153 to 1! At the U.N., one country voted against the anti-weapons trade treaty. Guess Who???

[RiverStone]

The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution last week that could lead to the first international treaty on controlling the trade in assault rifles, machine guns and other small arms. Out of 154 votes, guess which country cast the ONLY "no" vote?

With the NRA in BushCo's hip pocket, this crazy NO vote further served to show the rest of the world how backward our cowboy diplomacy, war mongering, face shooting leaders are. I wonder what other neanderthal idiocy Bush can do to further isolate our country from the rest of the civilized world?

153 to 1!

This administration's total disregard for doing anything to promote a saner and safer planet is beyond belief! What else can one expect from such the trigger happy president?

:grr: :nuke: :grr:

* * * * * *


NRA Makes US Sole Vote Against Reasonable Firearms Policy in the UN


The United Nations passed a resolution yesterday that could lead to an international treaty on small arms around the globe. The vote on the treaty was 153 to 1. Take a guess who was the sole vote against.

Over U.S. objections, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution Wednesday that could lead to the first international treaty on controlling the trade in assault rifles, machine guns and other small arms.

The nonbinding resolution asks the secretary-general to seek the views of the 192-member General Assembly on the feasibility of a comprehensive treaty “establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.”

Global trade in small arms is worth about $4 billion a year, of which a fourth is considered illegal. The arms cause 60 percent to 90 percent of all deaths in conflicts every year.

The resolution asks the secretary-general to submit a report in the next General Assembly session, which starts in September 2007. It also asks the secretary-general to establish a group of government experts to examine the feasibility of a treaty based on the report.

Resolution advocates said they hope any final treaty would compel countries to officially authorize all weapons transfers, stiffen compliance with previous treaties related to conventional weapons while prohibiting weapons transfers with countries likely to use the arms to violate their citizens’ rights.

This is an international embarrassment. These small arms account for, as the article says, a huge percentage of deaths across the globe, and we can’t even sign a nonbinding resolution against them. It’s sick. We’re the backwards member of the UN on this one, and the reason for that is none other than the NRA.

full story here:

http://www.gunguys.com/?p=1716

[RethugAssKicker]

1. One of many such votes.... Actually typical of the US...

[spanone]

2. Again bushco shames our once great nation.

[madrchsod]

3. the chinese and russians voted for this so

in real world it really does`t mean much. you would think the united states could at least "act" responsible but not with nra/weapon manufactures setting policy

[Blackhatjack]

4. And Which Country Sells The Most Arms To Other Countries? Coincidence?

No need to give any clues, and you only get one guess.

I was gonna follow up with this question: "Which country has sold the most arms to both sides of a conflict in the last year?"

But hey, why wear out an answer, right?

[malaise]

11. Bingo

this is when that lovely phrase 'national interest' violates the national interests of everyone else on the planet but since when did that matter to the bully.

[Bitwit1234]

5. Trigger Happy President Boo Hiss

This president is sure trigger happy when he has someone else do the fighting. BUT when he is the one who should have went to defend our country and actually pull a trigge HE RAN...THE COWARD RAN AND HID TIL THE WAR WAS OVER.

[Bandit]

6. Bad President...No banana

:shrug:

[Captain Hilts]

7. This is so embarassing. nt

[irislake]

8. Um --- let me guess

Could it have been the country whose main business is war and weapons of war and guns and more guns and guns galore and never enough guns?

[benEzra]

9. FWIW, that's a domestic gun-ban-lobby site...

so take it with the same dose of salt you'd use for an NRA press release on the topic...

[Hippo_Tron]

10. I don't see why controlling trade is a violation of gun ownership rights

Aren't we just trying to control the illegal sales of guns accross international lines? Sounds like the NRA is once again making up bullshit issues to divide and conquer.

[benEzra]

17. If that were all there was to it,

you'd be correct. Unfortunately, there is another side to it.

The International Action Network on Small Arms has a great deal of influence with the conference, and they have been trying very hard to piggyback some restrictions on legal firearms trade on top of the conference's main focus.

http://www.iansa.org/members/IANSA-media-briefing-low-res.pdf

2. Regulation of civilian ownership of weapons

To maintain public safety, civilian gun possession must be
recognised as a privilege with associated responsibilities for
maintaining public safety. In most countries, in order to drive a car,
applicants must pass a test proving their fitness to drive before a
licence is issued. If a car crashes killing a pedestrian, the owner of
the car can be identified by checking the registration plate which
will be linked to the owner’s name. Guns are specifically designed
to kill. Yet the majority of countries do not have effective licensing or
registration systems for guns.

Regulation of guns in civilian hands was omitted from the
agreement in 2001 and thus did not form part of states’
obligations in the Programme of Action. Despite this, 70 per cent
of governments have included information on controlling civilian
possession in their reports to the UN since 2001. Governments
clearly understand the importance of regulating civilian possession
in order to prevent diversion; it is time for the UN small arms
process to recognise it too.

Governments should agree to:
• Promote gun owner responsibility by requiring all firearms to be
registered. Individuals permitted to own guns and ammunition
must be held to account for their security, use and misuse.

• Define minimum criteria for private ownership of guns with
a national system of licensing. These should include proven
capacity to handle a gun safely; knowledge of the relevant law;
age limit; proof of valid reason; and a security screening based on
criminal record or history of violence, including intimate partner
violence. Licences should also be required for ammunition.

• Prohibit civilian possession of military-style rifles, including semiautomatic
rifles that can be converted to fully automatic fire and
semi-automatic variants of military weapons.

• Block access to guns for people with a history of violence,
particularly against intimate partners or family members.

• Introduce safe storage requirements to prevent gun accidents,
suicide, misuse and theft.

• Regulate manufacturers and dealers. A national register of all
manufacturers and their distribution network, including firearm
dealers, would help prevent diversion to illicit use.

I'm all for controlling illegal arms trafficking, as long as it doesn't include making trade in military surplus collectibles, handguns, and nonhunting-style long guns illegal. However, that is precisely what IANSA is aiming at--and, perhaps, why U.S. domestic gun-ban groups are making such a big deal about a UN convention on small arms.

Is the NRA's rhetoric exaggerated? Almost certainly (and FWIW, I am not currently an NRA member, though I used to be one). But IANSA has made no secret of its desire to use UN action on small arms to pressure the US into adopting Australia-style gun restrictions, and I think that is a legitimate concern.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. If the ban were on condoms.....

the vote would be reversed.

[iverglas]

13. there are many things one can read for background

but this is one of my favourites:

http://www.amacad.org/news/scourge.aspx
(and it also handily disposes of the nonsense argument that if they don't have guns, they'll just use machetes)

A Scourge of Small Arms

by Jeffrey Boutwell and Michael T. Klare,
published in Scientific American ©2000 All rights reserved.

With a few hundred machine guns and mortars, a small army can take over an entire country, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands

Most media accounts of the 1994 Rwandan genocide emphasized the use of traditional weapons—clubs, knives, machetes—by murderous gangs of extremist Hutu. As many as one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu perished, many of them women and children. To outsiders, it appeared as if the people of Rwanda had been caught up in a violent frenzy, with common farm implements as their favored instruments of extermination.

But this isn't the whole story. Before the killing began, the Hutu-dominated government had distributed automatic rifles and hand grenades to official militias and paramilitary gangs. It was this firepower that made the genocide possible. Militia members terrorized their victims with guns and grenades as they rounded them up for systematic slaughter with machetes and knives. The murderous use of farm tools may have seemed a medieval aberration, but the weapons and paramilitary gangs that facilitated the genocide were all too modern.

...

It's not too long, and it contains a very good summary of some of the problems and approaches that could help in solving them.



This is another good one, also short -- about one of the Bush administration's earlier exhibitions of how little of a damn it gives about the world's people:

http://americas.irc-online.org/commentary/2001/0108arms.html

Small Arms Trafficking in the Americas
By Jeffrey Fields | August 2001

This commentary was commissioned and originally distributed by the IRC's Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. It is reproduced here courtesy of FPIF. Foreign Policy in Focus—A Think Tank Without Walls—can be accessed online at http://www.fpif.org.

The Bush administration may think that it has struck a blow in favor of the Second Amendment by attempting to sabotage the recent UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms. But U.S. obstinacy has consequences in all the Americas, most notably Colombia and the surrounding region.

They may be called small arms, but they're big business. In Latin America, the problem of small arms trafficking extends from Mexico, where guns smuggled from the United States fetch prices three to five times higher on the black market than their original cost, to Colombia, currently embroiled in a long running civil conflict, to Brazil, which has one of the highest gun homicide rates in the world.

Guns bought legally and smuggled across borders however, are only part of a larger problem. Since the end of the cold war, weapons left over from superpower aid to insurgents still circulate, and are found in the hands of guerrilla groups, street criminals, as well as civilians. These weapons add fuel to many of today's civil conflicts.

Colombia and the Andean region provide a window to examine the larger global arms problem. As a well-financed guerrilla struggle takes place in Colombia, it is fought using modern small arms and light weapons, from assault rifles and grenade launchers, to shoulder fired rockets—not simply rusty relics of the cold war. A news report from last year chronicled Colombian guerrillas and the Russian Mafia's exchange of cocaine for weapons in a deal allegedly brokered by ex-Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos. Former Argentine President Carlos Menem has been accused of shipping arms not only to Croatia in violation of a UN embargo, but also to Ecuador during that country's 1995 border dispute with Peru while Argentina was serving as mediator. Not only are post-cold war weapons readily available, but new, off-the-shelf small arms are also being added to the arsenals of guerrilla groups with the help of high-level brokers.

The ready availability of these weapons to the well-financed guerrillas and paramilitaries in Colombia means that large quantities of weapons abandoned, lost, sold, or stolen are used in street crime and are easily available on the black market. The surrounding areas are also affected as weapons and drugs flow from Colombia into Central America, where guerrillas venture to obtain more weapons on the black market, often using drugs as payment.

...

The economic and social costs of firearms violence in poor countries is detailed here:

http://www.iansa.org/documents/2006/Gun-violence-and-poverty.pdf

For example:

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/dc3035.doc.htm
(this document summarizes the comments of people from many parts of the world about the effects of the unchecked circulation of firearms in their societies, and is well worth reading)

EMPERATRIZ CRESPIN, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said she was a medical doctor who lived in El Salvador, a country considered to be affected by arms. Due to the long civil war, there were an estimated 500,000 weapons in circulation, half of which were illegal. According to the National Civil Police, light arms were involved in 70 per cent of the all violent crimes every year. Management of that violence cost the country the equivalent of 12 per cent of its gross domestic product. She said she had contributed to a project to identify the political concerns of survivors of national armed violence. Their perspective was important and should be taken into account when developing national action plans to incorporate arms control in development and strategies to reduce delinquency.

Just think of all the yankee aid dollars that could be saved if the US decided to join humanity in efforts to stop this trade.

[ileus]

14. Guns kill people, the dead can't vote.

All the more reason GW and the NRA want firearms in every home.

[spoony]

19. Huh?

[jody]

15. A recent UN committee on banning small arms included U.S. anti-gun groups but not NRA.

Report of the Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference to Review Progress Made in the Implementation of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects

List of non-governmental organizations that include the following groups that oppose law-abiding citizens owning handguns or all guns.

Coalition for Gun Control

New Yorkers Against Gun Violence

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and its Coalition Partners include:
American Association of Suicidology
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Common Cause
Council of Churches of Greater Washington
DC Democracy Fund
DC Vote
Disarm Education Fund
League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia
Million Mom March

[iverglas]

16. jody, jody, jody

jody: "UN committee on banning small arms"

link given by jody: "United Nations Conference to Review Progress Made in the Implementation of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects"

I'm sure I'm not the only one who can see the difference, and who wonders why anyone would so misrepresent reality.


"List of non-governmental organizations that include the following groups that oppose law-abiding citizens owning handguns or all guns."

I give up, jody. Which of the organizations you listed opposes "law-abiding citizens owning all guns" (I think you mean "any", but whatever)?

I guess we could say that the Republican Party supports tax cuts for the rich or universal health care ...

[derby378]

18. Civilian gun possession must be recognised as a PRIVILEGE?!?

That ain't gonna fly in America, where gun ownership is a right, not a "privilege."

[HuffleClaw]

20. hilarious but sad

and not surprising.