Speaking about a gun control treaty being cooked up at the U.N. in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The United States is prepared to work hard for a strong international standard in this area.” That was a major change from just a year before when the Bush administration gave the treaty a big thumbs-down. Now the gun grabbers are back at the U.N. putting the finishing touches on their treaty, with tacit support from the Obama administration.
At Human Events, John Velleco writes that the U.N. deal, known as the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT),
“ … will, at the very least, require gun owner registration and microstamping of ammunition. And it will define manufacturing so broadly that any gun owner who adds so much as a scope or changes a stock on a firearm would be required to obtain a manufacturing license.
It would also likely include a ban on many semi-automatic firearms (i.e., the Clinton gun ban) and demand the mandatory destruction of surplus ammo and confiscated firearms.”
Anyone believing such laws will have a positive effect should remember that, since the end of the Clinton Gun Ban in 2003, violent crime rates have fallen 9.8% and the murder rate has fallen 12.3%.
In response to a passage in the treaty that “recognizes” countries’ rights to govern their citizens’ ownership of firearms, Velleco observes, “Americans’ right to keep and bear arms exists whether or not it is ‘recognized’ by some U.N. committee. The right enshrined in the Second Amendment predates our own Constitution, and does not need an international stamp of approval.”
Thankfully, support of two-thirds of the Senate is needed to ratify a treaty, and the proportion of current membership that is pro second amendment precludes this treaty from becoming law. That being said, shame on President Obama and Secretary Clinton for giving credence to a process that might deny Americans their constitutional rights.