2nd Amendment

Last year, the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that international human rights law requires all nations to adopt strict gun control laws. These "minimum" provisions are much more restrictive than any of those on the books anywhere in the U.S. and would almost certainly violate the Second Amendment of our Constitution.
Besides concluding that all nations are obligated under international human rights law to control the small arms and light weapons to which its civilian population has access, the UN report remarkably denied the existence of any human right to self-defense, evidently overlooking the work of Hugo Grotius, the 17th century scholar credited as the founder of international law, who wrote, "It is to be observed that [the] Right of Self-Defence, arises directly and immediately from the Care of our own Preservation, which Nature recommends to every one. . . ," and that this right is so primary, that it cannot be denied on the basis that it is not "expressly set forth."

There is another disturbing aspect to this call for international global gun control. Throughout modern history, the forced disarmament of people by its government has often been accompanied or followed by that government's commission of often massive human rights abuses. In fact, no genocide in the 20th century occurred when the victim population still possessed small arms, legally or illegally, with which to defend themselves.

So now the UN wants to disarm civilians? Where was the UN when the massacres in Rwanda occurred? What did the UN do to protect the victims of ethnic massacres in Bosnia? Disarming civilians under the guise of international human rights law will only lead to more such genocides by ensuring that civilians can never defend themselves! It would be funny if it weren't so perverse.

Thankfully, the Framers of our Constitution recognized this potential peril to our liberty, and enshrined in our Second Amendment the more basic right of self-defense. The U.N. can say what it likes about other countries' citizens' possession of small arms being a violation of human rights law, but so long as the United States is a sovereign nation governed by its Constitution, its words will have no effect here. And I am glad for it.

Senator Fred Thompson