Colorado Sheriffs file lawsuit to stop new Colorado gun laws

From Fox News:

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he and his colleagues were "not the ones playing politics with this."
"We believe that the Legislature were the ones who were playing politics," he said.
Gun control opponents say the language in the regulations is unclear and doesn't provide safeguards to prevent people from inadvertently breaking the laws.
Ammunition magazines, for example, are easily converted to larger sizes, which the bill bans. Gun rights advocates also say the law expanding background checks doesn't provide enough exemptions for temporary transfers and that people conducting private transactions will have a difficult time getting appropriate checks.
Lawmakers allowed several exemptions in the background check legislation, including transfers between immediate family members, shooting events and temporary transfers of up to 72 hours.
State officials, including Attorney General John Suthers, have worked to defend the intent of the laws. Suthers, a Republican responsible for defending the law against the legal challenge, issued a statement Friday giving guidance to law enforcement on how the magazine limit should be enforced.
He said magazine features "must be judged objectively" and that magazines that hold 15 rounds or fewer can't be defined as "large capacity" simply because it can be modified to include more.
The state has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit. . . .

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American College of Physicians plans new report on firearms regulation

The American College of Physicians last put out their policy position on guns in 1996.  Among their positions is a ban on all semi-automatic "assault" weapons.

"favors strong legislation to ban the sale, possession, and manufacture for civilian use of all automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons""sale and possession of handguns should be restricted. Purchases of handguns should be subject to a waiting period, satisfactory completion of a criminal background check, and proof of satisfactory completion of an appropriate educational program on firearm safety"

They are updating their previous positions and have made this announcement:

The American College of Physicians plans to issue an exhaustive, evidence-based review of firearms policy and gun violence later this year.The current policies are "a little dated," so "we’re going through an evidence-based review on firearms policy and gun violence [to] come up with more contemporary recommendations," said Dr. David L. Bronson, immediate past president of the ACP.
"We are aware that firearms are part of the American culture, and this can be a divisive issue for this country and for some of our members," said Dr. Bronson at the annual meeting of the ACP. He said that’s one reason why the college will take an evidence-based approach to formulating its new recommendations. . . .
Dr. Bronson noted that opponents of proposals to rein in firearms may also find ways to reassert their rights and desires in legislation unrelated to gun violence. "You have to keep your eye on the ball," he said, adding, "they have a relentless lobby."

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TrackingPoint Innovations: A Smart Gun that rarely misses, even at long range

Control advocates are obviously having a very hard time keeping up with the technological changes.  The device is currently very expensive:

A team of 70 people spent three years creating the technology. Schauble says there's nothing else like it, even in the military. For civilians, TrackingPoint sells its high-end, long-range guns directly. With price tags of up to $22,000, they're not cheap. . . .

An interview on Fox News is available here.

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Recalls in Colorado for state legislators who voted for more gun control

It turns out that a tax on obtaining a gun and a limit on magazine sizes may cost a few Democratic state legislators their jobs in Colorado.  Getting signatures from 25 percent of the total vote in the last election in that district is a very difficult task.  From Fox News:

Colorado Democratic lawmakers who recently helped pass some of the toughest gun-control laws in the country now face the political backlash of recall efforts.
Two groups are targeting state Rep. Mike McLachlan and state Sens. Angela Giron, Evie Hudak and John Morse.
The Democrat-controlled legislature passed bills that ban magazines holding more than 15 rounds and require background checks for all gun transfers. They were signed into law in March by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Morse, the Senate president, pushed a more far-reaching proposal that called for holding owners, sellers and makers of assault-type weapons liable for havoc inflicted by their guns. . . .
The petition drives are being organized by the organizations Pueblo Freedom and Rights Group. They will need signatures from 25 percent of the vote in each lawmaker’s district to trigger a special election. . . .

At least for one of the state Senators they appear to be on target for the recall.  Here is part of an email that I received this morning.

I spoke to one of the guys leading the recall for Sen. Hudak this morning.  He's says they are nearly on target for a successful effort so they are heavily recruiting more volunteers to make sure they win and finish strong. . . . 

In the case of Sen. Evie Hudak 18,962 signatures are needed.  Nor is it clear that so much time and money should be spent on recalling state Representative Mike McLachlan who is term limited and has to retire in 2014.

The Denver Post lists two of these state Senators as the biggest losers of the most recent legislative session.

Sen. Evie Hudak. Similar to Salazar, the Westminster Democrat planted her feet firmly in her mouth during a hearing on the bill to ban concealed weapons on campus. Hudak told a victim of a rape who said she'd wished she'd been armed that "statistics are not on your side even if you had a gun" and that it was more likely the rapist would have used the gun on her. Though Hudak later apologized, the comments went viral and contributed to the death of the bill. It also spawned a recall petition against Hudak. Luckily for Hudak, though, the statistics are on her side when it comes to recall petitions, which are extreme longshots.
Senate President John Morse. He sponsored an ill-defined liability-for-guns bill that couldn't muster support from his own Democratic caucus, and pushed a bill to grant tax credits to low-income Coloradans that was greatly watered down in the House. Morse also backed a telecommunications regulation bill and legislation allowing for the repeal of marijuana legalization that he couldn't find enough votes for. Meanwhile, his outspoken support of gun control prompted a recall effort against him — unlikely though it may be. . . .

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State Senate Democrats in New Jersey on guns: “We need a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”

Democrats at both the state and federal level keep pushing for taxes on gun purchases and registration.  Democrats claim that they really aren't interested in reducing gun ownership or confiscating guns, but then you have statements such as this.  From the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

As a committee hearing on new gun-control legislation began winding down Thursday, three state senators started chatting amongst themselves.
What they didn't realize was the microphone was still on.
A recording of the exchange — which appears to be between Democrats Loretta Weinberg, Sandra Cunningham and Linda Greenstein — ended up on YouTube, and gun supporters said today they were upset by the remarks.
The recording opens with what sounds like a senator or staff member saying, "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate" — although it is not clear who is speaking or if this is what she is saying. . . .

Some of the new laws that will be voted on Monday in New Jersey will substantially raise the cost of obtaining a gun.

• Reinstating a seven-day "cooling-off" period. When someone qualifies for a permit, they would have to wait seven days before buying the gun — an effort to prevent domestic violence and suicide. The original package of bills would have removed the seven-day waiting period. "Someone who is heated and angry can’t just go out to the store and buy a gun right away," said Nicola Bocour, the project director of anti-gun violence group Ceasefire New Jersey.
• Currently, New Jersey residents have 90 days to buy a gun after getting a permit. Under the bill, they would have four years, but changes were made to make it easier for law enforcement to yank the permit.
• Residents who apply for permits would have to undergo training.
• All sales of ammunition online would be electronically sent to the State Police. . . . 

Waiting periods are associated with increased crime rates against women.  The costs of mandated training will make it so that poor people who live in high crime urban areas will be disarmed.

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Comparing Liberals views about sex and guns: Why do they support training for sex but not guns?

Charles Cooke raises an interesting question about the distinction about what liberals think should be thought about.  From his piece in NRO:

. . . The New York Daily News remains censorious. Lambasting the event’s “Youth Day,” which featured an air-gun range at which children could compete to win multicolored marksmanship ribbons, the paper printed a series of pictures of children holding firearms. The captions read “SCARY SIGHT,” “FRIGHTENING,” and “SICK!” 

Subtle the Daily News is not. Bill Hutchinson, author of the piece, complained that “some of the attendees were the age of the Newtown massacre victims, others too young to know the difference between a toy gun and a real one.” 

This is astonishingly dishonest. How, pray, are children supposed to “know the difference between a toy gun and a real one” if they aren’t shown that difference? And what better way could there be of showing them that difference than to offer them instruction from a professional, as the NRA did, or — even better — having conscientious parents who are open about it? Love them or hate them, guns do exist — there are 360 million of them in the United States. Are we to pretend that this is not true? . . .

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Kansas' new law to nullify federal gun controls faces challenges, asks for original interpretation of Constitution & Bill of Rights

My take is that the people who wrote the US Constitution and who voted for the Bill of Rights would support Kansas' new law.  It seems very clear that in that sense Kansas is in the right.  The problem is that in the past the US Supreme Court has ignored the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution and have so misinterpreted the Commerce clause as to make it meaningless.  Will Eric Holder or the Courts rehabilitate these parts of the Bill of Rights or the Constitution?  Don't hold your breath.  

Some important parts of the Kansas law are as follows:

(a) The tenth amendment to the constitution of the United States guarantees to the
states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in theconstitution and reserves to the state and people of Kansas certain powers as they wereunderstood at the time that Kansas was admitted to statehood in 1861. The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the state and people of Kansas and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Kansas in 1859 and the United States in 1861.
(b) The ninth amendment to the constitution of the United States guarantees to the people rights not granted in the constitution and reserves to the people of Kansas certain rights as they were understood at the time that Kansas was admitted to statehood in 1861.  The guaranty of those rights is a matter of contract between the state and people of Kansas and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States wasagreed upon and adopted by Kansas in 1859 and the United States in 1861. (c) The second amendment to the constitution of the United States reserves to the people, individually, the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that Kansas was admitted to statehood in 1861, and the guaranty of that right is a matter of contract between the state and people of Kansas and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Kansas in 1859 and the United States in 1861. . . .

This discussion of the Commerce clause doesn't make the same defense of how it should be read, but clearly they are just assuming that people understand that it should be read as it was up until the Roosevelt court.

From The Hill newspaper:

The Obama administration is on a collision course with the state of Kansas over a new law that claims to nullify federal gun controls.
Attorney General Eric Holder has threatened litigation against Kansas over the law in what could the opening salvo of a blockbuster legal battle with national ramifications.
“This is definitely a case that could make it to the Supreme Court,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Friday afternoon. “There is nothing symbolic about this law.” 
Kobach, a former constitutional law professor, helped craft the statute, which bars the federal government from regulating guns and ammunition manufactured and stored within Kansas state lines. . . .

There is a later discussion in The Hill newspaper piece that quotes Mr. Winkler in support of Holder's position.  Given that the Federal government has complete regulation these days to regulate  everything by claiming that everything has some impact on interstate trade, Winkler is right.  However, it would be nice if just as newspapers fell that it is necessary to identify experts as "conservative," it would be nice if they would identify people such as Winkler as liberal or at least someone who consistently supports gun control.

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Ann Coulter on "America's Most Feared Economist"

Ann's newest piece starts this way:

You can tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as "discredited."  Ask Sen. Ted Cruz. But no one is called "discredited" by liberals more often than the inestimable economist John Lott, author of the groundbreaking book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.  

Lott's economic analysis of the effect of concealed-carry laws on violent crime is the most thoroughly vetted study in the history of economics, perhaps in the history of the world.  

Some nut Dutch professor produces dozens of gag studies purportedly finding that thinking about red meat makes people selfish and that litter leads to racism -- and no one bothers to see if he even administered questionnaires before drawing these grand conclusions about humanity.  

But Lott's decades-long studies of concealed-carry laws have been probed, poked and re-examined dozens of times. (Most of all by Lott himself, who has continuously re-run the numbers controlling for thousands of factors.) . . .

Read the rest available here.

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California seeking to ban lead in ammunition

California is dredging up old studies to justify banning lead bullets.  Just to get people up to speed on this issue, here is an EPA report from 1999.  An Associated Press story noted:

A 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control and the North Dakota Department of Public Health concluded with a recommendation that lead is so prevalent in meat harvested through hunting that pregnant women and children should never eat it.  Gun supporters say that those studies have never conclusively linked consumption with illness in humans. . . .

But if you look at the North Dakota study, you will find this:

The lead levels among study participants ranged from none detectable to 9.82 micrograms perdeciliter. . . 

No attempt was made to account for other sources of lead poisoning and obviously there are multiple sources of lead in the environment (the mean level of lead in the blood in the US is 3 micrograms, not zero).  In addition, the highest level of lead in the blood for one of the 738 people sampled in the North Dakota study was less that what the government defines as elevated even for children.

Lead is a highly toxic metal that was used for many years in products found in and around our homes.  An elevated blood lead level in a child is defined as 10 or more micrograms of lead in a deciliter (μg/dL) of blood. . . . Children are more vulnerable to lead than adults.  While all children are at risk from lead, children living in older housing and in poverty are at the greatest risk.  Children who eat paint chips or breathe dust from flaking or peeling lead-based paint are the most likely to develop a problem.  Children may also develop high blood lead levels by drinking water contaminated with lead that may be in the plumbing system or by being exposed to contaminated soil or other lead hazards. . . . .

 From the New York Health Department these are the numbers for adults.

• At levels above 80 µg/dL, serious, permanent health damage may occur (extremely dangerous).
• Between 40 and 80 µg/dL, serious health damage may be occuring, even if there are no symptoms (seriously elevated).
• Between 25 and 40 µg/dL, regular exposure is occuring. There is some evidence of potential physiologic problems (elevated).
• Between 10 and 25 µg/dL, lead is building up in the body and some exposure is occuring.

It is hard to look at these numbers from the North Dakota study and view even the highest level of lead found as a danger, and there is no reason to believe that outlier is a result of hunting.  It seems likely that in the US as a whole more than 1 out of every 738 people have lead levels equal to or above the highest person in this sample.  Take Detroit.  In 2012, apparently 2,900 children under age 18 had lead poisoning.  With about 186,500 children under age 18, that implies a poisoning rate of 1.6% (down 70% from what it was just in 2004).  Given that the North Dakota data doesn't have anyone reaching the lead poisoning rates found in Detroit and that only 0.136% even reach 9.82 micrograms, Detroit has much more to be concerned about.  (Note that I am making the assumption here that the Scientific American article on poisoning means those under age 18 when it mentions "kids."  If in fact that refers to younger ages, the poisoning rate would be substantially higher.)

A similar Minnesota study that was done at the same time found: "As a result, the Minnesota DNR conducted the first-of-its-kind lead fragmentation study to simulate how different types of bullets commonly used for deer hunting might fragment."

See more on the general issue here.

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'Duck Dynasty' Tops all Wednesday's cable and broadcast series in the much desired 18 to 49 demo

Pretty amazing that this show was the top rated TV show in the most desired demo on Wednesday.

Duck Dynasty shows no signs of slowing. The A&E series' season finale drew a record 9.6 million viewers during its one-hour episode -- and an equally impressive 5.5 million adults 18-49. 

That haul in the key demo puts it ahead of all of cable and broadcast offerings for the night -- including American Idol. Duck Dynasty's 4.3 rating with adults 18-49 rating tops the preliminary showing for Idol (3.2 rating) by 34 percent. . . .  

In the network's adults 25-54 demo, Duck Dynasty outperformed its 18-49 showing with an average 5.5 million viewers. It also raked in 2.6 million adults 18-34. . . .

That show gives me some hope given how strongly the stars in the show are against gun control.  It is nice to see these stars giving President Obama a trashing on the issue.

“Hey, look here, the President was just on the news about gun control, but hey, luckily our congressmen and senators, they voted it down. But look, America hasn’t got a gun control problem, we have got a sin control problem. Nothing has changed with the human race, OK? We’re a bunch of flawed people, OK? And Duck Dynasty, look here, Duck Dynasty is full of flawed people that have turned to Jesus, OK? That’s the difference.” . . .

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Soros funded Florida Center for Investigative Reporting claims: "As Firearm Ownership Rises, Florida Gun Murders Increasing"

George Soros has funded the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, and you can see how they report the data in the most biased possible ways.  Eric Barton with the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting writes:

Murders by firearms have increased dramatically in the state since 2000, when there were 499 gun murders, according to data from Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Gun murders have since climbed 38 percent — with 691 murders committed with guns in 2011. 

Only partial numbers are available for 2012, but from January to June, there were 479 murders in Florida — 358 of them committed with a gun. That’s an 8 percent increase in gun murders compared to the same period in 2011. 

Guns are now the weapons of choice in 75 percent of all homicides in Florida. That’s up from 56 percent in 2000. . . . .

Note that they could also have looked at robberies and aggravated assault rates with guns and they would have seen drops of 23 and 11 percent respectively.  If they had looked at murder rates with guns, those rose by 16 percent, versus the rate that they reported that didn't adjust for population growth of 38 percent.  Given that crimes can be deterred with guns, it seems to me that one will want to look at primarily at total murders, robberies and aggravated assaults.

Even more interestingly, gun sales have soared in Florida since 2008 and all the rates, both with and with out guns, fell since then.  The crime data is available here.

Unfortunately, mainstream newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the Lakeland Ledger pick up this report.

The claim that the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting is funded by Soros is found at various places including this piece in the Lakeland Times:

Take a look at the fast-growing number of Soros-funded centers - they are blooming everywhere, like tulips in the spring, the Colorado Center for Investigative Reporting, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism and on and on - and even a cursory look at the selected subjects shows an amazing similarity. . . .

UPDATE: The FCIR lists funding sources here.

Note however that Soros and his OSI have given money to the Center on Media, Crime and Justice and that the Fund for Investigative Journalism has received money from Soros.  I assume that there are other ways that Soros has given money to FCIR, but this seems enough to me.

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Chris Wallace at 1:18 into this video asks whether people in Boston wished that they had guns for protection

Given how Wallace treated those who opposed additional gun control regulations during the recent debate, Wallace is showing some balance here.

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Remembering the first real Federal push for gun control

Franklin D. Roosevelt was responsible for this push:

Roosevelt’s original proposal for what would become the National Firearms Act of 1934, the first federal gun control law, sought to tax all firearms and establish a national registry of guns. When gun owners objected, Congress scaled down FDR’s proposal to allow only for a restrictive tax on machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, which were thought to be gangster weapons with no usefulness for self-defense.   

Congress watered down FDR’s bill because of concerns about maintaining the right of people in rural communities, where there was little police presence, to have handguns for protection. . . .

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Even Politico notes the extreme bias in the media over the background checks

Bill Kristol is hardly a conservative on the gun issue, and even he thinks that the bias has been quite strong.  From Politico:

. . . Even by the standards of today’s partisan media environment, the response has been noteworthy. Television hosts, editorial boards, and even some reporters have aggressively criticized and shamed the 46 Senators who opposed the plan, while some have even taken to actively soliciting the public to contact them directly. 

The decision by some members of the media to come down so firmly on one side of a policy debate has only served to reinforce conservatives’ longstanding suspicions that the mainstream media has a deep-seated liberal bias. 

“I guess the liberal media get annoyed when Senators listen to their constituents and think for themselves, rather than doing the media’s bidding,” Bill Kristol, the editor-in-chief of the Weekly Standard, told POLITICO. 

”It’s clearly biased and unmistakably ideological,” said John Podhoretz, the conservative New York Post columnist. “These outlets can do what they do want, but nobody should kid themselves about what they’re doing.” . . .

I have noted this for a long time with the cheerleading by the media on the bogus claim that 40% of gun sales are done with out background checks (see others discuss it here).

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Radio interview with Mark Levin on Senate Gun Control Bill from April 10th

The audio of my radio interview with Mark Levin is available here.

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What the New York Times regards as "killer" amendments on guns

To the New York Times, if you have ever had a mental illness, you should be banned for life from owning a gun.  How is that reasonable?  What incentives does that create for people to seek help?  As to concealed handgun permits, again, is their opposition to letting people carry concealed handguns across state lines reasonable?  Why are these considered killer amendments?

. . . That lobby has lined up several senators to do its bidding by offering amendments that will pose a real threat to the background-check bill. The worst — a huge priority of the N.R.A. — would require every state to honor the concealed-handgun permits of other states, overriding their own restrictions. That would allow a resident of Florida, where deliberately lax laws have given out such permits to hundreds of felons, to carry a concealed gun in New York or Connecticut, where the laws are much more strict and sane. 

If this amendment were to be attached to the background-check bill — and there may be enough votes to make that happen — the underlying bill would no longer be worth passing. 

Another potential killer amendment, sponsored by Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, would reverse current law and allow people who have been involuntarily committed to mental institutions to own guns, a ludicrous undermining of the background-check system. Only those who are found to be an “imminent danger” would be prevented from owning guns, even though that standard isn’t required in many states to commit people to institutions. . . .

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Politico: "Using sales taxes as a gun control tool"

I recently made the same argument in an op-ed for Fox News.  These taxes are just a way to reduce gun ownership.

State and local officials are pushing a new way to expand gun control: taxes. 

Gun owners in and around Chicago last week started paying a new $25 tax on every firearm they purchase. In California, a statehouse panel on April 15 will hear testimony on a nickel-per-bullet tax measure, and in New Jersey, lawmakers want to slap an additional 5 percent sales tax on guns and ammo. 

The effort to impose new taxes on guns and bullets faces serious opposition from pro-gun groups, but it shows how far some states and localities are willing to go in this new frontier on gun control — especially as Washington struggles to find consensus even on the most scaled-back gun proposals being debated in Congress. . . .  

Gun Owners of America legislative counsel Michael Hammond called gun taxes “an effort to say the poor can’t own firearms because we’re going to impose a tax which they can’t afford to pay.” . . .

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Explaining why cross-sectional data is not useful for comparing the impact of gun ownership on crime rates

I have made this point so many times, but it seems that people need this point made again.  I don't really expect much from the leftwing Center for American Progress, but they are again using purely cross-sectional data to make their claim that "Weak State Gun Laws" are associated with more gun violence.  Reuters and others have picked up on the claim without any attempt to talk to academics or others who might be critical.

Here are just two of paragraphs from my book The Bias Against Guns:

First, the cross-sectional studies: Suppose for the sake of argument that high-crime countries are the ones that most frequently adopt the most stringent gun control laws. Suppose further, for the sake of argument, that gun control indeed lowers crime, but not by enough to reduce rates to the same low levels prevailing in the majority of countries that did not adopt the laws. Looking across countries, it would then falsely appear that stricter gun control resulted in higher crime. Economists refer to this as an “endogeniety” problem. The adoption of the policy is a reaction to other events (that is, “endogenous”), in this case crime. To resolve this, one must examine how the high-crime areas that chose to adopt the controls changed over time —not only relative to their own past levels but also relative to areas that did not institute such controls. 

Unfortunately, many contemporary discussions rely on misinterpretations of cross-sectional data. The New York Times recently conducted a cross-sectional study of murder rates in states with and without the death penalty, and found that “Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average.” However, they erroneously concluded that the death penalty did not deter murder. The problem is that the states without the death penalty (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Vermont) have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates, something that might well have more to do with other factors than the death penalty. Instead one must compare, over time, how murder rates change in the two groups – those adopting the death penalty and those that did not.

Of course, there are times when cross-sectional data still shows more guns mean less crime (see also here), but that is still a wrong way to look at the data.  As I have described in my books More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, you need to use panel data.  When that is done the results clearly show more guns, less crime.

UPDATE: Ken Mauer emails me the following:

There was once a cholera epidemic in Russia. The government, in an effort to stem the disease, sent doctors to the worst-affected areas. The peasants of the province of S_____ discussed the situation and observed a very high correlation between the number of doctors in a given area and the incidence of cholera in that area (i.e. more doctors were observed in cholera areas than elsewhere). Relying on this hard fact, they rose and murdered their doctors.   

Franklin M. Fisher, The Identification Problem in Econometrics, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) pp. 2-3.

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Poll on "Do more guns lead to less crime?"

Eric Veronikis at PennLive has a brief summary of a talk that I gave at Dickinson College on Monday. It was a fun talk.

For those living in Pennsylvania, PCN (Pennsylvania's version of C-SPAN) is going to again play the talk that I gave on Wednesday morning.

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Obama to push for UN Arms Trade Treaty in Senate

The Obama administration kept promising that the treaty would only be approved by unanimity, but, of course, the president broke that promise.  From The Hill newspaper:

The Obama administration defied a majority of the Senate on Tuesday by voting to approve a United Nations treaty on the trade of small arms and other conventional weapons. 

The treaty, overwhelmingly approved by the U.N., requires countries to create internal mechanisms to ensure that their arms exports aren’t likely to be used to harm civilians or violate human rights laws. 

President Obama is expected to sign the treaty within the next few months, but it faces a tough road to win the two-thirds majority support needed in the Senate for approval.  

It is opposed by the National Rifle Association, which argues the accord violates the Second Amendment by regulating small arms, such as rifles and handguns, and calling for the creation of an “end-user registry.” 

Fifty-three senators voiced their disapproval late last month by voting in favor of a nonbinding amendment to a Senate budget resolution to stop the U.S. from entering the treaty. . . .

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