Sunday, October 16, 2011

Not Really Accurate

I received a robocall from the NRA the other day. They wanted me to answer a question about whether I think the United Nations on US soil should be plotting to take away my gun rights. All in all, this is Not Really Accurate. Let us take the slightly pedantic point first. The UN is not on US soil. The land that the UN stands on by the East River in New York was ceded to the UN by President Truman at the UN's founding in 1948.
However what the NRA is getting excited about is the UN Small Arms Treaty. This is a good treaty in that it creates controls on the trade in small arms. A flood of small arms is the best way to make a failed state, like Somalia, a state in which Al Qaida can operate with impunity and plot to attack us. A true patriot would never want to make life comfortable and easy for Al Qaida. The Bush administration voted against this treaty, but then they were famous for acting against their own best interest. The Obama administration has taken the far more practical step of getting language inserted in the treaty that ensures nothing in the treaty can be interpreted as interfering with domestic gun laws and then voting for it. This is a good thing since the only country that voted against it was Zimbabwe, and there is no conceivable reason why a country that believes in freedom should have anything whatever in common with the thoroughly nasty and repressive regime of Robert Mugable.  I believe I  am being overly polite in representing the NRA's position as Not Really Accurate, and I  hate to sound like Andy Rooney, but wouldn't someone who shoots  a gun consider the matter of accuracy quite important?

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