The United Nations General Assembly has voted for a treaty to regulate the international arms trade, giving defenders of American gun rights another thing to worry about. Worry? Why?
Because gun-rights defenders have learned that their opponents are devious and can’t be trusted. They say they respect the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms but then propose to ban the most common guns. When that idea stalls, they propose other restrictions such as a license to buy ammo or a ruinous requirement for liability insurance on gun owners, with a $10,000 fine.
They clearly want to get rid of our guns any way they can. Meanwhile, they push for more universal background checks, the records of which would be kept. This would amount to gun registration, a prerequisite to future confiscation, as in Britain and Australia.
But, you may be thinking, we have a constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms, so what can the gun banners do? The U.N. treaty, if ratified, obligates countries to establish unspecified controls on guns and ammo to make sure none are illegally traded. And under our Constitution, treaties are the law of the land. Knowing the track record of gun-rights opponents, it’s no big leap to expect them to try to use that treaty to sidestep the Second Amendment and take our guns away. (hh)
