Photo courtesy of Adam Webb
Last time I checked, Americans were responsible for making our own laws. We do not invite foreign nations to have a say in how we govern ourselves within our own borders. Yet if you follow what’s been going on with the United Nations this year, you know that the USA came perilously close to having other countries dictate our gun laws. And the fight isn’t over yet.
The United Nations has been debating an arms trade treaty for nearly a decade now. Though the treaty is ostensibly focused on military arms, it has long been clear that the majority of U.N. delegates consider our personal firearms to be crying out for international regulation, as well. The focus of the treaty would be a demand that governments regulate the sale and possession of firearms worldwide — all of them, including yours and mine.
Though I believe that firearms should not be in the wrong hands, the proposed terms of this global gun control treaty would overreach wildly into regulating the sale of firearms to law-abiding citizens. In other words, the proposed treaty is a mechanism for Iran and other tyrannical powers to have a say in your gun ownership.
The George W. Bush administration wisely opposed this concept, asserting that any agreement to regulate private gun ownership would represent a threat to our Second Amendment freedoms. This proclamation was the death knell for the first U.N. gun control treaty conference more than 10 years ago.
But bad ideas at the U.N. never go away; they just fade until the political climate changes. Treaty discussions went underground for several years — until the Obama administration announced a willingness to consider a new treaty, as long as the parties operated under “consensus.”
The debate reached a fever pitch during a monthlong marathon negotiation session in July. The goal was to disgorge a treaty in time for the Obama administration to sign it before Election Day. The draft treaty was odious on its face. Among other things, it would have required the United States to “maintain records of all imports and shipments of arms,” register the identity of the “end user” of those firearms and then report the user’s information to a U.N.-based gun registry. In several drafts, the treaty would have mandated that every round of ammunition be tracked globally.
What’s really ironic here is that the United States already has the most comprehensive system in the world for regulating international arms transfers. Other nations could achieve the stated goals of the treaty process by simply emulating our protocols. But the reality is that the treaty was actually intended as a mechanism to submit our unique Second Amendment guarantees to international inspection — and condemnation.
As I have mentioned, the treaty negotiations broke down this summer, and that is a good thing. But that doesn’t mean the U.N. is giving up the fight. It’s just reducing it into smaller pieces. In fact, in late August, an umbrella organization of 23 separate U.N. agencies, known as the Coordinating Action on Small Arms, adopted the first portion of International Small Arms Control Standards. The ISACS text is made up of 33 separate modules, some 800 pages in total. And they’re just getting started.
What can we do? We can ensure that we have a president who will not support the treaty and a Senate that will not ratify it. That’s not a one-time commitment. Remember that once a treaty is enacted, it can be picked up at any time by a president and Senate. There are smaller gun control treaties that have been floating around the Senate for ratification since 1998.
What can you do? You can make sure that you and every freedom-loving American you know is registered to vote. I’m proud to serve as the honorary chairman of Trigger The Vote, the National Rifle Association‘s nonpartisan campaign to register voters who support the Second Amendment. We’ve made it easy on our website; all the tools to register are there, at http://www.TriggerTheVote.org. If you’re already registered, you probably know someone who isn’t. Share the stakes with that person, and urge him or her to join the rolls of informed voters.
Throughout my life, I’ve been committed to preserving our freedom from threats, both foreign and domestic. This proposed U.N. global gun control treaty may not be an “invasion” in the classic sense of the word, but believe me; over time, it represents the potential for encroachment of the greatest kind. Protect your rights by registering to vote today.
Gun Control is Dead For Now
Photo courtesy of Al Hikes
What do conservative news baron Rupert Murdoch, The Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and actor Jason Alexander have in common? They’re among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun control – an issue that has resurfaced in the wake of the Aurora, Colo. movie theater massacre.
But don’t hold your breath. It ain’t gonna happen. So expect the bloody cycle to continue – the shocking deaths; grieving families; the sadly familiar media coverage about the killer(s), their stunned families and the lives of victims who endured terrifying final moments; the memorial services – and the brief suspension of 24/7 partisan warfare that’s merely formalized during election year.
A Gallup poll found that only 44 percent of the public doesn’t want stricter gun control. But when did lopsided poll numbers ever stop powerful interests? California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein noted that this is an election year: “I think this is a bad time to embrace such a new subject,” she said on Fox News. “There has been no action because there is no outrage out there, people haven’t rallied forward.”
Indeed, nervous Democrats — including formerly staunchly pro-gun control President Barack Obama — aren’t making it an issue. Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney thinks existing laws are just peachy. And some GOPers absurdly insist it might have been less of a tragedy if more people in the theater had only had more guns. Meanwhile, the NRA‘s feared political and financial clout gets an extra boost from Citizens United because even more money can now be funneled to defeat candidates who don’t vote as the NRA wishes.
The battle for gun control now resembles an old Wild West gunfight. Except in this one the NRA is armed and the gun-control guy has an empty holster.
Still, there have been surprising cracks in the anti-gun-control wall.
Murdoch Tweeted: “We have to do something about gun controls. Police license okay for hunting rifle or pistol for anyone without crim or pscho record. No more.”
And would you believe it? – no one on Fox & Friends said anything snarky about their boss or called him a liberal out to destroy America’s constitution.
Next came Bill Kristol, about as GOP establishment as you can get, who declared on Fox: “People have a right to handguns and hunting rifles. I don’t think they have a right to semi-automatic, quasi-machine guns that can shoot hundred bullets at a time. And I actually think the Democrats are being foolish as they are being cowardly. I think there is more support for some moderate forms of gun control.”
But Democrats, independent voters and others calling for gun control aren’t as cushioned from counter attack as the NRA-friendly Murdoch and Kristol. My own modest website The Moderate Voice had some posts calling for tougher laws, which led to a Tweet claiming TMV “only wanted the government to have guns.” There, in a nutshell you have how the debate plays out: if you seek tougher laws they charge you’re trying to take all guns away. N-o-p-e.
After Alexander advocated tougher laws in a Tweet and was inundated with angry responses, he wrote a longer form answer that, in part, said:
“So, sorry those of you who tell me I’m an actor, or a has-been or an idiot or a commie or a liberal and that I should shut up. You can not watch my stuff, you can unfollow and you can call me all the names you like. I may even share some of them with my global audience so everyone can get a little taste of who you are. But this is not the time for reasonable people, on both sides of this issue, to be silent. We owe it to the people whose lives were ended and ruined [in Aurora] to insist on a real discussion and hopefully on some real action.”
A real discussion? That assumes being honest. Even a porcupine knows the founders didn’t write the second amendment with AR-15 assault weapons in mind. As satirist Andy Borowitz notes: “When the 2nd Amendment was written the most lethal gun available was the musket.”
A real discussion will wait a while. Future horrors, tears, and grief won’t.