Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
has scheduled a Wednesday vote on a State Department nominee who
supports gun control on a global scale.
While advocates of the Second Amendment have come to expect that
appointees of President Barack Obama would be hostile to the rights
of gun owners, the president's nominee for legal advisor to the
State Department reaches a whole new level of anti-gun extremism.
Harold Hongju Koh, who served at the State Department under the
Clinton administration, is a self-described "trans-nationalist" who
believes that our laws -- and our Constitution -- should be brought
into conformity with international agreements.
"If you want to be in the global environment, you have to play by
the global rules," Koh told a Cleveland audience.
Koh's positions treat our constitutional law as if it were a mere
local ordinance on the greater world stage. This is of particular
concern to gun owners at a time when the U.S. Congress is under
pressure from President Obama to ratify an international gun control
treaty with countries in the western hemisphere. That treaty, known
by its Spanish acronym CIFTA, would likely serve as a forerunner to
a more extensive United Nations initiative, the "Program of Action
to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and
Light Weapons in all its Aspects."
The Bush administration, under the leadership of UN Ambassador
John Bolton, rejected the small arms treaty. Bolton plainly told the
world that the United States will not accept a gun control document
that violates our Constitutional right to bear arms. Harold Koh
commented that Bolton was being "needlessly provocative."
In a paper entitled "A world drowning in guns," Koh maintains
that a civil society cannot exist with broad gun ownership: "Guns
kill civil society," he said.
Koh is eager to assume his post at the State Department, having
lamented that there is only so much that can be done from the
outside to push gun control treaties, and that ultimately we need
people like him in positions of power. The chief lawyer for the
State Department is just the position someone like him needs to put
his agenda into play.
While Koh's nomination has been delayed largely because of Second
Amendment concerns, Sen. Reid plans to force a vote this week.
It is imperative that gun owners contact their Senators and
insist that they vote AGAINST this anti-gun extremist.
ACTION: Please contact your Senators immediately and urge them to
oppose Harold Hongju Koh's nomination to the State Department. You
can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at
