#HomebuiltWeapons
Improvised weapons from the Croatian War of Independence
In 1991 the Croatian parliament voted to seceded from what was formerly the ‘Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’, leading to armed conflict between Croatian and Serbian government forces as well as various paramilitary groups formed along ethnic lines. An international arms embargo encompassing all of former Yugoslavia was passed shortly afterwards, leading an under-equipped newly independent Croatia to focus on domestic production of various small arms. On the lower end this included dozens of small workshops operating in rural areas which produced crude weapons for insurgency. Ante Lišnić, a 20 year old working out of his garage in Vrpolje, Trilj, produced various improvised firearms starting from single shot muzzleloading weapons to submachine guns and grenade launchers which were passed on to guerrilla fighters. Examples retained after the conflict ended in 1995 can be seen below.
