http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=530581§ion=news
Thai
gun shops offer discounts to teachers
Thank Goodness, this could never happen in America,
our School are gun free zones!! Everyone will be safe!
right...........Guess there is no sense in learning from other countries mistakes (England & Australia) problems, Thailand..........I wonder if this is George W. Bush's fault also? ......the webmistress
Wed 16 June, 2004
By Nopporn Wong-Anan
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Gun shops in Bangkok are offering discounts to teachers in Thailand's troubled Muslim south where a spate of almost daily attacks show no signs of abating despite government promises to restore peace.
On Wednesday, a school guard was shot on his way to work and a Buddhist policeman was killed at a government office, police said. More than 200 people have been killed in the violence that erupted in January.
Schools have been common targets for arson and gun attacks, leading to teachers being given permission to apply for licences for firearms for self-defence.
Several Bangkok gunsmiths have appointed teachers as salespeople to lure potential customers to the capital with promises of discounts, said Pairat Vihakarat, who heads a teachers union with 20,000 members in five southern provinces.
"A colleague of mine told me he would rather carry a gun than have 20 friends go about with him. Everyone can equally be killed here," Pairat said.
Hundreds of teachers and civil servants from the southern provinces have been lured by "discount offers" from gun shops in the capital.
"We need to protect ourselves when no single security agency can protect us," said a retired teacher in Yala province, next to the border with Malaysia, who recently made the 1,200 km (750 mile) trip to Bangkok to buy a rifle.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed last week to "go on the offensive", giving security forces 30 days to quell the violence.
Most of the victims, including those in the last 24 hours, have been attacked by motorbike-riding assailants armed with guns or machetes.
Authorities have alternately blamed bandits, youths high on cough syrup, and Muslim militants for the daily explosions and killings that have revived memories of a separatist insurgency that plagued the region in the 1970s and 1980s.
The worst violence came on April 28 when troops and police killed 108 Muslim militants, including 32 in a mosque shootout, prompting accusations of brutality.
Teachers are urging the authorities to ease strict controls on permits to buy and carry guns in the region, which has a history of violence and so has no gun shops of its own.
"Thousands of applications are awaiting approval at provincial offices. Gun prices have shot up by almost 50 percent," the retired teacher, who is now rubber grower, said.
"What would happen to those who do not have a gun if there was a riot?" he said.