April 5, 2013
IBD Editorials
Global Gun Control: Despite a prior Senate rebuff, President Obama will likely sign and push a treaty embraced by the world's oppressors and thugs who fear armed citizens.
The treaty's prior rejection by the Senate 53-46 in a nonbinding test vote as part of the budget debate in a body where a two-thirds vote to ratify is required would seem to doom the United Nations pact endorsed by the Obama administration.
However, the president will likely sign it and, as is his custom these days, try to enforce key provisions by stealth, executive order and by "common-sense" regulations and restrictions.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that the White House was pleased with the outcome, but "as is the case with all treaties of this nature, we will follow normal procedures to conduct a thorough review of the treaty text to determine whether to sign the treaty."
It is doubtful the president would not sign a treaty he has pushed for through his past and present secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
"The U.S. Senate is united in strong opposition to a treaty that puts us on level ground with dictatorships who abuse human rights and arm terrorists, but there is real concern that the administration feels pressured to sign a treaty that violates our constitutional rights," Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said Tuesday.
Supporters of the pact say it doesn't really threaten our Second Amendment rights, regulates only international arms trade, and won't be ratified anyway.
But there is also real concern that the Obama administration still might use it as a pretext not to sell weapons to allies like Israel and Taiwan, or to restrict the import of firearms and ammunition for individual end users.
Firearms expert and economist John R. Lott Jr. writes that, in fact, the "Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) will regulate individual gun ownership all across the world and contains provisions which are longtime favorites of domestic gun control advocates."
One provision requires participating countries to keep records of arms exports and imports, including the quantity, value, model/type, and "end users, as appropriate" for at least 10 years.
As Lott points out, under the ATT each country will be obligated to "maintain a national control list that shall include (rifles and handguns)" and "to regulate brokering taking place under its jurisdiction for conventional arms."
The new background check rules approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee include just those rules — a registration system and a record of all transfers of guns.
Coincidence? We think not.
"The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty that passed in the General Assembly today would require the United States to implement gun-control legislation as required by the treaty, which could supersede the laws our elected officials have already put into place," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who sponsored the nonbinding budget amendment 53 Senators voted for.
The Obama administration, which reversed long-standing U.S. opposition to the treaty in 2009, says the treaty does not threaten our Second Amendment rights and applies only to international arms trade, but its record of opposition to private gun ownership and its deference to international bodies and their authority gives us pause.
The U.S. is one of the few countries that has anything like a Second Amendment, our Founding Fathers enshrining the right to bear arms in our founding principles in recognition of it being the ultimate bulwark against tyrannical government.
It was guns owned by civilians that freed us from British tyranny.
The fact that a world full of tyrants, dictators, thugs and gross human rights violators wants to control small arms worldwide is hardly a surprise.
Rather than adopt the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, we should be pushing other governments to adopt our Second Amendment.
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