol on Monday to continue his protesting for gun reform – action which was sparked last week after trans shooter Audrey Hale killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville.

‘I’ll be back at the Capitol on Monday with those protesting,’ Jones said. 

He was the first to be voted out followed by Justin Pearson, also 27, who represented Memphis, while Rep. Gloria Johnson, who represents Knoxville, retained her seat by one vote. 

Johnson commented that she believed it came down to the fact that she is a ’60-year-old white woman and they are two young black men.’

It comes amid online posts from supporters who have threatened calls for arson at the House of Rep. several saying: ‘Burn it down.’

Speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon, Jones said that he hadn’t slept since the vote but won’t let it compromise his dissidence.

‘What they’re trying to do is to bring us back to days that we don’t want to go to,’ he said. 

‘If I didn’t know this happened to me I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023.

‘We’ll continue to lift up the issue and we’ll continue to speak truth to power and I’ll be back at the Capitol on Monday with those protesting – demanding action from my former colleagues.’

Tennessee Republicans accused the protestors and the Democratic House members of disruption when they interrupted House proceedings March 30 with a bullhorn.

The resolution to expel the lawmakers said that they brought: ‘disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions.’ 

The trio had joined hundreds of protestors who marched to the State Capitol last week calling for stricter gun laws in the wake of the grisly massacre at the Covenant School in Nashville at the hands of twisted gunman Hale, 28.

Johnson, who also spoke to the broadcaster said she believes she was spared because the issue came down to race.

‘I’m a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young black men listening to the questions and the way they were talked to,’ she said.

‘I was talked down to as a woman mansplained to but it was completely different from the questioning that they got.’

Supporters lashed out at the House of Rep. with many threatening online to ‘burn it down.’ 

Among those citing violence following the historic vote was University of North Carolina at Charlotte associate professor Anita Blanchard.

Until Thursday, only two people had been expelled from the Tennessee state legislature since the Civil War. 

U.S. president Joe Biden called the vote ‘shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent’.

He tweeted: ‘Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action.

‘It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.’

Jones said after the vote that it showed Tennessee was ‘on a path toward authoritarianism,’ and his lawyers were analyzing whether the expulsion vote was legal. 

‘This should sound the alarm across the nation, that we are entering some very dangerous territory,’ he said.

He said that the three ‘are in this together’, and he was heading to the public gallery to support the other two as he is no longer allowed to enter the House floor.

Jones said: ‘We are multiracial, intergenerational – we represent Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville. We stand united. Because this is not the end.

‘But if we don’t act, we lose our democracy. Today was a signal that we have lost democracy in Tennessee and we are on a path toward authoritarianism, to be quite honest.’

He said he was not sure if he would run for office again, but would ‘stand with the people’, and added: ‘We were saying, let’s pass an assault weapons ban. And they assaulted democracy.’

He said expelling him from the House was ‘unconstitutional’, and said he is consulting his legal advisers for the next steps. 

The House was shown video of the March 30 demonstration, with the three Democrats joined by protestors. 

They used a bullhorn to lead supporters in the public gallery in chants for gun reform, and as a result were accused of ‘disorderly behavior’ in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

The three Democrats raised their fists in the air as video of the disruption played, during the vote to expel them. Cheers and applause were also heard as the video played. 

All three progressive representatives were seen speaking with one another as the short clip ended.

Heavy security was present as the vote was held.

Tennessee Republicans accused the protestors and the Democratic House members of disruption when they interrupted House proceedings March 30.

The resolution to expel the lawmakers says that they brought: ‘disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions.’ 

The trio had joined hundreds of protestors who marched to the State Capitol last week calling for stricter gun laws.

Six people, including three nine-year-old children, were killed when Nashville shooter Audrey Hale opened fire at The Covenant School on March 27.

Three adults – Cynthia Peak, 61, Katherine Koonce, 60, and Michael Hill, 61 – were killed, along with three nine-year-old students: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. 

Hundreds of people invaded the Capitol on March 30, demanding that the Republican-led Statehouse pass gun control measures. 

House leadership later described it as an ‘insurrection,’ aping language used around the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters in January 2021. 

Jones and Johnson were stripped of their committee assignments in the aftermath  by Republican leadership. 

Pearson, however, did not serve on a committee.

Expulsion votes are rare and in Tennessee. 

The House of Representatives has only voted to expel a member twice since the Civil War. 

One vote was to expel a sitting lawmaker who was convicted of soliciting a bribe, and another for a majority whip who was facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

Two-thirds of the House needed to vote in favor of the expulsion in order for it to pass. 

On Monday, three Republicans filed resolutions that the three Democrats be expelled and they successfully asked for an expedited process with a vote Thursday. 

The resolutions claim the three ‘did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives,’ according to the Tennesseean newspaper. 

The result was fresh chaos on Monday when the first resolution, targeting Pearson, was introduced.

Protesters shouted from the galleries and Pearson raised his fist in salute, while other Democrats raised their hands to object.

Members of the public chanted: ‘Fascists! Fascists!’ and wagged their fingers and fists at members. 

Instead of taking a vote, the speaker called for state troopers to clear the House galleries. 

Johnson later said she would consider a lawsuit if expelled, saying their protest was constitutionally protected. 

‘We’re going to push back, and we’re going to fight this because it’s unprecedented and utterly ridiculous,’ she told the Tennessean. 

She accused Republicans of double standards. 

‘We had a child molester on the floor for years, they helped him get reelected and did nothing to expel him,’ she added.

‘We’ve had members pee in each other’s chairs and nothing happened. But talk on the floor without permission, and you’ll get expelled.’

House Democrats said they stood behind the three. 

‘The Democratic Caucus has unanimously, formally voted to oppose the baseless resolutions for expulsion and will zealously oppose them should they come up for a vote on the House floor,’ they said in a statement.

The Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators also protested the resolutions.

‘This political retribution is unconstitutional and, in this moment, morally bankrupt,’ it said. 

‘The people who elected us are calling for meaningful action to end gun violence and the people have a right to be heard through their duly elected representatives.’

Democrats and Republicans have strongly disagreed about how to respond to the Nashville massacre.  

Biden reiterated his call for a ban on assault weapons. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, proposed $155m to place an armed security guard at every public school in Tennessee and to boost security presence at both public and private schools.