Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul of Thailand announced a suspension of new gun permits on Tuesday, one of several firearm control measures presented by the government in response to the deadly mass shooting at a high school last week.
In addition to the moratorium on permits, Mr. Anutin said that he had directed one of his deputies to expedite the drafting of a firearms law that would impose harsher penalties for gun-related offenses than existing laws.
“I can’t please everyone, but we must ensure safety, especially for innocent victims and children,” Mr. Anutin said on Tuesday.
On Friday morning, a 14-year-old student at a high school northwest of Bangkok used his grandfather’s handgun to fatally shoot both of his grandparents before opening fire at his school, killing five teachers and wounding more than 30 others. The attack ended when the boy turned the gun on himself. One of the wounded, a 12-year-old girl, died from her injuries on Saturday.
The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in the country since 2022, when a former police officer shot or stabbed more than 30 people, including children, at a day care center. And it was followed almost immediately by another high-profile shooting on Monday, when a former lawmaker killed a local politician with whom he had a financial dispute, according to local news media. Both events have resurrected a vexed debate about gun control in the country.
While a string of mass shootings has occurred in Thailand in recent years, they are still relatively rare and far below the number in the United States. Thai officials, including Mr. Anutin, have previously pledged to tighten gun laws but critics say there has been little change on the ground.
There are about 10 million firearms in civilian hands in Thailand, or about 15.1 firearms per 100 people, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey, a research project based in Geneva. Of those, 4.1 million are believed to be unregistered.
Civilians are already prohibited from carrying their firearms in public, under a separate ban instituted earlier this year. And shortly after the rampage on Friday, Mr. Anutin pledged to crack down further.
Among the measures announced this week is also a suspension of the country’s “welfare gun” program, which has allowed public officials to buy firearms at heavily discounted prices. Experts say the policy has contributed to guns becoming a symbol of prestige, while also feeding into a black market for resold weapons. The authorities were also weighing an amnesty program to encourage people to surrender their illegal guns, Mr. Anutin said on Tuesday.
Mr. Anutin added that he himself once owned a gun. “I don’t know where it went,” he said. “I just filed a police report, that’s all. I don’t have a single one.”
Boonwara Sumano, a senior research fellow at the Thailand Development Research Institute, a Bangkok-based think tank, said that curbing Thailand’s gun problem would ultimately come down to how thoroughly the government could remove illegal firearms from circulation.
“Measures focused primarily on legal gun ownership are unlikely to have a major impact if enforcement against illegal firearms remains limited,” she said.
“Unless broader structural reforms, such as police reform to strengthen public trust and improve public safety, are introduced, suspending new gun permits could even have unintended consequences,” Ms. Boonwara added. “People who wish to acquire firearms may simply turn to illegal channels instead.”
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