The U.S. Senate
recently rejected measures that would expand background checks on potential gun
buyers, renew and strengthen a ban on military-style assault weapons and limit
ammunition magazines to 10 rounds. The National Rifle Association - a powerful gun
lobby group - is widely credited for helping defeat the measures. The
organization is now expected to work against Senate ratification of an
international treaty regulating trade in conventional weapons.
The Senate action
defeating the gun control measures came four months after a gunman fatally shot
20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut and was seen as a major defeat for President Barack Obama and gun
control advocates.
Following the vote,
President Obama did not mince his words.
“The gun lobby and its
allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it would create some
sort of ‘big brother’ gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This
legislation, in fact, outlawed any registry. Plain and simple, right there in
the text,” said Obama. “But that didn’t matter. And unfortunately, this pattern
of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose, because those
lies upset an intense minority of gun owners, and that in turn intimidated a
lot of senators.”
Obama said it was a
“pretty shameful day for Washington.”
Earlier this month, the
United Nations by a vote of 154 to three with 23 abstentions overwhelmingly
approved a landmark treaty regulating trade in conventional weapons - from
battle tanks and warships to small arms and light weapons. Only Syria, Iran and
North Korea voted against the pact.
The National Rifle
Association is also opposed to the treaty.
Martin Butcher, an arms
policy adviser with Oxfam, the international humanitarian organization, said
“If I were the National Rifle Association, I wouldn’t want to be standing with
Iran, Syria and North Korea on this - and that’s where they are.”
The National Rifle
Association argues that the Arms Trade Treaty infringes on the rights of
Americans to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It
is part of the Bill of Rights guaranteeing individual freedoms.
NRA Executive Vice
President Wayne LaPierre made that point during a speech to the treaty
conference last July.
“Without apology, the
NRA wants no part of any treaty that infringes on the precious right of lawful
Americans to keep and bear arms,” said LaPierre. “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.”
But Daryl Kimball, head
of the Arms Control Association, an independent research organization, said the
NRA’s charge that the treaty limits domestic gun ownership rights is simply
false.
“The National Rifle
Association is demagoguing the arms trade treaty. They are trying to scare
their members into thinking that this treaty is a problem for domestic gun
ownership when it is not,” said Kimball. “And what that does is it enables the
NRA to raise money and to be able to claim that they are somehow protecting
domestic gun ownership rights.”
The treaty will be open
for signature beginning in early June and will become part of international law
once 50 countries ratify it.
President Obama is
expected to sign it. But John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations, said Senate ratification of the treaty will be a difficult task.
“I think it has almost
no chance of passing. We have already seen resolutions in the Senate where a
majority of senators have disapproved of the treaty, even before they had the
language,” said Bolton. “And of course under the U.S. Constitution, treaty
ratification requires two-thirds of the senators present and voting to approve.
So if advocates of the treaty don’t even have a majority, obviously there is
simply no chance, I think, that this treaty will be ratified.”
Martin Butcher with
Oxfam said many of the senators who expressed their disapproval of the treaty
“were misled by the NRA.”
“It will be a process
of educating them what the treaty is actually about, how it will actually work,
and the fact that this is intended to help populations in conflict affected
areas, in Africa and elsewhere, and nothing to do with the United States,"
he said. "I’m sure that will reduce opposition to the treaty in the
Senate.”
Analysts also said the
National Rifle Association will make sure that its opposition to the treaty is
well-known in the Senate chambers.
Sources :
http://www.voanews.com/content/international-arms-treaty-us-gun-lobby-opposition/1649061.html
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