We almost can’t believe we have to keep talking about this, but apparently some gun guys haven’t quite gotten it through their heads yet: The NRA is lying to you. The UN is not going to ban firearms in the United States, not on July 4th, or ever.
No – for the bazillionth time – the United Nations is not going to take away everyone’s guns on July 4.
That’s the kind of emphasis U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, has to conjure every so often to dispel yet another rumor that the right to bear arms is under attack by the international agency.
“The past several years, I have heard concerns about some effort to go around Congress and use something like a U.N. treaty to have some restriction that cannot be passed in Congress,” he said, adding that a Supreme Court ruling is also a tactic often feared as the instrument to world gun domination.
The latest Pinky-and-The Brain-like strategy came in light of rumors that the Independence Day holiday would mark the end of gun ownership in America, a belief fueled by an online campaign and resulting in hundreds of thousands of letters pouring into the diplomatic agency.
According to a Reuters report, the U.N. has been inundated with angry letters and postcards condemning its plot to take away guns as part of a two-week meeting opening on Monday. The conference will actually look at illegal arms. The event ends July 7 and was called to review a 2001 U.N. action plan aimed at stemming the illegal global trade in small arms, which, as defined by the United Nations, ranges from pistols and grenades to mortars and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.
Why, you might ask, are NRA members under the mistaken impression that the UN planned to meet on July 4th (an official holiday at UN headquarters, by the way) to ban guns in the United States? It’s because Wayne LaPierre is trying to sell his book to them. It’s called “The Global War on Your Guns,” named after the nonexistent “war” he created to try and up NRA membership sales during the summer. The Sydney Morning Herald in Austrailia has more, including an inside look at what it’s like to be a global anti-violence group set in the sights of the NRA.
The International Action Network on Small Arms says 1000 people a day die as a result of guns. Most of these are homicides, but about a quarter are in wars. It estimates that the gun trade is worth $US4 billion ($5.4 billion) a year, of which a quarter may be illicit. Rebecca Peters, the head of the network, knows what it is like to be in the sights of the gun lobby. She is an Australian who rose to national prominence as the foremost gun-control advocate after the Port Arthur massacre.
She says the National Rifle Association campaign against the UN is “vicious, mean-spirited and deceiving of their own members”. She says that the association does not believe its own propaganda, but is using the UN conference as a fund-raising campaign.
The gun lobby, for its part, calls Ms Peters the mastermind of a global conspiracy to take guns away from Americans.
Ms Peters says that her organisation is not aimed at the US; that the US conforms to the international agreement because it does have gun laws – hundreds, even thousands of them. The problem is that it has a patchwork of laws across different states, so that the worst tend to rule, a problem that existed in Australia until the passage of national gun laws after Port Arthur.
We can’t think of anything more pathetic and petty. It’s like the NRA is attacking these larger organizations just because it really, really wants to be one of them, but instead, Wayne and friends end up looking like the little fly that won’t seem to shoo, no matter how much you swat at it.
Here’s the truth: guns may not be banned in the United States any time soon, but they will be regulated. Stronger gun laws are on the way, whether the NRA likes it or not. There’s too much violence to believe otherwise. But when the laws do come, they won’t come from some global organization setting rules inside the United States. They’ll come from Americans, who elect legislators who are willing to put laws in place that protect them instead of kowtow to the gun lobby.
Ms Peters says many countries are looking to the UN for international standards for national gun laws, but this is not on the agenda because of the insistence of the US. She points out that almost all guns start out as legal possessions but, at some point, many cross over into the illegal world.
“They move into the illegal market when there are gaps in your legal regulation.
“Over the last five years it has become clear that having strong national gun laws is essential.”
That’s what we’re working for, every day. The NRA might even be trying to move up to the UN because it wants to argue on a global level– the NRA wants to paint America as a “gun safe haven,” a place where criminals can come and get whatever firearms they want (as long as they buy them from the American gun industry). But in doing so, they’re not just endangering America. By using their clout in the United States governement to try and influence the UN in this way, they’re keeping the UN from setting a global gun standard, and they’re actively working to let the violence continue all over the world.
