The United Nations seemingly has it out for Americans' Second Amendment-guaranteed rights as it continues to promote its "Small Arms Treaty." The pact has already riled many gun owners as well as lawmakers such as Kentucky's Republican Senator Rand Paul. The most recent attack against the treaty was launched by Larry Bell of Forbes magazine, who published an editorial about it yesterday.
According to Bell, the treaty, if ratified by the U.S. Senate, would force the United States to do the following:
• Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership.
• Confiscate and destroy all "unauthorized" civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government, of course).
• Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull — one single "bang" manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp).
• Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.
In short, Bell said, the treaty would override our national sovereignty, in the process giving license to the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.
Bell contended that while the purported intent of the treaty is to combat terrorism and insurgencies, the measure will actually target "our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms."
If signed, the treaty would give the Obama administration the opportunity to impose harsher domestic gun-control laws, such as more difficult licensing requirements and other increased regulations. Bell reported that the treaty would also create an "international gun registry" and allow the confiscation and destruction of "all unauthorized civilian firearms," severely infringing upon Second Amendment rights.
It is worth noting that there is strong support for the treaty in the Obama administration, which in 2010 endorsed the UN Arms Treaty Resolution (along with 152 other nations), which establishes a 2012 conference that will draft a blueprint for enactment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already pledged to advocate for ratification with the U.S. Senate.
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton has already warned gun owners about the initiative, asserting that the UN is "trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control."
