U.N. v. Madison
Date: Jun 30, 2006 12:00 AM
http://www.nysun.com/article/35220

U.N. v. Madison

New York Sun Editorial
June 28, 2006

Call it the “Assault on the Founding Fathers and Defense of Tyranny” conference. This week, just in time for the Fourth of July, the United Nations is hosting a conference at Turtle Bay on small arms control. Apparently it wasn’t enough for Secretary Annan’s deputy to attack the American Congress (and the American public) earlier this month. Now the bureaucrats at Turtle Bay are attacking the Founding Fathers and the American way of life. It’s the Second Amendment they have in their sights this time.

U.N. officials are claiming that the conference is discussing only the “illegal small arms trade” and that legal possession will be left to national governments to decide. Defenders of the Bill of Rights can see through this and are up, so to speak, in arms. At the last U.N. conference on this head, in 2001, American diplomats had to fight off attempts to limit civilian gun ownership. Anti-gun groups, such as the George Soros-funded International Action Network on Small Arms, are at this conference, too. Once again they’re charging that the only way to stop illegal guns is to stop legal guns.

It’s not only fringe groups who are targeting all guns. It’s the U.N. itself. The conference’s Web site features a prominent message that “Wherever arms flow, violence follows” from the “United Nations Messenger of Peace, Award Winning Actor and Producer Michael Douglas.” Not “illegal arms.” Just “arms.” What Mr. Douglas’s expertise on this subject might be – other than in some of the violent movies he stars in – is beyond us, but concerned Americans have been flooding Ambassador Bolton’s office with pleas to defend the Constitution.

Which we’re confident the ambassador will do as he did in 2001, despite criticisms from some quarters for making a fuss about this conference. The Economist recently noted that “The UN, whatever its evil aims, is hardly in a position to push Uncle Sam around. To disarm Americans, it would need Congress on its side, plus an American president willing to sign an anti-gun treaty and appoint Supreme Court justices willing to rule it constitutional.” But Americans don’t want to risk the Bill of Rights being abrogated now or in the future. And the growing willingness of activist judges to cite international law in rulings adds to the possibility of a future threat.

The threat inherent in the conference isn’t just to Americans. While some foreigners like to portray the American defense of the right to keep and bear arms as a relic of the cowboy age, gun ownership is really one of the greatest defenses of liberty open to the ordinary citizen. The Founders enacted the Second Amendment to ensure the other nine Amendments were protected. As George Mason put it: “To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

Or as James Madison wrote in the Federalist No. 46, “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation,” along with “the existence of subordinate governments … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.” The Founders understood that those who seek gun control, wittingly or unwittingly, open the door for greater tyranny.

Greater tyrannical control is exactly what some of those behind the conference want. The “officers of the conference” include representatives from the communist regime in China, Iran, Belarus, and Egypt. A ban on arms would be great for them and fellow despotic regimes. A ban on arms ensures that these oppressive regimes have a complete monopoly on force. Those struggling for freedom in their totalitarian states will have no means to realize their dreams. The Chinese regime wants to defend its ability to conduct a massacre in Tiananmen Square without people being able to fight back.

The Founding Fathers saw the Second Amendment as a way to ensure Americans never faced the same tyranny that dominates the United Nations. A Second Amendment in other countries would be a gift to freedom seekers. As Madison noted in the same Federalist paper quoted above, if a people have arms and local governments “it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.” This conference instead seeks to solidify the thrones of today’s tyrants.