A global campaign to confiscate firearms is setting its sights on law-abiding gun owners in the United States, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) warned in a statement over the weekend.
Paul, a long-time Second Amendment supporter and strong opponent of gun control legislation, addressed subscribers of the National Association on Gun Rights’ email list on Saturday to demand they speak up about an alleged attempt to disarm Americans by way of a United Nations treaty supported by the US.
The UN Arms Trade Treaty was proposed with the intent of curbing mass acts of violence in parts of the world ravaged by uprisings and civil war. According to Paul, however, it is being endorsed by US President Barack Obama and his administration because it would be the beginning of the end for gun ownership in the States.
“But after the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut — and anti-gun hysteria in the national media reaching a fever pitch — there’s no doubt President Obama and his anti-gun pals believe the timing has never been better to ram through the UN’s global gun control crown jewel,” wrote Paul.
“I don’t know about you, but watching anti-American globalists plot against our Constitution makes me sick.”
The UN did approve the Arms Trade Treaty last month when the US and 153 other nations signed on to support the measure, “Yet because the Constitution requires that two-thirds of the Senate give its advice and consent to any treaty, Second Amendment supporters still have a political route to stop the administration,” the Wall Street Journal acknowledged at the time.
Sixty-seven of the 100 US senators would need to approve the treaty before the country can adopt the measure, but 53 of the lawmakers said as recently as this March that they would vote against the effort — essentially leaving the treaty unlikely to be accepted by the US at any time in the near future. But even if the likelihood of the US adopting the treaty seems grim, efforts in across the country have been underway for some time to ensure the president isn’t presented the opportunity to sign on.
“If you sign it, and if the US Senate ratifies the treaty, Texas will lead the charge to have the treaty overturned in court as a violation of the US Constitution,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, wrote President Obama earlier this year.
“I am deeply disappointed with the Obama administration’s vote today in support of forcing the ominous Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) through the UN General Assembly,” added Sen. Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania). “For the sake of our national interests and Constitutional freedom, I strongly urge President Obama to reject the ATT.”
Sen. Paul has now become the latest high-ranking Republican to issue a call to arms. His email sent out on Saturday was addressed to “Dear fellow Patriot” and insisted that “Gun-grabbers around the globe believe they have it made.”
“So far, the gun-grabbers have successfully kept many of their schemes under wraps. But looking at previous attempts by the UN to pass global gun control, you and I can get a good idea of what’s likely in the works,” Paul wrote.
“You can bet the UN is working to FORCE the US to implement every single one of these anti-gun policies,” he added, only to claim the treaty will enact tougher licensing requirements, “making law-abiding Americans cut through even more bureaucratic red tape just to own a firearm legally.”
Additionally, said Paul, the treaty would lend to the confiscation and destruction of all “unauthorized” civil firearms, as well as “ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons.”
“Ever since its founding 65 years ago, the United Nations has been hell-bent on bringing the United States to its knees,” he wrote. “To the petty dictators and one-world socialists who control the UN, the United States of America isn’t a ‘shining city on a hill’ — it’s an affront to their grand designs for the globe.”
“These anti-gun globalists know that as long as Americans remain free to make our own decisions without being bossed around by big government bureaucrats, they’ll NEVER be able to seize the worldwide power they crave,” said Paul.
Others, however, say he has things all wrong. “The treaty adopted today will establish a common international standard for the national regulation of the international trade in conventional arms and require all states to develop and implement the kind of systems that the United States already has in place,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said last month. “It will help reduce the risk that international transfers of conventional arms will be used to carry out the world’s worst crimes, including terrorism, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
“By its own terms, this treaty applies only to international trade, and reaffirms the sovereign right of any State to regulate arms within its territory. As the United States has required from the outset of these negotiations, nothing in this treaty could ever infringe on the rights of American citizens under our domestic law or the Constitution, including the Second Amendment,” said Kerry.