Is it really as bad as some are making it out to be?
(CBS News) The first draft of a new U.N. treaty to regulate the multibillion dollar global arms trade sparked criticism Tuesday from campaigners seeking to keep illegal weapons from fighters, criminals and terrorists – and demands for changes before Friday’s deadline for action.
Peter Herby of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross said that every element in the draft has “major loopholes,” and he warned that if it’s adopted there’s “a very high risk” the treaty would continue the status quo and allow countries to just continue doing what they’re doing now or even do less.
But Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association and Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said that with a few key fixes the treaty could reduce the impact of the illicit arms trade and save lives and should be supported by the Obama administration.
At the Examiner we read
The proposed United Nations international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is out, and it is already running into trouble as many of the tenets are apparently contrary to United States law, to say nothing of the collision they might have with the Second Amendment.
Julianne Versnel-Gottlieb with the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation reports from the U.N. headquarters in New York that the head of the U.S. delegation, Thomas Countryman, was quick to point out that provisions in the proposed treaty will run into trouble with existing law.
The thing is, I’ve read through the proposed treaty multiple times, looking for hidden nuggets, and really cannot find anything to get upset over. The treaty as written focuses on international arms sales and transfers, and it is all about exports, not domestic purchases. This would not effect the domestic purchasing of arms, of which handguns, rifles, and shotguns are mentioned. It’s not going to create a huge database of gun owners which would end up in UN hands.
Of course, as the drafts change, that could still happen, but right now it looks simply like a way to eliminate the sale of arms to crazy regimes, terrorists, people bent on genocide, etc, not the reduction of sales for legitimate purposes.
PS: If the Obama regime had been following these same rules as laid out in the Treaty, they would be in big trouble vis a vis Fast and Furious, as the treaty would have made that type of arms transfer illegal.
