{"id":1093,"date":"2013-03-02T09:57:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T15:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2013-03-04T10:00:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T16:00:14","slug":"american-bar-association-says-un-arms-treaty-consistent-with-2nd-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/american-bar-association-says-un-arms-treaty-consistent-with-2nd-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"American Bar Association Says UN Arms Treaty Consistent With 2nd Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talk Radio News Service
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

UNITED NATIONS (TRNS) \u2013 A proposed U.N. treaty to regulate international arms sales would likely have no impact on U.S. domestic gun laws, according to a white paper released by the American Bar Association earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The report by the ABA\u2019s Center for Human Rights, which comes less than three weeks before U.N. members states are set to resume negotiations on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), seemingly weakens claims by the National Rifle Association and other groups that the treaty poses a great risk to Second Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration backed away from the ATT negotiation conference last summer after the American gun lobby and\u00a0members of the US Senate<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Congress<\/a>\u00a0alleged the deal threatened private ownership of firearms for American citizens.<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0American Bar Association\u2019s latest analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the ATT concludes that while the treaty would impose obligations on the U.S. government to block international arm transfers to suspected human rights abusers, war criminals, and terrorists, it \u201cwould not require new domestic regulations of firearms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the United States signs and ratifies the ATT, in its most recent iteration in the President\u2019s text of 26 July 2012, the United States retains the discretion to regulate the flow of weapons into and out of the United States in a manner consistent with the Second Amendment,\u201d reads the white paper.<\/p>\n

The ABA report also found that the majority of weapons covered by the Arms Trade Treaty do not enjoy Second Amendment protections, citing the Supreme Court decision\u00a0in District ofColumbia v. Heller<\/em>, that \u201cthe Second Amendment applies only to firearms that are \u2018typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,\u2019 but not to \u2018dangerous and unusual weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

It says the current version of the agreement\u00a0would cover the international transfers of all conventional weapons, including tanks, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, combat aircrafts, artillery systems, and missile launchers, as well as small arms and light weapons.<\/p>\n

The National Riffle Association has energetically lobbied against the inclusion of small arms and light weapons in the ATT, blasting treaty negotiators for targeting\u00a0 \u201ccivilians weapons\u201d it says are protected by the U.S. constitution.<\/p>\n

However, the ABA white paper notes that\u00a0District of Columbia v. Heller<\/em>\u00a0does not extend Second Amendment protections to \u201csmall arms and light weapons\u201d such as short barreled shotguns, machine-guns, and automatic M-16 rifles.<\/p>\n

It says that even though constitutional protections apply to some weapons classified as \u201csmall arms and light weapons,\u201d the Second Amendment does not cover activities like importing and exporting arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Second Amendment is generally inapplicable to arms exports. Though the amendment protects \u201cthe right of the people to keep and bear Arms,\u201d it does not protect the right to supply arms to persons who are not themselves among \u201cthe people\u201d of the United States,\u201d says the ABA report.<\/p>\n

But conservative groups and gun rights activists remain unconvinced, and maintain that possible future amendments to the ATT might eventually infringe on American gun laws.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ted Bromund, a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and\u00a0outspoken critic<\/a>\u00a0of the Arms Trade Treaty, says the American Bar Association\u2019s white paper fails to consider the longterm implications of the agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the ABA has missed is that although the ATT is a treaty, it is fundamentally a process. It is going to be a treaty with annual conferences, a secretariat for annual implementation,\u201d Bromund told TRNS. \u201cThis is a treaty regime. What you see is going to be changed and added to by new interpretations of international law. By accepting the treaty, the US is entering into that process\u2026 That\u2019s why I think this kind of thing is liable eventually to lead into second amendment concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ABA report, however, says the current ATT draft ensures countries have the ability to address any future changes to the treaty \u201cwithin the bounds of their own constitutional requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Heritage Foundation\u2019s Bromund argues the ATT\u2019s shortcomings go well beyond Second Amendment concerns.<\/p>\n

While groups like Amnesty International and OXFAM have emphasized the importance of the ATT as an international mechanism to stem the flow of weapons to human rights abusers, Bromund says such expectations are far too optimistic given the powerful U.N. Security Council\u2019s own struggles to implement arms embargoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cA treaty is the wrong mechanism to fix this because it assumes that more laws are going to stop illegal activity,\u201d he told TRNS.\u00a0\u201cThe ATT is going to cover the entire world and every country\u2019s arms transactions. You have to be crazy to think that\u2019s going to be easier to enforce than the arms embargoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Arms Trade Treaty negotiations conference is set to resume at the U.N. headquarters in New York March 18-28th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk Radio News Service click here for original article UNITED NATIONS (TRNS) \u2013 A proposed U.N. treaty to regulate international arms sales would likely have no impact on U.S. domestic gun laws, according to a white paper released by the American Bar Association earlier this week. The report by the ABA\u2019s Center for Human Rights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Arms_graveyard.jpg?fit=2500%2C1642&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}