The UN Challenge to the Second Amendment

[Tigermike 3,035]

Do they have an agenda that they are hiding?

The UN Challenge to the Second Amendment

By Joseph Klein

June 26, 2006

As our Independence Day celebration approaches, the United Nations is holding a global conference in New York, starting on June 26th and lasting through July 7th, whose real agenda is to begin a backdoor process of interference with our constitutionally protected right to individually bear arms.  The UN denies this, of course.  It says that the only purpose of the conference is to review progress made in the implementation of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects that was adopted in 2001.  Faced with over 100,000 letters of protest about the review conference from American citizens concerned about holding on to their freedoms, the conference chairman - Prasad Kariyawasam, Sri Lanka's U.N. ambassador – said that this year’s review conference will deal only with illegal arms and "does not in any way address legal possession."  The review conference’s website says that “it is not the wish of nations attending the Conference to discuss outlawing the legal manufacture or trade of these weapons, nor their legal ownership.” (emphasis in the original).   

The review conference’s backers blame the National Rifle Association, whose executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, came out recently with a book entitled "The Global War on Your Guns", for inflaming passions by distorting what the review conference is intended to accomplish.  Unfortunately for American citizens, however, the NRA is right.  The United Nations and its well-heeled backers are playing word games to cover their true intentions, as they always do.  This is the typical ‘stealth’ strategy that I discuss at length in my book, “Global Deception.”  Here we find Chairman Kariyawasam, and the gun prohibitionist crowd who are pulling the strings for the review conference from behind the scenes, caught in a web of deception of their own making.

In his so-called “non-paper for informal consultation purposes” dated  May 18, 2006 (yes folks, only the United Nations can call a document of 10 pages of recommendations a ‘non-paper’), Chairman Kariyawasam recommended as one concrete measure that “States that have not already done so” should “adopt adequate laws, regulations and administrative procedures to regulate the possession of small arms and light weapons.” This ‘non-paper’ is intended to serve as the basis for an eventual ‘Outcome Document’ approved by the review committee.  The Outcome Document, in turn, will no doubt be characterized as the UN’s official implementing interpretation of the Programme of Action.  Note that the reference to the regulation of the possession of small arms had been proposed and rejected when the Programme of Action itself was adopted in 2001, but its backers are seeking to restore the idea through the back door of the review conference’s Outcome Document. 

Predictably, the anti-gun possession fanatic Rebecca Peters, who is Director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) - a network of more than 700 non-governmental organizations working in 100 countries against the individual’s right to bear arms – has seized on this opening.  IANSA is the official coordinator of non-governmental organizations’ involvement in the UN small arms process.  Its sources of funding include the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  IANSA is already guaranteed to have a seat at the table, but it is pressing for a fuller partnership with the member state delegations in the review conference’s deliberations. 

In her response to Chairman Kariyawasam’s ‘non-paper’, Peters wrote that IANSA welcomed “the reference to regulating the possession of small arms and light weapons” but urged that it be expanded.  She also raised the gun prohibition specter explicitly, recommending the outright prohibition of semi-automatic and automatic rifles and declaring that “(M)any States already prohibit the civilian possession of light weapons, and this should be recognised in the paragraph devoted to light weapons control.” 

Peters knows that the United States will block any legally binding treaty that contains a reference to regulation of possession of small arms.  However, she is doing all that she can to get a UN-sponsored international norm against individual gun possession on the record somehow – what IANSA in the past has referred to as “norms of non-possession.”  She claims that many member states are calling for the review conference's Outcome Document to recognize the critical importance of national gun laws and to suggest guidelines or standards for such laws.  Indeed, IANSA has the backing of an inter-governmental organization known as The Parliamentary Forum on Small Arms and Light Weapons which, according to its website, was created to serve as an international platform for parliamentarians interested in small arms related work, to contribute to the advancement of the small arms agenda, and “to provide space for parliamentarians and civil society to meet and join forces”.  The Parliamentary Forum is in complete synch with Rebecca Peters’ IANSA agenda.  It proposed a ‘Model Parliamentary Resolution on Small Arms and Light Weapons’ that resolved to “strongly recommend that governments prohibit the civilian possession and use of all light weapons and automatic and semi-automatic rifles and machine guns.”

Peters’ strategy, with the help of the chairman of the UN review conference and the Parliamentary Forum, is to enshrine international norms against civilian gun possession in an interpretive document that gun prohibitionists can label ‘customary international law.’  Such a document would legitimize Peters’ dogma that “gun ownership is not a right but a privilege.”  IANSA can then use the international norms in our own courts to attack the notion that an individual right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment.  They are counting on sympathetic federal judges, right up to the Supreme Court, to interpret the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections by deferring to ‘international norms’ against individual gun possession.  In short, the stealth strategy here is for IANSA to drive the UN review conference’s agenda, obtain the wording they seek on curtailing private gun possession in the review conference’s official Outcome Document that they can point to as an ‘international norm’, and then argue that this ‘interna­tional norm’ should be incorporated into our courts’ interpretation of the Second Amend­ment -- converting a constitutionally protected individual right into a government-bestowed privilege.

Ironically, IANSA is headquartered in London.  One of its UK-based member organizations called International Alert showed no compunction at all in boldly declaring that “the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee individuals the right to possess or carry guns.”  Apparently some British folks have forgotten from whom we won our freedom -and why we sought it in the first place.  We should as a nation celebrate our Declaration of Independence by telling the gun prohibitionists who are assembling in New York from all over the world during our Independence Day holiday to either stay out of our business or stay out of our country.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadA...le.asp?ID=23088

[Captain Liger 0]

All I have to say is it will be a violent, bloody day the day someone tries to take my firearms away from me.

[quietfan 233]

Well, of course they want all the guns...can't have anyone taking pot shots at the black helicopters when the "new world order" makes its move.

[GoAU 1,600]

Surely the UN can find something more important to address...

I have no use for an orgaization like the UN - completely useless.

[CCTAU 3,327]

Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, a UN resolution adopted by the Senate could override the constitution when it comes to the second amendment. That is just how our government works. That's why it remains important to always keep pro second amendment officials in office. It has been proven throughout the world that crime goes up when individual right to bear arms is infringed upon. In every state that has adopted the right to carry laws, crime has fallen or at the least remained consistent. The lies that the antis spew have no true numerical or physical proof. They use the misinformation of the American public to their advantage. Just as in the case with the UN's ultimate goal. The UN is the largest anti American organization in the world. They are not so much afraid of our government as they are of our citizens as a whole. We are the last bastion of democracy where the citizens rule. They prefer dictators and military rulers to our way of governing. Our downfall would ultimately be their greatest accomplishment. Whether or not you like the NRA, they are just about the only organization fighting the UN over this. Support them, or get ready to have the constitution relegated to just another historical document.

[quietfan 233]

Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, a UN resolution adopted by the Senate could override the constitution when it comes to the second amendment. That is just how our government works. That's why it remains important to always keep pro second amendment officials in office.

243627[/snapback]

I've got to disagree with this on constitutional terms. Treaties, even if ratified by the Senate, do not have any legal precedence over the U.S. Constitution in this country (UN resolutions would come under the heading of "treaties" if ratified). The Senate cannot amend the Constitution on its own. The Second Amendment cannot be changed without 2/3 of Congress (or a constitutional convention) and 3/4 of the states' approval.

Now of course, it's still up to the Executive branch and the Courts to enforce the 2nd amendment. So as with all of our constitutional rights, those concerned need to be ever vigilant that our 2nd amendment rights are not slowly eroded away by neglect or abuse on the part of the government.

[CCTAU 3,327]

Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, a UN resolution adopted by the Senate could override the constitution when it comes to the second amendment. That is just how our government works. That's why it remains important to always keep pro second amendment officials in office.

243627[/snapback]

I've got to disagree with this on constitutional terms. Treaties, even if ratified by the Senate, do not have any legal precedence over the U.S. Constitution in this country (UN resolutions would come under the heading of "treaties" if ratified). The Senate cannot amend the Constitution on its own. The Second Amendment cannot be changed without 2/3 of Congress (or a constitutional convention) and 3/4 of the states' approval.

Now of course, it's still up to the Executive branch and the Courts to enforce the 2nd amendment. So as with all of our constitutional rights, those concerned need to be ever vigilant that our 2nd amendment rights are not slowly eroded away by neglect or abuse on the part of the government.

243637[/snapback]

You are ccorrect only as long as liberal judges do not decide otherwise.