Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

In the spirit of my previous observations, where I commented “there are only two reasons for a national gun registry: taxation and confiscation,” Senator Reid has rammed through proposed legislation to do just that.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to tax your gun rights. His new legislation charges you a fee that is in essence a federal tax on selling or giving away your firearm, and he lets Attorney General Eric Holder decide how big that tax will be.

Senate Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Barbara Boxer of California have introduced a raft of gun control legislation (S. 374, S. 54, and S. 146, respectively). Senator Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, rammed the legislation through committee in record time—not even bothering to issue the customary committee reports to explain the bills—and Reid combined the bills into a single gun control bill (S. 649). Firearms owners across the country and others who care about their right to keep and bear arms should keep a close eye on the Reid legislation. Your rights are under attack.

[ … ]

Title I of the Reid gun control bill purports to “fix gun checks.” The proposed “fix” in section 122 of S. 649 is to take away an individual’s right to sell or give away a firearm to another individual unless, in most cases, the individual (1) uses a licensed importer, dealer, or manufacturer to make the transfer of the firearm and (2) pays a fee to that importer, dealer, or manufacturer to make the transfer. The individual transferring the firearm is not actually receiving a service; the federal government is receiving the service. The service the government gets is a background check on the intended recipient of the firearm, because the law requires the importer, dealer, or manufacturer to run the recipient through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Forcing the individual to pay for the government-mandated service, which is in fact a service to the government, is in essence a federal tax on the individual. And the amount the individual pays as a fee is not limited by the legislation; section 122(a)(4) of the Reid bill enacts a new section 922(t)(4)(B)(i) of title 18 of the U.S. Code to grant to Attorney General Eric Holder the power to set the maximum fee by regulation.

Thus he gets it all – a national gun registry, almost omniscient state knowledge of the whereabouts of firearms for legal owners, and taxation of our property.  And on top of that, Eric Holder gets to set the fee schedule.  Again as I have observed, so-called assault weapons are irrelevant to the progressive.  A national gun registry is the touchstone of success.

What could possibly go wrong?  Their only mistake is in assuming that gun owners will willingly acquiesce to this tyranny.  On that account, this might not turn out like Reid had hoped.

I wouldn’t otherwise link claptrap like this, but since it’s with the Washington Post it gets a nontrivial amount of traffic.  It’s important to deal with it.

Senators Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee all appear set to mount a filibuster to prevent any Obama gun control proposal of any kind from being debated on the Senate floor — on Second Amendment grounds. Senator Paul went on Fox News last night to explain his thinking.

In the process, however, Paul inadvertently made an important concession. Here’s what he said:

“I haven’t heard one proposal from him or Harry Reid that would have saved one life. And I’m all for saving lives….We plan on making them have at least 60 votes to pass any legislation that may abridge the Second Amendment. So we will fight tooth and nail, and use every parliamentary procedure to stop that from happening. We have a lot of things on the books that the president says he wants to enhance, many of these could be enhanced without any legislation. Background checks already do work. We already have rules that say mental health statistics need to come from the states to the data bank.”

I’d advise Senator Paul against claiming improving background checks would not save lives or prevent mass shootings. A better background check system very well may have prevented the Virginia Tech massacre. Data collected by the pro-gun-control Mayors Against Illegal Guns suggests that states with better background check laws show a lower murder rate of women, fewer suicides, and less gun trafficking. Now, maybe you don’t trust MAIG’s data. Shouldn’t the possibility that expanding gun background checks could save lives — which Paul himself says he wants — be enough for him to actually give the idea serious thought?

It’s also important that Paul claimed that current background checks “already do work.” Here’s why: He’s effectively allowing that the current background check law is not a threat to people’s Second Amendment rights. The current compromise on expanded background checks being negotiated would simply expand the current system to cover most private sales. It would maintain the prohibition against any national gun registry. It would maintain the current system of record keeping — in which dealers keep records of sales, and the feds destroy any record of a valid gun transfer within 24 hours. By Paul’s own lights those things, in the context of the current law, are not a threat to Americans’ constitutional rights. There is no logical way, then, that the new proposal threatens them, either. This is an important concession.

Keep that in mind as you read Senator Lee’s deeply strange and hallucinatory argument against the proposal. Lee claims it would require a national registry to work (it wouldn’t) …

Let’s deal with this is four categories.  First, Senator Lee’s argument is only deeply strange to the author because he hasn’t taken the time to study people who are smarter than he is if he lives a thousand lifetimes.  Dave Hardy has an article Mr. Sargent needs to read.

Second, Mr. Sargent does in fact point to a larger problem with the opposition that Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are mounting to gun legislation.  It troubles me that they are discussing “improved” background checks as a cure for anything, much less crime.  We have made it clear from the outset.  No new gun laws.  Not a single one, and it’s high time for the Senators to hear the message.

Third, I agree with Mr. Sargent in his demurral over “improved background checks.”  He doesn’t believe it will save lives or prevent shootings for the same reason that I don’t believe it.  It won’t, and the mental health professionals have told us so in the clearest possible terms.

But fourth and most important, while planning his logical coup against Rand Paul, Mr. Sargent has opened a logical hole in his own arguments and divulged the secrets of the gun control lobby.

While pointing out that “improved background checks” won’t have the desired effect on crime, he has informed you of his presuppositions.  Criminals don’t uniquely and solely suffer from mental health problems.

Crime is a moral choice, and there is no justified reason to claim that while “improved background checks” won’t help the situation, universal background checks will.  To assert that would require Sargent to believe the following: (a) no crimes are committed by people who suffer from mental maladies (since mental health checks won’t accomplish their desired end), or otherwise (a1) those who suffer from mental maladies obtained their firearms illegally, and (b) all criminals obtain their firearms legally.

Proposition (a) is demonstrably false, and acquiescing to (a1) would undermine his acceptance of proposition (b).  Proposition (b) also entails the acceptance of the notion that only previously convicted felons will commit felonies in the future, also a demonstrably false proposition.

Mr. Sargent has a world of logical problems, but it’s because he knows that this isn’t about crime.  Other statists have told us what a national gun registry is all about and how important it is for their world view.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

I have told you not to trust the Leviathan, and I have explained why.  Fortunately, while Mr. Sargent finds the weakness in Rand Paul’s argument, he divulges the secret weaknesses of his own.  Again, this isn’t about crime – it’s about a national gun registry.  There are only two reasons for a national gun registry: taxation and confiscation.  Both would be unconstitutional and immoral.

The Hill:

President Obama is quietly moving forward on gun control.

The president has used his executive powers to bolster the national background check system, jumpstart government research on the causes of gun violence and create a million-dollar ad campaign aimed at safe gun ownership.

The executive steps will give federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners, help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and lay the groundwork for future legislative efforts.

It is unclear whether the National Rifle Association (NRA) will challenge any of the executive actions in court. A spokesman for the NRA did not return a request for comment.

The moves, which have not been widely touted by the administration, come as Obama ups his pressure on Congress to take action on gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. The Senate is expected to begin floor consideration of legislation when it returns in April.

Efforts to renew a ban in semi-automatic weapons with military-style features and high-capacity magazines have stalled in Congress. Democratic senators still hope to move gun control legislation that includes tougher background checks, but conservative Republican senators have threatened to filibuster it.

If approved by the Senate, any bill would then face tough sledding in the GOP-controlled House.

Gun control groups say Obama’s piecemeal approach falls short of what could be accomplished by legislation overhauling the nation’s gun laws. Still, they argue the actions remain important and will reduce gun violence.

“They’ve taken direct aim at some of the bigger problems in the regulatory part of the issue and they’re doing it in the right way and that’s going to be very helpful,” said Mark Glaze, the director of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.

“Ultimately you need to close the loopholes in the law that will continue to undermine enforcement, but what they’re doing is precisely right.”

They also illustrate the administration’s power to change gun laws despite inaction on Capitol Hill, a practice the president may need to duplicate in other policy areas amid congressional gridlock.

Because, you know, he doesn’t especially get into that concept called balance or separation of powers.  That’s for those who live in a republic.

Obama moves to shame Congress into approving gun control.

President Obama moved Thursday to put the muscle of the White House and his network of supporters behind a gun control package tracking toward the Senate floor, calling on voters to pressure Congress into backing it as the proposal runs into resistance on Capitol Hill.

The president, in a set of brief remarks from the White House Thursday surrounded by the mothers of shooting victims, raised concern that the shock from the Newtown elementary school shooting could soon fade.

“Less than 100 days ago that happened. … Shame on us if we’ve forgotten,” Obama said. “I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.”

Let’s recast that shame in a more truthful light.  Shame on you Obama for surrounding yourself with the props of hurting mothers in order to pass your Fascist measures.  Shame on you for lying to the gullible American people and claiming that any measure you take would have changed the outcome of a dedicated person bent on doing harm.  Shame on you for deceiving the public into thinking that this has anything to do with school shootings.

Shame on you for inferring that any change you make to the laws governing law abiding people has any affect on criminals.  Shame on you for pushing measures more suited to communist China (who supports your gun control efforts) than a free America (I can recall such a thing, although many youth today cannot).  And finally, shame on you for nurturing a Fascist ideology that would turn our freedoms on their head and focus power in the hands of ruling elites who confiscate not only firearms but wealth too.  Shame … shame … shame.

God will soon condemn you, and your empty philosophies of liberation theology and warmed over Fabian Socialism won’t be able to save you on that awful day of judgment.

David Codrea passes along a statement from LWRC International where they have told us that they will move their company out of Maryland if the proposed unconstitutional gun ban passes.  I appreciate their patriotism, and I have already weighed in informing Beretta that they must move as well if they wish to survive as a company.

But there’s some fascinating movement in the proposed weapons ban in Maryland.  I must quote at length.

When hunters argued that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed assault-weapons ban would ruin their sport, state lawmakers were not moved. When devotees of the National Rifle Association cried that it would trample on their constitutional rights, lawmakers did not blink.

But then there were the soldiers, who showed up in Annapolis by the dozens this year and quietly became one of the most influential critics of O’Malley’s gun-control plan. Veterans streaming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have argued that freedoms they fought for overseas would be violated at home.

Some also came with a different, more complicated message that has resonated with lawmakers, who are now considering significantly weakening the proposal by O’Malley, a Democrat, by exempting several military-style weapons.

The very guns the veterans used in war — the ones they sang about in boot camp, slept with, cared for, cleaned, prayed with, the guns that led them down dark alleys and through firefights — have now become something altogether different. They are instruments of catharsis more than violence, a postwar release, therapy through the crosshairs.

Since he has returned from Afghanistan, A.J. Wynne, 24, who was a corporal in the Marines, has spent countless hours shooting in the farmland north of Frederick, Md. On a recent Sunday, he picked up his semiautomatic rifle, put down his demons and let muscle memory take over.

Breathe. Focus. Squeeze.

The weapon erupted into a violent cacophony — 30 shots in 11 seconds — and sent the crows in the treesbolting skyward.

The smile made his beard rise. He reloaded.

Wynne knows there are those who would argue that he is perhaps the last person who should be given unfettered access to high-powered, semiautomatic rifles that are designed to emulate the weapons he was trained to use in battle.

For months after coming home, Wynne would lunge to the ground at the sound of a weapon firing or a car backfiring. At night, he would awaken to find himself wrestling an invisible enemy, flailing and slamming the nightstand and leaving his girlfriend, Tara, cowering at the end of the bed.

The nightmares have subsided, but guns have become an ever bigger part of his life. He sells them, trains people how to shoot them, collects them, and has positioned them around his home so they are never more than a few steps away.

As the House of Delegates debates O’Malley’s bill, the veterans’ argument appears to be having an effect. After passing the Senate, the legislation is bogged down in an influential House committee, where lawmakers say they are concerned about the effect of the assault-weapons ban. Members of both parties say they are considering rolling back provisions of O’Malley’s ban, potentially leaving legal for purchase many semiautomatic rifles modeled after military ones.

State Del. Kathleen Dumais, a Montgomery County Democrat and vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said veterans and competitive sportsmen were central factors in her thinking that a total ban may be inappropriate.

“We have problems with soldiers returning from combat and taking their own lives. That’s a big deal, and we need to talk about that overall in this country,” added state Del. Michael McDermott, an Eastern Shore Republican and former member of the U.S. Army Reserve. “But banning these weapons? For some guys, that’s actually therapy …

While he understands that many like to shoot for recreation or even relaxation, Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a colonel in the Army Reserve, said that doesn’t mean you need to have a weapon designed for war.

[ … ]

“I came home and bought an M4 and $1,000 worth of suits at Joseph Banks” to look for a new job, said Obest.

“I want to be able to be an asset to my community if I am needed. If there is a disaster, and the road is blocked and I can’t get to the armory, I want to be able to tell my mayor that, ‘I’ve got this. I’m here. I can help keep order.’ “

First, as for Brown, no one cares what he thinks.

Second, let’s deal with the lawmakers.  I am generally opposed to treatment of veterans which differs from treatment of the balance of U.S. citizens.  The idiot Feinstein wants to ban combat veterans from having firearms.  As I said, she is an idiot and so her ideas are idiotic.  On the other hand, I am uninterested in the cathartic affect of firearms for veterans if civilians cannot have them.

So naturally, I see the actions of lawmakers who insist of being Fascists, but who back down because they might be seen as opposing the voice of veterans as cowardly.  But then again, saying that politicians are cowardly is redundant in most cases.

Veterans mostly just want you to see them as normal people, and for you to fulfill your contractual obligations to them (involving the GI bill, etc.).  I know because my son is a Marine Corps veteran … a veteran of a combat tour in Fallujah in 2007, MOS 0311.  So I’ve put in my time standing at the doorway to my home at 0200 hours looking out into the driveway and wondering if a Marine Corps officer and a Chaplain were going to show up any minute.

Third, speaking of Marines and veterans and guns and what you do stateside, you have made a serious blunder, Mr. Obest, and it is this blunder where I want to spend the rest of our time together.

You’ve made it easy on yourself.  Listen to me, boy.  Take it from someone who is more than twice your age.  God has placed a thousand unexpected things in my path over my lifetime.  You cannot prepare for the unexpected, but what you can do is train your body, mind and soul.  The mind and soul are the most important.

You need to have a set of incorrigible beliefs – a worldview – a set of irreducible axioms – upon which to base your life.  This way, when you face the unexpected you will have some moral moorings upon which to lean.

It’s too easy to imagine that a natural disaster occurs and you are called upon to “keep order,” whatever that means.  Frankly, you’re better off just ensuring that your family and loved ones are cared for and protected.

It’s much more likely that you will be called upon in darker circumstances, and it is these conditions you must consider.  I have asked my own son what he would do if ordered to bear arms against American citizens, and the answer is not only no, but “No, and I will prevent others from doing so.  Not a single one of my old unit would do such a thing.”

So you see, I’m not impressed with the felt need to shoot, although I certainly have that and like to do that.  I would be much more impressed if you would simply cite the constitution and demand rights for not only yourself, but your fellow citizens in the broader context of the intention of the second amendment.

So Obest, listen to me, son.  Heed my counsel (Leviticus 19:32).  Life’s vicissitudes are hard and complicated, and you haven’t seen anywhere near the worst of it, regardless of what you saw in Egypt.

You need to ask yourself some very hard questions regarding world view, morality, and basic commitment to liberty.  Suppose that you are called upon to “keep order” while the statists confiscate weapons, or confiscate wealth, or confiscate children?  Will you fire upon American citizens if ordered to?  I know my son’s answer.  How about yours?

UPDATE: Thanks to Mike and David for the attention.

In what will surely be many to come, the New York gun ban has claimed its first victim.

It was only a matter of time before New York’s draconian new gun law, the obscenely misnamed “SAFE Act,” claimed its first victim Since the oppressive new law was forced through with such haste (and “under a veil of secrecy in the dark of night,” as the NRA put it), and signed by Governor Cuomo (who is already scrambling to change this “Most Stupid Gun Law Ever Made“) into law immediately (because the required three-day public comment period apparently frightened supporters of the law), it ends up not having been much time for that first victim.

Our alleged “gun criminal” is Benjamin M. Wassell, and his supposed “crime” is selling both an AR-15 pattern rifle and a (similar, but larger) AR-10 pattern rifle, both of which had supposedly been upgraded by Mr. Wassell with such now-verboten “assault features” as a pistol grip …

Read it all at Examiner.  The question now is what will New Yorkers do?  You know, the riflemen?  You have a fellow rifleman who has been charged under the new communist law, so what will you do now?

Ever to be late to the debate and wrong with the facts, Fluffington Post discusses Hitler and guns.

When the president of Ohio’s state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.

In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.

But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.

Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control, and lived under a dictatorship commanding overwhelming public support and military might, historians say. While it doesn’t fit neatly into the modern-day gun debate, they say, the truth is that for all Hitler’s unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews’ very tenuous odds of survival.

“Objectively, it might have made things worse” if the Jews who fought the Nazis in the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland had more and better guns, said historian Steve Paulsson, an expert on the period whose Jewish family survived the city’s destruction.

It’s difficult to imagine how it could be worse than gas chambers and ovens to commit genocide, but they aren’t reluctant to cite an absurd comment like that because it’s a failing organization.  It’s a wonder anyone will write for or talk to them.

The record is clear.

… the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state.

Furthermore, regarding the specifics:

… control over weapons that have collapsible or telescoping capabilities, easy take-down and modularity, lights, no so-called “sporting purpose,” and magazines more than a pre-determined amount has its roots in Nazi Germany.

Again, the record is clear.  Today, potential enemies of the state includes everyone except law enforcement, and the controls that the current administration advocates are to be found in Nazi Germany.

No one has ever claimed that either the Obama administration or Adolf Hitler wanted the disappearance of all guns.  They just want guns in the “right hands.”

Reuters:

New York state lawmakers are considering amendments to the state’s sweeping new gun control law, including repealing a ban on magazines that hold more than seven bullets, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday, describing most of the changes as technical.

The law, passed January 15, a month after the massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, also requires gun owners to register most guns with the state and requires universal background checks.

[ … ]

Cuomo and legislators have been discussing “technical corrections” to the law, the governor told a news conference.

A provision banning magazines that hold more than seven bullets beginning April 15 would likely be repealed, as magazines generally hold 10 bullets.

“There is no such thing as a seven-bullet magazine,” Cuomo said.

Under the proposal, gun owners would be barred from loading more than seven bullets at a time, he said, unless they are at a shooting range or participating in a competition.

First of all, regarding this issue of seven cartridges in the magazine, Kimber makes plenty such magazines for their 1911’s.  Second, please stop saying that bullets go in magazines, you ignorant moron.  Complete cartridges go in magazines.

But to the substance of the report, take careful note again what the Governor said.  At shooting competitions (we can guess they mean IDPA or 3-gun competitions or some similar event), shooters could load more than seven cartridges in their magazines.  Likewise for ranges.  But if they’re home preparing to defend their families at night, it would presumably mean that gun owners would be committing a felony by loading more than seven cartridges.

This assumes that anyone would be willing to defend themselves from a home invasion and then rather than unloading the balance of the magazine, they admitted to law enforcement that they had more than seven loaded.  Of course, it might take more than seven to defend against the home invasion, which is the point of this ridiculous dance anyway.

Note again.  Voluntarily acquiescing to load no more than seven cartridges in your magazines when you need them, and loading them up to capacity when you don’t.

This has to be the most stupid law ever proposed by the most stupid people on earth.  But of course regarding the people, we knew that already, didn’t we?

Denver Post:

Gov. John Hickenlooper signed bills Wednesday that place new restrictions on firearms and signaled a change for Democrats who traditionally shied away from gun control debate in Colorado – a state with a moderate streak and pioneer tradition of gun ownership and self-reliance.

Hickenlooper’s signature of the bills comes exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot in a movie theater in suburban Denver, the day after the executive director of the state’s Corrections Department was shot and killed at his home.

Police were searching for the person who killed Tom Clements, and trying to figure out if the attack was related to his job.

The bills require background checks for private and online gun sales and ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Hickenlooper was surrounded by lawmakers who sponsored the bills at the signing ceremony. Before signing the first bill, which requires purchasers to pay fees for background checks, he looked around with a solemn look on his face and then began signing it.

Every time he signed a bill, applause erupted from lawmakers and their guests …

So be it.  It’s now time for Magpul to leave and take its revenue and jobs with them.  When laws like this are implemented it’s always the duty of every individual to study the bill itself, sometimes including case law that ensues from the bill.  Gun forums don’t do justice to the complexity of most gun control bills, and every visitor to the State of Colorado is in danger of some sort of new violation of their laws, which most of the time would be felonies.  It just isn’t worth my time to study the law.

I have visited Colorado only once to ski in Breckenridge.  It was a wonderful experience, and sadly, one that will not be a recurring trip.  Not only will I not risk any sort of violation of their new law, but I won’t reward Colorado for their actions today.  I have friends and readers in Colorado and I don’t wish them ill.  But now that Colorado has been proven to be an anti-gun state, they will feel the wrath of gun owners and gun manufacturers.  They should consider their future through the lens of firearms at a time when their chief of the department of corrections was just gunned down.  Will the criminals have such a hard time getting what they want?

My treatment of Colorado won’t be any different than my treatment of other gun-control states.  I steadfastly refuse to drive through or even fly over New York, New Jersey, Illinois, or Maryland.  If I drive through with a weapon I must know their idiotic laws.  If I fly over with a weapon I might have to make an unscheduled landing in one of their cities.

I don’t take pleasure in seeing friends suffer under totalitarianism.  But when we look for work-arounds and fill in the gaps for others, we prevent the learning experience that comes from bad decisions.  Consequences bring the gift of wisdom.  For half a century now America has raised its children to avoid consequences, and partly for that reason we are where we are.

In this case, may Colorado get exactly what they have asked for, and exactly what they so richly deserve.   Tonight I will go home and order some Magpul hats, clothing and accessories (I already have their AR-15 magazines).  I will never again visit Colorado, and depending upon what other manufacturers do (Remington has made their bed, are you listening, Colt?  Rock River Arms?  Kimber?  Springfield Armory?), I will look for ways to reward the faithful and punish the wicked.  And there are millions of gun owners just like me.

Good grief.  Heritage again.

On February 26, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Center for Human Rights issued a white paper on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which concludes that “the proposed ATT is consistent with the Second Amendment.” This conclusion neglects important facts about the treaty and the processes surrounding it, which we have explored in this four-part series.

We have shown that while we agree with several of the ABA’s contentions, it ignores the fact that the ATT—like many treaties—is not designed for a nation with a federal structure like the U.S. The ABA also ignores the fact that the ATT goes beyond import restrictions on firearms by requiring signatories to prevent the domestic diversion of imports. The treaty may also invite the executive branch to take executive actions to restrict and control the import of firearms into the U.S., imports which comprise about 35 percent of the new firearms market.

Finally, the treaty raises broader concerns about the application of transnational law to the U.S. These concerns are heightened by the fact that both foreign nations and some prominent legal scholars have identified treaties like the ATT as a mechanism to pressure the U.S. to change its domestic policies, and even to change the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

The question, then, is what the U.S. should do about this. The U.S. is sensitive to allegations that it is failing to fulfill treaty commitments, and it rightly takes its treaty obligations seriously. Because the ATT is a process that is designed to evolve and grow, it is impossible to know where it will lead.

A new ATT conference begins today in New York, and we will be blogging from the conference.

Supporters of the ATT frequently defend it as entirely unrelated to the Second Amendment. Some opponents of the ATT criticize it as a nefarious plot against the Second Amendment. The truth is more complicated …

Listen carefully.  No, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty isn’t really that complicated.  It is a nefarious plot against the second amendment.

We’ve covered this in detail before.  All that rubbish and claptrap about the treaty excluding civilians because it excludes civilian arms is a ruse.  What it does is what Feinstein and Obama want to do within the framework of U.S. law, and distinguish between so-called “military weapons” and “civilian weapons.”  Again – it doesn’t distinguish between you and a member of the professional military, it distinguishes between military arms and civilian arms.

It would make illegal all sorts of firearms currently in circulation, as well as subject you to a set of rules, licensing and governmental checks that would make what Obama has proposed look like free utopia.

Some things really are as they seem.  Can Heritage at least try to get it right next time?  Otherwise, it’s just wasted space and bandwidth.