United Nations debate over the international Arms Trade Treaty is set to resume in March amid a barrage of criticism.
David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association, described the treaty as a ploy by President Barack Obama to circumnavigate Congress, federal courts and state legislatures in an effort to enforce his firearm agenda, potentially violating the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.
“The president and his people will tell your viewers [the treaty] does not affect the rights of the people of the U.S. It does,” Keene said in an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas. “It requires an international registry of firearms. It charges all signatory countries to set up a regime of firearms ownership and registration in their country consistent with the treaty.”
Keene said Obama is using this international document to bypass congressional, judicial and state legislation in an effort to enforce his agenda on gun control.
“We’ve seen it with other areas, where people have failed to get their goal in Congress, they’ve failed to get their goal in the courts or in the states, and then they’ve said, how can we accomplish what we want to accomplish in another way? So they said, let’s go to the United Nations and try and end-run the Congress, end-run the Constitution, end-run the state legislatures and the federal courts,” Keene said.
“And that’s what the Obama administration is doing with the Arms Trade Treaty at the U.N., and we’re not going to let that happen.”
President Obama first issued a statement of U.S. support for the treaty through Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in October 2009. Even with Obama’s signature, the treaty would still require at least two-thirds of the Senate to approve its ratification to become law.
Meanwhile, supporters of the treaty have denied that it will have any significant effect on domestic gun ownership.
