On August 7, 2026, a 14-year-old Thai student murdered his grandparents, took his grandfather’s legally registered handgun, and carried it to Debsirin Nonthaburi School outside Bangkok. He killed six people at the school and wounded 23 before shooting himself. Eight victims were killed in all. The Thai government has now suspended firearm-purchase permits, ordered a review of existing licenses, and called for harsher restrictions.
In July of 2025, a mass murderer killed five people and then committed suicide at a Bangkok market.
Thailand had imposed even more restrictions on its already restrictive gun control measures in 2023. In 2023, a 14-year-old killed two and wounded five in a shopping center in Bangkok. In 2022, a former police officer killed 36 people, including his wife, his son, and 22 children. The former police officer used a gun and a knife. In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a mass murder with a gun in Nakhon Ratchasima.
Thailand has very strict gun control laws.
It was not always so. In 1947, mandatory registration, licensing, and permits for civilian ownership were instituted. Licensing for self-defense is relatively common in rural areas.
Self-defense is considered a legitimate reason to apply for a firearm permit. Carry permits for public areas are difficult to obtain. The Small Arms Survey estimated that Thai civilians possessed 10.34 million firearms in 2017, about 15.1 firearms per 100 residents. Ammunition ownership is tightly regulated. Reloading ammunition is banned. Resistance to the strict laws is common. Approximately 6.22 million were registered, and 4.12 million were estimated to be unregistered. Thailand has an estimated total firearms-related death rate of about 4 per 100K population. The homicide rate with firearms is about 1 per 100K and the total homicide rate is lower than the USA, about 2-2.4 per 100K. In the USA the total homicide rate dropped below 4.0 in 2025.
Total firearm ownership rates have little or no correlation to homicide rates.
Mass murders committed with firearms occur in countries with strict firearms controls. Some of those countries experience mass murder rates with firearms greater than the USA, when the numbers are corrected for population. Mass murder can be accomplished with many different methods. Vehicle-based attacks have become more common.
An important way to prevent public mass murders is to not legitimize mass murder through the mass media. This is difficult, but it can be done without censorship. There was considerable success when media companies cooperated to not publicize the suicides of celebrities. The total death toll from mass public murders is low, but the media attention is high.
Mass murder with firearms is promulgated as a phenomenon of media contagion. When people who commit mass murder are made into antiheroes. People with mental problems and suicide ideation see mass murder as a way to achieve fame and media immortality.
Thailand has much stricter gun control than exists in the United States.
Gun control does not stop mass murder, with or without firearms. People with guns can stop mass public murder, which was recently demonstrated in the attempted mass murder in Twin Falls, Idaho. An armed citizen engaged the mass murderer, as did an off duty state trooper. A former police officer engaged the killer, but was shot before he drew his handgun. These heroic individuals helped to lower the death toll.
In the Twin Falls incident, a bystander picked up a handgun the killer had abandoned. It was jammed, and she was unable to make it functional, so she abandoned it as well.
Thailand’s tragedy exposes the practical limits of gun control’s promise. The handgun was registered. The owner had a license. Public carry was heavily restricted. None of that stopped a murderer willing to kill the lawful owner and steal his firearm.
No law can promise that evil will disappear. The relevant question is whether peaceful citizens will be left helpless when it arrives.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
