By Panu Wongcha-um
BANGKOK, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Within hours of a shooting rampage on the outskirts of Bangkok that left at least eight dead, Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul on Friday vowed to introduce a new firearms control law in Southeast Asia’s largest gun-owning nation.
Anutin, who previously tightened gun laws when he was interior minister, will now propose a law to restrict the carrying of firearms by the public.
“The new law will only allow government officials on duty to carry guns,” he told reporters on Friday, but did not provide any specifics for the envisaged legislation, including whether it will tighten gun ownership requirements.
HIGH GUN OWNERSHIP
Under Thai rules, there are separate licenses issued for owning and carrying firearms.
In Friday’s incident, a Thai teenager fatally shot his grandparents before killing at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok.
Thailand had an estimated 10.3 million firearms in civilian possession, equating to around 15 guns per 100 residents — the highest rate in the region by a wide margin, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.
Of these, a little more than 6 million were registered firearms, with another 4 million comprising unregistered weapons, the Geneva-based group estimated.
Mass-shootings have also regularly occurred in Thailand, including incidents at schools, a major Bangkok mall and a 2022 killing spree in the country’s northeast that killed 36 people including 22 children.
LACK OF STRICT REGULATIONS, EXPERT SAYS
In the wake of an October 2023 shooting at a Bangkok mall, Anutin — then serving as interior minister — ordered a raft of gun control measures, including a short-term ban on new licenses, import restrictions, and the banning of people under 20 years old from shooting ranges.
Longer-term measures proposed included a medical certificate assessing the mental health and psychological condition of gun owners as well as a specified validity period for some gun licenses.
Thailand’s current licensing regime still lacks mental health screening for people applying to possess a gun, allows people as young as 20 to hold weapons and does not require periodic reassessments for licence holders, said Piyaporn Tunneekul, an associate professor at Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University.
“We only look at things like: Do you have money? Do you have a necessary reason to protect your property? Do you want it for self-defence? But in other countries, authorities say those are not good reasons,” she told Reuters.
“We need intervention, a process like other countries have. There are red-flag laws abroad,” Piyaporn said, referring to legal provisions that allow for the removal of a firearm from the environment of a person deemed at risk of harming themselves or others.
“So these events repeat, but the state does nothing.”
(Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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