There is the need for authorities mandated to tackle the proliferation of illegal small arms in the country to focus their attention on the easy way of accessing those weapons, Mr Franklin Cudjoe, president of policy think tank IMANI Ghana, has suggested.
In addition to this, unemployment, which makes people resort to the use of illegal arms to commit crime, should be dealt with immediately, he said.
His comment comes on the back of a recent action taken by the National Small Arms Commission (NSAC) to destroy some illegal arms.
The NSAC destroyed 1,300 illegal guns in the country, but warned that there were still more than 1.1 million of such firearms and light weapons that might be in wrong hands.
The guns, which were marked and broken before being set on fire, included locally made single- and double-barrelled shotguns, locally made and imported pistols, pump action guns and local mortars.
The number of illegal firearms in wrong hands means that for Ghana’s 27 million people, the ratio of illegal arms to the population is 1:25. It is estimated that there are 2.3 million weapons in civilian hands in Ghana, with only 1.2 million of that number having been registered.
The guns were destroyed as part of activities to mark the UN International Day for the destruction of weapons in Accra.
Mr Cudjoe wrote on his Facebook page on Friday, 18 November, that: “I hear 2.3 million illegal arms are in circulation in Ghana. And you thought ISIS and Al-Qaeda are from planet Mars. We must deal with the easy acquisition of small arms.
“We must strenuously deal with the push factors that draw people to violent acts such as mass unemployment. And we must deal with intra and inter party political violence lest we deploy these illegal arms to do their worst.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
