Serbia's president promises to disarm the country after mass shootings.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic promises to significantly tighten restrictions on gun ownership and has announced a gun buyback after two massacres this week rocked the Balkan nation. Declaring Serbia's "disarmament," Vucic spoke as the death toll from both crimes - a school massacre in Belgrade on Wednesday and a shooting outside the capital late Thursday - climbed to at least 17 dead and 21 wounded.

"We must make systemic changes to ensure safety for every child, for everyone," Vucic told reporters after the government convened Friday. "I know it won't be popular - there will be resistance from the lobby. "

From an estimated 400,000 gun owners in a nation of 6.8 million, the number of licensees would drop to 30,000-40,000, Vucic said. Gun restrictions would include reducing the number of licensed firearms, as well as mandatory buybacks from private individuals in an effort to reduce the number of gun-owning households, Vucic said.

The school shooting on Wednesday, when a teenager opened fire on his classmates in the center of the capital and killed nine people, was already the biggest massacre in a decade. Then, late on Thursday, an unknown gunman went on a shooting rampage in an area about 50 kilometers south of Belgrade, killing at least eight people. The suspected attacker was apprehended by authorities on Friday. Such brutal violence is rare in Serbia, which in the 1990s was at the center of the conflicts that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia. The deadliest mass shooting since then occurred in 2013, when a 60-year-old Army veteran killed 13 people, including his own son.

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