The John Birch Society :: Truth Freedom Leadership

In a 2000 manifesto entitled We the Peoples, Secretary General Kofi Annan asserted: "Controlling the proliferation of illicit weapons is a necessary first step towards the non-proliferation of small arms. These weapons must be brought under the control of states, and states must be held responsible for their transfer." "Small arms," as defined in numerous UN documents, is a category including handguns, rifles, shotguns, and other privately owned weapons; as the UN employs the term, "illicit" firearms are those not controlled by national governments.

The UN's ongoing drive to extinguish civilian firearms ownership (which has lost some momentum in recent years, but continues nonetheless) was foreshadowed in Our Global Neighborhood, the 1995 report of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance (CGG). That document describes "militarization" as a global social problem to be addressed by the world body. According to the CGG, the plague of "militarization" can be seen in the "acquisition and use of increasingly lethal weapons by civilians -- whether individuals seeking a means of self-defense, street gangs, political opposition groups, or terrorist organizations." [Emphasis added.]

What this means is that from the perspective of the globalist elite behind the UN, an American citizen who uses a handgun to repel a criminal assault is kindred to a terrorist who uses a firearm to murder innocent people, because both the law-abiding armed American and the lawless terrorist are promoting "militarization" of society by undermining the government's monopoly on armed force.

Sami Faltas, a consultant to UN civilian disarmament efforts in Asia, the Balkans, and elsewhere, puts the matter quite plainly: "Ultimately, the ownership of arms should not be left to the personal choice of individuals. The state needs to preserve its monopoly of the legitimate use of force."

In anticipation of the July 2001 UN conference on small arms at the world body's headquarters, Jayantha Dhanapala, former head of the UN's global civilian disarmament efforts, co-authored an essay with UN Development Program Director Mark Malloch Brown entitled: "Let's Go Out into the World and Gather Up the Small Arms." That's a pretty candid expression of the world body's desire for universal civilian disarmament. One of the UN's preferred methods of snatching up small arms is the gun "buy-back" ploy, in which a government or a UN peacekeeping mission offers incentives for civilians to surrender their arms.

Variations on this method have been used in U.S. cities, although the most common result is that small-time criminals turn in old guns (or stolen weapons) in exchange for money used to buy newer, better weapons.