REFLECTIONS

As homeschoolers, BurkeanMama and I are members of HSLDA – the Home School Legal Defense Association.  Their latest magazine had a cover story that stunned me, entitled “Will U.N. Treaty Disarm America?“ 

Now the idea that the U.N. wants your guns is nothing new.  The article discusses the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and points to (among other things) a pamphlet entitled “No Guns Please, We Are Children!”.  It contains such entertaining tidbits as this:

Collect and destroy small arms and light weapons through
community programmes in which civil society plays a key role.

 and this:

The use of small arms and light weapons makes gender imbalances more dangerous to women and girls.

Completely ignoring just why handguns gained the appelation “equalizer”.

But, I am becoming distracted. Their goals are clear: to confiscate and destroy our handguns.

“This can’t happen here,” I hear you say, “we have the Constitution and the 2nd Amendment”.

well … this was the frightening part.  In the Constitution, Article V, paragraph 2, is this:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

This clause is known as the “Supremacy Clause” (more discussion of it here).

Ok, what does it mean?  On the face of it, it looks to me as if terms of Treaties may take precedence over articles and amendments to the Constitution.  Apparently I am not the only one, as evidenced by an effort in the 50′s to pass amendments to limit the scope of terms of treaties, and ensure that they could not conflict with the Constitution (see “Bricker Amendments” on Wikipedia).

In 1957 the efforts to pass these amendments died out, as the supreme court declared that the United States could not abrogate the rights guaranteed to citizens in the Bill of Rights through international agreements.  One of these cases was Reid v. Covert.  Written in the decision was this” ”this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty”, however the case itself was with regard to an executive agreement, and not an actual treaty … so the Supremacy Clause has never really been fully adjudicated.
 

Well … this surprised — and scared — the heck out of me.  I mean, the government appears to still have the capability to take away rights declared in the Constitution by means of entering into treaties with foreign powers.

 Now, the HSLDA article seems to be concerned about the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and how it might affect gun ownership rights.  I have read through this Convention and did not see anything specifically addressing weapons, however as the article points out “Limiting the rights of gun ownership is not some secret agenda of the UN, but is open for all to see.”  They also point out that article 29 of the CRC mandates “peace education”, and that elsewhere (The UN World Congress on Disarmament Education) has adopted this statement:

As an integral part of peace education, disarmament education has essential links with human rights education and development education, in so far as each of the three terms peace, human rights and development must be defined in relation to the other two.

 
It is quite possible that the terms of the CRC, interpreted in light of the other UN documents and policies, could be interpreted as requiring a disarmament policy of it’s signatories. Even if the CRC does not bring this about, however, the possiblity still lies open that we may yet enter into a treaty that would abrogate the 2nd Amendment and our right to personal arms.

 The fact that this is even a possiblity chills my very soul.