June 4, 2001
By Tom DeWeese
On Thursday, May 31st, the United Nations General Assembly approved a
gun control treaty that calls on all nations to work together "to
prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking
in firearms, their parts and components, and ammunition."
The public face of the treaty is the lie that it is supposed to make it
easier to crack down on illegal gun trafficking by helping authorities
trace the global movement of all new weapons. The treaty must be signed
and ratified by at least forty countries before it becomes international
law. The signing period runs from July 1 through Dec. 12, 2002.
The treaty would require that all new firearms be marked with a serial
number
and the place of manufacture. Nations would have to set up
import-export licensing procedures and be required to keep records on all
guns, parts, and ammunition made within their borders for ten years. The
small print of this treaty no doubt contains a raft of other restrictions
and requirements that will have the effect of disarming ordinary citizens
everywhere. The result will be that only UN forces and governments will
have guns. This is spells doom for freedom anywhere in the world.
The United States came into being because its citizens, the subjects of
the British Crown, took up arms. In 1775, Patrick Henry said, "They
tell us that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.
But when shall we be stronger? Will it be when we are totally disarmed,
and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Three million
people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, are invincible by any force
which an enemy can send against us." He was right then and he is
right today when an estimated 80 million Americans exercise their 2nd
Amendment right to bear arms.
Patrick Henry was not alone in this belief. John Adams wrote,
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual
discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or
private self-defense." Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The strongest
reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a
last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
What did they know then that we have since forgotten?
This new, perfidious United Nations treaty is an extension of the
disarming of the citizens of Great Britain, Australia, and comparable
efforts in the nations of South Africa and Canada. The result in England
and Australia has been a steady rise in crime. While robberies rose 81
percent in England and Wales, they fell 28 percent in the United States.
While assaults increased 53 percent in England and Wales, they declined by
27 percent in the United States. Meanwhile, a flourishing black market in
illegal guns exists in England.
The UN propaganda machine is supporting this new assault on the ability
of people to arm themselves against the tyrannies of despotism with an
hour-long video titled "Armed to the Teeth: The Worldwide Plague of
Small Arms." Filled with images of bloody bodies, child soldiers and
weeping mothers, the villains of the film are not the terrorists or others
engaged in the butchery, but the firearms they use. This totally ignores
outbreaks of savagery that have involved simple farm tools and machetes.
No, this treaty aims ultimately to shut down the manufacture of small
arms and, in particular, those that are owned by the free citizens of free
societies. On April 26th, New York State's top court ruled against a
class-action suit that sought to make twenty-five gun manufacturers
responsible for six murders and a wounding. A civil society recognizes
that individuals have a right to self-defense even if some abuse it to
commit crimes.
In 1997, the United Nations, though, created yet another bureaucracy to
disarm of the world's people. Most Americans are unaware the UN operates
behind closed doors. It is the most undemocratic of the institutions that
seek global hegemony. The new anti-gun treaty will no doubt be quickly
signed by the nations still under the domination of despots or which, like
England, have given themselves over to a level of socialism that defies
even the powers of the monarchy the British curbed with the Magna Carta in
1215.
The United States of America must never sign this treaty.
