Critics of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) have lampooned the agreement’s relatively meager reporting requirements and evident lack of an enforcement mechanism. But for all its weaknesses, the treaty deserves to be celebrated. One person dies every minute as a result of armed violence, and the ATT makes significant progress towards combating this problem.
Terrorism equals war to Americans.
In the U.S. immigration debate, we have thus far focused our attention on the symptom—Mexicans crossing the semi-permeable barrier into the United States—and treated the crossing itself as the problem to be solved. In other words, policy makers have been preoccupied with figuring out how to make the border less permeable. But this is a fool’s errand. It’s time to start looking at the pressures that drive unidirectional movement instead of at the symptom.
Fearing the disruption of gun exports, the National Rifle Association vociferously opposed the Arms Trade Treaty that was approved on April 2 by the UN General Assembly. The joke, though, is not just on the NRA. While the treaty doesn’t do anything to affect American gun-owners, it’s so weak that it doesn’t seem to affect anybody at all.
In early September, Mexican authorities arrested a U.S. citizen, Jean Batiste Kingery, for smuggling grenades across the border for the Sinaloa cartel. Astonishingly, U.S. agents had released Kingery a year before when he was captured for the same offense. U.S. law enforcement officials reportedly wanted to use him in a sting operation.
The Pentagon and the National Rifle Association have a lot in common these days. They’re in love with guns. They maintain powerful lobbies. They refuse to acknowledge the dangerous consequences of their policies.
And they’re both on the defensive.
In April, the Democratic-controlled Congress froze $55.2 million in military assistance earmarked for Colombia. At issue were linkages between the Andean nation’s military and a paramilitary group on the State Department’s terrorist list. The administration response has largely been to marshal the troops and espouse the benefits of Plan Colombia, the vehicle that delivers U.S. assistance to Colombia.