Philip Alpers’ presentation at the United Nations Workshop on Firearm Regulation
United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
New Delhi, India
30 January 1998
My thanks go to the Amsterdam-based International Fellowship of Reconciliation, under whose auspices I speak today. I thank also the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, at whose kind invitation I have been permitted to present an NGO's viewpoint at the two previous workshops in Slovenia and Brazil, and again here, today in New Delhi.
I've spent the past five years as a gun policy researcher in New Zealand, writing reports for the New Zealand Police Association, branches of governement and violence precention foundations in the United States and elsewhere.
I'm a licensed gun owner, I enjoy target shooting and I have no objection to the use of appopriate firearms in pest control, on the farm and in sport. But it's also my belief that the regulation of guns is an important human rights issue.
While a small number of men do claim that they have the right to carry a gun, the vast majority of the people on the planet insist that they have the right to live in a society free of the fear of guns.
Some will tell you that the more guns you have, the safer you are. If that were truly the case, the United States would be the safest nation on earth.
Personally, I don't need somebody with a PhD to tell me that the more guns you have in a community, the more people are likely to get shot. To many of us, it si simply self-evedent that the availability of firearms is directly related to their subsequent use in crime and violence. Put even more simply, without a gun, there can be no shooting.
So, every nation has a duty to regulate guns. As you've seen from the excellent United Nations sudy on firearm regulation, for many years it's been the norm in both industraialised and developing nations to employ two parallel registers in a system similar to that used for automobiles. We license the individual - that's the driver or the gun owner - as a fit and proper person, and we register the object - that's the car or the firearm - to make the owner more responsible and personally accountable for any damage done.
Gun registartaion in particular is recognised as the cornerstone of any effective tracking and tacing system for firemarms. In promotin the regulation of firearms at these workshops, you earnthe thanks of millions of citizens who see it as their right to live without having to worry about someone else in th e crowd carrying a gun.
I can assure you that your efforts here do enjoy the support of hundreds of NGOs around the world. Victim support groups, public health professionals, suicide and violence prevention agencies, medical associations, police unions and women's organisations all applaud your efforts.
There is also a growing international recognition that perhaps 90% of the deaths in conflict since World War II have been effected, not by nuclear weapons, by tanks or by bombs, but by cheap, easily accessible, common-or-garden - guns.
In coming months your efforts here will be supported and encouraged by a wide range of NGOs and governments who are becoming just as concerned about small arms as they have been about landmines.
But now it's time to mention the grand conspiracy. As you know, there has been an attempt to label these proceedings as the machinations of the UN's so-called "global gun grabbers".
In some sectors, the purpose of these workshops has been intensely politicised and-distorted. In the United States, the pro-gun lobby is becoming openly distressed at the United Nations initiative of which this workshop is an important part.
Back home in the USA, the gun lobby is using you and your objectives in a massive fund-rasing campaign which laughbly misprepresents what you're trying to do here.
Some of you may already have seen the fund-raising letter mailed last November to members of the National Rifle Association of America. The NRA boasts three million members.
You may think that the reason you're all here this week is to discuss illicit trafficking in firearms, information-based community policing systems for th reduction of firemarm-related crim, and the sensible, co-ordinated regulation of firearms in the bans of civilians.
You may think that you're here to protect your citizens from gun violence of all types - including suicede - and to promote the public health of your nation.
But the NRA has told millions of Americans that this workshop is the main thrust fo what they call "the UN's world wide anti-gun campaign which threatens the sovereignty of our nation, and (our) personal right to keep and bear arms.
According to the NRA, "multi-national cadre of gun-ban exremists is lobbying the United Nations," demanding a declaration that would include a "world-wide ban on private firearms ownership."
That's worth repeating. The NRA claims that you'r here today to plot and to promote "a world-wide ban on private firearms ownership."
As you know, this is far from the truth. You know that this workshop is part of a United Nations initiative which began in Cairo in 1995.
You know that 138 member nations voted unanimously to give this process its mandate. But the National Rifle Association campaign targest only on e of those 138 countries. They single out "the Japanese governement…one of the most anti-gun in the world," as being both the originator and financer of what the NRA calls the UN's "global gun ban scheme."
The letter continues: " we can't give the Japanese and other UN gun-banners even half a chance to ban our guns and attack our US Constitution."
The writer of the letter then goes on to urge the three million members of the NRA to send at least a million protest letters to United Nations headquarters in New York. Those letters are now arriving.
So you cans see that your pupose here today has been blown out of all proportion by the US gun lobby. In a campaign with obvious overtones of racism, the gun lobby is doing its utmost to exploit anti-Japanese and anti-United Nations sentiment for a domestic US audience. And all of this to prop up the gun lobby's mythical, and dangerous notion that all people have a so-called "right" to possess unlimited guns.
The second diversion you'll expereince this week is bound to be "Eddie Eagle."
At all three previos workshops in Slovenia, Tanzania and Brazil, the lobby proposed that United Nations member states should abandon co-ordinated gun regualtion in favour of a gun-marketing programme aimed at children. This was devised by the NRA, and its purpose is to get the gun lobby into schools.
The "Eddie Eagle" campaign is a carefully crafted piece of pro-gun propaganda which has many critics. I urge you to reject it as inefective and inappororiate, especially in developing nations.
Ladies and gentleman, you came here to discuss the serious business of firearm regulation for the purpose of public safety. These antics may seem like a sideshow. And of course that's exactly what the NRA's campaign amounts to. It's a shameless beat-up of a very normal process. The United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice has every right - indeed it has an obligation - to discuss firearm regualton, just as it has to co-ordinate world-wide efforts against drug trafficking, money laundering and trans-national car theft.
Guns should not be treated any differently to any other tools of crime.
The fact that fireams hold a special and romantic place in the hearts of a small minority of men should in no way dissuade you from treating guns as just another hazordous consumer product.
Guns and their owners should never be regarded as somehow exempt from regulation.
And now, having spoken at length about the gun lobby and Eddie Eagle, I'm going to urge you to treat them both as irrelevant.
I suggest that you're here to co-operate in finding ways to improve the public safety of your nations. The peculiar attitudes of a small minority in the United States and Australia have little application or relevance outside border of those countries. Please, proceed with the important work of firearm regulation and just ignore sideshows.
I have every confidence that your citizens will thank you for doing so.
Thank you.
Home > Research archive > 1998 > Philip Alpers’ presentation at the United Nations Workshop on Firearm Regulation