U.N. global gun control effort begins anew

Via Dave Workman, Seattle Gun Rights Examiner

New talks about an old subject – international gun control – begin today at the United Nations in New York, and sure to be involved at some point is the Bellevue-based International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR), founded with the cornerstone involvement of gun rights advocates Alan Gottlieb and Julianne Versnel.

IAPCAR Executive Director Phil Watson keeps an office at Gottlieb’s Liberty Park complex. Attorney Mark Barnes is IAPCAR’s managing director with an office in Washington, D.C.

In addition, the National Rifle Association is keenly interested in these talks. Indeed, U.S. gun rights organizations have every reason for alarm, in the wake of a statement published Friday by the Washington Post from Amnesty International’s Michelle A. Ringuette.

“The NRA claim that there is such a thing as ‘civilian weapons’ and that these can and need to be treated differently from military weapons under the Arms Trade Treaty is — to put it politely — the gun lobby’s creativity on full display,” Ringuette insisted, according to the newspaper. “There is no such distinction. To try to create one would create a loophole that would render the treaty inoperative, as anyone could claim that he or she was in the business of trading ‘civilian weapons.’ ”

This suggests that global gun banners equate rifles and shotguns with tanks and surface-to-air missiles. For example, during last Thursday’s Senate Judiciary debate on her gun ban legislation, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) defended her efforts to ban “just a few guns” and leave others alone by arguing, “Is this not enough for the people of the United States? Do they need a bazooka?”

Raising further alarms is the fact that within hours of confirming his re-election in November. President Barack Obama had joined a handful of other nations to rekindle the U.N.’s long-running effort to adopt an international gun control treaty. Gottlieb, who heads the Second Amendment Foundation, raised alarms about this last Nov. 7.

Amnesty International is part of an international gun control group called IANSA (International Action Network on Small Arms). That group also includes the Brady Campaign for the Prevention of Gun Violence, and the Law Center for Smart Gun Laws (LCSGL).

It could be that the deck has been carefully stacked by the U.N. According to Fox News, last week, IANSA co-hosted – with the UN – a “series of meetings” with representatives from 48 African nations to push global gun control. The session was held in Addis Ababa, Ethopia.

Gottlieb was in Europe recently attending a meeting of the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting, and he takes the threat of global gun control seriously. That the U.N. is hosting these talks on American soil, in a building that has a statute out front of a Colt Python with its barrel twisted into a knot is a not-so-subtle insult to the Second Amendment and American firearms owners.

Gun rights leaders are warning American gun owners that this is not the time to become complacent, or to be entirely focused on state-level gun control measures, or bills passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s effort to renew and make permanent a ban on so-called “assault rifles” and ammunition magazines.

That all of this is occurring at the same time – barely two months into Obama’s second term – does not seem coincidental to some activists, who are now saying “We warned you.”