"I am the President! Do you understand me? It is no longer We, it is now I am the President!"
Posted on 05/10/2006 2:31:06 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
FAIRFAX, Va. -- Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, tells NewsMax that the United Nations is dead set on writing a treaty that will curb domestic ownership of guns.
He also says his worst fear is that a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency would allow such a treaty to severely damage Second Amendment rights.
"She has never cast a pro-gun vote in the U.S. Senate," advises LaPierre, author of "The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the U.N. Plan to Destroy the Bill of Rights."
"She will probably be the most anti-firearm Second Amendment candidate to ever run for President of the United States."
All this is not some vague future scenario, warns LaPierre. The world's governments will be attending the second world gun summit in New York City between June 27 and July 7, and the anti-gun factions are raring to go.
The ‘Nightmare Scenario'
LaPierre says that while a formal treaty needs two-thirds of the Senate to get approved, the damage to gun ownership rights can be done with a simple agreement, which requires only a simple majority in the House and the Senate.
"That is how President Clinton passed NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement]. The U.N. can do it with a simple agreement - if someone like Hillary Clinton ever becomes president.
"Here is the nightmare scenario on that: Yes, our Supreme Court has said the U.S. Constitution trumps treaties. But say Hillary Clinton becomes President in 2008 and gets a couple of Supreme Court appointments. The policy of her husband when he was president is that the Second Amendment applies only to the government and not individuals. Individuals have no right to own guns - only the government.
"If the U.S. Supreme Court, stacked with Hillary Clinton appointments, were to decide that the Second Amendment is only a government right and not the individual right, there would be nothing in the Constitution then to prohibit this U.N. treaty from taking effect," LaPierre said.
Making matters worse, adds LaPierre, is that in his opinion, Supreme Court Justices are increasingly looking to international custom and international law – a phenomenon the U.N. is counting on.
The chief NRA spokesman also warns that in yet another wave of attacks, the U.N. will be preparing international lawsuits against American firearms manufacturers.
The George Soros ‘Toxin'
For anyone who doubts that the U.N. could weasel its designs into the political and judicial fabric of the country, LaPierre gives a short course in reality.
He explains to NewsMax that the whole anti-gun movement in the U.S. is linked to the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) umbrella at the U.N.
IANSA's director, Rebecca Peters, who once famously debated LaPierre in London, is a great advocate of what she says is the "need to address the problem of guns circulating among civilian populations."
Another way anti-gun activists "have tentacles into the grass roots of this country" is through 527 committees, instructs LaPierre.
"One of the major funding people at the U.N. in terms of the gun ban movement and the NGOs [Non-governmental Organizations] is [billionaire activist] George Soros, who is putting tens of millions of dollars into 527 committees within the U.S. designed to manipulate our elections.
"George Soros is like a new toxin that is polluting American politics. These people consider themselves earthlings first and citizens of any other country second. They eat breakfast in London and dinner in New York and fly around the world in their jets.
"It is increasingly infecting American politics like a germ, and we are going to have to deal with it - including the national and international media."
‘Dead Serious'
La Pierre goes on to explain how IANSA is further funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Norway, and by what he describes as many left-wing foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Samuel Rubin Foundation.
The Rubin Foundation is headquartered right at the United Nations Plaza in New York City and touts that its mission is to "search for an equitable reallocation of the world's resources."
"As I talk about in the book, Samuel Rubin was a member of the Communist Party. His daughter, Cora Rice, is now running that Foundation. There is a lot of money behind this effort and they are dead serious about writing a treaty that gives guns to the governments and takes the right to own a firearm away from any citizen anywhere in the world, including the United States."
When asked to comment on the sentiment of the severest critics of the U.N. – that it is time for the U.S. to simply abandon the organization – LaPierre says he thinks everything ought to be on the table.
LaPierre would like to see a serious overhaul that includes cutting U.S. funding in a very serious way and turning to other international organizations.
As to that funding issue, U.S. taxpayers last year put $3.8 billion in United Nations programs - $1.5 billion in directly assigned money and $2.3 billion in voluntary money.
Unfortunately, says LaPierre, "a lot of that has gone for all kinds of scandals and a lot of it is being misused on this U.N. gun ban effort. The U.N. is even trying to grab control of the Internet and take it away from the United States, and we need to step back and look at this whole thing from a prospective of whether the U.N. is doing anything these days to serve the interest of the United States of America or not."
‘Freedom Grabbing Politicians Like Mayor Bloomberg'
In his free-ranging conversation with NewsMax, LaPierre reserved special vitriol for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently hosted a conference of fellow mayors from around the country.
LaPierre points out that Bloomberg, in his opinion, wants to impose a New York City-style gun law on the citizens of Texas and Kansas and Wyoming and North Carolina - throughout the whole United States.
In LaPierre's view, the Big Apple is denying ordinary citizens the right to own a firearm and the right to self-defense.
"It's a misguided, wrong-headed, freedom-grabbing approach that our founding fathers wanted nothing of. It goes right back to the policies of King George and it is elitist.
"If you are rich, you can have your bodyguard," laments LaPierre. "If you are rich, you can live behind a security system. If you are rich, you get your carry permit and you get your gun because you are special. But the less special people, all the rest of us, are flat out of luck."
LaPierre says Bloomberg doesn't want to impose gun bans on the "special people," who get gun permits.
But LaPierre evokes the what goes around, comes around attitude: "In election after election, citizens have shown that they will go to the polls and defeat freedom-grabbing politicians like Mayor Bloomberg in New York."
To the NRA spokesman's mind, any crime problem in New York City is best attributed to "the fact that it is not prosecuting criminals.
"The American public saw straight through Rosie O'Donnell, who wanted to be protected by bodyguards with guns and yet wanted to take guns away from the American people. People can see straight through this hypocrisy coming out of the Bloomberg administration and they choke on it."
In LaPierre's opinion the only thing that works is directly confronting criminals and taking them off of the street.
‘You Need To Prosecute Them'
LaPierre rattles through the laws that need to be enforced to the letter:
"If violent gangs touch guns, you need to prosecute them," he argues. "You need not let them out on bail. You need to have a prosecutor and you need not plea bargain and you need to put these people in prison - and leave the rights of law-biding citizens alone."
LaPierre also had strong words about a recent court decision in New York.
A federal judge just ruled that New York City can have access to gun-tracing information gathered by the federal government's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), saying such information is critical in a lawsuit brought by New York City against gun manufacturers.
In 2004, NRA's clout helped push Congress to pass an amendment that forbids the release to the public of federal data on gun tracing.
LaPierre opines that what the New York judge failed to consider was that the amendment passed Congress with the strong support of the Department of Justice and law enforcement.
"The Department of Justice of the United States and law enforcement said publicly before Congress that they believed that the trace data was being misused by the anti-gun movement in the United States and their lawyers and their political network," says LaPierre.
He added that it was shown the misuse was compromising criminal investigations.
"I do not agree with this lone judge who is trying to subvert the will of the United States Congress," he concludes.
Countries Around the World Under U.N. Pressure
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, on the recent 10th anniversary of an infamous shooting spree by a lone gunman that killed 35 people, appealed for a further tightening of gun control laws, with The Coalition for Gun Control, an antigun lobby, urging a national ban on semiautomatic pistols. These weapons are available for sport shooting.
"The average Australian does not need a gun," Howard told a TV audience.
LaPierre says that Down Under was getting pressure - like every country in the world - from the United Nations to ban their civilians from owning guns.
And it is a tactic that is simply not working, he says, clicking off some more facts and figures.
He notes that after the Australians got tough with guns, the ensuing four years saw some telling developments:
And don't forget the crime wave in the United Kingdom that followed on the heels of the gun ban there, he advises: "They had close to 6 million burglaries; 314 burglaries a day are going on in London right now. Gun crime has increased by over 50 percent since the ban passed in the United Kingdom."
Murder in the Sudan with Government Guns
But to LaPierre's thinking, the gun ban policy in the Sudan may be the worst example.
The genocide going on in the Sudan, he notes, is being perpetrated by Arab criminal gangs that are being "armed by the Government of Sudan to kill the dark-skinned Arab-Africans in Darfur.
"The government guns that the U.N. approves of are doing the killing over there," he concludes with disgust.
LaPierre laments that the pattern has been seen before – in Bosnia and Rwanda – with death coming in waves to the innocent because of a U.N. policy of disarming all civilians and leaving them to the whim of "thugs."
He argues that such places are being run by dictators, tyrants who are committing genocide and unleashing thugs who perpetrate rape and torture and terror against their own people.
"If you disarm the civilians from having firearms throughout the world, there is no way to fight back against these genocidal governments that are run by thugs and dictators," he concludes.
The Culture of Corruption
Both in his NewsMax interview and in his new book, LaPierre drives home to Americans the corruption that he says is going on at the United Nations – which is too little noted by the traditional media.
Above and beyond the notorious oil-for-food scandal, he points to other events he sees as travesties.
One case in point: the peacekeepers the U.N sent to Cambodia, who received an attractive wage and one U.N.-provided condom per day.
"Bulgaria and Romania emptied their prisons and psychiatric wards to get the peacekeepers that they sent to Cambodia, and then naturally they raped, they robbed and they stole money and did what criminals do," he recounts.
He maintains that all these scandals have been documented and yet have been swept under the carpet by both the United Nations and the national media.
LaPierre gives over a whole chapter of his book to the U.N.'s desire to take charge of the Internet away from the U.S.
He notes with disbelief that the U.N. just held a conference on the Internet that was chaired by a delegate from China.
"China has just shut down 47,000 Internet cafés," he recalls. "They just hired 4,000 more Internet security police to jail anyone in China that writes anything critical of the government on the Internet, and yet their delegate is chairing the U.N. conference on the Internet, and they held it in Tunisia, a country that is jailing journalists for free speech.
"If the U.N. gets control of the Internet, we are going to have an iron curtain around the world descend on free speech," he concludes.
‘Got To Feel and Taste It'
LaPierre says that a good part of the reason he penned his latest book is that Senators on Capitol Hill don't realize how bad the U.N. has become.
"You have to get up there [to New York City] to see and feel and taste it, and then you realize it is actually scary. Most people in the U.S. have no idea how extensive the structure of the UN is. It has three headquarters, not one. It has a huge facility in Vienna; a huge facility in Geneva."
But most of all, he decries what he sees as the institution's contempt for the freedoms that we have as citizens of the United States. These are not people who respect the Bill of Rights, he says, and these are not countries that have a Bill of Rights.
"They would like to reduce the United States of America's freedom to some lower United Nations standard that doesn't include many of the freedoms that are central to the United States.
"It is time to step back, all Americans, and take a good look at the U.N. and re-evaluate what we are doing."
Unfortunately LaPierre's concerns and message will be drown out by the "teach them a lession" crowd.
Second Amendment ping!
You're blaming the voters, not the GOP architects who continually refuse to offer us a conservative choice? That's "not helpful".
LOL! I've heard that mantra before. As I said, LaPierre's message will be lost on some people.
If the Pubbies lose the next election it will be the fault of the national leadership and no one else. It won't be the Dems fault, it won't be the legacy medias fault, and it won't be disgruntled conservatives fault.
Bush hasn't missed a single opportunity to miss an opportunity with conservative voters in his second term. He's acting like a frigging lame duck and there's still 2 years left in his term.
Couple that with the absolutely spineless Senate 'leadership' and it's no wonder folks are getting mighty pissed out here in the heartland. If he wants the votes of conservatives for the Republican party he can start doing some conservative things.
He could start by vetoing some spending bills, demanding the Senate Republicans use the Constitutional option in the Senate, and (I'm deliberately saving this for last) do something about the chaos on our southern border.
Sorry to spout in your direction, but these gratuitous little digs at we who are less than thrilled about the course of the second term are not the way to endear yourself to voters.
L
Yeah... so what's new?
I'm off to buy that book today.
Yes, I hear the same thing every election cycle...from the same people. As I said, it's sad LaPierre's message will go MIA because of some.
Does anyone doubt that Shrillery and Soros et al are eager to force the USA and the world into the tyrannical global government???
The evil traitors need removed from public life and sent to be cess pool cleaners in Siberia.
"I am the President! Do you understand me? It is no longer We, it is now I am the President!"
Yeah, yeah, we all hear the same thing from the same people.
Here's the difference. Conservatives are actually getting fed up. We are sick of being told about conservatism, and we see very little of it being championed in DC. We all know it's a winning formula, nobody disputes that- so why does the party who claims to be conservative, act like they're ashamed of it? We go through this over and over. They say 'If you don't vote for us, the Dems will gain power.' We say 'If you don't keep a decent agenda, the Dems will gain power.' The GOP wants the votes, but not the accountability.
In the end, the GOP doesn't want to totally destroy the Dems, because the threat of a lib regime keeps conservatives on the GOP plantation.
One day, we're going to call their bluff. They're playing with fire.
Strange I never notice that out in the real world but I sure do hear it a lot from a small group of very vocal people on FR. I guess that explains why the RNC is doing so well in fund raising.
lol Do they clean cess pools in Siberia? :p
You should get out more 'in the real world'. Plenty of contractors and businessmen are tired of illegal alien labor, and the inaction by the government. We resent the guys that break the law with impunity and gain an unfair against honest folks.
Personally, I gave my GOP donation to the Minutemen this time.
So just where are all those donations coming from to the RNC? They're doing spectacularly well.
I don't know or care. Those two could be the first to start. They well deserve it!
Besides, their cold evil hearts should fit right in.
You sound like those suckling at the gov't teat in New Orleans who complained that their leaders did not help them.
According to you, voters just sit back and wait for the party leadership to name candidates.
Well, if those voters would get off their ass and get involved, they could influence the process from within and steer good candidates into running.
To just sit there and say its the fault of the GOP architects for refusing to offer a conservative choice sounds like a welfare recipient living in public housing and complaining about the garbage in their yard that they themselves left there.
I disagree. I think Soros's only desire is to ruin the U.S. and if that means pretending that he wants guns out of the houses around the world, so be it.
Yeah right. Like I'm going to go down to the GOP office, throw my hat in the ring and get support for a candidacy? They would run screaming!
Cut taxes? abolish the IRS? pass the FairTax? decentralize government power? School choice? vouchers? cut programs? stop subsidizing drugs for seniors? Get out of people's lives and leave them alone?
lol right. I'm not rich enough yet to finance my own campaign. If I was, I would.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.