The United Nations is holding secret closed meetings to work out a global arms trade treaty. The agreement, which could be finished by 2012, is a threat to Americans’ Second and First Amendment rights.

“Some type of micro-stamping regulations seems all but inevitable. It is very, very likely,” the Heritage Foundation’s Theodore R. Bromund, who tracks the U.N., told The Washington Times. “Restrictions on trade between private individuals are somewhat less than 50-50, but you surely can’t rule that out. Some kind of gun registration and licensing system is an extremely likely probability.” Registration proposals cover guns as well as individual rounds of ammunition.

The Obama administration strongly supports the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty and no doubt will use the process to push for gun-control regulations that it can’t get through Congress otherwise.

A lot of baloney is floating in Turtle Bay. Gun registration is being promoted despite evidence that the costly bureaucratic system has been a complete failure in solving any crimes or stopping criminals from getting access to guns everywhere it’s been tried. “None of these treaties have a relationship to reality,” Mr. Bromund explains. “Terrorists are still going to have access to guns because governments give them guns, and they are still going to be able to give them guns.” As an example, he pointed out, “The FARC fighting in Colombia get their guns from Venezuela.”

As with everything that goes down at the U.N.’s headquarters on Manhattan’s East River, America will pick up a disproportionate share of the tab to implement the treaty, with all those countries considered most “in need” taking another free ride. This is counterproductive even without the usual fraud and waste that hobble U.N. programs.

Gun rights aren’t the only thing would-be globocops are targeting in the treaty. There is a U.N. discussion paper advancing “the reduction of violence in the media and in video games” as well as “sustained efforts at reeducation and reorientation of [member state] citizens.” Whatever the plan, that can’t be good for the First Amendment.

Any U.N. Arms Trade Treaty will undermine freedom around the world. The right to bear arms is an individual’s protection against oppression anywhere. It took herculean efforts by George W. Bush’s administration to thwart this U.N. power grab a few years ago. Unfortunately, we now have a left-wing White House working to make this dangerous treaty a reality.

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