Surfing the web for world crime statistics, I came across a great world statistic website, and found my way to its Thailand crime stats page and was surprised about my findings, particularly of how high Thailand ranked in certain categories of crime, particularly gun violence and homicide.
Taken from the gun violence data out of dozens of countries surveyed in the Seventh United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1998 - 2000), Thailand happened to be the country with the highest percentage of its homicides (reported) that were committed with a firearm. Simply dead said, the weapon murder choice for Thailand is the gun, more so than other countries.
Specifically, 79.58 percent of Thailand murders (some 25,000 in total) reported in the 2 year survey window were done so with a gun. In comparison, the 2nd ranked country, South Africa had only 59.2 percent of its murders (twice as many total murders than Thailand) committed with a gun, while the third, Colombia, amounted 51.7 percent of its murders (about 45,000) to firearms.
As far as firearm homicide rate, South Africa topped the list with 74.57 gun murders per 100,000 rate (29,000+ gun murders), followed by Colombia with 51.76 (some 23,000 gun murders), and Thailand tailing in 3rd with roughly 33 murders by gun per 100,000 people (19-20,000 gun murders).
As far as overall homicide rate, Thailand ranked in at 4th with 41.4 murders per 100,000 people, behind Guatemala at third with 43.9 per 100k (about 5,000+ total murders), Colombia at 2nd with 114.5 murders per 100k and South Africa maintaining the highest overall murder rate with 125.9 murders per 100k.
Come to think of it, I really shouldn’t be surprised that Thailand has a high murder rate, particularly regarding guns. A few years back, I actually saw a 14 year old girl get shot only 20 meters away from me—she was caught in the middle of some teenage gang grudge—she was lucky to survive as the bullet missed her heart by inches. Guns are so common here, but you may never notice as people are really discreet, and will only ever draw if they intend to use it—which would require a good reason i.e. payoff, loss of face, revenge, etc. Thais have high tolerance, but when they do lose their cool, it’s full blast—danger zone.
Not to say that Thailand is particularly unsafe and that just anyone is at a high risk of getting shot or murdered. There certainly isn’t/shouldn’t be a fear of randomly getting caught up in a drive by or such unmotivated killings if one minds themselves and is always conscious of their behavior.
Shootings/murders in Thailand can usually be broken down to business/land grudges-feuds, vocational school rivalries, adultery-jealousy rages, and hired assassins (i.e. political motivations).
That said, the average tourist or visitor will rarely ever likely be randomly caught up in the line of a bullet—granted he or she doesn’t intentionally and arrogantly step on the wrong persons toes, and fails to handle him/herself accordingly
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