A Deputy Director at the National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons has advised people against obtaining personal guns under the guise of self-protection.

According to Mr Gyebi Asante, the Director in charge of Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the weapons do not offer the level of self-protection people assume it does.

Speaking on The Probe on JoyNews he said that “it (guns) has some psychological effect on you and so the least thing, your mind goes to the weapon.”

Thus, even when gun owner’s life is not threatened in some situations, they either tend to pull out their guns which could have serious repercussions, Mr Asante said on Sunday.

He recalled "there was a video in circulation (last year), they had accosted this suspected trafficker, whom they suspected of trying to traffic a little girl. They were beating him, and I saw this gentleman holding his pump action gun among the people.”

Mr Asante told show the host Emefa Apawu that “The suspect had held the gun and they were struggling over the gun. You can imagine what could happen accidentally. He thought that ‘I have a gun so in a situation like this, I need to go and bring it’. It doesn't help when everybody wants to own a weapon.”

He stated that in places in the country where people have guns, they bring them out any time there is a score to settle or an altercation. This, he said, creates a ripple effect where the people or victims also want to exact revenge using their guns.

Mr Asante said that his outfit is working to ensure Ghana does not become a country with a gun control problem.

“We have gotten to a situation where people are even just having a normal celebration and people want to fire weapons but then they accidentally kill somebody. This is something that we should all be concerned about.”

“We are trying to prevent the situation where Ghana gets to a point where everybody is pulling guns because we have some scores to settle. That is not the way to go. At least let us learn from other countries around us, did the gun bring any solution? It did not.”