The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Ghana

Abstract

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.