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Posted: 8/11/2001 12:57:23 PM EDT
We have only dodged a bullet with the UN domestic disarmament BS. They are coming back in 5 years, if Bush is not re-elected in 4 years things will be different.
Checkout:
[B]The U.S.'s biggest loss came when it acceded to demands for a follow-up
conference within five years. John Bolton, head of the American
delegation, noted that the mandatory follow-up "serves only to
institutionalize and bureaucratize this process"[/B]
========================================================
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel080901.shtml

Dave Kopel
U.N. Out of North America
The Small Arms Conference and the Second Amendment.

Mr. Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute.

August 9, 2001 10:00 a.m.

Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment in an NRO series on the
United Nations Conference on Small Arms (the previous installment: #4).

"This is not the end. This is the opening skirmish of a war," announced
retired Rep. Charles Pashayan (R., Calif., 1979-91), a U.S. delegate to
the July 2001 U.N. Small Arms Conference. Pashayan warned that issues of
restricting private ownership of firearms, and of banning gun sales to
persons not authorized by a government (e.g., freedom fighters), would
return, even though they were defeated at the conference. As he explained:
"All of this has to be understood as part of a process leading ultimately
to a treaty that will give an international body power over our domestic
laws."
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) didn't like the conference's
results either. But she did agree with Pashayan that the battle was just
beginning: "[T]he Conference is the first step, not the last, in the
international community`s efforts to control the spread of small arms and
light weapons."
The U.S.'s biggest loss came when it acceded to demands for a follow-up
conference within five years. John Bolton, head of the American
delegation, noted that the mandatory follow-up "serves only to
institutionalize and bureaucratize this process" — which is precisely what
the gun prohibitionists wanted. At the next round, there will be pressure
to replace this year's non-binding Programme of Action with a legally
binding Convention. And the European Union has already begun pushing for
legal strictures.
In the meantime, the U.N. and related institutions will continue their
propaganda campaign against gun owners. The Canadian antigun lobby, for
example, is using a recent UNICEF report to demand a tightening of
Canada's already severe gun-storage laws. (Canadian law now requires that
firearms stored anywhere near a child must be kept unloaded and locked.
Prohibitionists are further demanding that all guns be stored at police
stations, to be checked out when needed for sport.) The Coalition for Gun
Control touts a requirement that all guns be sold with a trigger lock.
Small Arms Destruction Day, on July 9, is just one gun-hate celebration to
emerge from the Conference. The antigun NGOs have declared July 11 to be
Children and Small Arms Day. Pro-rights activists responded by declaring
July 9 to be Buy a Gun Day — July 11 ought to become Take a Child Shooting
Day.
Link Posted: 8/11/2001 12:59:29 PM EDT
[#1]
One function of the propaganda war is to portray guns as germs, and gun
owners as disease carriers. The World Health Organization, a U.N. body,
will play a major role in promoting intolerance against gun owners.
Speaking at the Small Arms Conference, Etienne Krug, Director of WHO's
Department for Injuries and Violence Prevention, claimed: "The ready
availability of small arms has been associated with higher small
arms-related mortality rates."
But this is just plain false. In both the United States and the United
Kingdom, for example, the regions with the highest gun ownership rates
tend to have the lowest gun homicide rates. And, more generally, Krug's
focus on "small arms-related mortality rates" cleverly ignores total death
rates. In this century, genocide by government is the overwhelming cause
of violent death — far ahead even of deaths from war. Genocide is
perpetrated almost exclusively against groups that have first been
disarmed. Therefore, it is the absence of firearms that bears a strong
association with astronomical rates of violent death — as detailed in the
new book Death by Gun Control, by Aaron Zelman and Richard Stevens
(forthcoming this fall from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership). Moreover, cross-national research by Jeffrey Miron of Boston
University finds that prohibition of handguns, or of all guns, has a
statistically significant relation to higher homicide rates.
Nevertheless, Krug made it clear that WHO is just beginning its antigun
work. New reports will gather data to marshal the case against small arms,
and the WHO has already funded a "Weapons for Development" program to pay
individuals (but not governments) to surrender their firearms. The Solomon
Islands have been one target of this program; Niger is next.
Also joining the campaign is the International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), based in Cambridge, Mass. Their antigun
"medical" conference is slated for Sept. 28-30 in Helsinki. Among the
speakers will be Mr. João Honwana — chief of the Conventional Weapons
Branch of the U.N. Department for Disarmament Affairs.
Link Posted: 8/11/2001 1:04:06 PM EDT
[#2]
Opponents of American sovereignty complain that the United States
"isolated" itself by stopping the Small Arms Conference from becoming a
springboard for disarming freedom fighters (and everyone else not on a
government payroll). It's true that the United States took a lonely
position by defending the fundamental human right to keep and bear arms.
(Although there was tacit support — for economic rather than ideological
reasons — from Russia, China, and Arab countries, all of which export
arms.) But such isolation is a sign of courage, not bad diplomacy. Under
the Reagan administration, for instance, the U.S. often stood alone at the
U.N. when supporting democratic Israel, or when condemning Communist
human-rights abuses. So long as America stands for the principle behind
the Declaration of Independence — that the only legitimate governments are
created by the people to protect God-given human rights — we will never be
popular at a United Nations where dictatorships are the majority, and to
which even democratic governments go to evade public accountability.
As detailed by the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute the U.N. has
become a haven for radical social planners seeking to impose their will,
free of public scrutiny.
For instance: Days before the Small Arms Conference opened, newspapers
reported on the public discussions at a U.N. Conference on HIV/AIDS. More
significantly, however, was the "intense debate . . . taking place in
basement conference rooms about the very nature of human sexuality, and
whether or not the U.N. should promote the complete transformation of
sexual norms."
Guidelines created in 1998 by the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights
favor "penalties for vilification of people who engage in same-sex
relationships." Such a provision would make priests, ministers, or rabbis
into criminals, simply for reading aloud what the Bible says about
homosexuality.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees that any person accused of a crime has the
right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." But the U.N.
Guidelines would allow people to "bring cases under pseudonym."
Americans almost unanimously oppose forcing children to view pornography —
but the U.N. Guidelines demand mandatory homosexual education for
children, with the proviso that the education be so explicit that it be
exempted from "censorship or obscenity laws." The U.N. Guidelines also
require the legalization of homosexual marriage.
Strong objections — especially from Islamic nations — prevented the
Conference agreement from including the U.N. Guidelines in the Draft
Declaration of Commitment. Ireland, through its membership in the European
Union, argued in favor of adopting the Guidelines — which would have
allowed European courts to impose them as binding law within Ireland.
Section 41 of the Irish Constitution requires the Irish government to "to
guard with special care the institution of Marriage." But, at the U.N.,
Ireland could promote a radical transformation of marriage. The weekly
Irish Catholic newspaper exposed the delegation's activities, only to be
met with implausible denials from the Irish government.
As C-FAM's report on the incident concludes, there are "worries that this
pattern will be repeated in many of the other states now seeking
membership in the EU, states including Malta, Poland, and the Czech
Republic.
Link Posted: 8/11/2001 1:06:05 PM EDT
[#3]
The EU will provide an opportunity for these countries' elites,
who are usually more liberal than average citizens, to change their own
constitutions without the consent of their own people."
As the Irish case illustrates, the U.N. is an ideal forum for governments
to surreptitiously impose policies they could never impose through
national, representative institutions. This is one reason why U.S. gun-
prohibition groups reacted with such fury to the Bush administration's
stance at the U.N. Small Arms Conference.
The U.S. delegation consistently rejected efforts at "compromise," which
would have kept some antigun language in the treaty, but made it softer
and ambiguous. An American delegation that was terrified of being
"isolated" would have accepted the ambiguous language — on the theory that
Americans could later apply a pro-rights interpretation to the
ambiguities. The Bush delegation was wiser: It recognized that, at the
U.N., a conference final document is just a starting point. From there,
U.N. bureaucrats will "monitor" how a country "complies" with such
documents, and the bureaucrats resolving the ambiguities will favor their
own radical agendas. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, for
example, is being reinterpreted by U.N. bureaucrats in ways never agreed
to by the governments that signed the convention.
The U.N.'s assault on Second Amendment rights is merely one aspect of a
far-reaching attack on nearly every aspect of the American Bill of Rights.
Consider, for example, the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, scheduled for Aug.
31-Sept. 7 in Durban, South Africa. A U.N.-convened "expert seminar" on
anti-racism remedies came up with the following standards for acceptable
anti-racism laws:
First, "the highest priority should be given" to "reparations" for
"descendants of slaves." (Don't expect that this clause will lead to
African governments — successors to those governments which profited most
from the slave trade, by supplying captured enemies for sale to European
traders — to send money to African Americans.)
Additionally, the premise of "innocent until proven guilty" is not
acceptable to the United Nations. The U.N. seminar insists that "In
allegations of racial discrimination, the onus of proof must rest with the
respondent to rebut the allegation made by the victim of racism."
Commendably, the Bush administration is considering boycotting the
conference, or downgrading its delegation, in part because of Arab efforts
to have Zionism proclaimed a form of racism.
The Small Arms Conference helped alert Americans to the nature of the U.N.
threat. Yet while dangers to gun rights, property rights, and family
rights are becoming well known among pro-freedom activists, the U.N.'s
campaigns against due process and free speech have remained more obscure.
La Verkin, Utah, recently declared itself a U.N.-free zone — forbidding
U.N. symbols on city property, stating that U.N. orders are invalid in La
Verkin, and banning city contracts with businesses that work with the U.N.
Link Posted: 8/11/2001 1:09:00 PM EDT
[#4]
The "U.N.-free zone" movement is backed by a group called U.N. Watch,
which provides cities with model language.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard responded: "I would just hope that the people
of La Verkin would see the United Nations for what it really is — an
intergovernmental organization working for the betterment of humankind,
and not a threat to the people of La Verkin." He's right — if you consider
the Bill of Rights to be an impediment to the betterment of mankind.
American grassroots groups are just beginning to educate the American
people about the efforts of foreign tyrants to disarm them. The Tyranny
Response Team, in conjunction with the Second Amendment Sisters, Gun
Owners of America, and other groups, staged a protest at the U.N. on July
14. The Heritage Foundation's U.N. Assessment Project — concerned with
U.N. attacks on American sovereignty, and on the Bill of Rights — plans to
seek official NGO status at the U.N., to obtain a better platform to speak
for liberty, and to warn Americans about U.N. activities. A Heritage
Foundation conference on the U.N. is scheduled for September, in
Washington. In Congress, H.R. 1146, the American Sovereignty Restoration
Act, would end U.S. membership in the United Nations.
George Washington never saw a United Nations conference, but he knew
enough about human nature to see the dangers of all that the U.N.
represents. Washington's Farewell Address urged: "Against the insidious
wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens)
the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history
and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful
foes of republican government."
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