InTheWind
03-31-2006, 02:57 PM
The American Legion Magazine
April, 2006
Annie Get Your Gun
The United Nations is coming for it
By Matthew Spalding
The United Nations is trying to take your gun away. And even if it doesn’t succeed, the effort may be enough – given the disturbing trend of judges to cite foreign opinion and international treaties – to call more of our constitutional rights into question.
The U.N. threat to the Second Amendment can be found in the “Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, in All its Aspects.” The 2001 document calls for a voluntary but comprehensive program of gun control, an international tracking system, worldwide record-keeping and national gun registries. The umbrella organization of the groups advocating such U.N. policies – the International Action Network on Small Arms – wants to go further, licensing all gun owners, registering all small arms, limiting the carrying of guns and making gun laws uniform within national borders.
So far the United States has insisted that “small arms and light weapons” means strictly military arms. Our government also has raised concerns about measures that go beyond illicit international activities to prohibit civilian possession of such weapons. The problem is that there is no accepted definition of the term, and the international gun controllers have a more expansive interpretation, to say the least.
The U.N. effort was dealt a setback when U.S. Ambassador John Bolton drew a line in the sand: “The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures abrogating the constitutional right to bear arms.”
Nevertheless, planning proceeds apace, with another U.N. implementation conference scheduled for June and hopes for a binding treaty in 2008. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., is sufficiently concerned that he has introduced legislation that would block U.N. funding should that body restrict, attempt to restrict or otherwise infringe upon any Second Amendment rights.
Granted, there is widespread disagreement in the United States over gun-control policy and the meaning of the Second Amendment. At the very least, we can admit that the precise scope and application of the right to keep and bear arms is open to interpretation. Technology has made an armed citizenry an insufficient substitute for a trained and organized standing army. At the same time, the lethality of modern weaponry raises legitimate questions about the specific “arms” that can be kept in civilian hands and the particular regulations that may be constitutionally imposed short of infringing the right to keep and bear arms.
All that aside, what really matters is that this debate occurs among us, within the context of the American constitutional system, stemming from laws based on our consent. The very purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to list those fundamental liberties that we as a people choose to provide constitutional protection, above the political whims or outside pressures of the moment. U.N. efforts to regulate our domestic affairs and shape our constitutional rights are a direct challenge to our sovereignty as a self-governing people.
The larger problem is that in the conflict between an old constitutional mandate and the advancing claims of international opinion, it is not at all clear which side the U.S. Supreme Court is on. Consider the recent decision of Roper v. Simmons. Writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy declared the death penalty for minors to be unconstitutional not because of any interpretation of the Constitution, mind you, but because of “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” And what, pray tell, governs the standards of progress?
“The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions,” the Supreme Court wrote in Roper. Key evidence of that opinion was a treaty that the United States chose not to ratify. Truth be told, ratification seems to be a minor technicality in claims of our international obligations, just as it is with those who maintain that the United States is still subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
In a keynote address before a meeting of the American Society for International Law, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, “Although international law and the law of other nations are rarely binding upon our decisions in U.S. courts, conclusions reached by other countries and by the international community should at times constitute persuasive authority in American courts.”
In another death-penalty case, Thompson v. Oklahoma, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “Although the death penalty has not been entirely abolished in the United Kingdom or New Zealand – it has been abolished in Australia, except in the State of New South Wales, where it is available for treason and piracy – in neither of those countries may a juvenile be executed. The death penalty has been abolished in West Germany, France, Portugal, the Netherlands and all Scandinavian countries, and is available only for exception crimes such as treason in Canada, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Juvenile executions are also prohibited in the Soviet Union.”
Why follow the Constitution at all when there is such persuasive evidence beyond our shores? In the end, it seems that international opinion is more important than the Constitution itself.
We are in the midst of a crucial debate in this country over the meaning of the Constitution, between those who wish to be guided as much as possible by that document as it was originally written and those who see the Constitution as a barrier to social and political progress. The U.S. Constitution – along with all treaties made under the authority of the United States – is “the Supreme Law of the Land.” Faced with the choice between the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms and a treaty that could be understood to infringe that right, which would the Court choose? It may all come down to who is wearing the robes at the time.
Matthew Spalding is director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, and the executive editor of “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution” (Regnery 2005).
http://www.legion.org/?section=publications&subsection=pubs_mag_index&content=pub_mag_gun
April, 2006
Annie Get Your Gun
The United Nations is coming for it
By Matthew Spalding
The United Nations is trying to take your gun away. And even if it doesn’t succeed, the effort may be enough – given the disturbing trend of judges to cite foreign opinion and international treaties – to call more of our constitutional rights into question.
The U.N. threat to the Second Amendment can be found in the “Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, in All its Aspects.” The 2001 document calls for a voluntary but comprehensive program of gun control, an international tracking system, worldwide record-keeping and national gun registries. The umbrella organization of the groups advocating such U.N. policies – the International Action Network on Small Arms – wants to go further, licensing all gun owners, registering all small arms, limiting the carrying of guns and making gun laws uniform within national borders.
So far the United States has insisted that “small arms and light weapons” means strictly military arms. Our government also has raised concerns about measures that go beyond illicit international activities to prohibit civilian possession of such weapons. The problem is that there is no accepted definition of the term, and the international gun controllers have a more expansive interpretation, to say the least.
The U.N. effort was dealt a setback when U.S. Ambassador John Bolton drew a line in the sand: “The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures abrogating the constitutional right to bear arms.”
Nevertheless, planning proceeds apace, with another U.N. implementation conference scheduled for June and hopes for a binding treaty in 2008. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., is sufficiently concerned that he has introduced legislation that would block U.N. funding should that body restrict, attempt to restrict or otherwise infringe upon any Second Amendment rights.
Granted, there is widespread disagreement in the United States over gun-control policy and the meaning of the Second Amendment. At the very least, we can admit that the precise scope and application of the right to keep and bear arms is open to interpretation. Technology has made an armed citizenry an insufficient substitute for a trained and organized standing army. At the same time, the lethality of modern weaponry raises legitimate questions about the specific “arms” that can be kept in civilian hands and the particular regulations that may be constitutionally imposed short of infringing the right to keep and bear arms.
All that aside, what really matters is that this debate occurs among us, within the context of the American constitutional system, stemming from laws based on our consent. The very purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to list those fundamental liberties that we as a people choose to provide constitutional protection, above the political whims or outside pressures of the moment. U.N. efforts to regulate our domestic affairs and shape our constitutional rights are a direct challenge to our sovereignty as a self-governing people.
The larger problem is that in the conflict between an old constitutional mandate and the advancing claims of international opinion, it is not at all clear which side the U.S. Supreme Court is on. Consider the recent decision of Roper v. Simmons. Writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy declared the death penalty for minors to be unconstitutional not because of any interpretation of the Constitution, mind you, but because of “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” And what, pray tell, governs the standards of progress?
“The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions,” the Supreme Court wrote in Roper. Key evidence of that opinion was a treaty that the United States chose not to ratify. Truth be told, ratification seems to be a minor technicality in claims of our international obligations, just as it is with those who maintain that the United States is still subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
In a keynote address before a meeting of the American Society for International Law, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, “Although international law and the law of other nations are rarely binding upon our decisions in U.S. courts, conclusions reached by other countries and by the international community should at times constitute persuasive authority in American courts.”
In another death-penalty case, Thompson v. Oklahoma, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “Although the death penalty has not been entirely abolished in the United Kingdom or New Zealand – it has been abolished in Australia, except in the State of New South Wales, where it is available for treason and piracy – in neither of those countries may a juvenile be executed. The death penalty has been abolished in West Germany, France, Portugal, the Netherlands and all Scandinavian countries, and is available only for exception crimes such as treason in Canada, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Juvenile executions are also prohibited in the Soviet Union.”
Why follow the Constitution at all when there is such persuasive evidence beyond our shores? In the end, it seems that international opinion is more important than the Constitution itself.
We are in the midst of a crucial debate in this country over the meaning of the Constitution, between those who wish to be guided as much as possible by that document as it was originally written and those who see the Constitution as a barrier to social and political progress. The U.S. Constitution – along with all treaties made under the authority of the United States – is “the Supreme Law of the Land.” Faced with the choice between the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms and a treaty that could be understood to infringe that right, which would the Court choose? It may all come down to who is wearing the robes at the time.
Matthew Spalding is director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, and the executive editor of “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution” (Regnery 2005).
http://www.legion.org/?section=publications&subsection=pubs_mag_index&content=pub_mag_gun