President Trump made good on one more campaign promise last week when he ordered the “unsigning” of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (UNATT).
Although Trump first announced his intention to end this treaty at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting back in April, the action didn’t formally get completed until this past week. Trump’s “unsigning” of it effectively withdraws the United States from the international gun-control agreement signed by former Obama administration official John Kerry in 2013.
What the treaty might mean for the average gun owner in the United States was filled with far more questions than answers from the day Kerry signed it.
The NRA and other second amendment rights proponents have long warned, the UNATT had the probability of limiting US citizens right to own small arms.
The liberal biased fact check site, Snopes, responded to a query about whether or not the U.N. small arms treaty signed by the U.S. provides a “legal way around the 2nd Amendment.” After labeling that claim as false Snopes added: “A U.N. small arms treaty signed by the U.S. does not provide a “legal way around the 2nd Amendment.”
Snopes quoted the Obama Administration’s three main promises:
- The Second Amendment to the Constitution must be upheld.
- There will be no restrictions on civilian possession or trade of firearms otherwise permitted by law or protected by the U.S. Constitution.
- There will be no dilution or diminishing of sovereign control over issues involving the private acquisition, ownership, or possession of firearms, which must remain.
The NRA has focused on the treaties requirements for end use verification that is vague and “sometimes-unintelligible.” Snopes and other progressives’ support the UNATT for the same reasons they oppose strict Constitutionalist like the late Justice Antonin Scalia. It is the kind of “living document” they wrongly claim the Constitution to be.
NRA-ILA reports the arms treaty was subject to constant revision and its supporters “repeated refusals to clarify” what effect it might have on, “the possession of small arms by civilians in the United States.”
Snopes conveniently ignored that data kept on end users is a “de facto registry of law-abiding firearms owners.” Worse even, the ever-evolving UNATT could be construed as requiring sovereign nations to make such data available to foreign governments.
President Trump is ending this anti-second amendment not a moment too soon. Last year the U.N. body added a clause to its Arms Trade Treaty titled: Series 3 – Legislative and Regulatory – and its Module 3.30. Better known as “National Regulation of Civilian Access to Small Arms and Light Weapons” is according to NRA-ILA “the most alarming of all.”
According to the NRA-ILA Module 3.30: “Creates a means to almost entirely limit civilian access to small arms under the guise of International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law, and Gender-Based Violence.”
Highlights of the treaty include:
- A ban on civilian possession of “military” style arms
- Ballistic recordings
- A ban on automatic weapons or magazines with over a 10 round capacity
- Licensing and registration of all firearms
- 20-year record retention requirements of sellers
- Requiring a demonstrated need to possess a firearm, with self-defense not being one of them
As with every anti-gun initiative from the U.N., concern must never lie entirely with what is in it now, but with what it will become and how it will be used by a future U.S. administration, especially one seeking international justification for enacting a gun control agenda.
Like much that goes on at the United Nations it’s ATT financial status is worse than its convoluted anti-gun treaty. Russia, China, and India never signed on and less than 60 percent of the nation’s that signed have met their promised financial obligation.
Guatemala’s actions underscore Trump’s decision to withhold funds from that nation. The Central American country has never made a single contribution yet has argued it deserves “full protection” offered by the treaty. The irony is that Guatemala says it deserves what never existed.
One pro-treaty non-governmental organization (NGO) representative put it, “the ATT numbers are not just bad, they are abysmal.”
In August 2018, an official NRA-ILA letter warned, “Despite looming financial insolvency … the ATT will never die. Instead, it will continue to grow in both size and reach, eventually affording its proponents with enough plausibility to call for its recognition as an international norm on gun control. The time is long overdue for the United States to stop paying into the ATT and unsign it.”
President Trump just made sure that “unsigning” happened.
