Freedom Line Blog

Even though the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty negotiations broke down in July, gun control advocates are already promoting a new vehicle to infringe on civilian ownership of firearms.

The new document being discussed at U.N. headquarters is called a “Programme of Action to Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects” (or PoA for short).

As Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation reports, so far the PoA isn’t doing much better than the ATT:

The normal approach is to try to walk before you run. At the U.N., though, the response to the PoA’s inability to walk is to recommend running. IANSA wants the PoA to expand to cover ammunition. Parker wants a PoA that would provide a broader framework for the ATT. And McLay believes it should consider further “normative development”—i.e., in future years it should discuss “the issues of civilian possession.” Indeed, on Tuesday at the review conference, IANSA acknowledged that the PoA has served as the basis for “gun control” in many nations and encouraged others to follow along.

IANSA stands for The International Action Network on Small Arms, and as Bromund notes, it is “the leading small-arms-control NGO…”

For some reason, the United States is still involved in negotiations with groups like IANSA.

It’s not often that regulators are so transparent about their ultimate goals.  With the IANSA on record as using the PoA as a basis for gun control, it’s past time for conservatives in Congress to demand that the U.S. pull out of negotiations immediately.  Safeguarding the Second Amendment requires nothing less.

Last week my column discussed the disastrous legal consequences likely to emerge from the ongoing negotiations to create the Arms Transfer Treaty at the United Nations.

Fox News reports that with the conference coming to a close, a draft text has been released that has everyone not working for a dictatorial regime hopping mad:

While critics say U.S. gun owners and interests would be left exposed by the draft, it has drawn criticism on other fronts. Activists on the political left say it is a gift to illicit gunrunners around the world, and the only group that seems to like it is the rogue states leading talks, say critics.

“The talks … are now being dominated by skeptical governments including Iran, Syria and Cuba, intent on having a weak treaty, or no treaty at all,” Control Arms, a global movement that says illicit gunrunning is fueling conflict, poverty and serious human rights violations worldwide, said in a statement. Other activists named North Korea, Egypt and Algeria as additional spoilers of the UN’s stated aims for the treaty: to keep conventional weapons out of the hands of rogue regimes, terrorists and criminals.

Heritage expert Ted Bromund says it’s no surprise why the draft text of the ATT treaty is benefiting bad actors while stymieing liberals’ good intentions:

Any conceivable ATT, simply because it is being negotiated through the U.N., will be based on recognizing that all members of the U.N. are equal and sovereign states and thus have equal rights. The inevitable result of this, in the context of the ATT, will be a treaty stating that Iran and Venezuela have the same rights to buy, sell, and transfer weapons as do the U.S. and Japan. The U.N. already contains far too many dictatorships; negotiating a treaty that enshrines their equality of status in the realm of arms transfers is inherently a bad and dangerous idea.

As I noted in my column, the push for the ATT at the UN arose because gun control groups could not get legislation they favored passed in the United States Congress.  But instead of getting the hint that the political marketplace was unreceptive to their ideas, gun controllers threw in their lot with a body that treats every government the same, even those willing to turn a gun control treaty into a mechanism that oppresses citizens at home and abroad.

It will be a form of perverse justice that when the ATT becomes an international law protecting Iran and Venezuela’s ability to kill their own people and arm other dictatorships like Syria that the constituency most responsible for enshrining those rights will be gun control groups.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CDT to 6:00 p.m. CDT (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her radio show, “Your Turn: Meeting Nonsense with Commonsense.”  Today’s guest lineup includes:

4:00 (CDT)/5:00 pm (EDT):  Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner:  State Voter Rolls;

4:15 (CDT)5:15 (EDT): Jessica Zuckerman, Research Associate at The Heritage Foundation:  Security at the 2012 Olympic Games;

4:30 (CDT)/5:30 pm (EDT): Marc Scribner, Land-Use and Transportation Policy Analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:  TSA and Full-Body Scanners;

5:00 (CDT)/6:00 pm (EDT):  Ted Bromund, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation:  UN Arms Trade Treaty and the Second Amendment; and

5:30 (CDT)/6:30 pm (EDT):  Pete Sepp, Executive Vice President at the National Taxpayers Union:  Post Office on Brink of Fiscal Disaster.

Listen live on the Internet here.   Call in to share your comments or ask questions of today’s guests at (850) 623-1330.