President Trump holds up a signed executive order signaling the withdrawal. NPR/Reuters.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will withdraw from the UN Arms Trade treaty while speaking to the NRA. NPR. The treaty governs the trade in weapons and was signed by President Obama in 2013 but has not been ratified. The ATT has been criticized by gun rights groups since its inception in part due to the fact that it would require establishing a database of domestic gun owners. The White House argued that the ATT is pointless for the United States as they country already abides by their own restrictions and pointing out that other major arms exporters, like China and Russia, did not sign the treaty.
My Comment:
Before I talk about the treaty, a couple of other things happened at the NRA conference. There was a security incident where some moron threw his phone at the president. He wasn't hurt and the attacker was taken out by security but it was still a disturbing incident.
The speech also comes at a very hard time at the NRA. The organization has come under fire lately from gun supporters for many reasons. The organization has drifted from it's original goal of protecting gun rights and isn't as committed to good gun laws as other gun rights groups. For example, they didn't put up a fight against Trump's ban on bump stocks even though they probably could have convinced him it was a bad idea. The group is also accused of wasting massive amounts of money and is currently suing one of their own business partners for being incompetent.
That being said, Trump picked a good place to cancel this treaty. The NRA has been one of the biggest opponents of the treaty, largely due to the domestic impact it would have. To comply with the treaty the United States would have to create an arms registry of new firearms. This is an existential threat to gun rights in the United States as it would allow gun confiscation, or at least make it much easier. It would also hugely violate privacy rights for gun owners.
And Trump is right, it wouldn't do much to stop the illegal arms trade. With two of the biggest arms exporters not on board it wouldn't do much. Russia and China send out millions of weapons to whoever will buy from them. Plus there are so many surplus arm from our more recent wars that arms are pretty much everywhere. Policing new arms will not do much.
As for Trump on gun rights he's been a mixed bag. Sometimes he does stuff like this which is obviously a huge win for gun rights supporters. He's generally in favor of gun rights and has appointed many pro-gun judges, including two Supreme Court Justices. With Trump there is no realistic chance of any major gun control legislation and he may sign pro-gun laws like concealed carry reciprocity or legalizing suppressors, assuming they ever get signed into law.
However, there was the bump stock ban. I'm not a huge fan of bump stocks as they are stupid range toys that aren't good for anything else, but I also think they shouldn't have been banned. Or, at the very least, Trump should have leveraged the bump stock ban in exchange for pro-gun laws. Such a compromise would have made up for losing bump stocks but Trump didn't go for it.
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