Gun Control Advocates Stunned By Failure at UN Conference
July 20, 2006

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

On July 7, Nick Wadhams of the Associated Press reported that “A two-week UN conference reviewing efforts to fight the illegal weapons trade ended in failure . . . , with nations too divided on too many contentious issues to agree on the best way to combat a scourge that fuels conflict worldwide.”

The AP report was headlined “UN conference on arms ends in failure.”

Also on July 7, Reuters news service’s report, written by Irwin Arieff, was headlined “UN small arms conference ends in ‘total meltdown.’ ”

The Reuters lead was “A UN meeting meant to expand a five-year-old crackdown on the illicit global trade in small arms ended in chaos . . . as delegates ran out of time without reaching agreement on a plan for future action.

“ ‘There was a total meltdown at the end. You don’t know if it was a conspiracy or just a screw-up,’ said one delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity,” Reuters continued.
“Other delegates said negotiations had simply proceeded too slowly, leaving too much to accomplish on the last day,” Reuters continued.

“But Rebecca Peters of the London-based International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) accused governments of letting a few states ‘hold them all hostage and to derail any plans which might have brought any improvements in this global crisis,’ ” Reuters said.

According to Reuters and AP, IANSA identified the main players blocking agreement as Cuba, India, Iran, Pakistan and Russia. Other gun control activists named China, Egypt and Venezuela as well.

The usual establishment media bias on guns was as evident as their disappointment in the outcome, who they quoted and what they didn’t say was enlightening.

Early in its story, Reuters quoted another IANSA operative, Anthea Lawson, as saying:

“It’s a squandered opportunity. It’s preposterous especially when there was so much will from so many countries to do something.”

The conference was intended to review progress made toward achieving a 2001 program of action to curb the illicit sale of small arms and light weapons, which includes pistols, rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, machineguns and other light military weapons. Some delegates at this conference wanted to add ammunition controls as reported on this issue’s Page 1 stories.

However, the conference was largely done in by the need for all nations to agree on every element of the final document, rather than to approve proposals by an up-or-down vote.

In the end, the conference couldn’t even accept a commitment for future meetings, although they are expected to take place in other forums.

Various reports blamed their failure on the pro-gun rights lobby in America as well as the US government’s position, originally staked out by current US Ambassador John Bolton in 2001 when he was then Undersecretary of State for Disarmament. If anyone still wonders why Sens. Schumer (D-NY) and Feinstein (D-CA) opposed George W. Bush’s nomination of Bolton to the UN ambassadorship, they can see it now.

Wire service reports claimed the Bush Administration, alleged by the media to be an ally of the National Rifle Association (NRA), set the tone from the start of this conference when Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Robert Joseph laid out a long list of proposals that Washington would not accept.

Joseph, however, said Washington was willing to endorse a set of global principles aimed at keeping small arms out of the hands of groups intent on human rights abuse, genocide or breaking UN arms embargoes.

Over the past five years, the world has spent well over $100 million on numerous UN small arms-related meetings.

As the conference concluded with no final document and no plans for any follow-up conference, David Kopel of the Independence Institute reported that it was the latter issue that prevented an agreement about a final document. The officials who had been charged by the conference chair with drafting the conference document presented a final take-it-or-leave-it document draft that eliminated various provisions that the US delegation had found objectionable, but also declared that there would be at least two more conferences. The US delegation refused to assent, and so the conference ended with no consensus and no plans for future conferences.

Kopel said the back-up plan of the international gun prohibition movement, and their many allies within the UN and national UN delegations, was to give up on significant progress in 2006, but to keep the game going with future conferences, when a more pliant US administration might welcome an international gun control program.

One of Kopel’s observations must be kept firmly in American gunowners’ minds, particularly in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

“If a few hundred votes had changed in Florida in 2000, or if 60,000 votes had changed in Ohio in 2004,” Kopel noted, “the results of the 2001 and 2006 UN gun control conferences would have been entirely different. There would now be a legally binding international treaty creating an international legal norm against civilian gun ownership, a prohibition on the transfer of firearms to ‘non-state actors’ (such as groups resisting tyrants), and a new newspeak international human rights standard requiring restrictive licensing of gunowners. With a presidential signature on such a treaty (even if the treaty were never brought to the Senate floor for ratification), the principles of the anti-gun treaty would be eroding the Second Amendment, through Executive Orders, and through the inclination of some courts to use unratified treaties as guidance in interpreting the US Constitution.

“At the domestic level, the Bush Administration has been close to neutral on the gun issue—doing very little to promote or oppose gun control in Congress. . . . And of course President Bush has signed all the pro-Second Amendment legislation which Congress has sent him, most importantly the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act.

“At the United Nations, however, the Bush Administration has twice rescued our right to keep and bear arms from destruction.

“There are plenty of issues on which pro-Constitution Americans can legitimately complain that the Bush Administration has continued or worsened bad policies from previous administrations—such as federal interference in education, erosion of the Fourth Amendment, and allowing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to ignore statutory controls on its behavior. But in regards to the United Nations assault on the Second Amendment, the Bush Administration, including John Bolton (in 2001 as Undersecretary of State, and in 2006 as UN Ambassador) has performed magnificently. The gun rights activists whose hard work in 2000 and 2004 was the sine qua non of Bush’s narrow electoral victories can take satisfaction that their work has, literally, saved the Second Amendment,” Kopel observed.

Amen!

Return to Archive Index