“I don’t know about you, but watching anti-American globalists plot against our Constitution makes me sick,” writes Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul (shown center).
The particular gang of globalists turning the senator’s stomach is the United Nations.
“Ever since its founding 65 years ago, the United Nations has been hell-bent on bringing the United States to its knees.”
That’s the message in an e-mail sent by the senator earlier this week to gun owners in the National Association for Gun Rights massive database of supporters.
Echoing many of the warnings this reporter has been sounding for months (including in an exclusive print article published as the cover of the May 6 issue of The New American), Senator Paul pointed to the recently approved UN Arms Trade Treaty as a clear and present danger to the right of American civilians to keep and bear arms. “Gun-grabbers around the globe believe they have it made,” Paul writes. “You see, only hours after re-election, Barack Obama immediately made a move for gun control.”
Despite being described as a “total fantasy” in the Washington Post, Paul’s characterization of the Arms Trade Treaty and the current administration’s advocacy of it is correct.
Within hours of his securing his reelection, President Obama ordered the U.S. United Nations delegation to vote in favor of a UN proposal to fast track an international gun control treaty.
Immediately the word went out that the United States was going to play ball (after having scuttled the last round of talks on the Arms Trade Treaty last July), and a new round of negotiations on the treaty was scheduled for March 18-28 at the UN headquarters in New York City.
This reporter attended that conference and the senator’s description of the true aim of these “anti-gun globalists” is right on the money.
Specifically, Paul highlights the following mandates of the Arms Trade Treaty:
CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL “unauthorized” civilian firearms (all firearms owned by the government are excluded, of course);
BAN the trade, sale and private ownership of ALL semi-automatic weapons;
Create an INTERNATIONAL gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun CONFISCATION. [Emphasis in original.]
Again, Paul (or whoever authored the e-mail sent in his name) has accurately identified significant threats to liberty in this global gun grab.
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.
Ammo doesn’t escape coverage in the treaty either. 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.”
Of course, as the e-mail points out, disarmament isn’t the true purpose of the UN’s gun control program. Under the terms of the treaty, only civilians will be stripped of their weapons and ammunition, while “state actors” (read: governments) will retain their possession of firearms of every caliber from .22s to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The e-mail contains a link to a Firearms Sovereignty Survey consisting of the following four questions:
1. Do you believe the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Second Amendment are the Supreme Law of the Land?
2. Do you believe that any attempt by the United Nations to Subvert or Supersede your Constitutional Rights must be opposed?
3. Do you oppose the International licensing requirements, International gun registry database and International ban on all private sales that will be included in the UN Gun Ban?
4. Will you vote Against any Senator who votes for the UN Gun Ban?
For Americans familiar with the Constitution, the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, and the essential role those rights play in protecting all the others given us by our Creator, this should prove to be an easy quiz.
Paul closes the electronic alert with an urgent call to action. “If we’re going to defeat the UN Gun Ban, you and I have to turn the heat up now before it’s too late!” he writes. He goes on to encourage recipients to “put [themselves] squarely on the record AGAINST the UN Gun Ban.”
Of course, this is the sort of constitutionalist position that buttresses the support the senator enjoys from the libertarian-leaning wing of the Republican Party.
His offering of bills calling for the audit of the Federal Reserve serves to cement that base, as well.
A recent comment regarding his opinion of the legalization of marijuana, however, has invoked the wrath of rabid libertarians who might otherwise be behind the senator’s rumored run for the White House.
The Los Angeles Times reported that during a press conference held before a Lincoln Day dinner in Iowa (more grist for the 2016 presidential rumor mill), Paul said that he had not “come out in favor of legalizing drugs.” He continued, saying that in his opinion, marijuana “isn’t a harmless drug.” He did say that he opposes people being “locked up for five years” for possession.
A reporter at the Iowa meeting pointed out that such a position was inconsistent with that held by his famous father, former presidential candidate and libertarian icon Ron Paul.
Given the frays into which Senator Paul has ridden, it is about time that people judge him based on his own merits and stop balancing him against his father in some scale of libertarian legitimacy.
No matter how many 13-hour filibusters he mounts or how many globalist threats he denounces, there will always be platoons in the Ron Paul army that are on the verge of not only deserting the Rand Paul camp, but of trying him for treason.
One unapproved comment, one word of perceived partisanship, one hint of straying from the Ron Paul party line, and this group charges Senator Paul with neocon sympathies and calls for his head on a silver charger.
Perhaps this latest attempt to reach out to gun owners will serve to assuage some of the fears of his father’s faithful. Regardless, Rand Paul’s presidential aspirations — if indeed he still has them come campaign time — will be best served by remaining true to himself and to the Constitution.
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 can be reached at: [email protected]