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UNITED NATIONS: The leading US pro-gun group, the National Rifle Association, has vowed to fight a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion glob alarms trade and dismissed suggestions that a recent US school shooting bolstered the case for such a pact.
The UN General Assembly voted on Monday to restart negotiations in mid-March on the first international treaty to regulate conventional arms trade after a drafting conference in July collapsed because the US and other nations wanted more time. Washington supported Monday’s UN vote. US President Barack Obama has come under intense pressure to tighten domestic gun control laws after the Dec 14 shooting massacre of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. His administration has since reiterated its support for a global arms treaty that does not curtail US citizens’ rights to own weapons. Arms control campaigners say one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence and a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities.
In an interview with Reuters, NRA President David Keene said the Newtown massacre has not changed the powerful US gun lobby’s position on the treaty. He also made clear that the Obama administration would have a fight on its hands if it brought the treaty to the US Senate for ratification.
“We’re as opposed to it today as we were when it first appeared,” he said on Thursday. “We do not see anything in terms of the language and the preamble as being any kind of guarantee of the American people’s rights under the Second Amendment.”
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects the right to bear arms. Keene said the pact could require the US government to enact legislation to implement it, which the NRA fears could lead to tighter restrictions on gun ownership.
He added that such a treaty was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority in the US Senate necessary for approval. “This treaty is as problematic today in terms of ratification in the Senate as it was six months ago or a year ago,” Keene said. Earlier this year a majority of senators wrote to Obama urging him to oppose the treaty.
UN delegates and gun-control activists say the July treaty negotiations fell apart largely because Obama, fearing attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney before the Nov 6 election if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, sought to kick the issue past the US vote. US officials have denied those allegation. The NRA claimed credit for the July failure, calling it at the time “a big victory for American gun owners.”
The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world’s biggest arms trader, which accounts for more than 40 per cent of global transfers in conventional arms - reversed US policy on the issue after Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.
The UN General Assembly voted on Monday to restart negotiations in mid-March on the first international treaty to regulate conventional arms trade after a drafting conference in July collapsed because the US and other nations wanted more time. Washington supported Monday’s UN vote. US President Barack Obama has come under intense pressure to tighten domestic gun control laws after the Dec 14 shooting massacre of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. His administration has since reiterated its support for a global arms treaty that does not curtail US citizens’ rights to own weapons. Arms control campaigners say one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence and a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities.
In an interview with Reuters, NRA President David Keene said the Newtown massacre has not changed the powerful US gun lobby’s position on the treaty. He also made clear that the Obama administration would have a fight on its hands if it brought the treaty to the US Senate for ratification.
“We’re as opposed to it today as we were when it first appeared,” he said on Thursday. “We do not see anything in terms of the language and the preamble as being any kind of guarantee of the American people’s rights under the Second Amendment.”
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects the right to bear arms. Keene said the pact could require the US government to enact legislation to implement it, which the NRA fears could lead to tighter restrictions on gun ownership.
He added that such a treaty was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority in the US Senate necessary for approval. “This treaty is as problematic today in terms of ratification in the Senate as it was six months ago or a year ago,” Keene said. Earlier this year a majority of senators wrote to Obama urging him to oppose the treaty.
UN delegates and gun-control activists say the July treaty negotiations fell apart largely because Obama, fearing attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney before the Nov 6 election if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, sought to kick the issue past the US vote. US officials have denied those allegation. The NRA claimed credit for the July failure, calling it at the time “a big victory for American gun owners.”
The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world’s biggest arms trader, which accounts for more than 40 per cent of global transfers in conventional arms - reversed US policy on the issue after Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.
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