July 16, 2001
UN Plans for Global Gun Control
A UN conference on small arms trading began last week in New York, with the goal of creating global standards for the manufacture, sale, export, and possession of guns. While UN spokesmen claim that any proposals arising from the conference will not be legally binding, the organization's own website details an earlier conference in Vienna (March 2001) where delegates agreed to a "legally binding protocol against the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms" (italics added). Furthermore, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been outspoken in advocating global gun laws, even proposing that small arms be supplied to governments only, and not individuals (as though governments use weapons wisely!). So it's obvious that the UN ultimately seeks to impose global gun control on individuals everywhere, despite any benign rhetoric. Clearly, every American who cares about the 2nd Amendment and the steady erosion of gun rights should be very concerned by this latest UN outrage.
The gun control conference merely represents the newest UN threat to our national sovereignty. The Constitution clearly requires Congress to enact U.S. domestic laws. No treaty or international agreement can transfer this legislative power from Congress to UN bureaucrats, and the 2nd Amendment plainly prohibits restrictions on private gun ownership by U.S. citizens. Yet the trend toward unconstitutional international laws already is firmly established. The UN wants to generate the same acceptance for global gun laws that it has established for global environmental and labor laws. As the global government trend intensifies, the conflicts between internationalism and sovereign constitutional government will only increase. The UN gun control conference provides Congress and the American people with an opportunity to affirm the supremacy of the Constitution and the 2nd Amendment over the dictates of global gun-grabbers.
The role of small arms in defending against aggression should not be overlooked. Gun control proponents like to characterize light weapons as ineffective in wartime, but history proves they are critical to the self-defense of nations. For example, badly outnumbered and outgunned Afghan rebels succeeded in creating havoc for the massive invading Soviet army using only light rifles and even handguns. By contrast, Jewish civilians in Germany who had been stripped of all weapons were unable to mount any resistance to Hitler's terror. UN gun control advocates ignore history when they attempt to link guns only with crime, and never with heroic resistance to tyranny.
The simple truth is that the UN is not concerned with our Constitution or our system of government. It is concerned only with expanding its power. It's hardly surprising that global government planners seek to impose global gun control, because disarmed nations will be that much easier to rule. Remember, the UN has much more power today than anyone could have imagined 50 years ago. So while it may seem far-fetched today that the UN could ever force U.S. citizens to turn over their arms, the current gun control conference could be planting the seed for such tyranny in decades to come. UN supporters like to ridicule the notion that the UN represents the beginning of one-world government, but what other label can be applied to an organization that seeks global laws, global courts, centralized legislative power, and a worldwide army?