U.N. Targets American Gun Owners

Wayne R. LaPierre

Saturday, May 12, 2001

The endgame ... includes overriding national sovereignty regarding firearms.
A push for United Nations action on global gun bans - expected in July - has been preceded with release of a propaganda video that paints its message blood red, and I quote: "A gun born ... a killer is on the loose ... small arms are not fussy about the company they keep ... and they can murder indiscriminately."

This film - "Armed to the Teeth: The Worldwide Plague of Small Arms" -is a prelude to a U.N. conference on a global gun control scheme that could affect Americans' future right to keep and bear arms.

"The United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and All Its Aspects" will be held in July at U.N. headquarters in New York.

This sounds like an effort to target gunrunners and terrorists, but only in part. And therein is the trap. Opposition to the U.N. summit will be smeared as support for international crime. That would be a lie. Our opposition stems from something that should be dear to all Americans - our national sovereignty and individual freedom.

This summer's conference culminates years of work by a host of leftist groups, many working under the direction of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) and the U.N. Preparatory Committee (PrepCom), which met this past January and published a manifesto they hope will override our Bill of Rights.

It is called the "Draft Programme of Action ... ." In its foggy dialectic, "illicit" doesn't mean what a reasonable person might think it means. In their translation, our guns are also ultimately "illicit" guns. Further, "All Its Aspects" also covers legal commerce in firearms, and legal private ownership.

Among those associated with IANSA's worldwide gun ban efforts are: Coalition for Gun Control, Canada; Coalition for Gun Control, New Zealand; Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, U.S.; Million Mom March, U.S.; and National Coalition for Gun Control, Australia.

These groups seek worldwide gun control measures that include international firearms registration and primacy of the "world criminal court" over violations.

The IANSA lists among its major funding sources: the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ploughshears Fund, The Compton Foundation, Belgian Ministry for Development Cooperation, Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Kingdom Department for International Development.

Virtually alone against this array of richly funded international pressure groups is the NRA.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advises, "If activists want to fight the NRA and like-minded groups on the international level, they must confront them at home, because domestic and international weapons issues are intertwined."

Anyone who argues that this international battle is only about terrorists and illegal guns need only look at what the global gun control forces are saying. In a pre-conference planning session in January, IANSA reported, "The speakers urged the Conference to take action in key areas affecting both the legal and illegal trade including ... controls on the availability, use and storage of small arms within states, including strong domestic firearms regulation as well as a prohibition on the sale and possession of military weapons by civilians." And in their view, any firearm ever used by any armed forces or based on military design is a "military" weapon.

The endgame - which includes the aggressive use of "transnational" power, thus overriding national sovereignty regarding firearms - is the collection and destruction of firearms, including guns from what they condescendingly call in U.N. bureaucratese "civil society." That's you and me.

The Draft Programme demands the U.N. be empowered: "To ensure that all confiscated, seized or collected small arms and light weapons are destroyed expeditiously ... To encourage States [countries], in the interests of awareness raising and confidence building, to carry out public destruction events. To develop a reference manual on ecologically safe methods of small arms and light weapons destruction."

What they are really after is all guns, worldwide, save for those in the hands of governments and the elite.

There is no doubt that American gun owners are the target. In the short term, the global disarmament crowd, at the very least, will open a campaign to shame America into joining its English-speaking cousins in Canada and crime-ravaged Britain and Australia.

The stated goal of the U.N. gun control boosters is "eliminating the conditions that foster reliance on private arms for self-defense." Well, the primary "conditions" are a knowledge of history and a love of freedom.

There are watchwords for who we are: independent, strong, and free.

And at the forefront of our independence, strength and freedom today is the NRA.

Wayne R. LaPierre is executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/5/10/213203.shtml