Mexico’s theory is that, since any gun in the U.S. might at some point conceivably cross the U.S. border, all U.S. guns have to be controlled in the name of controlling the international arms trade.
But Mexico, the other nations that agree with it, and “progressive” groups that campaigned for the treaty the blame America-first activists, in other words are in this game for the long haul. So it’s not a good sign that Mexico’s been given the job of hosting the first treaty meeting.
It’s even less good that Mexico’s spent much of the past year colluding with the activists to keep skeptics out of the room. Their view was that only true believers who campaigned for the treaty should be allowed to see what’s going on.
You might wonder what they’re afraid of. Civil libertarians and skeptics make no secret of their views. However, if they were always in the room, they’d report on exactly how closely the activists are working with Mexico and other like minded nations.
The activists led by the global Control Arms Coalition, which has a massive presence at Cancún are the only insiders in the treaty process, and they want to keep it that way.
The ATT was adopted through the U.N., which means it was drafted by the world’s nations. That’s bad, because there are lots of incapable and evil governments in the world. But it’s better than the alternative, which was for the ATT to have been drafted solely by the activists.
Now that the treaty exists, however, the activists want to take it over and direct it for their own purposes. What they want is to turn the ATT into an arms control and disarmament treaty.
Keeping skeptics away is part of that campaign.
So far, they’ve not succeeded in keeping them out, or in taking over the treaty. But the ATT isn’t simply a treaty that’s over and done with. Like many treaties, it’s a process that will go on and on, in meeting after meeting, year after year. And the activists have lots of people, lots of money, and lots of time.
The U.S.’s goal in Cancún should be to do whatever it can to prevent the activists from getting any footholds. That means ensuring a treaty secretariat that’s strictly limited in its purposes, conference rules that don’t privilege the activists, and reporting requirements that don’t go beyond current U.S. practice or identify individual U.S. firearms owners.
Because, thankfully, the U.S. hasn’t ratified the ATT, we won’t have a vote in much of what goes on. But that doesn’t mean we lack influence. Let’s hope that America uses it wisely.