Along with the French, the Australians, the Germans, the Canadians, and the rest of the world, and like the Redcoats at Lexington and Concord, they’re coming for our Guns.
By Alan Chwick, Richard Goldman & Joanne Eisen
Manasquan, NJ –-(Ammoland.com)- Gun owners, now is not the time to relax and let our guard down.
We need to be prepared to play hardball to protect our Constitutional rights. We have enemies at home, and enemies abroad as well.
They all have one goal – to disarm the American people and impose their own brand of Democratic Socialism on us. For now, it appears that we have won a double victory against them in the U.S. Senate and sort of, in the United Nations, but only by the skin of our teeth.
And all that we gained was more time to prepare for the next round.
Firstly, despite much hysterical posturing by legislators, anti-freedom special interest groups and the press, the U.S. Senate came to its senses and actually listened to the people. By a razor-thin margin, they failed to pass another round of feel good but ineffective gun laws. To the chagrin of Obama, Reid and Pelosi, Congress decided that there are already enough unenforced gun laws on the books, and that enough was enough.
The gun control crowd tried to use the public horror of children being murdered by a criminal madman in an undefended school to try and force “reasonable” gun restrictions on us, the law-abiding gun owners who pay our taxes, honor and obey the Constitution, and choose to own guns for a variety of legitimate reasons. However, despite their lies, the “gun-grabbers” couldn’t get past the desire of our legislators to get reelected.
Thankfully, in many Western and Southern states, gun control equals politician control, for Democrats and Republicans alike.
The laws they voted on were anything but “reasonable”. Dave Kopel, arguably our nation’s top Second Amendment theorist, warned that Senate bill S.649, “would turn almost every gun owner into a felon.” (“Turning Gun Owners into Felons”, Dave Kopel, April 5, 2013, National Review Online, https://www.nationalreview.com/articles/344763/turning-gun-owners-felons-dave-kopel)
After the uncomfortably close vote (56 to 44 with 60 needed), Vice President Joe Biden promised regarding the “universal” instant check;
“I can assure you one thing – we are going to get this eventually. If we don’t get it today we are going to get it eventually.”
This from a man who is a heartbeat away from the Presidency. What he’s saying is that they’ll be back, when they feel they can defeat us. (“Senate rejects background checks on gun purchases in 54-46 vote”, Alexander Bolton, 04/17/13, The Hill, https://thehill.com/homenews/
At the local level we all see the silly gun laws being foisted upon the public in places like New York, Connecticut, Maryland and Colorado, (and soon New Jersey). It’s easy to see that the goal is not safety, but a disarmed, compliant populace.
On another fronts, consider that on March 28 2013, American gun owners had to rely upon our mortal enemies, the North Koreans, the Iranians and the Syrians, to scuttle the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at the UN Arm Trade Conference. Their disapproval denied the Conference the 100% consensus required to enact their Gun Grab, but even that only lasted a few days, until April 2 2013.
That’s when the President of the Arms Trade Treaty Conference, Ambassador Peter Woolcott of Australia, brought the failed document directly to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) (Final United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, https://reachingcriticalwill.
Since the General Assembly requires only a simple majority , and not the unanimous consent of the body, passage of the ATT was assured. A whopping 154 states voted for adoption of the treaty document, including, of course, the US, with 23 countries abstaining and 3 voting NO. [See vote list: https://reachingcriticalwill.
While the Arms Trade Treaty that passed is not the dream document proponents of the treaty envisioned, they are joyfully calling this “the first step in the process”, while they crow about the “emergence of new international norms.” (ARMS TRADE TREATY MONITOR, No. 6.11, “Looking to the future of the ATT: shifting attention to implementation”, 04/02/2013, Katherine Prizeman, https://reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/
The reason for their confidence is that the Treaty’s proponents fully expect to be the people in charge of the “Secretariat”, the body to be formed under Article 18 of the treaty assigned with the task of implementing and administering the provisions of the Treaty. They believe that in the years ahead, THEY will get to make the practical, every-day decisions that control how the treaty functions.
Even more ominous, the version of the Treaty that passed permits changes without the original requirement of 100% consensus.
Article 20.3 begins, “The States Parties shall make every effort to achieve consensus on each amendment. If all efforts at consensus have been exhausted, and no agreement reached, the amendment shall, as a last resort, be adopted by a three-quarters majority vote…” Proponents are salivating at the prospect at “enhancing” the Treaty through the amendment process, without the nasty requirement of a 100% international consensus.
We believe that the proponents of a “strong” treaty would have pulled back from the final document and prevented it’s acceptance by the General Assembly, if Article 20.3 (allowing changes without unanimity) had not been included. Article 20.3 is not our friend. It will permit the gun-grabbing treaty proponents to strengthen the Treaty in an attempt to achieve total dominance over arms transfers, including, of course, arms transfers within the United States.
Noting that the treaty passed in the UN General Assembly with over a 3/4 majority, achieving a 3/4 majority again should not be difficult. Many nations truly believe, or want to be seen as believing, that arms are the cause of global violence and that controlling them should greatly reduce human rights abuses. Many impoverished Third World nations are actually eager to begin receiving international funds intended to implement the Treaty within their borders, so you know how they will vote on future amendments that tighten the rules. Adding stronger regulation and control to weapons transfers will be easily achieved through the amendment process.
Amazingly, several countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also wanted to include such concepts as victim reparations to the Treaty. Although they did not succeed in this gambit, the Treaty could eventually be amended to include such lunacy. Realize that there isn’t enough money in the entire world to “make whole” those victims killed or harmed by tyrannical governments or criminals misusing firearms to murder their victims. But there is enough to fill the pockets of corrupt third world and UN officials.
Ammunition Control On The Horizon
Changes and “improvements” to the treaty are sure to come. For example, many countries wanted to include ammunition within Article 2. Many other countries objected to this, which prevented ammunition from being a functional part of the initial Treaty.
Ammunition, however, is addressed in a separate article, Article 3, which is entitled “Ammunition/Munitions”, so it is certainly present in the Treaty. At some future date, if any changes need to be made to strengthen the regulations relating to ammunition, especially relating to record keeping and information sharing, we are certain those changes will be easily made, and ‘Ammunition‘ will conveniently move from Article 3 to the stronger Article 2.
Of greater importance to law-abiding American gun owners is the removal of the strong language relating to non-state actors, which you and me presently are, and unauthorized non-state actors, which we could easily become if the gun-grabbers have their way with proposed gun bans . It was obvious during the lengthy deliberations that many nations would refuse to deny to the transfer of arms to Non-State Actors, and would refuse to agree to such wording. That’s why it became necessary to remove that terminology from this first version of the Treaty. This is a victory, albeit it a small one, for US gun owners.
But we do know that the term “Non-State Actors”, as used by the proponents of the ATT, refers directly to us. In January of 2006, Owen Greene, Elizabeth Kirkham and Charlotte Watson, all gun-hating opponents of the right of self-defense and members of the Small Arms Consultative Group Process, proponents of a strong ATT, drafted a document with a clear intent entitled “Developing International Norms to Restrict SALW Transfers Non-State Actors.”
To these enemies of Liberty, we civilian firearm owners are Non-State Actors (they call us “Civilians: sports shooters, hunters, gun collectors, holders of guns for personal protection”), and these fascists desperately need to disarm us before they can proceed with their true agenda.
(https://www.saferworld.org.uk/
The document discusses regulation of civilian arms, stating “Although the content and enforcement of such regulations and controls are the responsibility of the recipient state concerned, their adequacy… is of legitimate concern to all states concerned with the transfer. This implies that all states should be encouraged to systematically exchange information … so that all concerned parties can take a well-informed, and wherever possible, co-operative approach to assessing the adequacy and effectiveness of the controls.” The obvious intent here is that American laws could be subjected to scrutiny and even modification by other countries.
Although the section on “non-state actors” is out for now, it could easily be brought back using the ¾ majority provision in the Treaty’s Article 20.3. But the Treaty still maintains the use of the phrase “end user”, which could be interpreted as referring to countries, or to us, as “non-state actors”. End user documents have already been required elsewhere for arms transfers [and failed elsewhere because the documents were easily forged ] . It would be quite easy for the Arms Trade Treaty to be amended to require “end-user” documentation for governments as well as for all of us. After all, many of us already carry “end-user” documents in our wallets.
We call them pistol licenses or Firearms ID Cards!
We should expect that the same vigor used by our local gun-haters will fall upon us from the one-world bureaucrats of the new “Arms Trade Treaty Secretariat”. While our local freedom-hating, political hacks continue to dream up new ways to infringe upon our Constitutional rights, those charged with administering the ATT will go joyfully about their task of building a new global bureaucracy around disarmament and denial of the right of self-defense, the dream of Fascists, Communists and National Socialists for over 100 years.
We now need to realize that global leaders are fully in sync with our own home grown, freedom hating firearm hoplophobes. They are ready and waiting to pounce on any weaknesses we may show, in order to macerate us into into disarmed, obedient sheep, or reclassify us as felons.
As law-abiding American gun owners, we should be strengthening our norm of gun ownership and self defense by teaching others where their safety surely lies. People need to answer some questions for themselves. If police services become unavailable because of a sudden catastrophe, would you be comfortable without a firearm? If your town is locked down and police are otherwise occupied by searches for mad bombers on the loose, would you not want a firearm in your home?
A double mission has fallen upon our generation, and it’s our duty to perform it well. We need to protect our progeny from local and global gun grabbers The only way to do that is to un-elect our local gun grabbers so they will never be in position to aid the global ATT proponents. And the only way to do that is to educate those who remain ignorant about the benefits of firearms ownership.
We should be proud and loud about our gun ownership!
All Americans, not just us in the chior, need to realize what our Founding Fathers understood, namely that “peace” and “security” come to us through the barrels of our guns. They need to understand, as we do, that every new new “sensible” gun law or regulation foisted upon gun owners weakens even those who do not chose to own weapons. They need to know that the politicians who promise greater safety through restrictive laws are liars.
Our American brothers and sisters need to hear, again and again, that felons don’t obey laws.
Given enough time and enough ignorance, those politicians may succeed. However, our enemies have now defined themselves. They’re out in the open. They told us what their plans are. Freedom is ours to keep, or to lose. It’s still not too late to educate our fellow Americans.
About the Authors:
Mr. Alan J. Chwick received a B.S. from the State University of New York at Albany in Business Administration and Data Processing, as well as an A.S. from Nassau Community College in Accounting. Alan has been engaged full-time since 1975 in the private sector as an Independent IT & Facilities Consultant in Freeport, New York (The Complete Machine, Inc.). He has been involved with firearms much of his life, and is currently the Managing Coach of the Freeport Junior Club (FJC) at the Freeport NY Revolver & Rifle Association. Alan is extremely active in defending the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights in the political arena in Nassau County and the State of New York. He is responsible, with the aid of attorney Robert Firriolo, for changing the face of preemption in NYS Penal Code 400, with his legal victory against Nassau County (Citation: Chwick v. Mulvey, 81 A.D.3d 161, 915 N.Y.S.2d 578 (2nd Dept. 2010)). Additionally, Alan was a strong voice in changing NYS PL 265.20.7e, to permit 14-20 year-olds to handle a firearm during training. At the Freeport Junior Club, with the help of Coach Edward Botsch and an excellent staff of Range Officers, Alan teaches firearm safety and use, competitive shooting and good sportsmanship to youths aged 5 to 21 years-old.
Dr. Joanne D. Eisen received her B.A. from Queens College, City University of New York, in Chemistry/Biology. She earned her D.D.S. degree from New York University in 1966. Since then, Joanne has been engaged full-time in the private practice of dentistry in Old Bethpage, New York. She has been a long-time advocate and prolific writer in defense of American’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Dr. Richard B. Goldman earned a B.S. in Geology from the State University of New York at Albany in 1974, and a D.D.S. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1981. He has practiced dentistry for over 30 years, and is presently Vice President for Clinical Products for a major dental manufacturing company. He maintains life memberships in many national and state gun rights organizations, and has spent many years educating all who will listen about the relationship between civilian disarmament and government-sponsored genocide.
The current primary focus of the writers’ research is the importance of the Second Amendment to the preservation of our American Constitutional liberties.
To contact the authors:
Dr. Eisen – JoanneDEisen@cs.com
Mr. Chwick – AJChwick@iNCNF.org
Dr. Goldman – RBGDDS@gmail.com