Faster than you can say “We told you so,” a major national gun rights organization is raising a ruckus over quick action by a United Nations committee Wednesday to renew talks over a proposed international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) with the support of a newly-re-elected Obama administration.
The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation has already issued a press release, alerting gun owners that their “worst fears” about four more years with Barack Obama in the White House are coming true, and the administration didn’t waste any time.
“It’s obvious that our warnings over the past several months have been true,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “The election was called about 11 p.m. Tuesday and by 11 a.m. this morning, we got word that the United States was supporting this resolution.”
According to the Chicago Tribune and Reuters, the U.S. “backed a U.N. committee’s call…to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $60 billion global arms trade.” The story noted that talks at the U.N. headquarters broke off when this country and other major arms producing countries “had problems” with the draft.
However, the news agencies reported, “The U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee moved quickly after Obama’s re-election to approve (the) resolution calling for a new round of talks March 18-28.” That is when, said SAF’s Julianne Versnel, the U.N. plans final action.
While there are doubts that any treaty will be ratified by the Senate if it threatens the sovereignty of the Second Amendment, the timing of today’s announcement – less than 12 hours after the election was called for President Obama – is certain to alarm gun rights activists.
Obama had only alluded to gun control once during the debates with Mitt Romney last month, and it got the expected bad reaction from the firearms community. Today, several newspapers are reporting anticipated brisk gun sales now that the president has been given another four years.
Gun rights activists have insisted that Obama has been holding back on an anti-gun agenda until his second term, because he does not have to worry about re-election. However, the House of Representatives remains under Republican control, so any gun legislation faces an uphill fight, if not a dead-on-arrival designation.
Today’s decision to rekindle ATT talks puts the United States in bed with China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and more than 150 other countries. Eighteen nations abstained from voting on the measure, but there was no opposition.
“Just days ago as he campaigned for re-election,” Gottlieb said, “Barack Obama told his supporters that voting is the ‘best revenge.’ I guess now we know what he was talking about. The revenge he seeks is against American gun owners and their Second Amendment rights.”
http://www.canadafreepress.
http://www.examiner.com/
http://www.reuters.com/