There are few acts of government that contribute more to the rapid subjugation of its citizens than disarmament. Fortunately, resistance to the United Nations’ plan to do just that is growing.
Earlier this week, The New American reported on a letter to President Obama penned by a bipartisan coalition of 50 senators informing the president that the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty was dead on arrival in the Senate.
On Thursday, one of the signatories of that letter, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), shown, said that the international gun grab “violates the Second Amendment rights of Tennesseans and all Americans.”
“I am opposed to any United Nations action that undermines our Second Amendment and threatens our country’s sovereignty, and the Arms Trade Treaty that the Obama administration is considering does both,” Alexander said in a statement published on his website.
“The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty violates the Second Amendment rights of Tennesseans and all Americans by failing to protect the lawful ownership and use of firearms. Agreeing to the treaty would also threaten our nation’s sovereignty, as well as the U.S. Senate’s constitutional role of advice and consent by allowing the U.N. to amend the treaty in the future.”
Alexander’s appraisal of the agreement is accurate. The treaty, signed in September on behalf of President Obama and the United States by Secretary of State John Kerry, contains provisions that would subject U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations and would substantially infringe on the right to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment.
First, the Arms Trade Treaty grants a monopoly over all weaponry in the hands of the very entity (approved regimes) responsible for over 300 million murders in the 20th century.
Furthermore, the treaty leaves private citizens powerless to oppose future slaughters.
An irrefutable fact of armed violence unaddressed by the UN in its gun grab is that all the murders committed by all the serial killers in history don’t amount to a fraction of the brutal killings committed by “authorized state parties” using the very weapons over which they will exercise absolute control under the terms of the Arms Trade Treaty.
Article 2 of the treaty defines the scope of the treaty’s prohibitions. The right to own, buy, sell, trade, or transfer all means of armed resistance, including handguns, is denied to civilians by this section of the Arms Trade Treaty.
Article 3 places the “ammunition/munitions fired, launched or delivered by the conventional arms covered under Article 2” within the scope of the treaty’s prohibitions, as well.
Article 4 rounds out the regulations, also placing all “parts and components” of weapons within the scheme.
Perhaps the most immediate threat to the rights of gun owners in the Arms Trade Treaty is found in Article 5. Under the title of “General Implementation,” Article 5 mandates that all countries participating in the treaty “shall establish and maintain a national control system, including a national control list.”
This list should “apply the provisions of this Treaty to the broadest range of conventional arms.”
Mark it down: If the treaty is ratified by the United States or if its provisions are enforced by executive order, within months the federal government (likely under the management of the Department of Homeland Security) would begin compiling a list of who owns, buys, sells, trades, or transfers any firearm, as well as the ammunition, parts, and components of those weapons.
After creating this database, the federal government would be required under the provisions of Article 5(4) of the Arms Trade Treaty to “provide its national control list to the Secretariat, which shall make it available to other States Parties.”
That’s right. The UN treaty demands that the list of gun and ammunition owners not only be in the hands of our own government, but be sent to foreign regimes, as well. This provision would guarantee that should an American owner of a legally purchased firearm decide to emigrate, he will be on the radar of the ruling regime in his new home.
Americans are right to recognize this registry as the first step toward confiscation.
Without such a registry, it would be impossible to monitor weapons transfers effectively because governments can’t track weapons exchanges and transfers unless they know who has them to begin with.
Article 12 adds to the record-keeping requirement, mandating that the list include “the quantity, value, model/type, authorized international transfers of conventional arms,” as well as the identity of the “end users” of these items.
In very clear terms, ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty by the United States would require that the U.S. government force gun owners to add their names to the national registry. Citizens would be required to report the amount and type of all firearms and ammunition they possess.
Section 4 of Article 12 of the treaty requires that the list be kept for at least 10 years.
Finally, the agreement demands that national governments take “appropriate measures” to enforce the terms of the treaty, including civilian disarmament. If these countries can’t get this done on their own, however, Article 16 provides for UN assistance, specifically including help with the enforcement of “stockpile management, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes.”
In fact, a “voluntary trust fund” will be established to assist those countries that need help from UN peacekeepers or other regional forces to disarm their citizens.
Despite these open and hostile threats to the right to keep and bear arms, there are many who believe that the Arms Trade Treaty would become the law of the United States if the Senate were to ratify the treaty.
While that is the process that the Constitution establishes for the implementation of treaties, fundamental principles of construction and constitutional law dictate that no treaty that violates the Constitution can become the supreme law of the land.
In the case of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, there is no doubt that regardless of presidential signatures or congressional consent, this treaty cannot pass constitutional muster and therefore will never be the valid law of the land.
Unless, of course, Americans once again acquiesce to President Obama’s assumption of illegal authority and relinquish their rights and weapons regardless of the reasons they should not do so.
Finally, citizens must understand a very important nuance of Secretary Kerry’s assurance in his speech that the Arms Trade Treaty isn’t about taking away freedom, “it is about keeping weapons out of the hands of terrorists and rogue actors.”
Americans must remember that Kerry, Obama, and the UN consider gun owners to be “terrorists” and “rogue actors,” thus subject to seizure of their firearms in the name of “international peace and global security.”
For John Kerry and Barack Obama, the confiscation of weapons from civilians is an act of, as Kerry said when he signed the agreement at a press event at UN headquarters in New York, “advancing important humanitarian goals.”
Senator Alexander and 49 of his colleagues recognize it as is a giant leap toward enslavement, however.
Lawmakers and their constituents determined to thwart the president’s plan to disarm them would be wise to remember the words of George Washington, who said:
A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He is the host of The New American Review radio show that is simulcast on YouTube every Monday. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected]
