NEW YORK — On March 22, the president of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) conference, Peter Woolcott, distributed his latest draft of the proposed treaty, known as “President’s Non-Paper.”
From the opening paragraphs of that document, the UN begins its assault on the Second Amendment.
For example, take this statement from what used to be called the Preamble: Trade in weapons is to be refused to “unauthorized end use, including to individuals and groups who would commit terrorist acts.”
Curiously, not a single one of those very broad and expansive terms is defined in the document. One very important question left unanswered is who, precisely, will decide who is an “authorized” end user?
Furthermore, what qualifies a gun owner as a terrorist and what sort of act will be deemed an act of terrorism? There again, the bigger question is, who has the power to answer these questions?
Although these terms are vague, what is crystal clear is that the Constitution will not be the arbiter of the scope of government’s power to infringe on the natural rights of Americans, including the right to keep and bear arms.
Another troubling statement is found in one of the “principles” set out in this latest draft of the ATT. The declaration in question provides for the possession of weapons for “legitimate self-defence [sic] and peacekeeping and peace support.”
In other words, the UN wants to rid the world of the “scourge of war,” unless it’s their war. Of course, when they deploy weapons and troops into an otherwise sovereign nation, they don’t call it war, they call it “peacekeeping.”
Which brings up another point. For years now, hundreds of people have spent countless amounts of time, talent, and treasure trying to hammer out a disarmament treaty. Only, the genuine aim is not disarmament.
Read the fine print. The UN doesn’t want to seize arms from government, but from “non-state actors.” Read: you and me.
As with their fellow travelers on Capitol Hill, the internationalists at Turtle Bay want to consolidate power — in this case, the power over weapons and warfare.
No one who can read English could fail to recognize that plainly written in the ATT and the working drafts produced so far at the conference are provisions providing for the continuing sale, transfer, and production of arms and ammunition, so long as the buyer, seller, or maker is an approved government (or, “state party” in the parlance of the UN).
Once the civilians (“non-state actors”) have been disarmed, then the developing UN global government — with the national governments or state parties serving as administrative units — will emerge and enforce its will without fear of resistance.
Those who fear the march of blue-helmeted UN “peacekeepers” are looking beyond the mark. The oligarchs at the UN will not need to rely on its own military alone, for after the civilian population of each member nation has been disarmed, then the domestic armed forces will be able to carry out the international edicts in a much more efficient manner.
This scenario illuminates the reason why it is so crucial for Americans not only to resist the consolidation of power in Washington and the UN, but to oppose just as doggedly the assimilation of local law enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security.
Among the various provisions in the ATT that will assist the creation of the UN monopoly on all weapons of war, none has been more discussed than the inclusion of ammunition and the requirement of the creation of national lists of gun makers, sellers, importers, exporters, and owners.
Delegations from several countries participating in the conference have called for expansion of the provisions governing the regulation of ammunition in the current draft proposal of the treaty. France, Canada, Brazil, and Germany among many others have addressed the plenary sessions of the conference, demanding that ammunition be regulated in equal measure to weapons.
Non-governmental organizations are singing in the ammo control chorus. Control Arms, a campaign jointly run by Amnesty International, IANSA [International Action Network on Small Arms], and Oxfam International, passed out a glossy flyer proclaiming “small arms ammunition is the fuel that keeps many of the world’s conflicts raging.”
At a side event on the topic held earlier this week co-sponsored by the government of Mexico and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), several speakers presented their best cases for granting the UN control over bullets as well as guns.
The hour-long meeting featured testimony from PRIO, the permanent mission of Mexico to the UN, the Spanish foreign affairs ministry, and Norwegian Church Aid. Each of them echoed the claim made by PRIO in a paper given to each of those in attendance that “controls over transfers of ammunition offer a greater opportunity to prevent atrocities compared to control over weapons.”
“Without bullets, a gun is not much more than a baseball bat,” said Hilde Wallacher of Norwegian Church Aid.
And that is the ultimate aim. The UN will have you left defenseless against itself and its “state party” enforcers. If eradicating private ownership of firearms proves too difficult, then they will prevent purchase of ammunition, rendering your weapons useless to defend yourself, your family, or your home from whatever atrocity is imposed upon you by your global overlords.
Near the end of the meeting, the ambassador at large for international affairs from Spain suggested that in order to accomplish the aim of the anti-ammo agenda, someone would need to develop a technology that would prevent reloading, the reuse of spent cartridges.
When asked during an interview with The New American after the conclusion of the presentation how reloading could be controlled, Ambassador Carlos Sanchez de Boado suggested implanting some sort of device in the cartridge that would cause it to self-destruct after being fired the first time.
Although this scheme of Sanchez sounds far-fetched, other suggestions for accelerating the internationalists’ control over guns and ammo are closer to becoming reality. The first significant step is the mandate that state parties begin compiling a list of all people inside their respective borders who own, sell, trade, or manufacture weapons and ammunition.
Article 11 of conference president Peter Woolcott’s latest draft proposal of the ATT requires state parties to “maintain national records” of the small arms located within their national borders.
Section 3 of Article 11 sets out the data these registries should contain. “Each state party is encouraged to include in those records the quantity, value, model/type” of small arms owned in the nation, as well as the name of the “end user.”
This list will be kept for 10 years, according to another section of Article 11.
The prospect of such a registration being carried out in the United States should offend every American who believes that the right to keep and bear arms is crucial to the defense of all other rights, and that the forced disclosure to the federal government (or any local government acting under the authority of the federal government) of the amount and type of weapons one owns is the first step toward banning of personal ownership of firearms.
As The New American reported at the opening of the ATT conference, in 1997 the United Kingdom banned all private ownership of handguns. The disarmament began with the creation of a mandatory registry of pistol owners. Within a year, no Briton was allowed to own a handgun.
The Police Firearms Licensing Office then was sent out to track down all gun owners who failed to comply with the forced forfeit of handguns. Once these holdouts were identified, they were informed that they were in violation of the Firearms Act and that they faced prison sentences if they continued flouting Her Majesty’s laws.
Should Article 11 find its way into the final version of the arms trade treaty and should the United States join as a signatory to that treaty, the compiling of our own mandatory “national list” will not be far behind.
As the foregoing report from the UN Arms Trade Treaty conference confirms, despite all their denials, the globalists intend to repeal by treaty the Second Amendment.
They intend to leave all civilians powerless to resist the growth of global government.
They intend to consolidate control over all weapons into the hands of the UN and its “state party” administrative units.
They intend to use agencies of national governments to compile a list of all gun owners, keep that list for at least 10 years, and then ultimately (if the UK is any example) use that list to enforce the absolute prohibition of private gun ownership first through threat of imprisonment, then through forcible seizure.
They intend to render useless any weapon remaining in the hands of citizens through the regulation of the manufacture, sale, and trade of ammunition.
They even intend to prevent reloading through the development of technology that will destroy cartridges after their first use.
Finally, they intend to replace the Constitution with the UN Charter and to replace God with global government, as the source of all rights.
And, when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms (or ammunition), the emerging UN global government giveth — and unless Americans awake to the seriousness of the situation, the global government will soon taketh away that most critical right.
Photo at top, from UN, shows twisted gun statue at UN headquarters
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and is currently on assignment in New York to cover the Arms Trade Treaty conference. He can be reached at [email protected].
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