"Ever since its founding 65 years ago, the U.N. has been hell-bent on bringing the U.S. to its knees," U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Friendswood, said in a recent fundraising letter.
The letter, forwarded to PolitiFact by a reader Aug. 19, 2013, sought donations to the National Association for Gun Rights to battle "the U.N.’s ‘Small Arms Treaty’ " and said that the treaty’s provisions include "mandating a new international gun registry."
Stockman also wrote that the treaty "sets the stage for confiscation on a global scale." A "gun registry" might facilitate that by telling the United Nations where everybody’s guns are. We wondered whether the treaty really creates a registry.
We did not hear back from Stockman or the association about this claim, so we were unable to determine when the letter was sent out or to verify it had not been altered. But the same claim appears on a web page at the association’s site with a shorter version of the letter also attributed to Stockman.
PolitiFact has looked at similar claims about the United Nations before, most recently finding that a letter supposedly outlining a U.N. plan to "disarm civilians" was fake. In December 2012, PolitiFact Texas rated as Pants on Fire a chain email saying the Obama administration planned to use international treaties to ban all U.S. weapons.
And in August 2012, PolitiFact Georgia tackled a claim very similar to Stockman’s. Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Broun said in a video from the same gun-rights group Stockman was supporting, "If passed by the U.N. and ratified by the U.S. Senate, the U.N. Small Arms Treaty would almost certainly force the United States to … create an international gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation."
PolitiFact Georgia rated that claim, including its implication of confiscating guns, as False. Among its findings: A July 27, 2012, draft of an Arms Trade Treaty that failed to gain U.N. members’ approval would have required the U.S. to report information on international arms sales.
Some background from that story: The U.N. has been working on a treaty to regulate the global arms trade -- not just small arms -- for years. Backers say it would curtail mass killings and terrorism and keep dictators from killing their own people.
On April 2, 2013, according to the U.N.’s website, the organization’s General Assembly "adopted the landmark Arms Trade Treaty, regulating the international trade in conventional arms."
The U.S. said "Yes" in that vote, and White House spokesman Jay Carney said Jun. 3, 2013, that President Barack Obama planned to sign the treaty "before the end of August," saying it was "in the interest of the United States." For the treaty to take force in the U.S., it would need to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, which on March 23, 2013, voted 53-46 to insert its formal opposition to the treaty into Senate spending legislation.
The text of the treaty says its purpose is to regulate the international arms trade and prevent illicit sales and transfers. It applies to arms, ammunition and parts moving across a national border, specifically conventional arms in categories such as "warships," "combat aircraft" and "small arms and light weapons."
The treaty requires nations to deny authorization to exports of such armaments if they will be used for terrorism, to commit genocide, to attack civilians or in other war crimes, and to take "appropriate measures" if they detect that a shipment has been diverted.
Nations are required to maintain a "national control system, including a national control list," report exports and imports to the U.N. each year and regulate brokering with measures that "may include requiring brokers to register," but the treaty doesn’t specify how countries must carry out these directions.
Daniel Prins, chief of the Conventional Arms branch of the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs, told us by phone that the national control list will be "an enumeration of the types of weapons you will report," starting with the categories in the treaty (warships, combat aircraft, etc.).