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Originally Posted by TheMercenary
Sounds like bull shit pandering to the UN to me. 
The UN is an inept and worthless organization that lost it's luster long ago. It does give a platform for the poorer nations of the world to whine and cry about how the richer nations don't give them enough money, I will give them that much. |
You dont think the UN treaty banning anti-personnel mines, which btw, the US did not sign, made a difference?
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According to the 2009 Landmine Monitor Report, signatory nations have destroyed more than 44 million mines since the entry into force in 1999. Eighty-six countries have completed the destruction of their stockpiles....
Through 2008, eleven states had cleared all known mined areas from their territory...
On 2 December 2009, Rwanda was declared free of landmines. The announcement was made at the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World in Colombia. It follows a three year campaign by 180 Rwandan soldiers, supervised by the Mine Awareness Trust and trained in Kenya, to remove over 9,000 mines laid in the country between 1990 and 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
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A more standardized way for nations to work together to prevent or respond to illegal trafficking of small arms makes sense to me.
So why should the US not lead the discussion or at least be at the table rather than conspicuous by our absence. It doesn’t commit the US to signing any final document, but it still can make a difference in arms trafficking.
In fact, the likelihood that the US will be part of a UN Small Arms Treaty in 2012 or anytime soon is zero to none. Even if Obama were to sign it, it would still require ratification by a 2/3 vote in the Senate.
And, again, in any case, the US Constitution will always have pre-eminence over any treaty. The US Supreme Court has made that clear in several landmark cases.
The column in Forbes was nothing more than fear-mongering.