The NRA shouldn't be allowed to
derail Senate support of a new global weapons agreement.
Did
you know that international laws dictate the rules of the game when it comes to
selling bananas and iPods, but not grenade launchers and AK-47s?
It’s
crazy but true. Fortunately, a solution is at hand. Negotiators at the United
Nations will soon wrap up a global Arms Trade Treaty that will establish much-needed rules to
prevent selling arms to human rights violators.
Every
year, more than 500,000 people around the world are killed as a result of armed
violence. Firearms are used in armed conflicts and to carry out human rights
violations, including genocide, gang rape, and the practice of forcing children
into combat as under-aged soldiers.
Roughly 60 percent of documented human rights violations involve the use of small arms (such as rifles and machine guns) and light weapons (such as grenade launchers and shoulder-fired missiles). In fact, more human rights abuses are committed with small arms than with any other category of weapon.
The
new Arms Trade Treaty sets uniform standards for international arms sales that
will bring foreign governments up to U.S. standards and move the black markets
out of the shadows. It will protect legitimate trade while holding governments
accountable for selling arms to human rights violators. Without the treaty,
warlords and terrorists will continue to get weapons used to force child soldiers
to kill their parents, to attack American soldiers and missionaries, and to
rape refugee women and girls.
U.S.
support for this agreement should be a no-brainer.
The
UN resolution that authorized the treaty talks ensured that the agreement only
dealt with international sales and reserved “the exclusive right of [individual
nations] to regulate internal transfers of arms and national ownership.”
Despite
this assurance, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre has gone on record saying the Arms Trade
Treaty will threaten Americans’ rights to bear arms. The February 2013 cover story from the NRA’s magazine America’s 1st Freedom pushes
a baseless conspiracy that the treaty will be used by “the minions of
tyrannical and thieving governments” to achieve “total disarmament of
freedom-loving people all over the world.”
Even
a senior research fellow from the very conservative Heritage Foundation, Ted Bromund, has debunked this big lie.
“I
don’t think that the [Arms Trade Treaty] is a gun confiscation measure for a
variety of reasons,” Bromund said. “First, because I don’t regard that as
within the bounds of possibility in the United States and secondly, because
that is not what the text says.”
The
NRA shouldn’t be allowed to derail support for the agreement when it gets to
the Senate. This treaty is in America’s security, business, and moral
interests. Not only is it good for our nation to have all countries operating
from the same rule book, it’s also our responsibility. The United States, after
all, is the top global supplier of major conventional weapons.
Fortunately,
the White House is backing efforts to establish this treaty. And there’s broad
support for it among U.S. military, religious, and human rights leaders.
Americans
are debating our own gun safety laws with more fervor than we’ve seen in years.
It’s also time for our nation and our senators to get behind a sensible
agreement to protect millions around the world and at home.
Don Kraus is the President and CEO of
GlobalSolutions.org.
Distributed via OtherWords. OtherWords.org
Distributed via OtherWords. OtherWords.org