About that UN small arms treaty

There's a bunch of folks who fear the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty now being crafted in New York could have chilling impact on our Second Amendment rights.

And while language in the treaty may not go so far as banning private possession of arms, there appear to be some worrisome proposals regarding what should be put in the treaty.

For example, Egypt's representative want arms makers and their warehouses to receive international monitoring, according to a UN news release:

All efforts should be made to bring production and stockpiles in major producing States under international scrutiny, as international accountability was the only guarantee against abuse of the existing imbalance between major arms producers and the rest of the world.

Choking off ammunition supplies is another priority of treaty advocates:

Arguing that position, the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that ammunition were the fuel of weapons-related violence.  To be truly effective, therefore, the treaty must apply the same criteria to ammunition transfers that it did to weapons transfers, she said, explaining that there were already massive numbers of weapons in circulation, but that their impact depended on a constant supply of ammunition. 

Similarly, Namibia’s representative said that since it was ammunition that made arms lethal, the treaty should be applicable to the full range of conventional arms and ammunition.

The Obama administration has publicly put a list of conditions on signing the treaty that it says will protect the arms-bearing rights of Americans. And left leaning media are fond of painting conservatives as paranoid on treaty issues. But I'd argue, even if all these conditions are apparently met, do they really offer protections?

We learned a lot from watching the drafting, passage, and then seeing the Supreme Court uphold Obamacare. We've seen what the Obama administration tells us and what it delivers can be complete opposites. We've also seen the Supreme Court is willing to go to great lengths to uphold the Constitutionality of a tax that was never written into law. We can only guess how the court might interpret something like the pending arms treaty it it were to be ratified.

Despite assurances from the Obama administration, there appears to be plenty of potential for danger coming down the pike in this pending arms treaty. There's also potential the Obama administration might try to push through ratification under a lame duck senate late this year. That's exactly the strategy they used to get passage of the New START treaty just days before Christmas 2010.

It's time to put your senator's on notice this Arms Trade Treaty is a bad idea. Urge them to vote no.


Other resources on the issue from:

The Heritage Foundation
The NRA
Investor's Business Daily