President Barack Obama has called on the Senate to ratify CIFTA, the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacture of and Trafficking in Firearms, but the convention poses serious prudential risks to liberties guaranteed by the First and Second Amendments. The convention appears to be an end run around domestic obstacles to gun control. Furthermore, ratification of the convention would undermine U.S. sovereignty by legally binding it to fulfill obligations that some current signatories already disregard. The U.S. would be best served by continuing existing programs, cooperating with other countries on a bilateral basis, and making and enforcing its own laws to combat the traffic in illicit arms.
The initial U.N. negotiating conference for the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on July 2–27, 2012, failed to produce an agreed treaty. On January 4, 2013, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution agreeing to hold another, supposedly “final,” negotiating conference on March 18–28, 2013, on the basis of the treaty text as it stood at the end of the July conference.[1]
On April 26, 2019, President Donald Trump announced that he would remove the U.S. signature, affixed by then-Secretary of State John Kerry in September 2013, from the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Known as an “unsigning,” this act would prevent the ATT, which has failed in its purported effort to prevent irresponsible international arms transfers, from having any legal effect or standing in the United States.