Posts Tagged ‘Arms Trade Treaty’

UN GUN CONTROL; It’s back, we told you it would be. Gun Owners of America fights back.

October 10, 2013
Senator Moran Circulates Letter to Repudiate
the UN Small Arms Treaty

“[GOA’s Larry] Pratt also contends that the U.N. has a terrible track record in protecting human life. He said the horrors in Rwanda are a perfect example of why the U.N. has no business deciding who should and should not have access to guns.” — WorldNetDaily, June 2013

When you’re dealing with an adversary who hates the 2nd Amendment as much as Barack Obama, you have to fight attacks coming from several different directions.

We know we’ve thrown a lot at you lately. But there’s one other issue we’d like to bring to your attention.

As you know, the Obama administration recently signed the virulently anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).

Although purporting to regulate international trade in arms, the treaty empowers anti-gun administrations (such as Barack Obama’s) to institute internal gun control, including gun bans, gun registration, and more.  In fact, the drafters of the treaty made no secret of their goal of imposing measures such as microstamping on countries like the United States.

GOA’s legislative counsel has done a word-by-word analysis of the treaty, which can be seen here.  If left unchecked, the treaty language will give rise a wide ranging series of gun control restrictions, as mentioned above.

Plus, it is entirely possible that, under the Supreme Court cases of Missouri v. Holland and Reid v. Covert, Obama could implement these restrictions without further legislation.  After all, we’ve already seen the President do an end-around Congress by issuing over 20 executive actions this year.

Gun owners will rightfully counter that the UN — or the Congress or President for that matter — has NO AUTHORITY to impose any of these gun restrictions upon us.  And those gun owners would be absolutely correct!

But if the President begins illegally implementing the UN treaty “by executive fiat” — just as he has done through other executive actions — then good people will go to jail for resisting these efforts and will have to defend their rights in court for simply exercising rights that were given to them by God.

This is why we have to raise a holy fuss right now, and thankfully, there are efforts underway in the Senate to do just that.

Earlier this year, with our support, an amendment offered by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to defund the ATT passed the Senate by a vote of 53-46. But that vote never became law.

Now, Senator Moran (R-KS) is circulating a letter calling upon the administration to withdraw its support of the treaty. A copy of that letter can be seen here.

The Moran letter raises six problems with the treaty that should be alarming, even to Senators who are not strongly pro-gun. These include the fact that the ATT was slammed through without consensus … it’s ambiguous … and it can be amended (and made even more restrictive) by the other nations which are parties to the treaty.

ACTION:  Click here to contact your Senators. Ask them to sign the Moran letter in opposition to the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

April 5, 2013

From Anthony Martin Conservative Examiner.

 

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to another edition of Musings After Midnight. It has been very cold here in the mountains, foothills, and Piedmont region of the Carolinas. So, pull up a chair and warm yourself by the fire, and have some hot coffee.

I wish I had good news to report to you this morning, but truth is, I do not. In fact, the news is not just bad. It is dismal. But you need to know the truth. You need to be informed about what we face, and that means a sobering, grim assessment of what is ahead.

Those of you who read these pages regularly are aware that ever since Obama and the Democrats in Congress announced their all out assault on the gun rights of citizens in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, I have maintained that we are down to 30 seconds to midnight on the doomsday clock — the hour when the darkness falls on America for perhaps a thousand years.

I must now inform you that we are down to 15 seconds to midnight, and the clock is ticking. In the time since we last spoke, circumstances have changed for the worse. Frankly, I don’t give the nation any hope apart from an all out war to restore the Constitution. I wish with all my heart that it were not so. I am truly grieved by it, and my heart is very heavy.

In spite of the fact that Obama’s attempt to destroy citizens’ rights has been met with numerous roadblocks in Congress, the states, one by one, are falling into the most egregious tyranny. New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Maryland have passed laws that are clearly unconstitutional and that fly in the face of a clear, absolute declaration in our Constitution that the right of citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. One of those states is going to begin fingerprinting all citizens who purchase firearms and ammo as if they were common criminals.

These acts, these laws, are themselves criminal. The very act of attacking the freedom and liberty of the American people is a criminal act in and of itself. In the best of all possible worlds, the politicians in each of these states who voted in favor of these tyrannical laws would be sitting in jail as we speak, charged with the crime of seeking to deny citizens their Constitutional rights. They are the ones who should be treated as common criminals, the lowest of the low, little small minded tin horn fiefs who are drunk with their own power. Their actions should not be tolerated anywhere by anyone. And they should not be allowed to serve in an elected office no matter what kind of “majority vote” they get. Sometimes, especially in these modern times when imbeciles reign supreme, the majority makes decisions that are too stupid to be valid.

Our Framers stated clearly that when laws are passed that are contrary to the Constitution, those laws are not to be obeyed and the people responsible for passing them are tyrants guilty of crimes along with the people who elected them to office. We don’t have “majority rule” in America nor should we. What we have is a Constitutional Republic based on principles that even the majority cannot negate. As long as the majority adheres to those principles, then well and good. But when they discard those principles, then the majority of voters are just as criminal and tyrannical as the crooked liberty-killers they elect to office. Their decisions are to be viewed as rubbish that do not carry the weight of law or authority. And at that point, the Patriots, the real descendants of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Franklin, Adams, Henry, and Webster are obligated to defy the majority, disobey the unconstitutional laws passed by the tyrants, and if necessary forcibly remove such tyrants from office.

What does this mean exactly?

It means that I am not obligated to obey any law that directly contradicts the Constitution of the United States. I am not obligated to submit to the authority of tyrants. I do not recognize their authority. They are illegitimate, and therefore, their laws are illegitimate. And if you as a citizen support and enable the work of these tyrants, then you are not my fellow countryman but a traitor worthy of nothing but disdain and derision…and jail. I have exactly ZERO respect for any citizen who supports robbing me of my rights.

Thus, to New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Maryland, I will say to you that you are are a shameful embarrassment to our country. You are a worthless bundle of mindless sheep being led around by a pied piper into a brave new world that neither recognizes nor affirms that human beings have certain natural unalienable rights, except for what you make up in your demented minds that have been rotted from within, from stem to lobe, by your progressive vision that is based on rank Marxism. You would deny me the right to defend myself with a firearm but turn around and claim that all human beings have a “right” to health insurance, even if you have to force me to pay for it. You are a fool. A despicable, sick, and evil fool.

The situation as it now stands is this. The states are falling into tyranny, clearly, blatantly, and arrogantly defying a direct statement in our Constitution that protects the right of all citizens to defend themselves with firearms. Barack Obama and his feminized, kept man with a rich wife, otherwise known as “Lurch” John Kerry, have approved the U.N. Small Arms Treaty that reaches down into our sovereign nation, grabs it by the throat, and requires it to regulate firearms. And in the Senate, some Republicans are standing perched and ready, like the deadly, menacing fowl sitting on powerlines ready to swoop down to slaughter their human prey, as depicted in Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” to help their Democrat counterparts pass a stringent assault on private property rights by requiring private gun sales, citizen to citizen, to be subject to background checks.

You had best be watching potential traitors such as McCain, Graham, Murkowski, Portman, Corker, Alexander, Kirk, Collins, Flake, Toomey, and Ayotte very closely on this. They will sell us out in a heartbeat if we do not keep up immense pressure on them to resist any and all gun control measures, including this sham and ruse of “universal background checks,” which is nothing but a backdoor method of registration, a national database, and eventually, confiscation.

Party affiliation is meaningless in this matter. It should be noted that in the blue states that passed unlawful restrictions on gun rights, Republicans helped the Democrat majority in those states pass these laws.

Frankly, I don’t care one whit about Party here. I have seen the truth about some things, and it ain’t pretty. In the Senate there are only six Republicans I have one ounce of respect for. I have ZERO respect for any Democrat. In the House, I can respect and affirm 40 to 50 Republicans at the most. Again, ZERO Democrats. But this means that in both the House and Senate I cannot support nor respect a large majority of the Republicans. The Democrats are a total lost cause.

Some want me to name the Republicans I can support. I can readily do that, at least in the Senate since they are so few in number. They are Cruz, Paul, Inhofe, Rubio, Vitter, and Lee. This does not mean I agree with them on everything. But at least they have some principles. Most of the others are as worthless as the Democrats.

Are you beginning to understand why I am so pessimistic about the future of the country?

The electoral process has failed us. We can no longer trust the voters to do the right thing, make sane decisions, or even be fully informed on the issues. Both Parties have failed us. And as for the White House? How can any sane American feel good about the country when two times in a row the voters went for a grandiose, dictatorial egomaniac?

And the Vice President is a village idiot who I’m surprised can remember his own name.

For a while when it became clear that Obama was not going to get most of his gun control proposals approved, I had begun to feel a bit better about the country. But now it has become all too apparent that the season of hope was to be shortlived. I see no way out of this mess short of Jefferson’s final solution. The tree of liberty from time to time must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and of tyrants, said Jefferson.

Jefferson knew something that no one else knew, or at least they would not admit that they knew — the kind of liberty they envisioned for this country is very fragile and tends to erode with time at the hands of evil men who make their way into positions of power. And thus, in order to keep those liberties from being totally annihilated, Patriots must be willing to do whatever is necessary to preserve or restore them, including going to war with fellow citizens and the tyrants they have placed in elected office.

It is now 15 seconds to that hour when this nation plunges into the most important war since the American Revolution of 1776. This will be a war to restore the Constitution that has been attacked, ignored, ridiculed, maligned, shredded, and violated by the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and at least a dozen states.

If the states continue down the path set by New York, Connecticut, Colorado, and Maryland, then they had best get set. They are starting a long, hard-fought, and bloody civil war. If Obama and Democrats in Congress, along with a few faux Republicans, continue their assault on the liberties protected by the Constitution, then their actions are tantamount to a declaration of war on the citizens. And if the Supreme Court continues to make asinine decisions such as affirming Obamacare in spite of no precedent and no rational argument in favor of it, then they, too, are asking for war.

The citizens have been arming themselves to the hilt for four years. And they are accumulating ammunition, just like Nappy at Homeland Security. You got bullets, Nappy? Well, we have them too…billions of rounds.

And let this be a warning to those who sit in the seats of power in what was once this Constitutional Republic — if you intend to open fire on us, then be fully aware that we will respond in kind. We will never start a war. But you will. We have seen people of your ilk in action before — in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Communist China, Communist Cuba, and Communist North Korea. We know what your kind will do if you feel your power is being threatened.

Do you want to be like them? Well, if you do, be fully aware that we, the people of America, are not submissive sheep like they were in those countries. We are American Patriots who will fight to the death for liberty. Fair warning.

The Liberty Sphere

Senate staffer says “gun grabbers were livid” and “DiFi was pissed”

March 25, 2013

On Friday, GOA asked you to contact your Senators and urge them to support the Lee amendment which would require Senators to muster 67 votes before adopting gun control legislation. You responded to the call, and the results were very encouraging.

The good news is that a majority of Senators supported the Lee amendment by a 50-49 vote. The bad news is, since the Senate rules requires 60 votes, the Lee amendment fell ten votes short.

Click here to see how your Senators voted on the Lee amendment.

Part of GOA’s strategy for defeating Harry Reid’s gun control bill (S. 649) has been to put Senators on record and force them to reveal where they stand on gun rights. Are they going to stand with us, or are they going to follow Obama down the road to further gun control restrictions and, therefore, require additional pressure from their constituents?

One high-level Senate staffer, commenting about the vote on the Lee amendment which took place at 4 a.m. Saturday morning, told GOA that, “The gun grabbers were livid when Senator Lee forced the vote. Mark Pryor looked nervous as hell, and DiFi [aka, Dianne Feinstein] was pissed.”

GOA’s strategy was realized twice Saturday when two key amendments were offered to the budget resolution — one amendment by Senator Lee, the other by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

Six Democrats and all but one Republican (Mark Kirk of Illinois) voted in favor of the Lee Amendment which would make S. 649 impossible to pass. Again, this is because the Lee amendment would have required anti-gun Senators to muster 67 votes (rather than a simple majority of 51 votes) before gun control could be adopted.

There were six “Red State” Democrats who voted Against the Lee amendment — Senators Mark Begich (AK), Tim Johnson (SD), Tim Kaine (VA), Mary Landrieu (LA), Harry Reid (NV) and Mark Warner (VA). Gun owners in these states should be sure to voice their displeasure with these Senators.

The other provision — an anti-UN treaty amendment offered by Sen. Inhofe — passed by a 53-46 margin.  53 senators, including eight Democrats, voted for the Inhofe amendment to kill the UN Arms Trade Treaty — a treaty that would impose gun registration and possibly even ban handguns and semi-autos, while creating a microstamping requirement that would be technologically impossible to comply with. You can see how your Senators voted on the Inhofe amendment here.

Anti-gun Mary Landrieu and Harry Reid voted wrong on both amendments — and even refused to join the eight Democrats who oppose the UN Arms Trade Treaty. This treaty could be self-executing and could, without further legislation, force the U.S. to implement gun registration and bans on semi-autos and handguns.

Gun owners in Louisiana and Nevada, you have some homework to do — Mary Landrieu and Harry Reid need to hear from you!

GOA will keep you updated on the status of Harry Reid’s gun control bill (S. 649), which will be voted on right after the Easter recess.

It would then appear that many of them are still STUCK ON STUPID!

 

The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty WILL restrict your gun rights

July 10, 2012

As GOA reported before the holiday break, the United Nations has begun discussions over finalizing language in the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) — talks that are expected to last all month.

Senator Moran has prepared a letter, which GOA has in its possession, demanding that the Obama Administration oppose any treaty that would sacrifice Americans’ gun rights — even if it means “breaking consensus” at the July conference.

“We are concerned that the Arms Trade Treaty poses dangers to rights protected under the Second Amendment,” Senator Moran says in his letter.

You have to ratify the ATT to see what’s in it

Despite the risks to our liberties, there is much double-speak taking place at the UN.  The talks in New York are reminiscent of the process that Americans saw with the passage of ObamaCare. Remember Nancy Pelosi’s famous quip: “You have to pass the [health care] bill so you can see what is in it”?

In similar fashion, the gun control details in the ATT will “not be publicly available” until the treaty has been agreed to by all the member nations.

It makes you wonder if Pelosi is being paid as a consultant at these meetings.

Make no mistake about it; UN officials are using secrecy to their advantage, claiming the treaty will not infringe upon the rights of individual gun owners.  They claim the treaty only deals with international transfers of firearms.

But Moran counters that the treaty will expand federal gun controls and lead to the registration of firearms.

The Arms Trade Treaty WILL restrict your gun rights

The Moran letter quotes a draft of the treaty, noting that it requires nations to “monitor and control” arms in transit and to prohibit the unauthorized “transfer of arms from any location” — a requirement, he says, that implies a huge “expansion of federal firearms controls that would be unacceptable on Second Amendment grounds.”

And the draft version of the treaty calls for the creation of a “U.N.-based firearms registry for all firearms that are either imported into or transit across national territory.”  Can you imagine any greater infringement of your privacy … giving UN bureaucrats the “right” to collect information on you as a gun owner?

Some 130 Representatives sent their own letter to the President on Monday reminding him that the Second Amendment guarantees the “fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms” and declaring that the U.S. has no business supporting a treaty that infringes on the Bill of Rights.

The House letter is a good first step, but getting a similar one sent from the Senate is even more important.  After all, IT’S THE SENATE — and not the House — which must ratify the ATT.

Since the treaty will be finalized later this month, it is very important for Senator Moran to get at least 34 Senators on his letter — meaning he would have enough votes to prevent the treaty’s ratification.

ACTIONPlease click here to send a message urging your Senators to sign on to the Moran letter right away.  Senator Moran’s office says that Senators have been very slow to respond to his request for more signatories.  But he needs these signatures right away!

Push for Gun Control Treaty Continues

July 18, 2011

A UN committee wrapped up a week-long series of meetings on a massive treaty that could undermine both U.S. sovereignty and the Second Amendment.  This is the third round of meetings by the so-called “preparatory committee” on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) as the UN gears up for final negotiations in 2012.

The most comprehensive treaty of its kind, the ATT would regulate weapons trade throughout the world on everything from battleships to bullets.

And as information trickles out of Turtle Bay in New York City, it is obvious the UN is getting more clever about taking the focus off of “small arms.”

With an eye cast in the direction of the U.S.—in particular, toward the U.S. Senate which must ratify the treaty—the most recent Draft Paper for the Arms Trade Treaty recognizes in its preamble “the sovereign right of States to determine any regulation of internal transfers of arms and national ownership exclusively within their territory, including through national constitutional protections on private ownership.”

That statement, taken by itself, is troubling.  Americans’ right to keep and bear arms exists whether or not it is “recognized” by some UN committee.  The right enshrined in the Second Amendment predates our own Constitution, and does not need an international stamp of approval.

But the preamble aside, the scope of the treaty is what’s most damaging.  Though negotiations will continue for another year, some provisions are certain to be contained in the final draft.

The 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.

Any suggestion that the treaty might not impact all firearms—right down to common hunting rifles—was thrown out the window after seeing the reaction to the Canadian government’s motion that hunting rifles be exempted from the treaty.

The Canadian representative caused a stir among the other delegates this week when he proposed that the treaty include the following language: “Reaffirming that small arms have certain legitimate civilian uses, including sporting, hunting, and collecting purposes.”

While Canadian gun owners were pleased with even the slightest movement by its government to protect gun rights, the proposed language is yet another indication that ALL firearms are “on the table.”

Feeble as it is, Canadian proposal was viewed as a major wrench thrown in the works, and had the anti-gunners crying foul.

Kenneth Epps is a representative with the Canadian anti-gun group known as Project Plowshares.  According to Postmedia News, Epps said Canada’s move is hampering efforts to forge a comprehensive global arms control regime.

Noting that there is little difference between a sniper rifle and a hunting rifle, Epps said, “The problem is that once you introduce exemptions, others will do the same.  It’s the thin edge of the wedge….From a humanitarian perspective, all firearms need to be controlled, and that’s the bottom line.”

Such statements are eagerly welcomed by the Obama administration.  Since it has been largely stymied in pushing gun control in Congress, U.S. negotiators will push the envelope as far as they can.

The U.S. Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, a key negotiator of the ATT, is anti-gun former Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher of California.  Tauscher said last year that her team at the State Department “will work between now and the UN Conference in 2012 to negotiate a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty.”

In 2009, newly confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reversed the position of the Bush administration (which voted against the treaty in 2008) and stated that “The United States is prepared to work hard for a strong international standard in this area.”

International standards, however, may not be the only, or even the primary, objective.  Former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, observes that, “The hidden agenda of a lot of the people who sought to negotiate a small arms treaty really had less to do with reducing dangers internationally and a lot more to do with creating a framework for gun control statutes at the national level.”

Bolton explains that pressure from the groups agitating for the treaty—groups such as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA)—is geared toward constraining the freedoms of countries that recognize gun rights.  “And specifically, and most importantly, [to] constrain the United States,” Bolton said.

Negotiators, from abroad and within the Obama administration, view arms control as  protecting human rights, rather than seeing civilian disarmament for what it is—the favorite tool of despots, dictators and tyrants to maintain power by engaging in mass murder and genocide.

And, perversely, in many instances those resisting an oppressive, genocidal regime would be held in the same light as criminals and terrorists and be legally prohibited under the ATT from purchasing weapons.

U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) makes this point in a letter he drafted to President Obama: “[T]he underlying philosophy of the Arms Trade Treaty is that transfers to and from governments are presumptively legal, while transfers to non-state actors…are, at best, problematic.”

Sen. Moran’s letter, in which he is joined by other pro-gun Senators, warned that any treaty “that seeks in any way to regulate the domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, and related items would be completely unacceptable to us.”

U.S. freedom is clearly in the sights of the ATT.  The time to take action is now, before the treaty moves into final negotiations.

ACTION: Urge your Senators to oppose any UN effort to impose restrictions on the Second Amendment, and to sign on to Sen. Moran’s letter to President Obama in opposition to the ATT.

Click here to send your Senators a prewritten message.


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