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On his recent trip to Central America, President Barack Obama did more than
cozy up to Marxist dictators; he also signed onto an international treaty
that could, in effect, be used as backdoor gun control. It appears that
Obama wants to use international treaties to do what congressional
legislation is not able to do: further restrict the right of the American
people to keep and bear arms.
Obama is using the oft-disproved contention that "90% of the guns recovered
in Mexico come from the United States" as the stated basis of his support
for the international treaty he is promoting. The treaty is formally known
as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and
Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials
(CIFTA) treaty. The Bill Clinton administration signed the treaty back in
1997, but the U.S. Senate has never ratified the treaty. Obama intends to
change that.
To date, 33 nations in the western hemisphere have signed the treaty. The
U.S. is one of four nations that have yet to ratify it. According to one
senior Obama administration official, passing the treaty is a "high
priority" for the President.
If ratified, the treaty would require the United States to adopt "strict
licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to
make them easier to trace, and establish a process for sharing information
between national law enforcement agencies investigating [gun] smuggling."
Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee promises to
"work for its [the CIFTA treaty's] approval by the Senate."
Should the Senate ratify CIFTA, Americans who reload ammunition would be
required to get a license from the government, and factory guns and
ammunition would be priced almost out of existence due to governmental
requirements to "mark" each one manufactured. Even the simple act of adding
an after-market piece of equipment to a firearm, such as a scope or bipod,
or reassembling a gun after cleaning it could fall into the category of
"illicit manufacturing" of firearms and require government license and
oversight.
In addition, CIFTA would authorize the U.S. federal government (and open the
door to international entities) to supervise and regulate virtually the
entire American firearms industry. Making matters worse is the fact that, as
a treaty, this Act does not have to be passed by both houses of Congress,
nor is it subject to judicial oversight. All Obama needs to do in order to
enact this unconstitutional and egregious form of gun control is convince a
Democratic-controlled Senate to pass it.
Obviously, the United Nations, from its very inception, has been one of the
world's most ardent gun control proponents. As anyone who has ever driven by
the U.N. building in New York City knows, a huge statue of an American-made
revolver with its barrel twisted in the shape of a pretzel greets every
visitor. The CIFTA treaty is one of the U.N.'s pet projects in order to
achieve this long-held ambition.
Of course, Obama is a longtime liberal radical when it comes to the Second
Amendment. As a senator, he voted against the Second Amendment at every
opportunity. He has never seen a piece of gun control legislation that he
did not support. And as I have said before in this column, gun control is
high on the list of priorities for the newly elected President Barack Obama.
For Obama to intimate that 90% of the firearms used by Mexican drug cartels
come from the United States reveals either a truly dishonest and deceptive
mind or a totally misinformed and naïve one. Many studies have thoroughly
debunked the 90% myth, including one by William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
in a recent Fox News report. According to these researchers, the real number
is closer to 17%.
According to La Jeunesse and Lott, Mexican drug cartels, which control
billions of dollars, obtain the overwhelming majority of their guns from the
Black Market, Russian crime syndicates, South America, China, Guatemala, and
even from the Mexican army.
In fact, Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar: AK-47s from China; fragmentation
grenades from South Korea; shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain,
Israel and former Soviet bloc dealers; assault weapons from China; and
explosives from Korea--just to name a few sources.
In addition, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo, more than
150,000 Mexican soldiers have deserted in just the last six years. The vast
majority of them took their weapons with them, including the standard issue
M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.
And please do not forget that corruption within the Mexican government is
rampant. Many news sources have covered stories of how drug cartels bribe
Mexican officials. An article in the New York Times last year reported, "One
of Mexico's most notorious drug cartels made huge cash payments to officials
in the Mexican attorney general's office in exchange for confidential
information on anti-drug operations . . . the cartel might have had an
informant inside the American embassy."
The Mexican drug cartels control a multi-billion dollar enterprise that has
more than enough resources to obtain planeloads of weapons from all over the
world. For Obama to assert that 90% of the Mexican drug cartels' firearms
come from the United States is a bald-faced lie! Again, either Obama is
stupid and naïve or he is deliberately lying to the American people in order
to "sell" the CIFTA treaty to the U.S. Senate. I think we all know that Mr.
Obama is anything but stupid and naïve.
Read more about the CIFTA treaty at
http://gunowners.org/a042109.htm
In addition to the CIFTA treaty, liberal Chicago Democrat Congressman Bobby
Rush has introduced H.R. 45 in the House of Representatives. This bill is
anything but subtle. It is an in-your-face gun control bill that would make
"Mr. Gun Control," the late Senator Howard Metzenbaum, shout Hallelujah.
H.R. 45 would require a federal license for all handguns and semiautomatics,
including the ones you already possess. It would require handgun and
semi-auto owners to be thumbprinted at a police station and sign a
certificate that the gun will not be kept in a place where it could be used
for the defense of the gun owner's family.
Read more about H.R. 45 at
http://gunowners.org/hr45ana.htm
In all likelihood, H.R. 45 is probably a long shot at passing both houses of
Congress, albeit gun owners should never take any proposed gun control bill
for granted. The CIFTA treaty, however, is much more dangerous due to its
subtlety and subterfuge, the less cumbersome process of passage, and the
fact that it makes U.S. gun owners subject to international gun control
laws.
All in all, freedom in America is on the Obama White House chopping block.
And this much is certain: if the American people do not retain the right to
keep and bear arms, every other freedom we hold dear will quickly disappear
as well. Moreover, if we do retain the right to keep and bear arms, it will
only be because enough of us--and our state and federal legislators--resist
the tyrannical gun control machinations of Barack Obama. And that means
defeating the CIFTA treaty and H.R. 45.
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