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Revisiting Ghana’s Handling Of Firearms Regulations

Feature Article Revisiting Ghanas Handling Of Firearms Regulations
DEC 17, 2013 LISTEN

Two students shot thirteen people to death before killing themselves in 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. A year ago, another gory story of a shooting incident greeted the world. Within a few minutes, twenty-six people comprising twenty children and six adults including Dawn Hochsprung, the principal, and the school psychologist Mary Sherlach were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut, USA. The shooter was identified to be twenty years old Adam Lanza who has also killed himself.

This brings to light the strict attention we pay to the enforcement of security policies in the world. As a response to the shooting, the US President Barack Obama proposed that a new White House-led effort on gun policies should formulate a new document on how gun policies can effectively be implemented.

“This is not some Washington commission. This is not something where folks will be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside. This is a team that has a very specific task. To pull together real reforms right now. I urge the new congress to hold votes on these measures in the new year in a timely manner” Barak Obama said.

This shows the serious and pragmatic effort being made by the United States of America to prevent further shooting incidents. The most powerful nation on earth is the United States of America. If these measures are being taken by the country, then Ghana must also take gun issues serious.

Ghana's gun policy says that everyone who wants to possess firearms must register it in person at any firearm licensing office at the Police Station. An applicant must be eighteen years and above and must be free from any mental disorder. To import arms and ammunition into the country in commercial quantity or a single one for personal use, one must apply to the Minister of Interior for his approval. In this regard, the police will be notified if the approval is given and this will enable them to process the relevant documents for the applicant.

How many Ghanaians know these and how many go according to these guidelines?

The National Commission on Small Arms (NCSA) has expressed worry over the easy availability of guns and other weapons in the country. Currently according to the commission, about five hundred thousand legally acquired weapons are owned by civilians. However, there are no statistical records of the illegally acquired ones.

The commission's comment was triggered by the arrest of an Ivorian and two Ghanaians by the Asawase Police in the Ashanti Region after Custom officials found nine AK-47 riffles in their possession in June 2012. According to police sources, locally manufactured small arms and ballistic weapons constitute more than eighty percent of weapons found at all crime scenes in Ghana. Security agencies are partly crippled in their capacity to put these local producers under effective checks because there are currently no specific working regulations guarding gun production in the country. Again, according to the National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCSALW) there are approximately thirty arms importers licensed in Ghana, with mostly no credible database on their activities.

This development is very worrying and the quicker we address this challenge, the better for our security as a nation. Stricter methods must be put in place to curb the proliferation and smuggling of firearms. The law enforcement agencies, District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies must keep their eyes and ears on the ground so that they can control the activities of the local manufacturers of firearms.

The US experience should be a warning sign to us to take the issue more serious. After all, when one sees a friend's beard on fire one must put water near one's beard. A word to the wise has always been enough.

God bless our homeland Ghana.

Gabriel Edzordzi Agbozo is the Director of International

Affairs at the Beyonders Foundation

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