It is "Small Arms Destruction Day" on July 9, 2001. Plans are underway for government agents to ignite huge bonfires of handguns, rifles and other firearms in major population centers worldwide.

No joke. The United Nations Conference on Small Weapons is sponsoring massive gun burnings on July 9 to mark the opening in New York of the UN Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons. Organizers of the Conference say "the public destruction of weapons" is good because it "is one of the best ways to attract attention" to global civilian disarmament.

Whose guns will be burned? Privately-held weapons that have been captured or confiscated by governments, of course. But certainly not the guns held by governments and their armies, police forces and death squads.

What Is Going On?

Having failed to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the UN lately has been working to disarm the world's civilians. Going under the name of "reducing illicit trafficking in light weapons and small arms," the UN's expressed goal is to concentrate power into the hands of UN member governments:

• A UN report in August 1999 recommended that "all small arms and light weapons which are not under legal civilian possession and which are not required for the purposes of national defense and internal security, should be collected and destroyed by States as expeditiously as possible."
   
• Secretary-General Kofi Annan in April 2000 called for "non- proliferation of small arms," declaring that "these weapons must be brought under the control of states."
   
• A UN Committee of Governmental Experts in March 2001 recommended that all nations install centralized "gun control" with detailed record-keeping and prohibitions against selling "small arms" to anyone except other governments.

Make no mistake: when the UN refers to "small arms," it means rifles and handguns. In our Second Amendment, the word "arms" means, at the very least, "small arms." The UN program thus directly infringes our Second Amendment.

Americans: your right to keep and bear arms will soon face a united world of enemies. Even the so-called human rights advocates Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have joined forces with the regimes of Cambodia, Colombia, Zimbabwe, Syria and Iraq to press for world "gun control" at the July 9 Conference. Do you really think the current U.S. government or the Supreme Court will defend the Second Amendment against the UN?

Three Propaganda Points

The international victim disarmament forces focus on three talking points. First, they treat firearms as the cause of war, violence, unrest, and crime. In their advocacy papers, they actually blame the guns, not the aggressors or the evil ideas. They stand with activist doctor groups who claim firearms are a "public health menace."

Second, the victim disarmers follow the morally bankrupt idea that armed conflict is always wrong. They cannot tell the difference between a good government and an evil government, or between aggression and self-defense. Armed defense is morally right and is a moral duty under the Judeo-Christian tradition and under the non-religious philosophy of natural law. The victim disarmers never distinguish between oppression and righteous self-protection.

Third, the anti-small arms forces say they are only going after "illegal" or "illicit" possession of firearms. They urge governments to confiscate and destroy all firearms that are owned illegally. Who defines what is illegal? The UN's member governments: Red China, Iraq, Colombia, and the dozens of other oppressive and/or corrupt regimes, many of whom obtained power by force, not election.

What It All Means -- Your Next Move

Future UN action may well declare American gun owners to be criminals. If your gun is too big, too small, too powerful, too accurate or too ugly, it may be deemed dangerous to world peace and thus illegal. If you reload your own ammunition or fix guns, you may be deemed an illicit trafficker in small arms.

Get smart, gun owners, and get moving! Every gun owner must fully grasp this looming threat to our rights as Americans. Use the powerful Gran'pa Jack booklet "The UN is Killing Your Freedoms" to show how the UN endangers most of the rights Americans take for granted -- most especially the gun rights. Distribute copies of this article and the booklet to every citizen and every member of every gun club in America.

Save money -- order bundles of booklets, only $20.00 for 50 copies; $38 for 100 copies. To speed delivery, JPFO pays the postage. Call (800) 869-1884 or click www.jpfo.org/gpjack5.htm Annual membership only $20, tax deductible.

Source: JFPO