Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Kerry to Sign UN Small Arms Treaty

As my youngest is a high school senior, I had what was my last back-to-school night for parents this evening and got back late. This post will be short.


Knowing fully well that the chance having sufficient votes the US Senate to approve the UN Small Arms Treaty, Obama is having his stooge sign on to it anyway.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/24/kerry-to-sign-un-arms-treaty-despite-senators-opposition/

"Secretary of State John Kerry plans to sign a controversial U.N. treaty on arms regulation on Wednesday, a senior State Department official told Fox News -- despite warnings from lawmakers that the Senate will not ratify the agreement. 

A State official said the treaty would "reduce the risk that international transfers of conventional arms will be used to carry out the world's worst crimes," while protecting gun rights.

"The treaty builds on decades of cooperative efforts to stem the international, illegal, and illicit trade in conventional weapons that benefits terrorists and rogue agents," the official said.

U.S. lawmakers, though, have long claimed that the treaty could lead to new gun control measures. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the most vocal opponents of the treaty, sent a letter to Kerry declaring it "dead in the water," since a majority of senators has gone on record against the agreement.

"The administration is wasting precious time trying to sign away our laws to the global community and unelected U.N. bureaucrats," he wrote......."


On the surface, the UN Small Arms Treaty, as with most methods of state control over private individuals and businesses, looks like a good thing. Few would argue that the transfers of military equipment to rogue states and terror groups should continue unabated. But as we have seen with other international agreements, the treaty  has more than its share of provisions that would enable national governments to several restrict the ownership and transfer (read sales between individuals - a key freedom that the Left despises) of privately-owned firearms. It also leaves room to  clamp down on types of firearms that the Left certainly wants the People to be without. 

In a best-case scenario for the Left, the US would ban privately owned guns. The second choice would be a US that is transformed into a UK-type climate in which the approval to own a firearm itself would be an extremely difficult thing to obtain and the few types of firearms that are not prohibited would be restricted  to hunting and small-bore target guns. Handguns and semiautomatic rifles would be out of the question. What is allowed will be so restricted as to be impossible to transfer to anyone without a recorded transfer at the hands of a retail dealer - sales or gifts to family members or others who are legally allowed to own guns would become a thing of the past. By this means, what guns are privately owned would dwindle in number down to almost zero as older citizens die off. A key will be requirements that nations create registries of firearms, a nice way of saying registration - the first move of all who plan on implementing full-blown totalitarianism. 

Regulations such as those in the Small Arms Treaty provide governments with the power to enact much more stringent laws, all while assuring the People that it is not their doing but only what they are required to do by the treaty - a classic case of plausible deniability.  

There is one possibility that, even without a yes vote from the Senate, the treaty can still at some point effect Americans. I can't find it right now, and it's too late to try to find (will add tomorrow if my search is successful) but from what I understand, international law provides a fail-safe provisions that deems the treaty as binding as long as nations that have signed on have been putting the required regulations/laws into practice for a set period of time. From what I recall the number may be five years. That is, if the US enforces the treaty, it will be considered as binding on the United States - a way of forcing the treaty on us through the 'back door' and going around our Constitutional process. 

 

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