BANGKOK: Thailand has stopped issuing new gun licences for a year, the interior ministry announced on Wednesday, after a series of high-profile shootings.

The change comes into effect immediately, the ministry said, and follows debate in the kingdom about firearms control following deadly gun incidents.

A 14-year-old boy opened fire in a Bangkok shopping mall in October, killing three people, and an ex-policeman armed with a legally owned handgun and knife murdered 36 people at a nursery a year earlier.

“In order to improve security and decrease crime rates, we will temporarily ban the issuing of personal guns,” interior ministry spokeswoman Traisuree Taisaranakul said on her official Facebook page.

Thailand has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the region with 10 million firearms in circulation, according to the GunPolicy.org website — roughly one for every seven Thais.

Aside from high-profile incidents such as the nursery and mall attacks, deadly shootings are frequently reported in Thai media.

The kingdom recorded almost 1,300 gun deaths in 2019 — the latest year for which data is available — compared with around 130 in neighbouring Vietnam, where the population is about 40 percent higher.