The U.N. will gather in New York City this July for the 2006 Small Arms Review Conference. Doesn’t the name alone make you nervous? The U.N. is “reviewing” guns. If you don’t own one, doesn’t it make you want to go out and buy one just so you can be ready for whatever Kofi’s got planned?

Wayne LaPierre is plenty nervous, which is why he’s written, “The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the U.N.’s Plan to Destroy the Bill of Rights.” Sound alarmist?

His critics think so, claiming that the aim of the conference and its supporters is only to deal with the “illicit” sale of small arms, so it would have no effect on any legally traded arms. But check out the U.N.’s own explanation and see what you think (emphasis mine):

By unanimously adopting the UN Programme of Action to address the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons (UNPoA), in 2001, the UN Member States committed to collecting and destroying illegal weapons, adopting and/or improving national legislations that would help criminalize the illicit trade in small arms, regulating the activities of brokers, setting strict import and export controls, taking action against violators of such laws, and better coordinating international efforts to that end.

Sounds like there’s some wiggle room in there to me. I got to talk to LaPierre, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, about his new book and the new fight facing gun owners.

LaPierre has been charting the U.N. gun-ban movement since the mid-1990s, when all of the nuclear freeze non-governmental organizations (NGOs) morphed into gun-ban groups and “hijacked the disarmament machinery of the United Nations,” he said.
 
The philosophy of these groups, LaPierre said, is that the right to own a gun should be solely the right of governments, and they despise the fact that the United States remains a country in which private citizens can keep a handgun at their bedsides.

In a recent debate LaPierre did with Rebecca Peters, who is heading up the NGOs’ gun-ban efforts, Peters told him that Americans need to give up on the notion of self-defense because it’s something that only happens in movies.

The problem is, of course, that a disarmed people can do nothing when its armed government or militias turns on it. The U.N. has no response about what to do about that, LaPierre said, citing the Tutsis in Rwanda, the people of Darfur, and the Muslims of Bosnia.

“All they offer is a global socialist fantasy…If there were no guns, there would be no poverty, there would be no child hungry, there would be no violence. It’s the same global socialist fantasy we saw in the 20th century, “ he said. “Under the U.N. gun-ban policy, they have no solution for when the government goes bad; they have no answer for how to be liberated from a tyrant or a dictator; they have no answer for what oppressed people should do…Their whole philosophy is give up your arms and your freedoms and we’ll protect you.”

But why should we be scared in the U.S., I asked him. Doesn’t our Constitution override any international treaty the U.N. could impose upon us?

According to LaPierre, the U.N. plans can find their way into America in one of several ways. A treaty would require approval by two thirds of the Senate. An international agreement, however, is a lower hurdle, requiring only a simply majority. But, if neither of those succeeds, much of the U.N. plan can be implemented through executive agreement—the President putting policy to work through his agency heads.

The NRA’s message remains that gun owners should stay vigilant about the U.N. and work in 2006 and 2008 to elect Second Amendment candidates here at home who will protect their rights from U.N. encroachment.

“This threat is real. It is very well-funded and they really do intend to diminish the standard of U.S. freedom and dumb it down to some U.N. standard,” he said.

As for the upcoming conference, LaPierre is just happy to have Ambassador John Bolton on the inside, fighting for American gun-owners. There will be a week of testimony from NGOs and member countries before the U.N. insiders go behind closed doors to make decisions. It’s hard to find an ally on this issue behind those doors, he said.

“The United States stands alone,” he said. “The United Kingdom has not only thrown in the towel; they’re funding this.” Continued...