June 29 marked the end of the Third Review Conference (RevCon) of the United Nations’ Programme of Action (PoA) on Small Arms and Light Weapons. Delegates at the conference, including representatives of the United States, worked on producing updates to the global gun-control agreement.
According to the text of the latest draft of the agreement, the PoA will serve as an “international instrument to enable states to identify and trace, in a timely and reliable manner” the small arms and light weapons that are the target of the scheme.
In practice, this means that the governments of member nations (including the United States) should create a massive, all-inclusive database of all parties that manufacture, own, sell, trade, or transfer arms and ammunition.
If recent history is a reliable indicator of how such data would be used, after the catalog is complete, Congress could, hypothetically, pass a law (or the president would issue an executive order) compelling “voluntary” surrender of whatever privately-owned weapons, ammo, parts, and components (including reloading equipment) the UN deems “illicit.” If, after a statutorily set window, citizens don’t turn in these now-illicit items to their local law enforcement, then officers will be sent to remind violators of their responsibility under the law to disarm.
The delegates — including those from the United States — present at the PoA planning meeting have agreed to begin developing domestic legal frameworks that will provide for the “proper management of small arms and light weapons stockpiles.”
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To assist member states in the implementation of the disarmament and stockpiling of the prohibited small weapons and light arms in the hands of anyone other than approved government entities, the PoA places the enforcement of the provisions “into the operational activities of United Nations peacekeeping missions.”
In other words, should the Congress and the president fail to begin seizing and stockpiling privately owned weapons “in a timely manner,” then the UN will deploy blue-helmeted peacekeeping troops to assist in the operation.
Regarding the implementation of the PoA at the national level, the final draft of the report of the latest RevCon lists six points to which all member states agreed to advance within their respective domestic governments. Here are those six commitments, taken directly from the document:
1.To establish or strengthen national laws, regulations and administrative procedures in support of the full and effective implementation of the Programme of Action.
2. To strengthen coordinated national approaches for the implementation of the Programme of Action, including, as appropriate, the establishment or designation of national coordination agencies or bodies involving relevant government agencies, including those responsible for law enforcement, border control and export and import licensing.
3. To promote the full participation and representation of women in mechanisms relating to the implementation of the Programme of Action and to encourage strong cooperation with civil society, parliamentarians, industry and the private sector.
4. To establish or designate a national point of contact to act as a liaison between States on matters relating to the implementation of the Programme of Action; and to share and update this information regularly; and to provide the point of contact with the necessary means to carry out its role.
5. To encourage the development and implementation of national action plans or other national policies in support of the implementation of the Programme of Action by making better use of existing information to improve the measurement of progress and to coordinate the development and implementation of such plans or policies, as appropriate, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including those from civil society and industry, with those relevant to target 16.4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to the relevant United Nations resolution on women, disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control.
6. To significantly reduce the illicit flows of small arms and light weapons, as appropriate, through illicit weapons recovery and voluntary surrender programmes.
Anyone with even the most cursory constitutional education will be able to identify several significant problems present in this list of commitments, a list to which the United States has agreed.
First, in order to legally comply with the goal of “full and effective implementation of the Programme of Action,” the Second Amendment to the Constitution would have to be repealed. That critical provision of the Bill of Rights explicitly forbids the federal government from infringing whatsoever on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Programme of Action, on the other hand, requires that member states do all they can to not only infringe on the right to keep and bear certain arms the UN doesn’t approve of, but on the right to buy, sell, and trade them (and the ammunition that makes them effectual), too.
Second, the agreement would require the repeal of the 10th Amendment, as it would place state governments, as well as state and local law enforcement, subject to federal and international agencies tasked with licensing weapons and controlling international borders. Placing the state governments and their resources at the mercy of the federal and international governing bodies would turn the Constitution upside down and would violate the anti-commandeering principle which holds that the federal government cannot coerce states into participating in federal programs.
Third, the appointment of a “liaison” between the federal government and the United Nations would be an extra-constitutional act that would result in the endowment of an unelected person with the “necessary means to carry out” the Programme of Action in the United States. One wonders how liberally the globocrats and the homegrown gun-grabbers would define the phrase “necessary means” in order to accomplish their shared goal of seizing weapons and ammunition from civilians.
Could this liaison call upon the General Assembly or the Security Council to send UN “peacekeepers” into the territory of one of the sovereign states of the American union charged with assisting law enforcement with the mandated registration and eventual seizure of all light weapons? While this seems far-fetched, is it really outside the realm of possibiliity for some future date?
Next, the Programme of Action calls for the domestic implementation of some system capable of using “existing information to improve the measurement of progress” of the full implementation fo the Programme of Action, including disarmament and the control of all sale, purchase, and trade of disapproved firearms.
How, do you imagine, would the progress of implementation be measured? By means of a compulsory national firearm registration? By means of tracking the manufacture and sale of ammunition from factory to end-user? Yes.
If you doubt it, consider this paragraph from the PoA agreement: “To take advantage of the opportunities that new technologies, when available, can offer for enhanced small arms and light weapons stockpile management and security, including through improved marking and record-keeping, and for the destruction of surplus small arms and light weapons that have been designated for destruction.”
Finally, there are many, many more patently unconstitutional provisions of the UN’s Programme of Action and the United States, in order to protect the Second Amendment, must refuse to negotiate with those who would see Americans disarmed and vulnerable to rule by the global plutocrats.
Right now, that seems unlikely though, as the “Working Paper Submitted by the United States” declares that “Implementation [of the PoA] must remain priority #1” and that “the United States continues to support full implementation of the PoA at the global, regional, and national levels.”
Perhaps Americans who oppose eventual disarmament by the UN and the participation of our government in that betrayal should contact President Trump and encourage him to get the United States out of the UN.
