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Canada tries to exempt hunting rifles from UN Arms Trade Treaty negotiations By Bryn Weese ,Parliamentary Bureau, Sun Media First posted: Friday, July 15, 2011 4:25:38 EDT PM OTTAWA - The Canadian government is trying to spare hunting rifles and sporting arms from a United Nations one-size-fits-all international standard to regulate the flow of weapons around the world. Gun advocates in Canada praised the feds Friday, but gun control advocates and the opposition blasted the move as an irresponsible ploy to hamper the UN's efforts to save lives. On Thursday, Canadian diplomats at the treaty's preliminary negotiations in New York tried to exempt sporting and hunting firearms in the treaty's preamble, remove ammunition and other high-volume items from the reporting requirements and add a clause that reads, in part, "small arms have certain legitimate civilian uses, including sporting, hunting and collecting purposes." Tony Bernardo, a spokesman for the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, derided the UN as "incredibly anti-gun" and said Canada's attempts to exempt sporting arms is the right call. "The UN is trying to create a treaty to regulate the acquisition and movement of all conventional weapons that aren't nuclear, chemical or biological. In terms of scope, they want it to cover everything from pointed sticks to aircraft carriers," Bernardo said. "What Canada is saying is they don't want civilian firearms and firearm accessories tied in with military stuff. "They don't want our Marlin .30-30 hunting rifle coming into Canada to have to go through the same kind of regulatory process that a jet fighter has to go through." But NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said the government's position is "wildly parochial" and confuses legitimate ownership of legal guns with the arms trade fuelling conflicts around the world. "This (personal gun ownership) is not at all in line with what we're talking about here, and to equate the two I think is wrong and really makes us look immature on the world stage," Dewar said Friday. "Small arms have been noted as the weapons of mass destruction in places like Africa. This is important work that has been ongoing for a number of years and they've made some progress." "Sadly, what we saw yesterday (Thursday) was a wildly parochial stance by our government." A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Canada's position was based on fairness for "law-abiding hunters and sportsmen. "We received a strong mandate to implement our platform, including abolishing the wasteful long-gun registry," Chris Day wrote in an e-mail. "It does not make sense to abolish that registry at home only to support one internationally." Gun-control advocates following the treaty negotiations blasted Canada's stance, calling it a "poison pill for treaty negotiations." "The Canadian stipulation that sporting and hunting firearms should be exempt from the scope of the treaty reveals that the Canadian government is living in a regulatory dream world. It has proved impossible, at the international level, to agree to a distinction between civilian and military small arms and light weapons," Project Ploughshare's Ken Epps said in a news statement Thursday. He added that he thinks Canada's position shows the government doesn't understand the treaty's purpose. "The ATT (Arms Trade Treaty) does not apply to civilian ownership or domestic transfers of firearms or any other type of weapon. It is about ensuring effective regulation of international transfers of conventional weapons." Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have routinely delayed by years the implementation of a separate United Nations small-arms marking regulation that would require guns to be stamped with individual markings when imported into a country. The feds and the gun lobby have said the program is unworkable and would cost so much that sporting arms would be unaffordable. Bernardo said the arms trade treaty being discussed at the UN would be equally flawed because it's being drawn up by people who are in the dark about weapons and firearms. "When you talk arms trade to the United States, you're talking about a nuclear missile boat, but when you're talking about the arms trade to a representative from the Congo, you're talking about a shipment of machetes," he said. "These things are chalk and cheese, they're completely unrelated and I don't know how they're going to get a one-size-fits-all solution to it. "And responsible countries already do this. Canada doesn't sell arms to terrorist groups around the world. Albania might, and even if we have an arms treaty, they still might." (I laughed how they mentioned that ) Dewar said people used the same argument against the ban on using land mines, but that has resulted in far fewer land mines being used. "Is it perfect? No, but it is progress," Dewar said. The United Nations first passed a resolution calling on member states to work towards an arms trade treaty in 2006.

And the NRA ...

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“It is regrettable that proposals affecting civilian firearms ownership are woven throughout the proposed ATT (Arms Trade Treaty). That being the case, however, there is only one solution to this problem: the complete removal of civilian firearms from the scope of any ATT. I will repeat that point as it is critical and not subject to negotiation – civilian firearms must not be part of any ATT. On this there can be no compromise, as American gun owners will never surrender their Second Amendment freedom. It is also regrettable to find such intense focus on record-keeping, oversight, inspections, supervision, tracking, tracing, surveillance, marking, documentation, verification, paper trails and data banks, new global agencies and data centers. Nowhere do we find a thought about respecting anyone’s right of self-defense, privacy, property, due process, or observing personal freedoms of any kind.” ( By Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President, National Rifle Association -- Address to United Nations – July 14, 2011)

I got to ask, Wayne has been VP for a long time, no promotions in sight for him?

Dimitri

good reading thanks D . we sure have to look after our interests with crap like that trying to be passed.

Thanks 'Mitri...as Elvis said...a good read and we certainly have to look after our interests with the garbage that the UN wants in place.

The UN stance on ATT started many years ago, in fact it was well known throughout the firearm ownership fraternity here in Australia that our previous Prime Minister supported the UN stance to TOTALLY remove firearms from the hands of civilians by a certain year (can't remember exactly when). It would be very interesting to find out the stance adopted by individual countries to the ATT...in particular my own country.

Cheers, Vince

Personally I think the UN wants to try to control every country. Here is another read about the UN and new gun policies and as you read it, note what the nra says about it. New UN Policy

See in a way, American's are watching history repeat itself, first their Federal Government was just about facilitating interstate commerce, and protect all the states from foreign invasion etc.

The United Nations in a way is similar, it was founded as a form for everyone to voice their concerns, deal with country to country relationships and to create stability in the world.

While they do not do a good job in the grand scheme of things, they have reached that point long ago where they want to be bigger then the countries themselves. Similar to what happened with the American Civil War, where the Federal Government became the supreme law of the land afterwords as the individual member states didn't have the right to leave a "union of the willing" anymore.

Dimitri

My personal statement to the u.n.;

D: just a question. Do you have to register your firearms? If so then what happened?

I don't have to register my arms here in the US yet, but I can tell you that it will be a cold day in hell before I have to!

And one more thing, As far as I'm concerned, the US should get out of the UN. The amount the US contributes as of 2010 is 23% of the whole UN budget.

I can tell you, that I do have to register the firearms here, for the next little while anyways, the majority government is going to remove the long gun registry.

And something tells me that the provincial registries that some provinces have threatened wont work. As at the federal level they can track a firearm going from one province to another, but at a provincial level they cannot do that.

Plus since the Federal government has already said they wont transfer the databases to the provinces that ask for it, something tells me that many guns will disappear. Mind you most people who have studied guns in Canada admit that we have less then a third compliance rate at the most with our gun registry. The feds say 7 million, but there really should be about 20 million based on the old FAC system and the imports of firearms to Canada over the last 100 years.

It is very ineffective, especially considering that many nail guns and cordless drills have been registered by their owners as handguns just for the hell of it.

Dimitri

Stuff the UN, just an interfering bunch of busy bodies who want to control the lives of everyone in the world. They are very good at talking the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk, nothing good seems to happen. It seems to me they are very good at making great one line statements but after that bugger all. As old "Coffee Anarn" (however you spell it) was heard to say all the time "WE CONDEM THE VIOLENCE AND BLOODSHED", whoopee, so does everyone, but it makes them look good in the eyes of the world media. They do nothing about the real problems, seems that they cant anyway I guess thats why they target the law-abiding citizens of countries like US, AUST, CANADA etc, because they know we will generally obey the laws of our respective countries. I guess that makes it look like they are doing something in the eyes of their followers.
Why should our lives be governed by some bunch of do-gooders who sign all these agreements. The UN should just get out of our lives and maybe then they will have the time to really do some good. I wish Australia never joined in the first place.

Personally I can't see letting folks from third-world countries tell me how I should be living. I prefer to listen to successful people!

Mike,

Personally I prefer to listen to no one and live my life the way I damn well please, but that is just me.

Dimitri

D, reference the second line of my signature here.

I understand and believe that Mike,

My point was, I'd rather live freely to make my own mistakes and success, then be told how to live my life, no matter if the person telling me what I can and cannot do is from a 3rd world country or your local left-wing tree hugging nut.

Dimitri

Registration will bring a lot of problems and no solutions nor benifits. We have a CWR here for years and it still doesn't work. When you know Mickey Mouse had a gun offecially registrated on its name in our CWR, then you don't have to investigate all this much further.

All this is only to create jobs and increase the costs for civilians, a kind of hidden taxes.

And think about this: police and military weapons are not in the register and where do you think most guns are stolen?

Aloysius,

Australia has a similar problem, police investigate and find the gun that committed such and such a crime, just to look up the serial number in their databases and realize it was one of the many legally owned firearms that the police confiscated.

Not saying all police officers sold guns that were confiscated, but quite a number had been sold illegally to criminals after the confiscations.

I always bring it up as a point, that at the end of the day greed supersedes all when talking to someone who is on the fence about the gun issue, or is just outright anti-gun. Hard to argue about banning guns, when leads to more guns getting into the hands of criminals.

Dimitri