Deadly Thai mall shooting exposes murky trade in blank handguns that are turned into lethal weapons

By JERRY HARMER and GRANT PECK
Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) — Police in Thailand say they have arrested three men they accuse of selling the handgun and ammunition used by a 14-year-old boy to allegedly kill two people and wound five others at a shopping mall in Bangkok. The Tuesday shooting has highlighted a gray area in the gun trade. That’s the sale of handguns originally manufactured to shoot blanks but which can be modified to fire live ammunition. Thai police identified the gun used in Tuesday’s shootings as one of these so-called blank, or blank-firing, handguns. They are generally controlled less strictly than regular guns. But they can be modified to fire regular bullets, making them lethal weapons that also become harder to trace than real guns.