Alphecca

Weekly Check on the Bias

First, from United Press International:

Seeking to diffuse opposition from the pro-gun lobby, the U.N. has said once more that it does not intend to deny law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms.

"I would want to repeat, because there are people around who either have not heard this, or do not want to hear," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday. "We are not negotiating a global ban, nor do we wish to deny law-abiding citizens their right to bear arms in accordance with their national laws."

Right. Now some selected quotations from the IANSA 2006 Report:

2006: Bringing the global gun crisis under control
[...]
Too many loopholes
There are no international guidelines to assist states in regulating gun ownership among their own citizens.

There is no legal requirement for governments to maintain records linking guns to their location (whether military stockpile, police depot or civilian home)...
[...]
What governments must agree to do at the UN small arms conference
Recognise the importance of regulating guns in civilian hands through registration and licensing.

Think IANSA doesn't have any influence over the UN conference? From the UN's own website:

The Million Faces Petition, which organizers billed as the world’s largest appeal for tougher global controls on the arms trade, was presented to Secretary-General Kofi Annan today in New York by a consortium of international groups as well as the one millionth petitioner – a survivor of gun violence from Kenya.

“I am honoured to receive this petition in recognition of the people in more than 160 countries who have supported it, and given it a million ‘faces,’” Mr. Annan said in accepting the call from the Control Arms Campaign, Amnesty International and Oxfam International, the International Action Network on Small Arms and the young survivor.

The Secretary-General pledged to transmit the petitioners’ call for an international arms trade treaty to the President of the Review Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, which is currently meeting at the UN to review a 2001 plan of action against the scourge. “It will be in their hands to decide the future direction of the initiative.”

So, we see that Mr. Annan is more than willing to help further the agendas of various world gun control groups, the most powerful being IANSA. And we've just seen what part of their agenda is. That's why I have to laugh when I read UPI's house liar, Heather Murray, in this "analysis":

Thousands of U.S. citizens, prodded by a misleading National Rifle Association-related campaign, have inundated the offices of U.N. officials with letters expressing concern the world organization will take away their right to bear arms during the U.N. Small Arms Review Conference.

The chairman of the conference, Prasad Kariyawasam, said that by last week he had received over 100,000 letters and postcard protests. U.N. spokesman François Coutu said that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.S. Ambassador John Bolton were also targeted by the protest.

Americans' anxiety about losing rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution "is a total misconception as far as we are concerned," Kariyawasam said Wednesday, ahead of the Small Arms Review Conference which opened Monday at U.N. World Headquarters in New York and lasts until July 7.

How's THAT for some unbiased media analysis? "...misleading National Rifle Association-related campaign..."

If the NRA is "misleading" U.S. citizens, then how to explain this statement?:

The secretary-general's comments echoed those by Keith Krause, program director of the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. Krause said the NRA opposition forced them to narrow the conference to illegal weapons.

"Because of this, we focused on 'armed groups' because the term 'non-state actors' meant everybody," Krause said.

More on that phony Geneva group in a moment but did you catch that limitation forced on them? Because of the prompt actions of the NRA, the scope of the conference was limited. But is it? Cam Edwards is in attendence at the conference and in day one of his Town Hall summaries he writes:

It’s too bad for Kofi that many of the countries attending the summit didn’t get his memo. Yesterday’s speeches were full of calls for expanding the current agenda to include the civilian possession of firearms. Hans Winkler, speaking on behalf of the European Union, called the current Program of Action “the key starting point for further action on small arms”.

The ambassador from Australia, Robert Hill, spoke glowingly of his country’s gun laws that “require the registration and licensing of all firearms owners, prohibit a range of automatic and semi-automatic long arms and handguns, and mandate minimum firearms safety training and storage requirements.”

The statement from Indonesia’s representative was perhaps the clearest example of what these countries are aiming for.

“We believe that no armed group outside of the State should be allowed to bear weapons. We also believe that regulating civilian possession of Small Arms/Light Weapons will enhance our efforts to prevent its misuse. In our view, the issue of ammunition should also be addressed in the context of the Program of Action because in the absence of ammunition, small arms and light weapons pose no danger.”

Getting back to IANSA, over at Front Page Magazine Joseph Klein writes:

Predictably, the anti-gun possession fanatic Rebecca Peters, who is Director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) - a network of more than 700 non-governmental organizations working in 100 countries against the individual's right to bear arms – has seized on this opening.   IANSA is the official coordinator of non-governmental organizations' involvement in the UN small arms process.  Its sources of funding include the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  IANSA is already guaranteed to have a seat at the table, but it is pressing for a fuller partnership with the member state delegations in the review conference’s deliberations. 
 
In her response to Chairman Kariyawasam’s 'non-paper', Peters wrote that IANSA welcomed "the reference to regulating the possession of small arms and light weapons" but urged that it be expanded.   She also raised the gun prohibition specter explicitly, recommending the outright prohibition of semi-automatic and automatic rifles and declaring that "(M)any States already prohibit the civilian possession of light weapons, and this should be recognised in the paragraph devoted to light weapons control."

[...]

Peters’ strategy, with the help of the chairman of the UN review conference and the Parliamentary Forum, is to enshrine international norms against civilian gun possession in an interpretive document that gun prohibitionists can label 'customary international law.'   Such a document would legitimize Peters’ dogma that "gun ownership is not a right but a privilege."  IANSA can then use the international norms in our own courts to attack the notion that an individual right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment.  They are counting on sympathetic federal judges, right up to the Supreme Court, to interpret the scope of the Second Amendment's protections by deferring to 'international norms' against individual gun possession.   In short, the stealth strategy here is for IANSA to drive the UN review conference’s agenda, obtain the wording they seek on curtailing private gun possession in the review conference’s official Outcome Document that they can point to as an 'international norm', and then argue that this 'international norm' should be incorporated into our courts' interpretation of the Second Amendment -- converting a constitutionally protected individual right into a government-bestowed privilege.

The UN and it's media apologists can claim that we American gun owners are being hysterical or misleading but the evidence is all around for anyone to read that the international slippery slope has been greased.

To summarize, Texas Congressman Ron Paul writes in the Hawaii Reporter yesterday:

Domestically, the gun control movement has lost momentum in recent years. The Democratic Party has been conspicuously silent on the issue in recent elections because they know it’s a political loser. In the midst of declining public support for new gun laws, more and more states have adopted concealed-carry programs. The September 11th terrorist attacks and last summer’s hurricanes only made matters worse for gun control proponents, as millions of Americans were starkly reminded that we cannot rely on government to protect us from criminals.

So it makes sense that perhaps the biggest threat to gun rights in America today comes not from domestic lawmakers, but from abroad.

[...]

It’s no surprise that UN officials dislike what they view as our gun culture. After all, these are the people who placed a huge anti-gun statue on American soil at UN headquarters in New York. The statue depicts a pistol with the barrel tied into a knot, a not-too-subtle message aimed squarely at the U.S.

There are so many NGO groups trying to enact worldwide gun control that you almost don't know where to start. One of them tried to show that Canada's long gun registration scheme actually paid for itself. From the Toronto Star:

Despite expensive overruns, Canada's gun registry may be saving the country money by helping to reduce costs associated with gun violence, a Swiss research institute argued Monday.

The Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies released its report, Small Arms Survey 2006, in New York on the opening day of a UN conference on ways to deal with the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.

Among other gun-related issues, the report says Bill C-68, which created the federal gun registry in Canada, "appears to be considerably more cost-effective than previously believed when considering possible savings in terms of firearms violence reduction."

Researcher Nicolas Florquin told a news conference: "Drawing from existing costing studies in that country, we find that the decrease in gun injuries and gun deaths since 1995 actually shows that Canada may be saving up to $1.4 billion Canadian dollars a year."

The Swiss report acknowledges proving a direct causal link with the gun registry is difficult but argues that "mortality and morbidity figures suggest stronger controls do contribute."

Last year, Statistics Canada reported that death rates related to firearms had fallen over the last 25 years but refused to link the decline to gun-control measures brought in during the period. Its author, Kathryn Wilkins, noted there had been gun-control laws of one sort or another in Canada for most of the last century.

While acknowledging other factors could explain falling rates of violence, the Swiss institute said Bill C-68 probably played a role in helping to reduce the costs of fatal gun violence by $1.3 billion in 2002 — calculated in 1993 dollars — compared with 1995 when the bill was passed.

Let me see if I have this right -- firearm death rates have fallen over the last 25 years but Bill C-68 was only created 11 years ago so it must have been effective! And, although Canada has had gun control for a hell of a long time, the billion dollars spent in the past 11 years has proven "cost effective". Even though we can't state for certain that our "statistics" show any actual correlation. But we're just another unbiased gun control group [Stop laughing, dammit -- ed.] and because the UN conference is only about stopping illegal gun trade between countries, we're releasing this "study" on the first day of that conference...

Letter in Canada. After my report last week about the press release by Wendy Cukier regarding the scaling down of Canada's long gun registry, from the Toronto Star we get a letter of reaction:

...a commentary from Wendy Cukier from the Coalition for Gun Control states: "It's important that there are controls over civilian possession of guns if you want to stop illegal possession."

How the registration of legal firearms by licensed owners would possibly affect illegal guns is truly a billion dollar question.

The former Liberal government tried wasting $1 billion on registration and our murder rate still climbs and climbs.

Rather than blaming an intimate object for societies woes, let's go after the criminals internationally, create a registry of criminals whom we know misuse firearms and give the money saved to the only entity to combat crime worldwide — the police.

While the emotion is good, Canada and the U.S. already keep a registry of known criminals. Better still would be if those thugs were simply kept in jail for very long sentences. Then, we'd know where they are, not just who they are.

Silliness from the Boston Herald and MySpace. Well here's something that's bound to have an effect on crime in Massachusetts:

The hottest new hit on MySpace.com isn’t a wacko with a manifesto, but a teetotaler Gemini who’s into firearms reduction.

As of early last night, 183 “friends” had linked their MySpace profiles and their moral support to Boston Gun Buyback, a peacekeeping police initiative that so far this month has taken 382 firearms off the city’s streets and put Target gift certificates into the hands of those ready to trade, “No questions asked.”

Authorities said they turned to MySpace “because of its enormous popularity with young people and its force in youth culture.” But to reach the inner circle, they had to fill out an online questionnaire.

Thus, Boston Guy Buyback is a single, 20-year-old female from Boston, whose heroes include slain activist Martin Luther King Jr. and Kai Leigh Harriott, a now 6-year-old Dorchester girl paralyzed by a stray bullet in 2003.

A smoker? No. Boozer? No way. Networking? Sign up here.

“Check it, the Boston Gun Buyback is a good step,” writes “Shikiboo” of Roxbury. “All of those guns . . . could have added up as lives taken instead. Big up to Mayor Menino, Target and all the people who turned in the guns.”

Aside from a few child molesters, does the Boston Herald really think the thugs and mutants, the gang bangers are going to read much less heed this nonsense on MySpace? Somehow I doubt they even own computers...

Oops! I spoke too soon... From WOAI TV (TX):

A Jacksonville man says he was duped and robbed by two girls after attempting to meet with a woman he met on the internet.

The victim says he chatted online with a woman, known on her MySpace.com profile as “Natalia”, for two weeks before deciding to meet with her. He says her prfile showed sexy photos, and a blurb which said “just lookin’ for something fun”. That brief, friendly description was all he knew about her before they planned to meet.

[...]

“I went to [the apartment] and knocked on the door, and there was no answer. So I called her and said, ‘I'm here’ and there was no answer."

That is when two girls who were 14 and 15-years-old, approached him saying they knew Natalia, the girl he thought he'd be meeting. They also said they knew where he worked at what car he drove.

"This was not the girl that the picture was of on MySpace," the victim said.
Now sensing something was wrong, he was ready to take off, but was stopped by a shocking discovery.

"[One of the girls] took [a] gun out and put it to my head and told me to empty my pockets."
The girls didn't get much because the victim had forgotten his wallet. They let him go, unharmed, and he called police.

Police did a search of the area and found the two teens with another male suspect. They searched a purse and found two loaded handguns.

Apparently these girls didn't get the message from MySpace that they should turn in their guns to authorities...

Holy Toledo! Gubernatorial candidates in Ohio are falling all over themselves to show who's the most pro-2A. From the Toledo Blade:

Mr. Strickland is a southeast Ohio congressman who touts his “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and says he’s bucked party leadership for years on guns, though he does not own one personally. He voted against President Bill Clinton’s ban on assault weapons and for a measure last year to shield gun manufacturers from liability in crimes involving their products.

In a press release last week, Mr. Strickland criticized Republican leaders in the Ohio legislature for not passing a bill that would wipe out municipal gun restrictions in several cities, including Toledo.

Mr. Blackwell, Ohio’s secretary of state, is a gun owner who traces his Second Amendment support to his days on Cincinnati City Council. He opened a trapshooting tournament on Tuesday; his campaign and the state Republican Party spent part of the rest of the week questioning Mr. Strickland’s commitment to gun rights.

In an interview, Mr. Blackwell criticized a 1976 quote from Mr. Strickland — reportedly: “I personally do not like guns and I do not own a gun” — and his choice of gun-control advocate Lee Fisher as his running mate. He said Mr. Strickland’s gun support came from his constituents, not his own convictions.

If Mr. Strickland wins the governor’s office, “I believe that the intensity of his support for Second Amendment freedoms will be lessened, if not abandoned,” Mr. Blackwell said, adding later, “I think that gun owners and Second Amendment rights advocates will have a choice on this.”

Mr. Strickland said his votes show he’s committed to gun rights. “I’m the guy who has the record,” he said, “and he’s the guy who doesn’t.”

Some pro-gun groups, such as Buckeye Firearms, are sitting out the race so far. Mr. Blackwell won the endorsement of Ohioans for Concealed Carry, in part because of Mr. Fisher’s presence on the Strickland ticket and in part because Mr. Blackwell returned a candidate survey that Mr. Strickland did not.

Still, said Jeff Garvas, the group’s president, “From our position, whoever gets elected, we’re going to have someone who’s good for our cause.”

That leaves gun-control advocates cold.

“What’s bothering us right now is that they all seem to be hiding under the cloak of being a hunter and being pro-gun,” said Toby Hoover, executive director of the Toledo-based Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence. “When you talk about crime control, you need to talk about guns.”

Anything that leaves gun-control advocates "cold" works for me. As for Hoover's inane remark, actually when you talk about crime control, you need to talk about criminals.

Sorry this is so late going up -- about 9 am this morning a power surge fried my old iMac. I raced to work and am writing this from there. And now I need a new computer... Maybe I better get my PayPal donation thing back up.

I'll be doing this live on NRA News this afternoon during the 3 o'clock hour. Note that next Tuesday is July 4th and there won't be a Weekly Report. As always, thanks for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at June 27, 2006 12:26 PM