7/01 Bartlett-Barr Amendment Denies Funding for U.N. Gun Control

Bartlett-Barr Amendment Denies Funding For U.N. Gun Control
Gun Owners of America
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408

July 18, 2001

Dear Representative:

Gun Owners of America urges your support for the Bartlett-Barr amendment to the CJS funding bill. This provision would prohibit any funds for implementing anti-gun policies which come out of the United Nations gun control conference which is meeting right now.

Gun control is not the answer to cutting violence. After imposing draconian gun restrictions, England has experienced a tremendous jump in violent crimes involving firearms — a 40 percent increase according to the London Telegraph Times this past Sunday. Police have estimated there are three million illegal guns in their country, and the British press has facetiously dubbed the city of Manches-ter as “Gunchester.” All of this on an island that virtually bans almost every privately-owned firearm!

The hypocrisy at the UN is beyond belief. UN delegates claim that our right to keep and bear arms in this country is part of the reason there’s gun violence in the world — they cite one-half million gun deaths worldwide per year. But there are more people dying at the hands of armed governments, to the tune of about two million people per year.

The UN supports many of these governments, quite obviously, because many of the UN delegates come from these oppressive countries. If the UN wants to take a bite out of crime, then it should stop putting the delegates from barbarous nations on the UN Commission on Human Rights. The real killers are to be found in governments like those in the Sudan, Rwanda and China. All three have made it a practice of butchering or exterminating millions of unarmed citizens.

What will registering law-abiding gun owners here in America do towards stopping the real butchers — those armed governments that disarm their own people and then commit horrible acts of genocide? Absolutely nothing.

A real solution would allow the citizens in those oppressive countries to defend themselves. UN advocates throw around the 1/2 million worldwide gun deaths as reason to impose global gun control. But in our country alone, Americans use firearms more than 2.5 million times every year in self-defense. That is real crime control.

As long as the UN is seeking to register decent gun owners and to infringe upon the Second Amendment to our Constitution, then we should not send them a dime to help them in their efforts.

Please support the Bartlett-Barr amendment to the CJS appropriations bill. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Larry Pratt
Executive Director