About us being top doggie in conventional arms sales; maybe, but ole parooski sure is selling plenty too.

Arms control treaty is; trying to find out where to make money………… and then get guns away from us. i say, screw off. i have hardly enough now. What a joke these people are. The entire world is Loaded to the hilt with weapons cause it’s money and there’s Arms control treaties ha ha ha ha ha. it’s time to dig a big hole for these bastard foreigners.

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun
Saturday, November 14, 2009, 12:15
http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/news/Ex-soldier-faces-jail-handing-gun/article-1509082-detail/article.html

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

“I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

“At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.”

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Defending, Lionel Blackman told the jury Mr Clarke’s garden backs onto a public green field, and his garden wall is significantly lower than his neighbours.

He also showed jurors a leaflet printed by Surrey Police explaining to citizens what they can do at a police station, which included “reporting found firearms”.

Quizzing officer Garnett, who arrested Mr Clarke, he asked: “Are you aware of any notice issued by Surrey Police, or any publicity given to, telling citizens that if they find a firearm the only thing they should do is not touch it, report it by telephone, and not take it into a police station?”

To which, Mr Garnett replied: “No, I don’t believe so.”

Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge – therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant.

Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

But despite this, Mr Blackman urged members of the jury to consider how they would respond if they found a gun.

He said: “This is a very small case with a very big principle.

“You could be walking to a railway station on the way to work and find a firearm in a bin in the park.

“Is it unreasonable to take it to the police station?”

Paul Clarke will be sentenced on December 11.

Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.

“The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.”

- Comments on this story have been disabled for legal reasons

November 15, 2009

(WND) – Gun rights supporters are up in arms over a pair of moves the White House made last month to reverse long-standing U.S. policy and begin negotiating a gun control treaty with the United Nations.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first announced on Oct. 14 that the U.S. had changed its stance and would support negotiations of an Arms Trade Treaty to regulate international gun trafficking, a measure the Bush administration and, notably, former Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations John Bolton opposed for years.

Two weeks ago, in another reversal of policy, the U.S. joined a nearly unanimous 153-1 U.N. vote to adopt a resolution setting out a timetable on the proposed Arms Trade Treaty, including a U.N. conference to produce a final accord in 2012.

“Conventional arms transfers are a crucial national security concern for the United States, and we have always supported effective action to control the international transfer of arms,” Clinton said in a statement. “The United States is prepared to work hard for a strong international standard in this area.”

Gun rights advocates, however, are calling the reversal both a dangerous submission of America’s Constitution to international governance and an attempt by the Obama administration to sneak into effect private gun control laws it couldn’t pass through Congress.

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Bolton, for example, told Ginny Simone, managing editor of the National Rifle Associations’ NRA News and host of the NRA’s Daily News program, “The administration is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there’s no doubt – as was the case back over a decade ago – that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

He continued, “There’s never been any doubt when these groups talk about saying they only want to prohibit illicit international trafficking in small arms and light weapons, it begs the whole question of what’s legal at what’s not legal. And many of the implications of these treaty negotiations are very much in their domestic application. So, whatever the appearance on the surface, there’s no doubt that domestic firearm control is right at the top of their agenda.”

Brian Wood, disarmament expert for Amnesty International, explained in a Bloomberg report why his organization and others are pushing for the U.S. to join Arms Trade Treaty talks. Wood

said the U.S. is the largest conventional arms trader in the world and the unregulated trade of conventional arms “can fuel instability, transnational organized crime and terrorism.”

“All countries participate in the conventional arms trade and share responsibility for the ‘collateral damage’ it produces – widespread death, injuries and human rights abuses,” said Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms in an Agence France-Presse interview. “Now finally governments have agreed to negotiate legally binding global controls on this deadly trade.”

But Bob Barr, a former U.S. representative and presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party explained in a separate interview with the NRA’s Simone how a treaty that looks like it’s all about fighting international crime will necessarily lead to erosion of Second Amendment gun rights:

“Even though [treaty advocates] all say, ‘We are not going to involve domestic laws and the right to keep and bear arms, that won’t be affected by all this,’ that’s nonsense,” Barr said. “There’s no way that if you buy into something like this and a treaty is passed regulating to ensure that firearms transfers internationally don’t fall into the hands of people that the U.N. doesn’t like, there’s no way that that mechanism will work unless you have some form of national regulation and national tracking.”

Bolton not only agrees with Barr’s assessment but also sees the treaty as an Obama administration end-around of the Constitution:

“After the treaty is approved and it comes into force, you will find out that it has this implication or that implication and it requires the Congress to adopt some measure that restricts ownership of firearms,” he said. “The administration knows it cannot obtain this kind of legislation purely in a domestic context … They will use an international agreement as an excuse to get domestically what they couldn’t otherwise.”

Clinton’s October statement of support for the treaty negotiations was filed with a caveat that the Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty operate under the consensus rule of decision-making, essentially that its provisions be adopted unanimously.

“Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the treaty,” she stated, “and to avoid loopholes in the treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly.”

But Bolton warned gun owners not to think the consensus rule will stop the treaty from passing.

“Consensus at the U.N. is a way of saying unanimity, everybody agrees, but in fact, the U.N. in the last eight years could have been very close to consensus on exactly this kind of treaty but for the Bush administration,” Bolton said. “So I don’t think her comment about consensus offers Second Amendment supporters any consolation, because absent the Unites States, nobody is really going to put up an objection to this.”

Citizens wishing to speak out on the issue can contact the State Department or the National Rifle Association.