CCRKBA On HR 3594 And The Arms Trade Treaty

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) is not your average Chicagoland congressman. He is actually pro-gun and pro-Second Amendment unlike many of others. Walsh spoke at the 2011 Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Chicago and gave a very pro-gun speech.

This past December he introduced HR 3594, the Second Amendment Protection Act, which hits directly at proposed the Arms Trade Treaty. It would cut off all funding to the United Nations unless the president certified that the UN had not taken actions that would infringe on the rights of Americans to possess firearms and ammunition.

(a) In General- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the United States may not provide any funding to the United Nations for a fiscal year unless, before the last day of the preceding fiscal year, the President makes the certification described in subsection (b).

(b) Certification- The certification described in this subsection is a certification submitted to the Congress by the President, that states that the United Nations has not taken action to restrict, attempt to restrict, or otherwise adversely infringe on the rights of individuals in the United States to possess a firearm or ammunition, including by imposing burdens on international commerce, or abridge any of the other constitutionally protected rights of citizens of the United States.

The bill currently has 60 co-sponsors including 26 just added recently. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms released the statement below on HR 3594 and the new sponsors.

26 NEW CO-SPONSORS TO 2A PROTECTION ACT IS ‘GOOD NEWS,’ SAYS CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – Twenty-six more members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors to the Second Amendment Protection Act, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms announced today.

“This is good news,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb. “With a vote looming on the proposed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, this sends a clear message to the Obama administration that the president will face real trouble if he or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signs any document that threatens our constitutionally-protected individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Sponsored by Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, H.R. 3594 was written with help from CCRKBA staff, Gottlieb noted. It now has 60 co-sponsors, and has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. CCRKBA has been urging members and supporters to contact Congress and demand action on this bill.

“The U.N. is scheduled to vote on the proposed treaty next week,” Gottlieb said. “Right now they are pushing to include small arms and ammunition, and because the Devil is always in the details, when they finally hammer out a document that the Obama administration has already indicated it will sign, this could be extremely bad for American gun owners.

“Fortunately, Congressman Walsh had the foresight to understand this,” he continued, “so he introduced this legislation to protect Second Amendment sovereignty. We want the United Nations gun grabbers, and the Obama administration to understand that they are treading in perilous waters if they adopt a treaty that even remotely threatens the firearms freedoms of our citizens.

“We are coming down to the wire on this treaty,” Gottlieb stated. “Our constitutional rights far outweigh the administration’s desire to push its ‘citizen-of-the-world’ philosophy down the throats of American gun owners. We want to see action on the Second Amendment Protection Act, and with 26 new co-sponsors, we are one step closer to achieving that goal.”

Walsh Becomes 4th Congressman To Call Upon Holder To Resign

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) was one of the speakers at the recent Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Chicago and made a very strong, pro-gun address. He has now become the fourth Congressman to call on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign over Project Gunwalker. In his letter to Holder, Congressman Walsh said the motivation for the operation seemed to be to curtail American’s Second Amendment rights under the pretext of stopping guns going to Mexico.

Your Department has made an enormous error in judgment. It instructed federally-licensed firearms dealers to illegally sell at least 2,000 guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) intended to be trafficked to drug cartels in Mexico. The results of this error in judgment have implicated the United States in well over one hundred deadly crimes and the deaths of two federal agents.

This not only raises serious questions about your ability to serve as the head of the Justice Department, but also begs the question of why an anti-gun Administration would knowingly force licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals. I raise this because Operation Fast and Furious — if the facts of this case had not come to light — would have been used by this Administration as another false argument to attack law-abiding American gun owners.

The American people deserve to know if your Department had any intent to link the legal purchase of firearms here in the U.S. to crimes committed near our southern border. Operation Fast and Furious funneled firearms legally purchased at gun shops in the U.S. to known criminal syndicates to prove these syndicates have access to legal purchased weapons. This is a deliberate attempt to vilify and attack the millions of gun owners in America who value our Second Amendment and have never broken the law.