As United Nations delegates met in New York City in July to adopt an Arms Trade Treaty that could have dire effects on America’s law-abiding gun owners, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre once again appeared before the world body fighting for our Second Amendment rights.
“The NRA is the largest and most active firearms rights organization in the world, with 4 million members who represent 100 million Americans who own firearms,” LaPierre told the delegates at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty. “On behalf of those 100 million American gun owners, I am here to announce NRA’s strong opposition to anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens’ right to self-defense.”
For nearly 20 years, the NRA has fought tirelessly to oppose any United Nations effort to undermine the constitutional rights of law-abiding American gun owners. That fight has grown more intense lately, as the U.N. and global gun banners have moved to step up their attack on our Second Amendment freedoms by including civilian arms in the proposed Arms Trade Treaty.
“No foreign influence has jurisdiction over the freedoms our Founding Fathers guaranteed to us,” LaPierre said. “We will not stand idly by while international organizations, whether state-based or stateless, attempt to undermine the fundamental liberties our men and women in uniform have fought so bravely to preserve and on which our entire system of government is based.”
In 2009, at the behest of the Obama administration, the United States joined 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Resolution. The resolution established the international conference currently being held at which leaders from countries around the world—many of which have deplorable human rights records—are working to draw up an international treaty designed to severely restrict or even outright ban your right to sell, purchase, carry or own a firearm.
In reversing President George W. Bush’s opposition to U.N. mandated global gun control, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, “The United States is committed to actively pursuing a strong and robust treaty that contains the highest possible, legally binding standard. …”
NRA has alerted American gun owners to be on guard against this ticking time bomb for years. NRA-ILA was the first group to be officially recognized by the U.N. as a “non-governmental organization” dedicated to protecting the freedoms of American gun owners, hunters and shooters. The threat to those freedoms posed by an international Arms Trade Treaty has gained steam under the current administration.
“Without apology, the NRA wants no part of any treaty that infringes on the precious right of lawful Americans to keep and bear arms. Let there be no confusion. Any treaty that includes civilian firearms ownership in its scope will be met with the NRA’s greatest force of opposition.”
Although gun-ban schemes have largely failed in Congress in recent years, gun owners shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that none in the U.S. Congress are pushing for ratification of a freedom-gutting treaty. In fact, a group of anti-gun members of the U.S. House of Representatives, led by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, in which the lawmakers “... strongly urge the United States to take a leadership role in pushing for a strong, verifiable Arms Trade Treaty.”
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