Nopadol Kannika, a National Police Policy Committee member, supports Prime Minister Anutin's efforts to control guns at their source and urges stopping debates on whether shooting intruders in one's home is wrong, stating the goal is to reduce loss of life. He proposes five measures to cut illegal gun circulation and emphasizes that legal guns must be tracked to their owners to know who holds them.
On 12 August 2026, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nopadol Kannika, a member of the National Police Policy Committee and lecturer in the Master’s program in Peace Innovation at the College of Public Administration, Siam Technology College, addressed the debate over whether shooting an intruder at home is wrong. He noted that this question is important, but he believes an even bigger question, crucial to the safety of all Thais, is: “How can we prevent guns from being used in ways that cause deaths in the first place?”
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nopadol said that Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has seriously raised the issue of gun control. He sees this as an important opportunity to engage. The key message the Prime Minister may want to convey is that guns should be kept at a distance, and society should not equate having a gun with having the right to shoot someone. Legally, it must be clear that shooting an intruder is not always lawful or justified; it is only lawful if it is self-defense or defense of others from imminent and reasonable danger.
Thai law supports justifiable self-defense. Dr. Nopadol views this and supports the Prime Minister’s gun control policy’s intent, which does not infringe on the legally guaranteed right to self-defense. He believes this distinction is crucial in communicating the gun control policy. Rather than debating whether shooting an intruder at home is right or wrong, the issue of guns in Thailand is much broader and deeper.
Dr. Nopadol said first we must separate two issues. The first is the right to self-defense; Thai law does not say that shooting an intruder is always unlawful. Article 68 of the Criminal Code recognizes the right to defend oneself or others from illegal and imminent danger with proportional force, so facts must be examined case by case. The second is whether the state should permit citizens to own guns. These are different questions. Having the right to self-defense does not mean everyone should be authorized to own guns for that purpose.
Singapore offers an interesting example where these two issues are clearly separated. Citizens have the legal right to self-defense, but applying to own a gun on the basis of “for self-defense” is not grounds for approval. This should prompt Thailand to reconsider the fundamental question: “For what reasons should the state allow a person to own a gun?”
This is the starting point for gun control. Then we must ask, once permission is granted, how do we manage that gun? Suppose Mr. A is properly vetted and legally licensed to own a gun. The process should not end when the license is issued. The state should know if that gun remains with Mr. A, whether it is stored securely, whether it has been sold or transferred, lost or stolen, if others in the household can access it, and if the owner exhibits risky behavior, how quickly the system can detect and act.
Dr. Nopadol calls this “managing the firearm’s lifecycle.” It’s not just issuing a license and ending there but includes the entire process from application, acquisition, possession, storage, carrying, transfer, loss or theft, use in crime, to revocation or termination of rights.
Simply put, legal guns must be tracked to know who holds them and where they are. Meanwhile, illegal guns require separate but simultaneous action because no matter how well legal guns are managed, if illegal guns remain easy to buy and sell, the problem persists. He proposes not stopping at “cracking down on illegal guns.” When one illegal gun is seized, authorities must immediately ask where it came from, who sold, produced, or imported it, through whose hands it passed, where the money went, and whether it was used in other crimes. Arresting one possessor should be a starting point, not the end, to trace the entire network.
Dr. Nopadol therefore proposes the principle of “Five Cuts to Illegal Gun Circulation”: cut the source by shutting down illegal production, modification, assembly, and import; cut the market by tracing from buyers back to sellers, producers, importers, and financial networks; cut leakage by preventing legal guns from being lost, stolen, or entering the black market; cut the cycle through forensic science by linking guns found in crimes to other cases to trace back to origins; and cut incentives by using appropriate legal measures to remove illegal guns from society and transparently destroy confiscated weapons.
In summary: legal guns must be tracked to their holders; illegal guns must be traced to their origins; guns used in crimes must be traced to their source. But this is not enough. We must know before gunshots occur. Consider that many violent incidents are preceded by warning signs—threats, serious conflicts, threatening posts, dangerous behavior, access to weapons by unauthorized persons, or reports from family, schools, neighbors, or communities.
The question is who notices these warning signs, who reports them, who is responsible for acting, and how quickly the state can intervene. This is why he proposes, alongside gun control, an “early warning system” to detect risks before incidents occur.
He wants people to remember five key words: know the people, know the guns, know the risks, know the areas, know the signals—all within the framework of the law. He believes this shift in thinking is vital. Success should not be measured solely by the number of guns seized, because if many guns are seized but shootings and deaths continue and illegal guns remain easy to buy, the goal is unmet. Instead, we should measure whether illegal guns are harder to obtain, legal guns less likely to leak, arms trafficking networks increasingly exposed, risky areas safer, the state’s response to warnings faster, and most importantly, whether gun-related injuries and deaths among the public have decreased.