The violent gun death rate in Thailand is more than TWICE as high as that of the United States, according to a US network of public radio broadcasters.
NPR ran the data from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation after the recent mass shootings in California, and found Thailand had 7.48 violent gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2013.
That’s over twice the gun death rate in the US, which had 3.55 deaths per 100,000 people in the same year.
Thailand also has the highest gun death rate in Asia, the data shows.
It had 50% more deaths than the Philippines, which also beat the US gun death rate with 4.64 deaths per 100,000 people.
They were followed by Sri Lanka with 2.79 gun deaths per 100,000, Cambodia with 1.58 and Myanmar with 1.10.
The university admits that it is difficult to get a true figure of gun deaths around the world as many countries underreport the number of gun deaths.
An online database by Gunpolicy.org, run by the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, estimates a smaller gun death rate for Thailand.
It says there are around 3.48 deaths per 100,000 people, which is just under that of the States, AFP reported earlier this year.
“Thailand has a fervent gun culture on par with the United States and has become a world leader in firearms-related homicides,” US State Department’s Bureau for Diplomatic Security wrote in a safety report, AFP said.
Photo: Reuters
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