By JOHN BOLTON AND JOHN YOO
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.
Associated Press
General Assembly building at the United Nations.
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.
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