If a right requires government pre-approval and licensing before it can be exercised, is it really a right at all? Would we have a functioning First Amendment if the government licensed individuals to attend specific churches, or to have social media accounts? I don't think so, and I believe that even "shall issue" licensing regimes are an affront to the Constitution if they are required to possess or carry a firearm.
Any license that can be granted can be taken away. In most U.S states that requires some sort of cause, but when rights get turned into privileges then cause can turn into "because the State demands it."
It's a painful lesson that the gun owners of Ghana are learning, after Interior Minister Muntaka Mubarak suddenly declared that all existing firearm licenses have been suspended as of today.
The Minister for the Interior, Muntaka Mubarak, said the directive forms part of a broader reset of Ghana's weapons ownership and control system, aimed at tightening oversight, improving accountability, and strengthening national security.
Mubarak told Joy FM the suspension applies universally to all current licence holders without exception.
"Everybody in Ghana who currently holds a legitimate license to hold a gun, today, I am suspending all of it. All of it that everybody is holding."
He explained that the move will allow authorities to conduct a comprehensive audit and restructuring of the firearms control system, pointing to compliance breaches and the misuse of legally registered weapons as key concerns.
Authorities say the nationwide suspension is intended to stabilise the firearms system while investigations and reforms are carried out.
Owning a gun in Ghana hasn't been easy, at least if you want to remain in compliance with the law. I've seen some reports that there as many as 1.2 million licensed gun owners, though only about 40,000 of them renew their licenses each year. As of 2012, though, the Ghana Police Service reported just 4,494 licensed firearms in the country, and some owners may have had multiple guns. There were about 26 million residents in Ghana at that time, which means the percentage of legal gun owners is even lower in Ghana than in gun-restricted places like New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, California.
The Overseas Security Advisory Council reports that "street crime is a serious problem throughout the country and is especially acute in Accra and other large cities," with violent crimes like armed robberies "on the rise."
Criminals frequently carry weapons; the most prevalent are locally manufactured pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Reliable sources estimate that there are 1.2 million unregistered guns in Ghana. Victims of robbery should comply with perpetrator demands, as resistance may cause the situation to escalate to violence.
Africa Defense Forum also notes that Ghana has a vibrant illicit market of gun making and selling.
Experts say Ghana’s surge in deadly violence is driven by weapons traffickers flooding the country with small arms, particularly from Burkina Faso. Many of those weapons are flowing into Bawku in Upper East region where ethnic divisions have driven local conflict and violence among youth groups, according to researchers with ENACT.
Some of the trafficked weapons are among the 200,000 a year created by Ghana’s artisanal gun makers. Although it is illegal to produce weapons locally, Ghana has one of the most sophisticated craft weapons industry and trafficking networks in the sub-region. Many of the guns flow from Ghana into neighboring countries, potentially circling back later to fuel conflict within Ghana’s own borders.
If Ghana has a crime problem, it's not because of licensed gun owners. And yet, that's exactly where the Ghanian government is cracking down; subjecting licensed gun owners to mental health screenings and more vetting in the hopes of reducing the number of lawfully owned firearms and lawful gun owners.
Will that make Ghana a safer place? Not hardly. Violent criminals will continue to have access to a thriving underground market, and some folks who might otherwise have gone through the lengthy and expensive process of becoming licensed will instead decide to ignore the country's laws and arm themselves regardless.
I'd love to say that this can't happen here, even in the most gun-controlled states like California. While such a move would face an immediate (and hopefully, successful) court challenge, I think anti-gunners would love to be able to suspend all active permits-to-purchase and licenses to carry while they implement even more restrictive measures. California has already told residents who lawfully possess magazines that can hold more than ten rounds that they're subject to prosecution if they don't get rid of them or modify them to comply with state law, so telling them they can no longer carry on their Concealed Handgun Permit unless they subject themselves to another round of restrictive licensing really doesn't seem like much of a stretch.
Licensing laws invite abuses, whether it's the pay-to-play scandals that engulfed the NYPD and the Santa Clara County, California Sheriff's Department during "may issue" regimes or the use of "suitability" language to subjectively deny permits in ostensibly "shall issue" systems. Racial disparities loom large in New Jersey's "shall issue" system, while some California counties are charging more than $1,000 to simply apply for a carry permit. These abuses aren't as flagrant as Ghana suspending every active gun license in the country, but if anti-gunners ever get the opportunity to impose a national gun licensing scheme on the American people, we can't rule out something similar happening here.
