I’m surprised that Faux “News” hasn’t given this much coverage at all. Here’s what Lou Dobbs had to say about it:

And here’s a copy of the treaty.

Now my two cents…

I’m always wary of any legislation that removes rights or places restrictions because in my opinion, once you start along the path of taking rights away from the populace, there’s really no limit to the number of rights that could be potentially taken away. The people making the rules seem to believe that the rules somehow do not apply to them, or, they view the rights that they’re crusading against with such contempt that they have convinced themselves that only “bad” people would complain about them being taken away. I hate to frame this in such simplistic terms, but this probably fits the mentality of the majority of people who would push a “prohibitionist” agenda. With respect to gun rights; I have a particular problem with people who crusade against gun ownership—in all it’s forms, while not realizing that it was private gun ownership on behalf of the colonists who fought for the freedom of this nation, that has given them the right to bitch about guns. These very same people also ignore the fact that private gun ownership is first and foremost a matter of self defense—not recreational activity. Highlighting this point is the following line in the text of the SIFTA treaty:

RECOGNIZING that states have developed different cultural and historical uses for firearms, and that the purpose of enhancing international cooperation to eradicate illicit transnational trafficking in firearms is not intended to discourage or diminish lawful leisure or recreational activities such as travel or tourism for sport shooting, hunting, and other forms of lawful ownership and use recognized by the States Parties;

If they actually understood the reason the Second Amendment exists, then the words “self defense” or something to that effect, would appear in this paragraph. But they do not. Instead, we’re left with the ambiguous statement: “and other forms of lawful ownership and use recognized by the States Parties;”

The Second Amendment exists because our forefathers realized that as time goes on, the probability that the government would stop serving the people and serve only itself, approaches one. They also realized that should this ever happen, the people should have the right to rise up and replace the government with one that better suits them—which is exactly what just took place a few years before the Second Amendment was conceived. The prohibitionists also like to argue that such a rebellion would likely not be successful. This completely misses the point. During the Revolutionary War, the greatest military force at the time (the British) were defeated by a rag-tag force of under-gunned and outnumbered farmers. But the revolutionaries had one thing on their side: they were fed up with the oppression that they were experiencing at the hands of their current government, and they were willing to die fighting against it.

The prohibitionists always like to point out crime statistics as a reason for banning weapons. This is a flawed approach, because it’s obvious that if you are going to commit a crime then you don’t care much about the law. If alcohol prohibition and the war on drugs has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t outlaw something and expect it to just go away. You also can’t make the law-abiding population safe by taking away their ability to defend themselves… and aside from the impractical concerns involved with the police force protecting every single citizen; it’s not really the job of the police to defend you from criminals anyway.

Their definitions are all wrong too. For instance, “assault weapons” … what an ambiguous term! Damn near anything can be used as a weapon to assault someone with. Ignoring this, the anti-gun crowd has effectively defined “assault weapons” to include weapons that are only cosmetically similar to military style weapons. To me, this is just ignorant fear.

I’ll end this rant with a plea; if you feel the same way that I do, please contact your Representatives and/or Senators to express your opposition.