Posted on 07/31/2003 9:26:07 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
The UN has earned its reputation as the largest anti-self-defense organization in the world. Their lust for depriving individuals of firearms for self-defense is strong and growing.
They have been promoting a universal gun registration program in order to set the stage for confiscation.
Consider who comprises the UN. Communist China is the largest thugocracy in the world. Other countries suffering from a variety of crooks and thugs include Syria, Sudan, Lybia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. We are supposed to take them seriously because they send their goons all dressed up in suits to UN meetings?
The only contact we should have with these tyrants is through the guns that we should be selling to freedom fighters in their countries. That is precisely why the UN - the mouthpiece for most of the world's organized criminal syndicates - wants to disarm individuals. The UN is on record wishing to restrict gun sales to governments only.
Jaques Chirac, that well-known champion of freedom for the Iraqi people, has entered the debate with a proposal only a socialist could love - a tax on gun purchases by individuals to be collected by the UN.
Perhaps Chirac is seeking to replace the billion dollar piggy bank that UN Secretary General Kofi Anan lost when Sadam Hussein stopped signing over oil checks to the UN. Anan had unsupervised access to the UN fund built up from its cut of the Oil for Food (actually Palaces) deal with Iraq. Chirac seems undisturbed that Anan's fiscal probity is a bit lacking and might not be the best place to put any revenues.
Ironically, Chirac had one group of folks who would be exempt - manufacturers. He wants to stick it to individual buyers since France makes lots of guns. Chirac helpfully suggested that taxing gun buyers might be easier to impose than the Tobin tax. The Tobin tax has been proposed as a levy on currency transactions.
Brazilian Presidente Luiz Lula da Silva, a socialist gun grabber, suggested that taxing weapons manufacturers would be a good way to eliminate world hunger. Of course, he is not interested in the hungry of the world as he claims, because he really wants to use the tax to price guns out of the reach of all but government buyers.
A question none of these folks deal with is - where is the authority for the UN to levy a tax?
Most Americans do not make this an issue with our elected officials, so the UN mess continues to rock along. But we should be asking them: "What is their authority?"
Unhappily, these socialists have a somewhat plausible argument. When the U.S. agreed to join the UN, we agreed to allow the UN to tell the U.S. how much tax money to send to the international body (our dues). Since our Constitution says that the House of Representatives is to originate all revenue bills, joining the UN without amending our Constitution amounts to an unconstitutional act.
Worldnetdaily.com (June 8, 2003) quotes a State Department official who requested anonymity regarding the UN's gun control proposals saying: "Those are just recommendations - and surprisingly, a number of countries, including the U.S., take them up on those recommendations. In fact, we support all 24 of those recommendations" (June 3, 2003).
UN gun taxes plus UN gun control equals big trouble. This is an important reason for supporting Rep. Ron Paul's bill (H.R. 1146) that would get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S. While the bill does not say where the UN should go, I can think of several capitals where it would more suitably headquartered: Beijing, Damascus, Khartoum, Tripoli, Harare, Havana, Teheran, Pyong-Yang - you get the idea.
Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun Owners of America for 27 years.
I think it would be in our interest to give the guns to their freedom fighters. At least sell them at a deep discount. If they're big enough, we have bunch of surplus M-14s, and some older M-16s as well, just laying around not doing anyone any good. It pains me to think that somewhere there is a modern day Johnny Tremain who doesn't have an M-14.
Over the years the Isaelies have come into possession of a number of rifles, AKs, SKSes, Hakims and others, that should still be in good condition, only dropped once. Perhaps we could trade for a smaller number of M-16s and other goodies, and then give the guns to the freedom fighters.
The BATFE doesn't wear those nice blue helmets that make such a good aiming point. After the frist raid or two, it would be a slaughter.
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