The great U.N. gun grab
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Wednesday, July 11, 2001
By Hal Lindsey© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
n its most ambitious effort in recent years, the United Nations is meeting this week to discuss ways in which it can legally confiscate privately owned weapons on a global basis. To be sure, that's not the way it is being presented by the press – instead, the conference is theoretically going after small-arms manufacturers, but the net result is the same.
The name picked for the conference makes it sound like the main targets for the legislation are tin-pot dictatorships like Saddam's Iraq: The U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade of Small Arms and Light Weapons in all its Aspects.
But think again. What constitutes an "illicit trade" in small arms when one is dealing with national governments? According to the U.N., the illicit arms trade is "international trade in conventional arms which is contrary to the laws of states and/or international law."
So, the U.N. is meeting to discuss passage of laws making illegal something that, in order to qualify must already be illegal. On its face, then, it would appear this must be the brainchild of the U.N. Department of Redundancy Department.
Although the U.N. stresses that legal weapons, properly obtained, are not on the table, the definition of what constitutes "legal weapons, properly obtained" is.
The United Nations' propaganda team has been on this from the start – rolling out numbers to scare the pants off any critics of the conference. For example, it says there are 550 million small arms and light weapons in circulation today. Those weapons, when used in armed conflicts, account for 300,000 deaths annually, says the U.N. Another 200,000 guns are involved in murders, suicides and accidental deaths. Something must be done!
But wait! A half million people die each year from gun-related causes worldwide, whereas more than 2 million people die each year from tobacco-related causes. Where is the U.N. Conference to Confiscate Tobacco? Why no global conference to eliminate this deadly killer – one far more deadly than a dumpster full of guns?
Not everybody killed by guns is an innocent victim of gun violence, either, but the U.N. isn't discussing that. No point in reminding people that guns have been used to save innocent lives – that would just muddy the agenda.
In America, crime is highest where gun control is the strictest. On the other hand, a few municipalities have actually passed laws requiring each household to have a gun. Those citizens who want to opt out have that right, but who has guns and who doesn't is kept secret.
Those cities have proved the sagacity of the 1774 commentary by Thomas Jefferson. In his "Commonplace Book" Jefferson observed, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
It is interesting to note who stands most strongly behind the U.N.'s plan for global gun confiscation. The Europeans [who hope one day to replace the U.N. as the global government in fact] are very much in favor of it. So are the Canadians, easily among the most propaganda-prone nations of modern times.
U.N. conferees say that "the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons has fueled many if not most of the recent civil and regional conflicts in various parts of the world, including Africa and the Balkans." This argument suggests that cause of war is the availability of guns, rather than disputes between nations.
Following this twisted bit of logic, if there weren't any guns, there'd be no war. Of course, that makes it difficult to put Alexander the Great or Hannibal or Titus into some kind of historical perspective. They didn't have guns, but they managed to conduct very efficient wars, nonetheless.
Secretary of State Kofi Annan said of the conference, "It is a recognition by the international community that we need to do something about these weapons." We can balance against his words the words of history.
"'Necessity' is the plea for every infringement of human liberty," said William Pitt; "it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe," observed Noah Webster.
In the Federalist Papers, James Madison outlined the real reason for the global gun grab. It is a matter of simple mathematics. "The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by [state] governments possessing their affections and confidence."
The U.N.'s true agenda is a New World Order with itself at the helm. And the only thing stopping them is Madison's equation. Belgium's Louis Michel offered a solution to the problem presented by Madison's equation – confiscate guns while they are still legal. "It is our duty to consider the legal aspects directly involved in this illicit trade." In other words, disarm everybody, and let the global government sort it out.
After all, if the U.N. conference is successful they'll be the only ones still armed. Except for the criminals. Which would include anybody who still owns a gun.
Hal Lindsey is the best-selling author of 20 books, including "Late Great Planet Earth." He writes this weekly column exclusively for WorldNetDaily and maintains a website where he provides up-to-the-minute analysis of today's world events in the light of ancient prophecies.
The Washington Times
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Trigger unhappy
Faith Whittlesey
Published 7/20/01
The current U.N. Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons has focused heavily on the perceived suffering of women and children and seeks, as a cure-all, to restrict severely if not ultimately ban guns, legal and illegal, except those in the hands of the police and the military. There is even a large poster displayed in the room where delegates work to come up with a final program of action, with the words in big bold letters: "SMALL ARMS KILL WOMEN & CHILDREN."
Nothing is neutral about this U.N. establishment. Needless to say, there are no other posters visible to the delegates. No dissenting views are prominently displayed. The long-range outcome of the U.N. process is predictable, despite 2 weeks of non-stop speeches in New York.
The leaders of universal gun-control non-governmental organizations (NGOs) driving the U.N. conference agenda, particularly the Americans, appear to be upper-middle class, well-educated women who, no doubt, are well meaning but undoubtedly have had very few experiences in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Minority women who run small businesses in dangerous "hoods" would hold a different view. Sadly, they are not present. A pistol for self-defense empowers these minority women, freeing them from the debilitating fear of robbery, rape or even murder as they go about their daily routines – just as a few pistols also might have spared some victims in Rwanda from unspeakable cruelties there. The women of Rwanda, of course, couldn't call 911 for protection; nor does a call to 911 in American cities always guarantee a timely response from the local police.
The rule of law is the best guarantee of a peaceful world – not the law of totalitarians or authoritarians, but the morally ordered liberty of people who understand that a virtuous citizenry is the best protection from violence. When the culture that inculcates the values necessary for a peaceful society breaks down, the best protection for women (and women protecting children) is the right of self-defense with a firearm. The social breakdown that afflicts our inner cities has not yet hit the world of these upper-middle class NGO women – so they mistakenly focus on firearms rather than root causes, namely, societal and family dissolution.
Small arms are impersonal objects which can be used for good or ill depending on the character of the person or police force into whose hands they are placed. They can be used to prevent one's daughter from being taken to be raped in the Balkans, to resist a "necklace" torture killing in Haiti or fend-off rioting thugs from looting a small store in Los Angeles. Criminals do, indeed, inflict harm with small arms – also with knives and machetes. But to purposely disarm the vulnerable and innocent, as the proposed U.N. program of action seeks to do, only compounds the problem and misses the point. In sum, it is reckless.
Where is the discussion on human rights of victims of violence including the right of victims to protect themselves from abuse by legitimate and lawful means? Our Founding Fathers got it right; they had a profound understanding of human nature. They laid out the constitutional formula to ensure civil peace – but just to be sure, Americans were guaranteed in the Bill of Rights the right to defend themselves form criminal intruders and those who would do harm to innocent people.
Minority women and children are, indeed, among the greatest beneficiaries of the protections afforded by the Second Amendment today, since most crime is committed not in the suburbs, but in the inner cities where they live and work. In America alone, firearms are used 2.5 million times a year in self-protection as positive proof of their life-saving value. So I suggest another poster be ordered and mounted forthwith in the U.N. delegates workroom, alongside the one already there: "SMALL ARMS SAVE WOMEN & CHILDREN."
This would create a modicum of balance in keeping with the egalitarian American spirit of fair play. Then let a principled debate begin.
Faith Whittlesey is a delegate at large with the United States delegation to the U.N. Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons, and a former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland.Copyright © 2001 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.