The United Nations’ (UN) first Biennial Meeting of States to Consider the Implementation of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects wrapped up a week-long meeting at UN Headquarters in New York on July 11 with no significant new action taken but with a report still to be prepared for the General Assembly meeting in September.
During the meeting American representatives continued to stress that US position set forth at the 2001 meeting by Undersecretary of State John Bolton that the focus of international efforts should be limited to trafficking in illicit small arms and light weapons and not to any international registration or regulatory scheme that would affect lawful civilian arms ownership or infringe on Second Amendment protections.
But the UN program on guns is not as simple as it sounds, as Gun Week learned.
“It’s not just civilian gun ownership that’s at stake,” said John Miller, executive vice president of the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association (NMLRA), who was attending the meeting as a representative of two non-government organizations (NGOs). Miller was one of a team of gun industry and gun organization observers for the World Forum on the Future of the Shooting Sports and he testified on proposed UN regulations regarding involving explosives which could affect blackpowder on belaf of the International Association of Museums of Arms and Military History.
“There’s a lot of trouble over words at the UN,” Miller told Gun Week. “Some countries mean common rifles, shotguns and handguns when they are talking about ‘small arms.’ The US delegation means rocket propelled grenade launchers, hand-held surface to air missiles and other light military arms.
“Then there are differences between what some people call deactivation or demilitarization. For some nations that means total destruction,” Miller said.
Miller, the NMLRA and the museum NGO don’t want to see blackpowder improperly grouped with explosives, which would impact not only muzzleloading hunting and shooting, but historial events and re-enactments. Improper language on deactivation might lead to total destruction of arms of immense historical value.
As the UN meeting closed, the chairperson on the meeting, Kuniko Inoguchi of Japan, hailed the progress that has occurred since the 2001 conference. In an official UN press release, she said that a key element in moving forward on the UN Programme agenda was newly-enacted or amended national legislation, with over 90 countries now reporting that they had domestic laws to govern the illicit manufacture, possession and trade in weapons.
Inoguchi claimed that world progress in stemming the illicit small arms trade had been made in public disclosures about the origins, destinations, modus operandi and profiling of groups engaged in the global illicit arms trade. She noted that regional and global cooperation was also growing, especially with respect to brokering of arms, but that states should agree on guidelines for authorizing exports, imports and the transit of small arms and light weapons.
The US position has been that our government already has in place suitable and workable procedures for authorizing and tracking international exports and imports of arms and munitions, and that other nations could help resolve the problem of the illicit trade by adopting similar regulations.
As if to underscore what Miller told Gun Week about deactivation, Inouchi observed that the destruction of almost half of an estimated total of over 4 million weapons collected and disposed of during the last decade had taken place over the past two years. She also stressed the perennial anti-gun thesis that all illicit arms stocks are derived from what were once legal inventories. This is the prinicipal argument used to justify imposing new international standards on independent nations’ small arms and civilian arms regulations.
“Since nothing really new was proposed at this time, I suppose some would say we dodged the international gun control bullet at this meeting,” Miller said. “But the situation bars watching. There’s an official report yet to come. And there are future meetings scheduled for 2005 and 2006, when a binding treaty is expected to be signed.
“The problem then,” Miller said, “may come in the way sanctions are placed on those countries which don’t sign onto the final program. That could also affect the US even if our government rejects it.”
During the UN meeting, Canadian government officials, who have been among the leaders in the global gun control effort, watched straight-faced as a leading opponent of that government’s controversial long gun registry scheme recounted its cost overruns and questioned its effectiveness.
“I know you have heard many reports of its technological brilliance and its unmitigated success,” Tony Bernardo told delegates representing the UN’s 192 member countries, according to The National Post of Canada.
“I might suggest to you that the government of Canada has been less than transparent in its reporting of the accomplishments of its domestic firearms control system.”
Canada has been using the week-long conference to campaign for accelerated global efforts to trace guns internationally and destroy illicit supplies of small arms.
International gun control lobbyists have hailed Ottawa’s efforts to devise ways to keep track of light weapons, and held up the country as setting an example to follow.
But Bernardo, speaking as executive director for the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action (CILA), challenged Ottawa’s claims about the efficiency of its domestic gun registration system. He also pointed out the system has been much more expensive than expected, and warned poorly thought-out programs can deny money for other projects, such as fighting poverty, without solving the problem of illicit arms trafficking.
Canada says it is not advocating international gun registration, but rather a tracing system that would see all guns marked in some way so their point of origin can be identified if they end up being recovered after their illegal use. A large part of the aim is to try to determine who is supplying rebel groups around the world with arms, so the illegal arms trade can be stopped.
But the UN’s Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice passed a resolution in 1997 saying the eventual goal of gun control should involve tracking the distribution of firearms. Gun control advocates cite the resolution as evidence that countries around the world want registration.
“Amongst many governments, there’s hope that eventually norms will emerge around the regulation of the civilian possession of firearms,” said Wendy Cukier, president of the Canadian-based Coalition for Gun Control, who also was attending the conference.
“Aggressive attacks on Canada by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Canadian gun lobby only strengthen the resolve of groups and governments around the world to tackle illegal gun running.”
The NRA and CILA attended the July 7-11 meeting in New York along with other pro-gun groups trying to shape the direction of an international plan to prevent illicit small arms proliferation.
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