This is how close we came to having the UN Gun Ban Treaty approved in the Senate.

[BigRack]

No. The Second Amendment protects your right to keep and bear arms. It doesn't address you buying weapons in another country - or even this one.

The sky is falling approach used by many people only undermines honest efforts to protect our rights when free-thinking individuals, who will take the time to read documents and think for themselves, spot the obvious hyperbole/BS and wonder what other lines they're being fed.

I have read portions of it and that is why I said the language is ambiguous.

Can you point me to the part of the treaty that says it will not regulate me buying a hunting rifle from Japan?

 

[Devil Diver Down]

I have read portions of it and that is why I said the language is ambiguous.

Can you point me to the part of the treaty that says it will not regulate me buying a hunting rifle from Japan?

You're not reading very carefully - I'm not saying anything about the treaty - I'm talking about the 2nd Amendment, which I why I wrote what I did about the 2nd Amendment. This treaty and the 2nd Amendment are different documents. You said you believe it is your "Second Amendment right to buy a rifle made in Japan" but it is not. Period.

 

[BigRack]

The sky is falling approach used by many people only undermines honest efforts to protect our rights when free-thinking individuals, who will take the time to read documents and think for themselves, spot the obvious hyperbole/BS and wonder what other lines they're being fed.

Which documents are you referring to?

 

[BigRack]

You're not reading very carefully - I'm not saying anything about the treaty - I'm talking about the 2nd Amendment, which I why I wrote what I did about the 2nd Amendment. This treaty and the 2nd Amendment are different documents. You said you believe it is your "Second Amendment right to buy a rifle made in Japan" but it is not. Period.

Keeping arms implies the right to purchase them right?

 

[mtmiller]

Keeping arms implies the right to purchase them right?

Perfect, you nailed it. Thanks for the heads up rhomas/big rack. Now get to the field and bare your arms.

 

[Devil Diver Down]

Actually, I don't think keeping arms does imply the right to buy them. Even if it did: how do you think OUR Constitution would apply to buying weapons in ANOTHER country? It does not. It's not really a tough concept to grasp.

As to your other question re: which documents I am referring to - any/all used by The Sky Is Falling agenda-drivers who use scare tactics rather than intellectual honest discussion about what is contained in said documents and what latitude said documents have in what can be restricted/expanded. To be more clear: this includes documents misrepresented by the "They're Taking Away Our Guns" groups, the "They're Taking Away Our Lands" groups and even the "They're Taking Away The Sanctity of Our Marriage" groups. Usually, the document in question does no such thing as the groups claim. But to further their agendas (and often, to make money raising funds), they shout it loud from every roof and mountain top and shout down the opposition. It is, in my opinion, one of the major things wrong with our great country - and it has been carried out by Libs and Conservatives alike.

I hope that answers your questions.

 

[BigRack]

Perfect, you nailed it. Thanks for the heads up rhomas/big rack. Now get to the field and bare your arms.

 

[BigRack]

Actually, I don't think keeping arms does imply the right to buy them.

If you believe that then you think the founding fathers expected us to steal our guns.

I don't believe they thought we should steal.

 

[Devil Diver Down]

Let me guess: Blonde? I sure hope your rack is huge.

 

[schmalts]

For those saying Rhomas is paranoid, can you enlighten me in a nutshell what this UN deal is then? What will it give us or take way? Sorry, I don't trust many things that so many D's vote for, even more so when the most Liberal D's from my own state are part of. Tammy Baldwin makes Pelosi look like a right winger

 

[TLC]

http://www.un.org/disarmament/ATT/

 

[schmalts]

http://www.un.org/disarmament/ATT/

I found that as well but don't have hours of time and a law degree to soak it all in.

 

[Biscuit Hunter]

By a 54 to 46 vote the treaty failed to receive ratification. What can happen if just 5 or 6 of those Senators who voted against ratification are defeated by anti-gun candidates?

I'd expect exactly the same result; the failure of the treaty to be approved by the Senate. It's been a while since I read the Constitution, but doesn't it take 2/3's of the Senate to approve a treaty? That would mean you'd need 20 senators to switch sides. That's a lot of senators.

 

[noharleyyet]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324504704578413110123095782

non lawyer-speak

Obama's United Nations Backdoor to Gun Control
Luckily, the Constitution gives the Senate exclusive power to ratify, or block, the Arms Trade Treaty.



By JOHN BOLTON and AND JOHN YOOJohn Yoo CONNECT
April 14, 2013 6:06 p.m. ET
Even before his most ambitious gun-control proposals were falling by the wayside, President Obama was turning for help to the United Nations. On April 2, the United States led 154 nations to approve the Arms Trade Treaty in the U.N. General Assembly. While much of the treaty governs the international sale of conventional weapons, its regulation of small arms would provide American gun-control advocates with a new tool for restricting rights. Yet because the Constitution requires that two-thirds of the Senate give its advice and consent to any treaty, Second Amendment supporters still have a political route to stop the administration.


Like many international schemes, this treaty has seemingly benign motives. It seeks to "eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and to prevent their diversion to the illicit market," where they are used in civil wars and human-rights disasters. The treaty calls for rigorous export controls on heavy conventional weapons, such as tanks, missiles, artillery, helicopters and warships.

Yet, as with many utopian devices, the treaty fails the test of enforcement. Some of the world's largest arms traffickers either voted against the agreement or abstained. The U.S., quite rightly, already has the world's most serious export controls in place, while nations such as North Korea, Syria, Iran, Russia and China will continue to traffic in arms with abandon.

But the new treaty also demands domestic regulation of "small arms and light weapons." The treaty's Article 5 requires nations to "establish and maintain a national control system," including a "national control list." Article 10 requires signatories "to regulate brokering" of conventional arms. The treaty offers no guarantee for individual rights, but instead only declares it is "mindful" of the "legitimate trade and lawful ownership" of arms for"recreational, cultural, historical, and sporting activities." Not a word about the right to possess guns for a broader individual right of self-defense.

Gun-control advocates will use these provisions to argue that the U.S. must enact measures such as a national gun registry, licenses for guns and ammunition sales, universal background checks, and even a ban of certain weapons. The treaty thus provides the Obama administration with an end-run around Congress to reach these gun-control holy grails. As the Supreme Court's Heller and McDonald cases recently declared, the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right "to keep and bear Arms" such as handguns and rifles. Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce remains broad, but the court's decisions in other cases—even last year's challenge to the Affordable Care Act—remind us that those powers are limited.

International treaties don't suffer these limits. The Constitution establishes treaties in Article II (which sets out the president's executive powers), rather than in Article I (which defines the legislature's authority)—so treaties therefore aren't textually subject to the limits on Congress's power. Treaties still receive the force of law under the Supremacy Clause, which declares that "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land."

Some have argued over the years that this difference in language between laws and treaties allows the latter to sweep more broadly than the former. In Missouri v. Holland (1920), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes followed this logic to declare that no "invisible radiation from the general terms of the Tenth Amendment" applies to the Treaty Power. Congress could win greater favor from the courts for gun-control measures, or President Obama could issue executive orders for a gun registry and background checks, on the claim that he is implementing the treaty.

Missouri read the treaty power broadly under the Supremacy Clause at a time when the courts gave Congress's powers short shrift, but the decision was fundamentally mistaken. The Supremacy Clause referred to treaties "made under the Authority of the United States" not to expand their scope—but to grandfather in existing agreements such as the Peace Treaty with Great Britain. In Reid v. Covert (1957), a plurality of justices agreed that the treaty power could not undermine the Bill of Rights, rightly trying to close the huge loophole that Missouri had erroneously opened.

The attempt to advance gun control through the Arms Trade Treaty might surprise average Americans, but not liberals, who have been long frustrated by the Constitution's limits on government. Gun-control statutes, like any others, have to survive both the House and the Senate, then win presidential approval. It is far easier to advance an agenda through treaties, unwritten international law and even "norms" delivered by an amorphous "international community."

Opponents of capital punishment have used treaties to press the Supreme Court to stop the death penalty in Texas. Women's rights groups advocate an international convention that would achieve the goals of the failed Equal Rights Amendment. And supporters of bans on "hate speech" invoke international norms to defeat First Amendment objections. There also is an international legal doctrine that during the period when a country has signed but not yet ratified a treaty, it must take no measures that defeat the treaty's object and purposes. Under some liberal theories, this would allow the president to put some measures of the new arms treaty into effect by executive order.

Fortunately the Framers required that the president submit all significant international agreements to the Senate, which must consent to the treaty with the same supermajority needed to send a constitutional amendment to the states or to override an executive veto.

The Senate should block this latest effort to evade the Constitution's controls on federal power. There could be no greater justification for senators to exercise their veto over treaties than the cause of protecting the individual liberties of Americans—including the right to bear arms.

 

[rhomas]

The original article I posted, had some incorrect information since it does require a 2/3rds majority to ratify a treaty. The vote that the article was discussing was the vote in the Senate to bring the actual treaty to the floor for a vote. Harry Reid was forced to bring the issue before the Senate for a preliminary vote prior to an actual ratification vote could be held. Somehow when I cut and pasted the original article, the entire statement didn't get copied correctly, so evidently I failed to highlight enough of the article when I tried to cut and paste.

The point is that there are 46 Senators who would have gladly brought the treaty to a ratification vote, and if ratified the treaty would place the Second Amendment in jeopardy. The fact is that the language in the treaty is so ambiguous that a majority of the Senate felt that any foreign manufactured guns would be restricted from importation into the US, thus placing many of the guns used by hunters in jeopardy, including brands built in Japan and owned by US companies.

I would also point out that the portion of this article that I did manage to post, was a portion that I edited from a claim that the UN had sent out a memorandum establishing an agency to investigate efforts to eliminate all gun ownership in the US. This portion was left out due to checking and discovering that the original author of the article had been provided a bogus piece of information. However, the information on the Senatorial vote was verified and documented by checking the Senate records ( I actually went to SNOPES, even though I normally don't put any faith in that fact checking mom and pop site).

I don't believe it's paranoia to believe that a shake up in the Senate could lead to an eventual ratification of the treaty, and much like Obamacare and Pelosi's comments concerning that fiasco, it would have to be passed in order to find out what's actually in it!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Ben Lamb]

It's clear none of y'all read a lot of legislation, treaties or law.

But that's not a bad thing.

Bolton & Yoo are hacks of the highest order. Pick credible sources.

 

[Nemont]

The original article I posted, had some incorrect information since it does require a 2/3rds majority to ratify a treaty. The vote that the article was discussing was the vote in the Senate to bring the actual treaty to the floor for a vote. Harry Reid was forced to bring the issue before the Senate for a preliminary vote prior to an actual ratification vote could be held. Somehow when I cut and pasted the original article, the entire statement didn't get copied correctly, so evidently I failed to highlight enough of the article when I tried to cut and paste.

The point is that there are 46 Senators who would have gladly brought the treaty to a ratification vote, and if ratified the treaty would place the Second Amendment in jeopardy. The fact is that the language in the treaty is so ambiguous that a majority of the Senate felt that any foreign manufactured guns would be restricted from importation into the US, thus placing many of the guns used by hunters in jeopardy, including brands built in Japan and owned by US companies.

I would also point out that the portion of this article that I did manage to post, was a portion that I edited from a claim that the UN had sent out a memorandum establishing an agency to investigate efforts to eliminate all gun ownership in the US. This portion was left out due to checking and discovering that the original author of the article had been provided a bogus piece of information. However, the information on the Senatorial vote was verified and documented by checking the Senate records ( I actually went to SNOPES, even though I normally don't put any faith in that fact checking mom and pop site).

I don't believe it's paranoia to believe that a shake up in the Senate could lead to an eventual ratification of the treaty, and much like Obamacare and Pelosi's comments concerning that fiasco, it would have to be passed in order to find out what's actually in it!!!!!!!!!!

So your contention is that you love the Constitution except when it works? Who cares what 46 Senators wanted to do?

Did you spend any time perusing the actual treaty? Did you look at all the places where it referenced national laws?

I don't love the UN and I didn't support passing of this treaty but the arguments you are using is the NRA paranoid fantasy at it's very best.

Nemont

 

[Ben Lamb]

Never let facts get in the way of a good old fashioned rant.

 

[noharleyyet]

It's clear none of y'all read a lot of legislation, treaties or law.

But that's not a bad thing.

Bolton & Yoo are hacks of the highest order. Pick credible sources.

Ben,, I figured their kool aid would provoke a rinse and repeat from ya. Wrong ideological capital consonants?

But that's not a bad thing.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Ben,, I figured their kool aid would provoke a rinse and repeat from ya. Wrong ideological capital consonants?

But that's not a bad thing.

Ken,

I love you too.