The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Ghana

The 1992 Constitution provides explicit instructions to the citizens of Ghana to defend it. That is to say, the citizens are inured with the correlative constitutional right to acquire arms, to keep and to bear them in anticipation of national defense. Despite this charge, the legislative framework has, for a considerable length of time, placed administrative restrictions on gun ownership that undermine the constitutional grant to citizens to even acquire arms. The National Commission on Small Arms and regional conventions such as Ecowas Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons, have confusing nomenclature and idiosyncratic definition for legal and illicit gun ownership that complicate the right to bear arms. This investigation attempts to show to what extent the constitutional mandate had been overlooked and encroached upon, and how the encroachment can be clawed back to enhance Article 3 rights of the citizens under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana.


Introduction
The right to bear arms is not only guaranteed by the 1992 Constitution of Ghana for the defense of the nation, but it is part of the fundamental and inherent rights of every individual for self-defense and self-preservation (Magna Carter of 1215; English Bill of Rights, 1689; US Bill of Rights, 1791;McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 2010;Caetano v. Massachusetts, 572 U.S., 2016). The national Constitution provided that, citizens have "the right and duty at all times;" "to defend the Constitution, and in particular, to resist any person or group of persons seeking to commit any of the (enumerated) acts in Article 3" of the 1992 Constitution. The enumerated acts include prohibition against the establishment Advances in Applied Sociology political activists sums up the political and economic tension of the era. The AFRC initiated legislation and economic policies that crippled the real economy and financial system that was already crumbling under repressive policies. It finally handed over power to an elected Hilary Limann's government after four months. The Peoples National Party (PNP) stayed in power for barely two years  but was ousted by Lt. Jerry Rawlings and his compatriots in the Army on 31st December, 1981, establishing the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government. With his charismatic leadership style and his appeal to Eastern Europe during the cold war, Rawlings initiated the "famous" Economic Recovery Program (ERP), touted as a neoliberal agenda based on the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) of the World Bank and IMF in 1983 (Osei, 1999in Norman & Aviisah, 2015).
All these series of economic-political incidences had negative effect on the sense of well-being, happiness, sense of ownership, education, professional development, promotion, patriotism, nepotism, cronyism and even general health of the population. Beginning from the worsening of conditions from the period immediately after independence through the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Program, through divestiture to the re-introduction of democracy and the rule of law in 1992, there was the general feeling that "Ghana was not a nation for which one should die" (Frimpong-Boateng, 2008, In Norman & Aviisah, 2015). All such political upheavals point to the nascent understanding and appreciation of democracy that the so-called leaders of Ghana had and, in many instances, continue to have and exhibit in managing the national interests and affairs.
The framers of the 1992 Constitution took due cognizance of the fact that "democracy" as a philosophy of life and governance is not yet entrenched in Ghana. Even if Ghana is presumed to be 'democratic', its brand of democracy and the rule of law are not dowered with the fruits of democracy such as the exercise of individual choice, autonomy, capacity, capability and wellbeing. From year to year, the average Ghanaian cannot really say he or she is better off this year compared to the previous year. This is due to a myriad of incapacitating exogenous social, political and economic as well as marketplace, job place and other forces that exert undue pressures on the functioning and capabilities of the average Ghanaian citizen (Norman, 2017).
The framers of the 1992 Constitution did not want the citizens to be surprised by a rag-tag of soldiers, and for that matter, any cell, who might seek to overthrow the government and thus empowered the citizens to rise up in defense, should the unthinkable happen. In order for the citizens to render credible defense, it informs all citizens that they also have immunity against the exercise of their "right and duty" to "do all in their power to restore the Constitution after it has been suspended, overthrown, or abrogated". This is very powerful due to the lack of equivocation and simplicity of the charge. To articulate the import of this charge liberally would mean a call to civil war. That is how far the framers want Caetano v. Massachusetts, 572 U.S., 2016). The right is still intact and has even become stronger due in part to the duty of the legislature and judiciary to preserve the Constitution (Kates, 1983). It is also due in part to the vociferous lob-  (Kopel, 1995;United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 1875;Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 1886;Halbrook, 1994;Kopel, 1995;District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 2008).
The 1992 Constitution of Ghana provides in Article 4(a) and (b) that: (4) All citizens of Ghana shall have the right and duty at all timesa) to defend this Constitution, and in particular, to resist any person or group of persons seeking to commit any of the acts referred to in clause (3) of this article; and b) to do all in their power to restore this Constitution after it has been suspended, overthrown, or abrogated as referred to in clause (3) of this article.
The Constitution further provides indemnity and immunity clauses in Article (5) through (7) to all citizens who exercise their "right and duty" obligation under the Constitution mentioned in Article (3) and (4).
Despite this observation, there is evidence that national legislation and regional and international conventions (ECOWAS Convention on SALW and at the global level (United Nations Programme of Action on SALW) to which Ghana is a signatory, have already nibbled away the Constitutional right and privilege (Ecowas Convention, 2006). This development is part of the evidence of the encroachment on the Constitutional rights of the people of Ghana. The sovereign shell of Ghana cannot be allowed by regional or international conventions or treaty to poke holes into this sacred embodiment of all that which defines the people of Ghana. Some of such instruments also attempt to nibble away the citizens' right to keep and bear arms in defense of the Constitution and in their own personal defenses. The right to bear arms as given to the people should be held as sacrosanct and should not be downgraded by legislation or common law.

The Reason for This Paper
The motivations behind this paper were to ascertain to what extent the constitutional grant to bear and carry arms, has been nibbled away by legislative construct or judge made law, and by public policy or by the importation of regional conventions and other international treaties into the legal framework. It is also to help shed light on the creeping nature of such encroachment on the rights of the people and how this can be clawed back. It is discomforting and disconcerting to learn that, "the history of the legislative ( and Jaye, 2014:2). Such an approach to national law making, though seemingly efficient, is extremely ineffective in addressing local exigencies without tinkering with the law to suit the national situation. Often the required tinkering is poorly executed by the promoters of the draft bill, and continues on through the various parliamentary readings and sub-committee review of the bill until it is passed into law with all of its avoidable imperfections and defects.
Why is the defense of the 1992 Constitution so important to the citizens' right to keep and bear arms? Admittedly, in the post-modern era of electronic information networks and social platforms, the defense of any social or political value is not only limited to the use of guns and weapons. In some limited circumstances, the use of force or weapon, is necessary due to the nature of the challenge and the behavior of the actors in the situation or conflict. This is the least preferred approach, despite the Constitutional charge. The defense of the constitution of this nation or any other can be done also, through many other means.
These include cogent presentation of the narrative surrounding the vexatious issues leading to the conflict in the court of public opinion, besides the use of force. It could also be a dispassionate and unbiased review of the literature of the particular social menace such as what is being discussed in this paper, to ascertain the extent of the encroachment, abuse, or deviation from the desired goal.
The constitutional grant to keep and bear arms is part of the overall preparedness strategy of the nation against the singular existential threat of a military take-over. This also means that the citizens need to have sufficient ammunitions, physical strength and mental readiness to respond to any act that might usurp the 1992 Constitution.
Nonetheless, it seems the expectations of the 1992 Constitution is already hampered by the various Acts of Parliament regulating the right to keep and bear arms. There are currently some fourteen or so separate laws on the ownership, or acquisition and operation of handguns and related ammunitions, besides the Ecowas and United Nations Development Program conventions. There is obviously something wrong with the picture of a nation that has not ever conducted a civil war against itself, but has over a dozen laws and legislative instruments to regulate the right to keep and bear arms. Ghana has not ever gone to war against its neighbors since its independence in 1957, except a select few of its military and police personnel that had ever served in benign Peace keeping roles in the Sub-region and elsewhere. Due to the pacifism of Ghana, which underlines its foreign policy and relationship with its neighbors, there are many of our military personnel as well as the police, who through no fault of theirs, may spend their entire military or service careers without ever been placed in war situation apart from Peace keeping forays. Despite their availability for national duty and sacrifice when required, their numbers are finite. The citizens can provide appreciably larger numbers of first responders to the defense of the nation.
That is why it is important to the survival of the nation to empower citizens to

Approaches Used to Limit the Citizens' Right to Bear and Carry Arms
Legislation has been used dating back to the colonial era to curtail and clip the citizens' right to keep and bear arms. Over the years, the nation has built up quite a number of such legislation, namely Arms and Ammunitions Ordinance, (Act 736), to mention but a few. Each one of these laws has its own unique mandate which are apposite to that of the National Commission on Small Arm's but operate in different ways and means from that of the National Commission.
Each of these Acts and their legislative instruments have different hierarchical structures and resources that the National Commission may not be able to boast of.
The end result is that the National Commission on Small Arms has been given a mandate whose operationalization creates confusion and conflict with other national entities such as the Police to supervise gun ownership and possession.  Arms used by one person and which include notably, • Firearms and other destructive arms or devices such as an exploding bomb, an incendiary bomb or a gas bomb, a grenade, a rocket launcher, a missile, a missile system or landmine, • Revolver and pistols with automatic loading It is not acceptable national culture to butter pressing national threats with hasty legislation that are both ineffective in providing the required intervention and also unsuccessful in building the expertise needed to solve the same or similar national threats and challenges.
The Commission's definition of Light Weapons is the same as that of the Ecowas Convention, a national legislative culture which is not really proper in tackling the issues that scare us.
According to the Commission, Light Weapon means "portable arms designed to be used by several persons working together in a team and which includes: The studies selected met the evaluation criteria adopted for the review of literature in order to find common themes that would enhance the study. It was assumed that licensing and registration modalities had the potential to curtail the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. The selected material included any report (scholarly paper, opinion, editorial, book chapter, internal post-operations In addition, the review concerned both the public safety and human rights approaches adopted by the National Commission to consider whether they were sound and effective in preventing the proliferation of illicit guns in the nation.
And whether there are national mechanisms to isolate mundane criminal activities without the use of guns or light weapons, from those perpetrated with guns.
It also investigated if there was a national policy on owner notification, names reporting in the context of expired licenses and the enforcement mechanism for compliance with the law. Finally, the research focused on the manner and consequences of public education on gun ownership, licensing, and registration.
A review of "grey literature" was performed non-selectively, including an overview of existing policies pertaining to acquisition, registration and licensing of guns. Thirty-five publications that met the inclusion criteria were found.
Twenty-five were articles and 10 were reports. An overall score was assigned and the position taken by the paper, report or publication was identified in relation to the objective. A score of 1 = entirely relevant; 1/2 = somewhat relevant and 0 = not relevant at all were awarded. Papers that received scores above 3.5 out of 5 after the rating were used in the evaluation and were further analyzed. The data was disaggregated into the respective themes for analyses and summarized the findings into their respective units, and interpreted them based upon the author's skills, knowledge and specialization in public health legislation, national security matters and policy management.

Findings from the Literature Review and Analyses of Gun Legislation
Below is a summary of some of the key flaws in the national legislation, coupled with regional legislation on gun acquisition and ownership as well as registration. These tend to compromise the free exercise of the citizens to keep and bear arms, which may not be consistent with the 1992 Constitution.
There is a constant criminalization and decriminalization processes of gun There is distortion in the statistics of gun ownership due to the short ownership renewal cycles and the automatic classification of guns with late renewals as illicit. Thus depriving their owners the right to free and unencumbered uses and enjoyment of their personal possession.
It is not yet established empirically or otherwise that, there is correlation between legal gun ownership and uptick of crime in the urban, rural and peri-urban areas.
It has not been shown yet, the correlation between illicit guns and the uptick of crime in the urban, rural and peri-urban areas. There is no data on crimes committed with Light Weapons such as anti-tank or aircraft launchers, or missiles, or heavy machine guns to necessitate that provision in the law to be placed under the mandate of a unit under the Ministry of Interior.  Section 11 of the Arms and Ammunition Act states: Where any firearms, arms of war, munitions of war or ammunition are, without the proper authority, a) found in the possession of a person, b) kept in a place other than a public warehouse, or c) unlawfully kept in a private warehouse, 2) that person or the occupier of that place, or the owner of the place or any other person keeping them, commits an offence unless that person, occupier, or owner can prove that they were deposited there without the knowledge or consent of that person, occupier or owner.

Discussion and Recommendations
Obviously, the charge to citizens to bear and carry arms provided by the 1992 Constitution had in mind the utility of the arms so kept and borne. That without ammunitions the guns are merely toys. Therefore, it appears there is already a conflict in the legal framework respecting the issue of ammunitions. The registration and licensing of arms do not disinherit the person who had previously legally purchased ammunitions to surrender it. In fact, and as a practical matter, the registration and re-registration allows gun owners the right to purchase more or fresh ammunitions without regard to the number of ammunitions for a rifle, for example, the person had previously. There is really no practical way of controlling the number of ammunitions a person has to be used for one regis-Advances in Applied Sociology tered gun.

Distortion in Gun Statistics
Part of the reasons why the annual registration was invented was to help the government's revenue collection efforts as demonstrated by the Arms and Ammunitions (Amendment) Act of 1996 (Act 519). In the Arms and Ammunition Amendment Act, various classes of guns and related material are levied according to their class or explosive yields and trajectories. There is obvious confusion about the several baseline studies about the same phenomenon. Such a situation does create problems of estimation of gun inventory in the nation. Baseline study, as it is understood in the research and scientific communities refers to "measurements of key conditions (indicators) before a project begins, from which change and progress can be assessed. It helps to set achievable and realistic indicator targets and informs project management decision-making, by providing a reference point to determine progress and adjust project implementation to best serve people in need. It also provides a point of assessment and measurability of the selected indicators and upholds accountability, informs impact evaluation. The specific methodology will depend on a variety of project-specific factors, ranging from specific indicators to time and The Commission has reported that most of the crimes of armed robberies and others were committed with homemade shod off, single barrel guns. If the local gun makers are actually producing so many of these guns in Ghana, shouldn't their outfits be listed among the top one hundred companies in the nation!

The Lack of Correlation between Licensed and Registered Guns and the Uptick of Crime in the Urban, Rural and Peri-Urban Areas
This discussion is also illustrative of the fact that Ghana really does not know how many Small Arms are actually in circulation at any given time, let alone the quantum of ammunitions of various calibers that are in the hands of the citizens. The figures being bandied in the grey literature and appearing rather frequently in peer reviewed papers on the matter since the publication of the 2014 Baseline Study of NACSA and in the Commission's reports were inspired by statistical estimates or approximations. Reliance on geometric progression is a dicey matter particularly when the estimates are couched as absolute numbers or used as absolute values. There are many issues with doing baseline study to estimate incidence and prevalence rate of a phenomenon using cross-sectional, quantitative approach. One of such challenges, is the self-reporting nature of the questionnaire administered. It may face the respondents' ability to be truthful, or their difficulty in expressing the true nature of their gun ownership status and thus leading to poor data acquisition and characterization. It is well known that gun represents power. Like employee salaries, it has been found that workers often lie about their true salary status in social settings and in responding to general surveys. Since guns strongly associate with power and ego, it is also possible that those who may not even own a gun may report otherwise. For researchers, however, there is no other alternative method for such surveys. Therefore, projections from such data cannot be the standard for measurement for gun ownership. Despite the inherent limitations, cross-sectional studies are still useful in educating the public about incidence and prevalence rates of phenomena under investigations (Horowitz, et al., 2001;Kuyper & Vanwesenbeeck, 2003). For these reasons, it is important to bear in mind that, the quantum of guns correlates are useless without more (Myrdal, 1957(Myrdal, , 1969. warning is to prepare the intended community of the warning against the danger and enhance safety, in this case the danger posed by Small Arms" (Slovic, 2000;Glik, 2007;Norman et al., 2012). In the case of the 2014 Baseline study on Small

I. Norman Advances in Applied Sociology
Arms, all the elements (high-hazard and high-outrage) for wholesale acceptance of the statistics of the stock of guns in circulation were present. 'There are four main types of risk communication, namely, high-hazard with low-outrage (which is normally used in public relations communications. In the first type of risk communication, the audience is apathetic and uninterested about the risk although it may be a huge risk to all, such as the current public discourse on climate change and its consequences. For example, fire risks is high and concerns all but there appears to be very low-outrage of the public towards it (Glik, 2007;.
The second deals with medium-hazard, medium-outrage, which is preferred by stakeholders to a common cause, such as disruptive power outage during business and manufacturing hours.
The third is low-hazard, high-outrage, where a small group of perhaps, fanatics, may weigh and agitate heavily on an issue such as prostitutes and johns on a school street, as the majority of the community adopts a wait-and-see attitude.
The last is the high-hazard, high-outrage such as illicit guns in the country. In this situation, the audience is huge; there is fear, perhaps, anger and willingness to do "something" so that the risk would not happen again. This calls for crisis communication to help the public deal with the circumstances surrounding the event (Glik, 2007, In Norman et al., 2014.
As part of risk communication, the baseline study on the quantum of Small Arms in circulation in Ghana appears to have achieved its goal. However, one may not cry wolf, when there is no such threat (Norman, 2013

The Correlation between Illicit, and Expired Guns and the Uptick of Crime in the Urban, Rural and Peri-Urban Areas
Knowing the relationship between illicit or expired guns and the uptick of crime in the enumerated areas of the nation would help in the design of the strategies to combat crime. There is often hue and cry over the growing crime rate without scientific basis. When it comes to disasters and emergencies that confront the nation, it appears, the reaction by the population is a persistent preference for alarmist, falling fire and brimstone, end time approach rather than deliberative and scientific approach.
In the present case, the analysis of the taxonomy of crimes being committed and the demography of the victims, and the antecedence of the perpetrators, coupled with exogenous factors contributing to crimes in general has not received deep investigative research. The hysterias associated with well-publicized robberies and crimes create unreasonable fear among the people and may contribute to vigilantism. It is essential for the Commission to design clear guidelines for collecting, assessing, and aggregating data on crime and their relationships to Small Arms in the nation.
One of the ways to achieve a more rational approach to delinking willy-nilly crime rate and gun ownership is to collect close to perfect record of gun ownership and registration and allow a longer renewal period of about two to three years. This would allow the Commission and the Police to trace the number of a particular cohort of gun owners that may engage in crimes with their guns. This would also allow the Commission and their stakeholders' breathing space to conduct good investigations into crimes, and reduce the volume of the artificially created stock of illicit guns in circulation. working and enhancing gun re-registration. Therefore, the modality for this activity needs to be changed, since the very intrusion of government in gun ownership compromises the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. As a constitutional priority to all citizens, expedited registration and renewal of guns to citizens is part of the essential attributes of democracy in Ghana.

Conclusion
The framers of the 1992 Constitution envisioned the potential continuation of the disruptive phenomena of military take-over of duly elected and installed governments in the nation, if not in Black Africa as a whole. In anticipation therefore, it provided for the defense of the nation by every abled bodied citizen of the nation, to resist the potential oppressors' might by keeping and bearing arms.
It is about time the nation stopped scaring its self into believing that there are guns and light weapons everywhere. This review has found that, in fact, the total number of guns that are alleged to be in circulation is not, and cannot be convincingly shown that it is 2.3 million actual guns. In fact, this figure came out of loose projections from a study which may not relate to reality of gun ownership in Ghana. Part of the reasons why that figure is often cited is the way the national media made noise about it, without subjecting the entire study to a review. But the 2.3 million figure does not relate to reality, because at best, the actual figure of Small Arms in Ghana is definitively unknown.
It is recommended that the sales points of guns should be the domain of private enterprise, and should not be shrouded in secrecy. That, the Police's role in ensuring the right to bear arms subsumed in Article 3 and 4 of the 1992 Constitution, should be limited to background investigation to avoid conflict of interest issues in gun acquisition in Ghana. This paper is intended to inform policy and bring sanity to the way data on Small Arms is collected, analyzed and disseminated.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.