The Interior Ministry has been assigned to study measures to exempt from punishment people who surrender firearms they hold illegally.
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin announced the move after Tuesday’s regular cabinet meeting.
He said the ministry would design an amnesty to encourage people who own guns illegally to surrender their weapons within a set deadline and avoid punishment. This could come in the form of a royal decree and it would not conflict with relevant laws.
The move was aimed at reducing violence amid the widespead criminal use of guns in Thailand, the prime minister said.
Public concern about guns has risen in recent years in light of serious crimes including the shootings in a Bangkok shopping mall that left three people dead in October last year, and the Nong Bua Lam Phu nursery massacre in 2022.
There were more than 6 million registered firearms nationwide as of 2023, according to the Ministry of Interior, but officials estimate there are as many as 4 million illegal weapons, often sourced from strife-torn countries or smuggled into the country.
The so-called “welfare guns” programme that allows police and other public officials to obtain cheaply priced weapons has also been a problem. Many of those weapons are resold for profit, local gun dealers say.
The US manufacturer Sig Sauer secured two major deals with the Royal Thai Police, in 2017 and 2020, to supply a total of 400,000 guns under the programme.
Thailand is the largest market in the world by far for US-made semiautomatic firearms. From 2005 to 2022, a Bloomberg investigation showed, 795,000 such weapons were exported to Thailand from the United States, representing 21.5% of the global total of 3.7 million.
Illegal possession of a firearm carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a fine of up to 20,000 baht, but gun ownership is high compared with some other countries in Southeast Asia.
Applicants for a gun owner’s licence must give a genuine reason to possess a firearm, such as for hunting or collecting. The applicant must be at least 20 years old and undergo background checks that consider personal conduct, living condition, income and criminal records.
After the Nong Bua Lam Phu nursery massacre in 2022, the government tightened gun ownership rules, including requiring regular mental health checks and revoking licences of registered owners who have reportedly behaved in a way that “threatens society” and “creates chaos or causes unrest”.