True story: About two years ago, I was at home in rural Connecticut. Phone rings. I pick up. It’s National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre. He introduces himself…and keeps on talking and talking. This is a robocall. He warns me that Hillary Clinton is trying to use the United Nations to take away my guns.
At the time, the State Department had just given its support for a framework agreement to guide discussions for an eventual international Arms Trade Treaty. The NRA was clearly trying to gin up controversy around a treaty that would attempt to regulate the international arms trade.
Fast forward two years. Negotiators are now in their second week of month long negotiations to put the final touches on the treaty and, and forces opposed to this treaty are once again trying to spin controversy about this treaty.
Case in point: this email just landed in my inbox. It’s from Stephanie Struggs, of a group called Unite for Action.
It contains a multitude of falsehoods about the Arms Trade Treaty. These are not just disagreements about interpretation, but outright empirically demonstrable falsehoods. Here are just a few of the falsehoods spread in this email:
URGENT!
OBAMA & HILLARY TO SIGN UN GUN BAN JULY 27!
FAX THE SENATE NOW – STOP THE UN GUN GRAB
URGENT UPDATE: Dick Morris is reporting that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are scheduled to sign the 2nd Amendment killing UN GUN BAN Treaty JULY 27!
The Supremacy Clause of our Constitution says that treaties are the “law of the land” and cannot be overwritten by acts of Congress or acts of the State Legislatures. So IF the Senate ratifies the UN Arms Trade Treaty that Obama and Hillary intend to sign July 27, the UN Gun Ban will VOID THE SECOND AMENDMENT!
Not True! The Arms Trade Treaty only covers the international arms trade. The Arms Trade Treaty very specifically excludes domestic arms sales or arms transfers, which are covered by the Second Amendment. Regular gun owners in the United States will not be affected by this treaty–unless, perhaps they want to legally sell their guns overseas. In that case, there may be another form they’ll have to fill out.
The UN Arms Trade Treaty seeks to set up an international agency that will control the availability of arms and ammunition around the world. This new international body will have the authority to tell signing nations what they can and cannot sell within their own borders. In addition, the international body will have the authority to ban existing guns within countries.
Not true! Arms manufacturers will still control the availability of arms and ammo around the world. What this treaty will to do, however, is help ensure that when those arms and ammo are sold internationally they don’t end up in the hands of warlords, child soldiers or terrorists. This is the key goal of the Arms Trade Treaty: to impose some sort system to verify that the end-user of the weapons won’t use the arms to committ systematic human rights abuses.
But — and this is key — it is up to countries themselves to enforce this system. UN bureaucrats have zero enforcement power. Only countries can enforce laws within their borders. The “international agency” that the treaty negotiations will establish will likely consist of a small number of UN civil servants who will help countries that want help and also coordinate the implementation national laws around the world.
In other words, if the UN decides they don’t like your .45 or your 30.06, they can and will ban both the guns and the ammo!
Only if you want to sell those weapons abroad! You can even take them with you on a hunting trip to Africa. But if you want to legally transfer the title of those weapons while hunting gazelles in South Africa, then some provisions of the treaty may apply.
Also, the United States has firmly opposed including ammunition in the trade, meaning that the final agreement will probably not even mention ammunition at all.
That’s because the USA insisted at the outset that this treaty proceed by consensus, meaning that any one country (read, the USA) can torpedo any provision if it so likes.
Feel like giving the UN your personal protection weapon any time soon?
How about your hunting rifle?
Neither do I !
Let’s get busy and demand the Senate STOP THE UN GUN BAN!
UN TARGETS HANDGUNS & HUNTING RIFLES
STOP THE GUN GRAB!
Gun Control Advocates like Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton, keep insisting that the United Nation’s Small Arms Treaty won’t affect the average American – only bad guys with big scary weapons. But this treaty has nothing to do with disarming cartels and criminal regimes; rather it is about disarming the citizens of the freest country in the world – America.
This is demonstrably false! In fact, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made American participation in this treaty process contingent on the treaty only dealing with international arms sales and specifically excluding domestic arms sales. How do I know this? At the behest of the USA, the UN General Assembly included this clause in the resolution authorizing the treaty negotiations:
“the exclusive right of States to regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership, including through constitutional protections on private ownership.”
The fact is, this treaty will affect the international arms industry. Groups that want to legally sell guns and fighter jets abroad will, indeed, have to do more to make sure that those guns and fighter jets don’t end up in the wrong hands. But your everyday average gun-owning American will not have any interaction with this treaty.
The United Nation’s and their globalist supporters hate guns…ALL GUNS. Your hunting rifle. My personal protection weapon. Don’t believe it? Take a good look at the statue that graces the United Nations plaza – a .38 with the barrel tied in a knot.
That statue does exist! But I’ve always seen the sculpture as more a commentary on the idealistic goals of the UN to reduce the frequency of war. However, I get how a gun advocate might see that statue as evidence of the true aims of the UN.
We’ve finally found a legitimate point if disagreement!
Source: Mark Leon Goldberg