22 Jun Is the U.N. Preparing to Ban All Guns?
The chairman of an upcoming U.N. Conference on Small Arms Review tells Reuters he has received over 100,000 letters from U.S. gun-owners protesting the U.N.’s plot to ban all guns worldwide. According to the conference chairman, however, these letters are misguided. The small arms conference,” he says, “will not negotiate any treaty to prohibit citizens of any country from possessing firearms or to interfere with the legal trade in small arms and light weapons.”
Is he right? Well, obviously it is impossible to predict with complete certainty what governments will do at a U.N. conference, but U.S. gun-owners should probably not head for the hills quite yet.
The conference programme of action (available here) is largely but not exclusively focused on the international trade of small arms, not domestic regulation. There is no indication in this programme of a plan to ban all small arms, both domestic and international. Moreover, as a political realist, there is little reason to believe 67 U.S. senators are going to join an international ban on small arms when 50 of them aren’t exactly enthusiastic about a domestic ban (and there is also that whole Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). So the panic here about this proposed treaty is mostly overblown. (The NRA is the source of most of this semi-panic among gun-owners in their very effective and scary descriptions here).
Having said all that, I think the conference does sound a little scary to gun-owners because there is no recognition in the conference materials that the right to personal self-defense by carrying small arms is considered by many people a very fundamental human right, or at least a very important interest. The conference participants would have saved themselves much grief if they had acknowledged this and expressly disclaimed any plan to restrain such interests. To be honest, such a disclaimer is now absolutely necessary if the treaty has any chance of including the U.S.
Let’s get together with the NRA and do whatever we can. There is little greater threat to fundamental human rights than the pernicious, cynical drive to reduce the ubiquity of $10 AK-47s throughout stable countries like the DRC and Somalia. We need the UN to adopt Wayne LaPierre’s humanitarian crusade to shield gun manufacturers everywhere from this totalitarian, liberal, mainstream media ideology (he makes Rafael Lemkin look like a lightweight)! After all, Charlton Heston has explained elsewhere the real cause of gun violence.
After that, we can really get into the work of obsessively snarking on any negative developments in international criminal tribunals.
Having spent time in the UN regarding nuclear weapons treaties, I will attest that the focus of the UN is NOT on legal trade of hunting rifles and shotguns.
What the UN has been trying to do (for decades) is stop the lucrative international trade of assault rifles. The vast majority of violent deaths around the world are from the international small arms trade. The goal is (as an example) to stop the US from selling 100,000 AR15’s to Adnan Kashoggi who then sells them to Somali warlords to assist them in killing residents in Darfur. The aim of the UN is NOT to take Ted Nugent’s AR15 away from him.
The NRA is merely using this as a fundraising and recruitment tool.
Lacking any enforcement arm it is totally dillutional to think the U.N. could ban private ownership of guns even IF they wanted to.
This is a slick attempt by the ass-clowns withing the NRA (not every NRA member or leader, but certainly many) to raise money and to keep the pot boiling so as to maintain the irrational rage they have fomented within the gun-owning community.
I quit the NRA several years ago when I realized it was no longer a sportsmen/gun owners group but a lobby for gun manufacturers and certain reactionary politicians
It is unfortunate that this posting perpetuates falsities being spread by the NRA. To clear it up….
1) The conference is on the ILLICIT trade of small arms and light weapons. The document, in Article 9, affirms the “the inherent right to individual or collective self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.” It is up to every country how it chooses to pursue or regulate that right within the bounds of international law.
2) The conference is exclusively focusing on the illicit INTERNATIONAL trade in small arms. States, however, must ensure their domestic laws are in order so they don’t feed this illicit trade.
3) The Second Amendment concern is COMPLETELY overblown. There is no threat to US domestic gun ownership rights.
4) The NRA may have sent 100,000 letters to the UN, but supporters of the UN Programme of Action will deliver a message from 1 million people with their message – control the illicit trade in small arms – no arms for atrocities.
For more info, check out the Control Arms Campaign, What is the PoA? and Setting the Record Straight.
Julian: Even though you say you are not trying to be alarmist about this, I think your post nontheless misconstrues the small arms treaty. This treaty has nothing to do with someone wanting to go out and hunt or defend his home; it is not about the trade in small arms in general (as your post implies), it is about the illicit trade in small arms. As for gun ownership as a human right, can you point me to any international consensus on that issue? There was a good discussion of this treaty the other night on NPR among the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State handling these matters, a think tank rep and a journalist. (Don’t have their names offhand.) The discussion didn’t turn on whether domestic gun owners should be frightened. The main concern voiced by the U.S. was that the U.S. is doing well on all “10 pillars” of the common program against illicit trade in small arms and that it wanted other countries to meet their commitments. The real tension, it was clear, was that the U.S. does not want to multilateralize the issue, preferring to use instead rhetorical commitments and, at most, a series of bilateral… Read more »
The Programme of Action is not a treaty. It is a plan for combating the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. States are politically bound by it, that is, they have agreed to take these certain steps, but there is no enforcement.
American’s think that the UN is going to take their guns, because they are so very ignorant of what is really going on in this country. Our civil rights are being eroded by the Bushists and other fascist elements that currently rule our country…..So we (some, many) are distracted by smoke and mirror stories in the press of immigration, gay marriage and now a mispreception of a panal that is trying to stop the unregulated flow of small arms across borders. Whatever. It is sad to see a country of such strength as ours lose it’s credibility and empire at the hands of such a small group of super rich, super greedy people.
Apologies for being sarcastic but this “UN conspiracy to ban individual gun ownership” is just recycled John Birch Society tripe. They’ve published dozens of articles in the New American voicing the same concern.
Forgive the reductio ad birchum, but I was surprised to see a thoughful scholar and critic of international institutions suggesting that this was even a legitimate controversy. The influx of cheap weapons is killing conflict ridden countries by helping to strangle their economic and political development.