US Arms Trade Treaty: UN appoints Iran to key role in negotiating away your 2nd Amendment rights

BCNews note: Iran? Are you for real? Iran, with their lifelong stellar record on human rights has been put in charge of treaty enforcement that could eventually lead to us losing our guns and right to own them? Really? Is this the same UN that the Chamber of Commerce created several years ago? I’m sitting here with my tounge hanging out wandering what in the heck is going on? Why is the UN anywhere near our border with this bull?

Then I think again and it astounds me that we still give the Chamber of Commerce so much credibility in light of their Frankenstein type creation! Did anyone, even the Chamber think that they could create such an animal with such fangs. Then I think well everything the Chamber of Commerce does somehow points right back to the United Nations as if by design, as if they were trying to take over the world and replace her with some type of alternative plan. A plan so deviant even our neighbors couldn’t blame on the Chamber!

Where does it stop? When does someone say enough is enough? When does some brave soul say the UN has no right in our country so get the hades out!

Do we hand our guns over to a foreign entity at the behest of the Chamber that is in every community in the US and seemingly and well disguised as red white and blue as apple pie? Some are saying even if our senate repels this treaty our “gun info” will still be in the hands of the UN for global monitoring! Folks, better wake up! I have been told many times by many people “by golly if they come after my guns, then I’m gonna get mad” well, they are after your guns and will be real close to getting them as soon a July 27th, 2012.

Our two Senators in Tennessee Alexander and Corker cant seem to give anyone a straight answer when asked if they are going to vote on it or not! Senators this is a no brainer! This is the gem in the crown that keeps our nation and it’s people free! This is our second amendment rights! Please! What is so difficult about this.

A United Nations treaty on the trade of conventional arms could give enemies of the U.S. access to the records of American gun owners, say critics. (AP)
UNITED NATIONS –  A treaty being hammered out this month at the United Nations — with Iran playing a key role — could expose the records of America’s gun owners to foreign governments — and, critics warn, eventually put the Second Amendment on global trial.

International talks in New York are going on throughout July on the final wording of the so-called Arms Trade Treaty, which supporters such as Amnesty International USA say would rein in unregulated weapons that kill an estimated 1,500 people daily around the world. But critics, including the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, warn the treaty would mark a major step toward the eventual erosion of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment gun-ownership rights.

Americans “just don’t want the UN to be acting as a global nanny with a global permission slip stating whether they can own a gun or not,” LaPierre said. “It cheapens our rights as American citizens, and weakens our sovereignty,” he warned in an exclusive interview with FoxNews.com from the halls of the UN negotiating chambers.

“It cheapens our rights as American citizens, and weakens our sovereignty.”
– Wayne LaPierre, National Rifle Association

The world body has already been criticized for appointing Iran to a key role in the talks, even as Tehran stands accused by the UN of arming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on rebels. The Obama administration in 2009 reversed Bush administration policy by agreeing to take part in the talks. But in another exclusive interview with FoxNews.com, the top government official on the issue under President Bush says he’s seen nothing new to convince him the U.S. should be at the table today.

While the treaty’s details are still under discussion, the document could straitjacket U.S. foreign policy to the point where Washington could be restricted from helping arm friends such as Taiwan and Israel, said Greg Suchan, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs from 2000 to 2007.

Suchan also highlighted ongoing concern that the treaty may end up giving foreigners access to U.S. gun-ownership records.

On that score, LaPierre, who serves as NRA executive vice president, warns that the “UN’s refusal” to remove civilian firearms and ammunition from the scope of the treaty amounts to a declaration that only governments should be gun owners.

But he revealed he was set Wednesday to tell the UN gathering that 58 U.S. senators had signed a letter saying that they would refuse to ratify any treaty that includes controls over civilian guns or ammunition.

Ratification by two-thirds of the Senate is necessary before an international treaty negotiated by the executive branch can become U.S. law. But the treaty could still go into effect elsewhere once 65 countries ratify it. Such a development could change the pattern of world arms transfers and reduce the U.S. share, which stands at about 40 percent of up to $60 billion in global deals.

The Bush administration opposed a 2006 UN General Assembly resolution launching the treaty process, but President Obama decided the U.S. would take part on condition the final agreement be reached by consensus — thereby giving any of the 193 participating states an effective veto.

The safeguard is insufficient for opponents of the U.S. participation, not least because UN talks invariably involve compromise.

“The administration swears they have a whole bunch of red lines, and they will block consensus if anyone crosses them,” said Suchan, now a government relations consultant as senior associate with the Commonwealth Consulting Corporation in Arlington, Va.

“But the dynamics of international negotiations are that once you get 90 percent of what you seek, you say, ‘Maybe there is a way we can finesse the final 10 percent.’”

A clause permitting arms transfers solely between UN member states would allow UN member China to object to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a non-UN member that China considers to be a renegade province.

This would be highly problematic for the U.S. at a time when Beijing is engaged in an unprecedented arms buildup.

Another fear is that Arab or other states critical of Israel may use any treaty language on human rights standards to argue against U.S. arms transfers to the Israeli government – much in the same way they currently use the UN Human Rights Council to repeatedly condemn Israel.

Suchan said U.S. arms trade law is seen as the global “gold standard” for regulating arms transfers, but doubted many countries would be willing to raise the bar that high. Instead, the treaty that emerges is expected to set a lower global standard – which Suchan said would have the effect of reducing Washington’s ability to press for voluntary arms embargoes against rogue states.

“We might want to urge a country to not sell arms to a state whose government is particularly odious,” Suchan explained.

“But that government could then ask whether the sale is prohibited under the Arms Trade Treaty – and if it is not, they would argue they are meeting the international standard.”

U.S. gun lobby concern focuses on the emphasis the treaty places on governmental – as opposed to individual – rights to guns, LaPierre explained.

“They’re trying to impose a UN policy that gives guns to the governments – but the UN doesn’t in turn make moral judgments as to whether these governments are good or bad,” he said.

“If you’re the government, you get the guns, if you’re a civilian, you don’t. But this will just end up helping evil governments and tyrants.”

For LaPierre, the emphasis he sees at the UN on governmental rights reflects what he believes is a wider international tradition that contrasts with the historical American emphasis on individual rights.

“The UN view is that governments – not individual citizens – ought to protect people,” he said, signaling that this principle permeates the draft that negotiators are currently working with.

LaPierre says the treaty that is likely to emerge will have the effect of squeezing individual gun owners in the United States and elsewhere by imposing on them an onerous collection of regulations.

“If they get this through, then what comes along is the institutionalizing of the whole gun control-ban movement within the bureaucracy of UN – with a permanent funding mechanism that we [in America] will be mainly paying for,” he said.

“The world’s worst human rights abusers will end up voting for this, while the Obama administration has not drawn a line in the sand like the previous administration did. Instead, it is trying to be a part of this train wreck because they think they can somehow finesse it. But, to me, there is no finessing the individual freedoms of American citizens.”

Source of info and we thank him for his generous contribution!
Steven Edwards is a UN-based freelance journalist
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/07/11/un-arms-treaty-could-put-us-gun-owners-in-foreign-sights-say-critics/#ixzz20Ms11rMk

U.N. To World: You Have No Human Right to Self-Defense

U.N. To World: You Have No Human Right to Self-Defense

You are dead wrong to think the United Nations does not want to eventually control everything you do! It starts with our guns, then our food, then our economy, then our schools, then our environment! It is in the progress now and our locally elected officials are giving it all away!

The very skilled UN using HUD, the EPA and the DOT to implement the UNs Agenda 21 local comprehensive plan! Your mayors have signed on with ICLEI out of Chattanooga to push a Regional Comprehensive plan to our County! They are giving it away and not thinking twice about it!

Prepare your life now! It is fixing to change drastically because of the careless decisions they are making with our futures! We can’t ignore their actions! We must act and act quickly before it is too late! The most effective and quickest way to stop them is to vote them out and replace them with honest, loyal citizens can save this county, otherwise just turn in your guns now before your front door is smashed in and all them taken away! We are very close to this day folks! It just on the horizon, mark my words!

Thwarted by the demise of its global gun ban treaty, the United Nations declares the human right of self-defense null and void

by Dave Kopel

America’s 1st Freedom, pp. 26-29, 62-63.

Self-defense is a privilege that governments may choose to grant or withdraw. You have no human right to self-defense. If a government does not impose repressive restrictions on gun ownership—more severe than even the laws in New York City or Washington, D.C.—then that government is guilty of violating international human rights.

So says the United Nations in its latest assault on the Second Amendment.

This July, the National Rifle Association and other pro-freedom groups won a tremendous victory at the U.N. Small Arms Review Conference when they helped block the creation of a global gun control treaty. Winning a very important battle, though, is not the same as winning a war. Since then, the global gun prohibition movement has already opened up a major new front in the war on our rights.

This fall, the General Assembly of the United Nations will be considering a new Arms Trade Treaty. The treaty is backed by many governments, as well as by the world’s leading gun prohibition group, International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). Once the final language of the treaty is approved by the General Assembly, the treaty will be open for signature and ratification by all nations.

At the highest level of generality, the Arms Trade Treaty is based on a very good idea: prohibiting the sale of arms to countries that use them to violate human rights. It would be a good idea, for example, if all nations refused to sell arms to the dictatorships in Burma, Zimbabwe or Cuba, all of which have an atrocious record of human rights violations. (And all of which, like other modern nations that are extreme violators of human rights, have extreme laws against citizen gun ownership.)

However, any nation that has a conscience can already ban arms exports to such evil governments. Conversely, nations such as China, which currently supply arms to human rights abusers all over the world, have a long record of flouting the treaties they sign, so it would be foolish to expect that a new treaty would stop their arms exports to their favorite tyrannical allies.

The Arms Trade Treaty will, however, increase international pressure to cut off arms sales to Israel. Although Israel’s human rights record is far superior to any of its neighbors (and superior to the large majority of U.N. members), the United Nations condemns Israel much more than any other nation for supposed violations of human rights.

The Arms Trade Treaty can also be used to attempt to suppress the sale of civilian, police or military arms to the United States. The reason is that the U.N. is working to declare that all American gun laws, as well as the right to self-defense, are violations of human rights.

THE U.N. HAS appointed University of Minnesota Law Professor Barbara Frey as its “Special Rapporteur on the prevention of human rights violations committed with small arms and light weapons.” A “Special Rapporteur” is a U.N.-designated expert and researcher on a subject.

Notably, the title the U.N. gave to Frey required her to look exclusively at how small arms are used to violate human rights—and to ignore how small arms are used to protect human rights, such as when used to resist genocide. But the one-sided nature of Frey’s research mission was consistent with her own views; Frey is a member of IANSA and participated in a 2005 strategy meeting in Brazil designed to support the gun prohibition referendum in that nation.

On July 27, Frey issued her final report, declaring that there is no human right to self-defense and that insufficient gun control is a violation of human rights. (The report, “Prevention of human rights violations committed with small arms and light weapons,” is available on IANSA’s website, http://www.iansa.org/un/documents/salw_hr_report_2006.pdf.)

On Aug. 21, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights endorsed the Frey report in total and recommended that the full Human Rights Council (HRC) do so.

It’s important to note that the U.N. Human Rights Council, despite its name, is composed of some of the worst human rights violators in the world, such as Cuba and Saudi Arabia. The U.N. rejected efforts by the United States to join the Human Rights Council, and instead allowed dictatorships such as China and Pakistan to join.

It is all but certain that the Human Rights Council will follow the lead of its sub-commission and adopt the Frey Report as an official statement of HRC policy on human rights. At that point, the global and American gun prohibition lobbies can then begin to attack American gun laws because they “violate human rights.”

According to Frey, governments have an affirmative human rights obligation to protect their subjects from violence. This obligation includes much more than simply making and enforcing laws against crime. According to Frey, the “due diligence” obligations means that:

“It is reasonable for international human rights bodies to require States to enforce a minimum licensing requirement designed to keep small arms and light weapons out of the hands of persons who are likely to misuse them. … The criteria for licensing may vary from State to State, but most licensing procedures consider the following: (a) minimum age of applicant; (b) past criminal record including any history of interfamilial violence; (c) proof of a legitimate purpose for obtaining a weapon; and (d) mental fitness. Other proposed criteria include knowledge of laws related to small arms, proof of training on the proper use of a firearm and proof of proper storage. Licences should be renewed regularly to prevent transfer to unauthorized persons.”

BY THE FREY/HRC standards, every American jurisdiction is a human rights violator because its gun laws are not severe enough. Even in New York City or Washington, D.C., the government does not require a gun license applicant to prove that he or she has “a legitimate purpose.” Once New York City or D.C. finally let you buy a shotgun, you can use it for any legitimate purpose—sporting clays, gunsmithing practice, collecting or even self-defense (assuming that you somehow can retrieve the locked gun in time to use it against a home invader).

At every gun store in the United States, buyers must pass a background check under the National Instant Check System (or a state equivalent). Most states do not require a separate license for handgun purchases and even fewer require a license for long gun purchases. Only a few states mandate that a person who simply wants to continue owning the guns he already has must renew a license from the government every few years. The absence of mandatory, periodic licensing for continued possession of one’s own guns is another human rights violation, according to Frey.

Similarly, the vast majority of American states allow children, under parental supervision, to use firearms; the family, not the government, decides when a particular child is ready to take his or her first shots with the family’s .22 pistol or rifle. Yet this, too, is a human rights violation, according to Frey and the HRC, since the government has not specified a minimum age for a gun license.

The Frey/HRC rules declare almost all American self-defense laws to be human rights violations. The Frey report declares: “When small arms and light weapons are used for self-defence, for instance, unless the action was necessary to save a life or lives and the use of force with small arms is proportionate to the threat of force, self-defence will not alleviate responsibility for violating another’s right to life.”

Moreover, “Because of the lethal nature of these weapons and the jus cogens (a mandatory norm of general international law from which no two or more nations may exempt themselves or release one another) human rights obligations imposed upon all States and individuals to respect the right to life, small arms and light weapons may be used defensively only in the most extreme circumstances, expressly, where the right to life is already threatened or unjustifiably impinged.”

Under international law, a jus cogens standard supersedes any contrary rule. Thus, Frey and the HRC are declaring that their restrictive view of self-defense trumps any contrary state, national or international law.

The laws of all American states allow the use of deadly force against certain violent felonies (include rape, torture and mayhem) when the person being attacked reasonably believes that no lesser force will suffice. Yet Frey and the HRC will allow the use of deadly force only against a life-threatening attack, and not against other violent felonies.

Thanks to NRA leadership, 14 states this year have adopted “Castle Doctrine” laws that state that a person may use a firearm (that is, deadly force) against a violent felon without having to calculate whether lesser force might suffice. The large majority of American jurisdictions state that a person who is attacked in his home need not retreat when attacked, and some jurisdictions also apply the no-retreat rule in public spaces. Yet all of these American protections of the right of self-defense are violations of human rights, according to the adopted report of the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur.

YOU MIGHT WONDER HOW the U.N.’s claim that gun control is a human right, and that suppression of self-defense is a human right, can be reconciled with the actual human right of self-defense. Such a reconciliation is impossible, so the U.N., speaking through its Special Rapporteur, has simply declared that THERE IS NO HUMAN RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE.

The Frey report admits that most criminal justice systems acknowledge self-defense, but the report claims that self-defense is merely a government-granted exemption to criminal liability, and that this exemption must be very narrowly construed.

Frey and the U.N. assert that the traditional sources of international law do not support the existence of a right to self-defense. However, this premise is false.

The United Nations’ own Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes, in its preamble, a last-resort right of self-defense against tyranny: “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”

To list all the sources of human rights law that recognize the right of self-defense would take many thousands of words, but the error of Frey’s assertion can easily be seen simply by looking to three of the great philosophers universally regarded as founders of international law.

Hugo Grotius (Dutch, On the Law of War and Peace): “When our lives are threatened with immediate danger, it is lawful to kill the aggressor, if the danger cannot otherwise be avoided … We must observe that this kind of defence derives its origin from the principle of self preservation, which nature has given to every living creature.”

Emerich de Vattel (Swiss, The Law of Nations): “Every nation, as well as every man, has, therefore, a right … to preserve herself from all injuries: and this right is a perfect one, since it is given to satisfy a natural and indispensable obligation … It is this right to preserve herself from all injury that is called the right to security.”

Francisco Suárez (Spanish, 26 volumes, including De Legibus ac Deo Legislatore): Self-defense is “the greatest of rights,” encompassing individual protection against criminals, as well as community self-defense against tyrants.

The only way that the United Nations can use international law to deny the right to self-defense is to ignore the fundamental sources of international law itself. Yet many American officials, including some Supreme Court justices, have taken to using international law in defining the scope of the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

Professor Frey and the misnamed U.N. Human Rights Council are creating the tools that could, in the hands of judges or other government officials who are hostile to the Second Amendment, be used to decimate both our right to arms and our right to self-defense.

Dave Kopel is research director of the Independence Institute. His website is http://www.davekopel.org.