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TIRANA, Albania (AP) — The Albanian government is offering a four-month amnesty to all those who hand over guns.
Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri said on his Facebook page the Cabinet passed a law Wednesday offering "no penal prosecution and zero punishment to all those handing over arms before April 30, 2017."
Illegal weapon possession can attract sentences of up to 15 years of jail but old army Kalashnikovs and new pistols bought in Europe are widely used in domestic crimes, feuds and other shootings.
More than 10,000 people have been killed or wounded by light weaponry in the 25 years since the fall of communism, according to ministry figures, adding that only 2,500 arms have been collected in the past three years.
In 1997 Albanians who lost life savings in fake pyramid investment schemes looted hundreds of thousands of small arms and light ammunition from army depots.
A United Nations-led project collected about 200,000 arms, but as many again are still believed to be in circulation.
More than 100,000 small weapons and thousands of tons of excess ammunition have been destroyed by the army, which itself, since the country became a NATO member in 2009, has replaced its old Kalashnikov automatic rifles with NATO-standard weaponry.
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