Reversing the position of the Bush administration, the Obama administration recently announced support for the global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which is currently being drafted by the United Nations. The leading voices for the ATT are the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA, funded by George Soros, and run by the Open Society’s former gun control executive, Rebecca Peters) and the IANSA spin-off ”Control Arms.” Proponents of the ATT promise that it will impose effective arms on embargos on human rights violators. In a forthcoming article in the Penn State Law Review, The Arms Trade Treaty: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Prospects for Arms Embargoes on Human Rights Violators, Paul Gallant, Joanne Eisen and I examine the issue. Our article shows that if the ATT were to be implemented as its proponents promise (to proactively embargo arms where there are serious risks of instability), there would have to be dozens of new embargos. Because small arms manufacture is already widespread, and is not technologically complex, most targets of new embargos would be able to manufacture firearms domestically.
We then study two failed arms embargos: Zimbabwe, and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zimbabwe is currently under a European Union embargo, but there is no UN embargo because Mugabe’s principal diplomatic allies, China and South Africa, have blocked UN action. Moreover, the South African government has flagrantly violated South Africa’s own gun control law (which was imposed by the currently-ruling party), which forbids South Africa to authorize arms transfers to human rights violators. If South Africa will not obey its own laws, there is no reason to assume that it will obey treaty law created by the UN.
The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is under a United Nations embargo, impsed by the Security Council. But the embargo has been violated by smuggling conducted by most of the nations which border the DRC, and even by UN “peacekeepers” in the DRC. Thus, the ATT might, at most, lead to more nominal embargos of arms; but nothing in an ATT can have greater force in international law than a Security Council order already does. Accordingly, the ATT will be of little or no use in achieving its purported objective. To the contrary, the ATT may be positively harmful, since it will probably declare a “right” of governments to acquire arms. This “right” could be used to claim that arms embargos outside the ATT system (e.g., unilateral embargos by the US, or the EU) are violations of international law.
Kevin P. says:
IANSA on Wikipedia: a summary of the organization’s orchestration of gun control across the world.
November 2, 2009, 1:45 pmHouston Lawyer says:
I spoke last week with a secretary in our office who used to live in Rhodesia, before the militias machine gunned her car and killed her 5 year-old son. When she was younger, all the land owners had machine guns of various calibers for self-defense. She said that hand grenades were a lot of fun, and don’t forget the Claymores. The current regime made all of these weapons illegal to own so that the oppression could begin.
It appears that the proponents of these treaties want to make sure that when the government comes to kill you, you have no effective means to fight back.
November 2, 2009, 2:26 pmStating the obvious says:
The current regime made all of these weapons illegal to own so that the oppression could begin.
Excuse me? So that the oppression could begin? I don’t know how much you know about oppression in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, but it began (although the current oppressors/oppressed are not necessarily the same ones as forty years ago) long before the living memory of anybody currently alive now.
November 2, 2009, 2:38 pmwfjag says:
My experience was that arms embargos were very effective only at ensuring that the people in the area of conflict who were disarmed and defenseless remained that way. War isn’t nearly as much fun when the other side and people who usually are counted in the category of “collateral damage” have the means to defend themselves.
November 2, 2009, 3:13 pmJust Dropping By says:
To the contrary, the ATT may be positively harmful, since it will probably declare a “right” of governments to acquire arms.
If individuals have a right to acquire small arms, and a government (being a legal fiction constituted of its individual citizens) ordinarily has the same rights as its individual citizens, how can a government not have a right to acquire small arms? Put another way, how can you deny a government the right to acquire small arms without necessarily denying individuals the right to acquire small arms?
November 2, 2009, 3:20 pmLarryA says:
The problem with the treaty is that it declares that governments have the right to acquire small arms but individuals don’t. Thus governments that completely disarm the people they rule will have all the guns they need to kill such people that they don’t want.
Repeating firearms were common by the mid 1850s. In fact, all of the “modern” firearms actions were developed before 1900, including the automatic/semiautomatic. The Colt Government Model 1911 is named that because it was adopted by the U.S. military that year. Just as the AK-47 was adopted by Russia in 1947. The Thompson submachinegun helped the 1920s roar.
You know the post-apocalyptic (Mad Max type) movies where everyone is using compound bows because it’s too hard to make firearms? Turns out the materials necessary to make compound bows weren’t developed until the 1950s. It’s a half-century easier to manufacture a submachinegun than a compound bow.
IANSA is trying to embargo 19th century technology.
November 2, 2009, 5:05 pmjcm says:
Yes, it will be useful like in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The victim were unarmed , thanks to an embargo , while the murderers used their already owned arms. In Rwanda , the UN blue helmets stood in the frontier to enforce the embargo and to avoid the people coming armed from Uganda to defend theirs families
November 2, 2009, 8:16 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
If I am reading the implication rightly, Stating The Obvious thinks the oppression began with the Europeans. That is also short-sighted. Oppression has been the lot of that region for centuries. (That’s true of most of the world, actually.) To focus on the evil of those 40-140 years ago is not historical truth, but political truth. It is rather like saying “I’m going to study the Crusades” and starting at 1098 rather than the 7thC. Very different picture.
November 3, 2009, 10:12 amWeekly Web Watch 11/2/09 – 11/8/09 « EXECUTIVE WATCH says:
[...] Kopel reports that the Obama administration will support the Arms Trade Treaty, reversing the position taken by the Bush administration. The ATT would further regulate the [...]
November 10, 2009, 1:21 amVicki says:
Governments have NO rights. Governments have powers delegated by the governed people. The people have arms and the right to obtain them. If they chose to arm their government they can.
As someone else mentioned many of the governments demanding their “right” to arms fail to allow their own citizens to keep and bear arms. How does the ATT plan to address this issue?
December 23, 2009, 3:33 pmH Huges says:
Vicki,
Brush up a wee bit on people,governments, and power. Very,very few people on earth “delegate ” powers to their governments.
It is by far the opposite, that the government simply tells the people what rights they have.
Study Aristotle’s “Statesman” and “Politics”..then you’ll understand.
December 30, 2009, 7:18 pmDave Kopel’s Second Amendment Newsletter | The American Jingoist says:
[...] David Kopel The Volokh Conspiracy November 2, 2009 http://volokh.com/2009/11/02/will-the-arms-trade-treaty-provide-effective-embargos-on-human-rights-v... [...]
December 31, 2009, 7:32 pm