Are mass shootings common in Thailand?
Mass shootings have broken out almost annually in Thailand in recent years.
Guns are easily obtained in Thailand due to lax gun control enforcement – with former police and security officers even able to amass large arsenals by buying the weapons through the government.
Some notable cases in recent years include the Siam Paragon Mall shootings in October 2023. A 14-year-old boy used a modified blank firing pistol to shoot at shoppers at the the busy mall – killing two foreign nationals and a Thai woman.
In 2022, a former police officer carried out a gun-and-knife attack at a nursery in eastern Thailand, killing 36 people, including 22 children.