Research archive

SSAA Goes to the United Nations

by SSAA Research Team
Australian Shooters Journal
April 1998

The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia has gained international status as a firearm body representing over one hundred thousand members. In order to protect the firearm rights of lawful Australian gun owners, permission was sought to address a United Nations workshop in New Delhi. Our National Executive Director has just returned from doing so.

On the available information, the SSAA rejects suggestions of conspiracy theory. However, our rights are still being eroded by bureaucrats and academics together advising governments, operating within Australia and internationally in a closed circle of mutual acclamation. Should this be allowed to continue?

Is this acceptable in the Australian way of life? Or, like the SSAA, do you also see the immense danger presented by the Liberal-Labor bipartisan lack of consultation with us in firearm matters? What picture of lawful Australian firearm owners are they portraying to the UN?

Part I - United Nations Update

International firearm regulation is now firmly on the global agenda. Momentum is developing towards greater control over all firearms and ammunition at a bipartisan and multi-national level. Civilian firearm owners are about to become locked in a worldwide struggle for survival.

The movement towards a "Universal Declaration Of Principles On Firearm Regulation" (1) continues apace and the timetable is shown below. The workshop series is now complete and the Experts' Group meets on April 21st. Drafts of the Declaration are in preparation and about to be tabled.

It is important to understand the difference between certain UN document types and their impact.

• A Resolution may or may not be binding to a member state. It was a Resolution proposed by Japan in Cairo in 1995 that began this process. Australia voted in favour of the Resolution.

• A Declaration is a stronger statement of belief and or intent concerning member states. This is what is currently being prepared. Australia has indicated that it will vote in favour of the Declaration.

• A Convention is a binding agreement between and upon member states. A Convention is the next step which, once ratified by the member state, then becomes a part of the policy decision-making process and affects every area of the domestic affairs of that country.

After the Experts' Group meeting, the draft Declaration will go to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CoCP&CJ) for consideration, thence to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and finally for ratification to the UN General Assembly (UN-GA) towards the end of 1998.

Presumably, it is only a matter of time before work begins on a draft Convention, if it has not commenced already.

Event	Proposed Date	Actually held	Location
Workshop	9-12 Sept, 1997	22-26 Sept, 1997	Ljubljana, Slovenia
Workshop	6-19 Oct, 1997	3-7 Nov, 1997	Arusha, Tanzania
Workshop	10-14 Nov, 1997	8-12 Dec, 1997	Sao Paulo, Brazil
Workshop	8-12 Dec, 1997	27-31 Jan, 1998	New Delhi, India
Experts group	21 April, 1998	?	Vienna, Austria
CoCP&JC	April-May 1998	?	Vienna, Austria
ECOSOC	June 1998	?	Geneva, Switzerland
UN-GA	Aug-Sep 1998	?	New York, USA

Table 1. United Nations Timetable of Events

The Workshops
Table 1 shows the date and location of the Regional Workshops On Firearm Regulation For Crime Prevention And Public Safety. The Workshops for the most part were closed sessions, accessible by invitation only. Outsiders were excluded. A few Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have been permitted to speak. The American National Rifle Association (NRA) has been the only pro-firearm NGO able to make a statement, yet a number of anti-gun organisations have been permitted a hearing.

The purpose of the Workshops is informally to gather views on the subject of international firearm regulation. The workshops will not participate in the preparation of the draft Declaration. A senior UN official from the Vienna-based UN Crime Prevention Division, Mr Slawomir Redo, indicated at the Ljubljana workshop that any individual country could develop and circulate a draft Declaration.

An independently developed draft Declaration can simply ignore any amount of information that it chooses, academic or otherwise, thereby making the draft Declaration essentially ideological and political.

The four workshops have concluded. What happened?

Ljubljana, Slovenia, Sept 22-26, 1997
The pro-firearm movement had only the NRA to speak on behalf of legitimate firearm-owning citizens worldwide. Conversely, the gun-prohibitionists had in attendance the Gun Control Network (UK), the Gun Control Coalition (NZ) and the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) (2) (UK & USA).

The UK's Gun Control Network said in their paper: "We do not intend to set out statistics which purport to 'prove' the connection between gun availability and gun violence.... Statistics can be turned to any purpose and we must trust our instincts." (3)

From this it may be concluded that some would like international policy to be determined by strong-minded minority groups acting on superior intuition and instinct alone for the benefit of the rest of humankind.

Philip Alpers from New Zealand spoke of an "international network of gun control advocates" and made reference to a "UN NGOs for gun control" (4) organisation to be established (see Part II of this report).

The United Nations Study on Firearm Regulation was criticised by the NRA for ignoring much of the research available concerning firearms abuse. The Chairman of the Experts' Panel that conducted the study, Mr James Hayes from the Canadian Department of Justice, said that it had been a deliberate decision not to include academic material. Again, it would appear that a combination of raw uninterpreted statistics and superior intuition is to be the determining factor.

At the conclusion of the workshop, Mr Hayes noted that among other things the process was concerned about the development of good legislation. This clearly has domestic implications for all UN member states.

He added, "We are concerned with all sizes of shipments, legal or illegal it could be as few as two or three guns"(sic) (5). Translated into legislation, this may mean random searches of vehicles and other forms of transport, even for legal firearms, something that Australians are beginning to discover is happening already under the new "national" gun laws.

An example of this occurred a few weeks ago when a Canberra SSAA member was stopped in NSW in a random vehicle check. Upon producing his ACT driver's licence for the NSW policeman to check with headquarters, the motorist was asked whether he had any firearms in the vehicle. No offence had been committed and there was no specific reason for such a question. The link had been made to the firearms database.

Arusha, Tanzania, Nov 3-7, 1997
As with the Ljubljana workshop, the only pro-firearm NGO speaker was the NRA.

Professor Eric Kibuka, Director of the UN African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in Kampala, Uganda, said, "Firearms owned by civilians are the target. The international community has decided that firearms regulation is at the core of democracy and good government." (6)

Adele Kirsten of Gun Free South Africa espoused the view that firearms in the hands of civilians are a threat. In later conversation she admitted that whilst her organisation only initially talked about handguns and assault rifles, they really want to rid society of all guns. Kirsten is now talking with New Zealand gun-prohibitionist Philip Alpers.

Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dec 8-12, 1997
Specific details of the workshop are not yet available. However, a press release issued by the UN Information Service noted that participants at the Sao Paulo workshop "agreed that tighter control over the legal movement of firearms at the international level is urgently required in order to improve the control over their criminal misuse and illicit trafficking." (7)

One of the many problems with the workshop approach is that the difficulties being experienced in many countries do not equate with those experienced in other places. A one-size-fits-all approach to international firearm regulation is unworkable and unwarranted.

New Delhi, India, Jan 27-31, 1998
Thanks to the generosity of the NRA, the SSAA's National Executive Director, Keith Tidswell, was able to present a paper utilizing the NRA's NGO status. (8) Whilst the paper was well received, Philip Alpers also spoke and was very critical of both the NRA and SSAA.

One delegate made a call for a total and complete worldwide ban on hunting. It was only after some discussion after his presentation that it became apparent that his definition of hunting, based upon experience in his own country, was very different from the definition of hunting held by most others. This type of problematic cultural misunderstanding and definitional misinterpretation is common. It also incorporates the use of words like "weapon", "firearm" and "gun" which are neutral in one country and yet slanted in another. This factor alone has made for serious misunderstandings in international deliberations.

The closed discussions also included consideration of regulatory approaches to:

• Appropriate penalties for offences involving the misuse or unlawful possession of firearms

• Amnesty programs to encourage citizens to surrender illegal, unsafe or unwanted firearms

• Regulations relating to firearm safety and storage

• A comprehensive licensing system

• A comprehensive record-keeping or registration system (9)

Participation by anti-gun NGOs has increased with each workshop and their presentations are becoming more sophisticated. It is also apparent that many of the workshop deliberations appear to be based upon unsubstantiated assumptions about the causes of crime. The "more guns mean more crime" myth is principal amongst such thinking and it is being heavily promoted.

In addition, Japan continues to be the driving force in the process. The African workshop could not have occurred without Japanese support, because Japan paid the cost of 23 of the 28 nations to attend. Furthermore, it has been reported that the South African Government has admitted Japan will pay the cost of a proposed gun buyback scheme.

NRA Submissions
In November, 1996, the "World Forum on the Future of Sportshooting Activities" (WFSA) was formed in Rome, Australia's SSAA being amongst the foundation members. The Forum has the potential to unify sport-shooting groups worldwide and provide an effective international body for the benefit of legitimate firearm owners.

Meanwhile, America's NRA has consistently pleaded the case for the rights of civilian firearm owners at all four workshops. The NRA has repeatedly emphasised a number of points including the following:

• The lack of an adequate time frame and the continued closed nature of UN activities regarding international firearm regulation;

• The lack of consultation with groups most likely to be affected, the firearm owners;

• The unique nature and volatile politics in relation to each nation's domestic firearms policies;

• Suggested guidelines and language to govern the development of a Declaration on firearms;

• The discouragement of any requirement for member states to meet an arbitrary international standard of firearm regulation or to surrender any sovereign rights in relation to the determination of legislation;

• The discouragement of any centralized registry of firearms and their owners;

• The discouragement of any requirement for any state to accept evaluation of compliance by another state.

• The discouragement of the establishment of any permanent entity to police such compliance.

Lawful firearm owners worldwide await with keen interest the release of the draft Declaration.

Part II - The Gun Prohibitionists

It is now clear that the gun prohibitionists are becoming more active and better ordered in their efforts at international firearm regulation. They have been encouraged by the highly successful anti-landmine campaign, which is being used as a model by the anti-gun movement.

Well organised within their own countries, they are now starting to develop international links using the same methods as in the anti-landmine campaign.

On December 10th, 1997, a "Small/Light Arms Campaign" meeting of 29 people representing a range of international NGOs was held in Washington DC. The Australian Coalition for Gun Control's Rebecca Peters attended, as did Philip Alpers from New Zealand.

The stated purpose of the meeting was to:

1. Explore whether groups want to work together to combat the global diffusion of guns and light weapons throughout societies;

2. Conceptualise an inclusive and compelling framework to reduce the damage caused by these weapons;

3. Discuss establishment of a mechanism to coordinate and advance collective efforts.

The topics of disarmament and domestic gun control were high on the agenda. However, it was noted that talk of "disarmament" or a "ban" at the early stage could inadvertently undermine their efforts.

One participant noted that "dealing with the scourge of small arms is the logical next step after landmines". Flushed with success, these activists are now looking for another cause to absorb their zealous energies. Unfortunately, they have decided that legitimate civilian firearm owners fall within their ambit.

In an effort to get more NGOs involved, the group seeks to adopt a humanitarian and public health focus for their work to attract the broadest base of support possible.

BASIC's Natalie Goldring and Dan Plesch, as a part of a six-point plan tabled at the meeting, proposed a global ban on production, sale and transfer of "non-sporting weapons and their ammunition". They noted that it would be an extension of the gun control policies recently undertaken in Australia and the United Kingdom. The question is, of course, what is held to be non-sporting, because the term is so encompassing.

By no means are these people finished with privately owned civilian firearm ownership. They have barely started yet.

Ed Laurence from the Monterey Institute of International Studies sought an international treaty to control light weapons. Others wanted to see the proposed treaty replete with enforcement and verification mechanisms along with weapons collection and destruction clauses and a no-arms-to-civilians clause.

It was agreed that a treaty was premature and it was suggested that what is needed are national campaigns to stigmatize indiscriminate use of small-light arms and a process of shaming governments that allow such conduct by either government troops or civilians as the first step. The point was made that it is a change of behaviour that is required.

This is obvious social engineering by people of fixed views.

Representatives from Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross also expressed interest in being involved in the campaign.

A further participant observed that NATO is always looking for a new mission and should be assigned the task of collecting surplus guns. Does this mean that it could become an international exercise to seek out and collect "surplus" Australian firearms? That may seem implausible now, but no more so than the nationwide confiscation of eighty-year-old .22 rimfire rabbit rifles by a Liberal government would have seemed to unsuspecting Australian gun owners ten years ago.

Other suggestions included that as a part of the campaign, groups should isolate specific arms to be outlawed and that small arms that are "particularly injurious" ought to be banned. This reference to a wide range of calibres and firearm types is conducive to banning by attrition, as is already being experienced in Australia.

Australia's own Rebecca Peters stressed what she claimed is a link between legal and illegal gun ownership and suggested a focus on limiting legal gun transfers as well. "Limiting legal gun transfers" is simply a euphemism for further bans.

The meeting agreed that a campaign is desirable but that further work is required to establish it. A number of participants volunteered to get the ball rolling. They are cocksure because of their victory in the landmine campaign. Looking for new fields in which to display their talents, they are becoming better organised and more strategically placed on a daily basis.

The Future
Many overseas countries are beset with their own internal domestic and cultural problems and fail to understand the Australian environment and culture. Why is it that Australia is prepared to allow them to dictate to Australia what our own internal policies in relation to firearms ought to be? This is unwarranted interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation.

Additionally, the gun-prohibitionists of superior intuition are now gearing up for their onslaught against the legitimate firearm owners of the world. The land-mines campaign is won. Now those same efforts, strategies and techniques are to be employed in an attempt to curb threatened civil insurrections and perceptions of domestic crime for which civilian firearm owners are somehow supposed to be responsible.

Such perceptions are known to be false and created by moral entrepreneurs aided and abetted by politically correct academics. Firearm owners are now about to line up for a daunting international battle to retain their rights to civilian firearm ownership.

The SSAA has made a useful advance in this battle by being able to make representations at the United Nations level.

 

1. The proposed UN Declaration is outlined in both the September, 1997 Special Edition insert and in the October, 1997 ILA Report of the ASJ.
2. The work of BASIC is outlined in the September, 1997 Special Edition insert of the ASJ.
3. UK Gun Control Network, Statement to the Ljubljana Workshop, September, 1997.
4. The World Forum on the Future of Sportshooting Activities (WFSA), Report on UN Slovenian Regional Workshop, 27 October, 1997, p7.
5. WFSA, 27 October, 1997, p12.
6. The World Forum on the Future of Sportshooting Activities (WFSA), Report on UN African Regional Workshop, 3 December, 1997, p6.
7. United Nations Information Service Workshop On Problems With Civilian-Owned Firearms In Americas Concludes In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Press Release SOC/CP/202, Vienna, 15 December, 1997.
8. The full text of the SSAA submission to the New Delhi workshop is available from the SSAA National Office upon request.
9. UN Regional Workshop On Firearms Regulation For Crime Prevention And Public Safety Programme, New Delhi, India, 27-31 January, 1998.

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