With just over a month left in office and no gun control achievements to speak of during his time in the White House, President Obama has sent the United Nation’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to the Senate for one last shot at ratification.
The ATT garnered a lot of attention as it moved through various bureaucratic channels in 2012 and 2013. Breitbart News reported that the treaty was supported by 46 Senators, two of whom were Independents–Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Angus King (I-Maine)–and the rest of whom were Democrats. It was signed by Secretary of State John Kerry on September 25, 2013, but it is not binding because Republican Senators shot down ratification efforts.
At the time that Kerry signed the treaty the NRA warned, “This treaty threatens individual firearm ownership with an invasive registration scheme [and is full of regulations and requirements that are] blatant attacks on the constitutional rights of every law-abiding American.”
The “registration scheme” referenced by the NRA is a clear and present danger which still presents itself in this latest ratification attempt. This is because the ATT is advertised as a way to monitor and control the movement of “small arms and light weapons across borders.” To that end, the treaty encourages records for “end use or end [users]” to be maintained for “a minimum of ten years” after the weapons reach their final destination. This requires the creation of a database of sales records–which would include information on the weapons and the owners–and that information would be internationally maintained; after all, this is a UN treaty. full story
