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.

Just Dropping By: Just Dropping By says:

“If individuals have a right to acquire small arms, and a government (being a legal fiction constituted of its individual citizens) ”

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?

Just Dropping By: 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?

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.

Because small arms manufacture is already widespread, and is not technologically complex, most targets of new embargos would be able to manufacture firearms domestically.

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.

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?

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.

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.