Civilian Disarmament.

The goal of UN disarmament programs is to take weapons away from private citizens as well as national militaries, giving the world body a monopoly of power.

Much of what the United Nations does and intends to do is clouded by double-talk, but its intentions regarding private firearms ownership are unmistakable. A prominent symbol of the UN's desire to disarm the world's civilian population is literally the first thing that visitors to the world body's headquarters will see upon entering the courtyard in front of the General Assembly building.

In 1986, the government of Luxembourg donated to the UN a sculpture entitled Disarmament that consists of a large-scale replica of a revolver with its barrel twisted into a knot. The type of handgun chosen as the model for that work of art is a civilian weapon, rather than military issue. This is an entirely appropriate symbol of the UN's disarmament plans, which call for the disarmament of everybody other than military and police forces that would operate under UN control.

A second clear illustration of that design was on display in the lobby of UN headquarters during the UN Small Arms Conference in July of this year. That conference featured a work of "art" entitled The Gun Sculpture: The Art of Disarmament, a huge cube-shaped artifact composed of thousands of guns seized by police and security forces. Yet another vivid expression of the UN's drive for global civilian disarmament was the organization's decision to designate June 9th, the first day of its Small Arms Conference, as "Small Arms Destruction Day." At UN Headquarters and in national capitols around the world, that event was marked by the ceremonial destruction of firearms. Zlata Filipovic, a Bosnian girl who had been appointed a UN "World Ambassador of Peace," kicked off the event by throwing disabled guns into a container labeled "UN Small Arms Destruction Unit."

The purpose of such symbols and symbolic acts is to demonize privately owned firearms as instruments of death and terror. Armed to the Teeth, a UN anti-gun propaganda video, takes the same approach. "Small arms are not fussy about the company they keep," states the video's narrator. "They can murder indiscriminately. The gun that killed in Africa can do it again in Latin America, or in Asia.... Humankind is beginning a new millennium under the sign of the gun. Small arms are like uninvited guests who won't leave. Once they take over a country, they are virtually impossible to get rid of."

Not all guns bother the UN, though. It is only those weapons that are privately owned -- in the hands of "non-state actors," in UN parlance -- that the world body finds troublesome. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan refers to privately owned firearms as "weapons of mass destruction in slow motion" that are responsible for "the violence associated with terrorism and organized crime." The same claim is made in Our Global Neighborhood, the 1995 report of the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance (CGG). That report, which was created as a blueprint for UN reform, called for global measures to crack down on "the rampant acquisition and use of increasingly lethal weapons by civilians -- whether individuals seeking a means of self-defense, street gangs, criminals, political opposition groups, or terrorist organizations."

That's right -- the UN considers legal gun owners to be a global "menace" comparable to terrorists or other gun-wielding thugs.

Target: U.S. Gun Owners

Following the UN's Small Arms Conference, Secretary-General Annan declared: "Faced with the global scourge of small arms, the international community has now begun an important process of constructive global action." The "process" referred to would expand the UN's focus from the "illicit" international trade in firearms to include the legal gun market in the United States and elsewhere, as a step toward the abolition of private firearms ownership.

"Controlling the proliferation of illicit weapons is a necessary first step towards the non-proliferation of small arms," wrote Annan in 'We the Peoples,' his official 2000 report. "These weapons must be brought under the control of states, and states must be held responsible for their transfer." During the UN Small Arms Conference, an effort was made to amend the proposed Program of Action to mandate "legal restrictions on unrestricted trade in and ownership of small arms and light weapons."

While this language was not adopted, the UN has made it clear that the final document that emerged from the conference was just a "first step" in the drive for global civilian disarmament. At the conclusion of the Small Arms Conference, Camilo Reyes of Colombia, who had presided over the event, emphasized that "no decision [was reached] on two or three issues that were important for us. One related to ownership of arms and the other related to the transfer of arms -- the selling of arms."

When it comes to disarming civilians, the UN does not regard "No!" to mean "no," but rather "not yet." This was clear to retired Congressman Charles Pashayan, who attended the Small Arms Conference as a delegate. "This is the opening skirmish of a war," warned Pashayan. "All of this has to be understood as part of a process leading ultimately to a treaty that will give an international body power over our domestic laws."

Once again, the UN's pretext for the disarmament of law-abiding civilians is the need to prevent illegal transfers of firearms to criminals in other countries. This point has been made repeatedly by supporters of the UN gun grab.

"It's my firm conviction that the illicit [gun] trade cannot be tackled without involving the legal arms trade," declared Jovias van Aartsen, foreign affairs minister for The Netherlands, during the Small Arms Conference. "We must further regulate the legal trade in arms, small weapons included, in order to prevent spillover into the illegal arms trade." And, of course, the legal trade in small arms is most vigorous in the United States.

The UN gun-grabbers didn't get everything they were after at the Small Arms Conference. But they did make significant progress toward their objective, and they made it clear that American gun owners are their primary target.

The Hidden Design

When it comes to disarmament, all roads lead to the UN. But it is a mistake to believe that the UN itself is the ultimate source of the threat. The real danger is the Power Elite behind the UN, which created the organization as a framework for an all-powerful world government. Some of the most influential figures within that Power Elite are Americans by birth, if not by conviction. And it was people of that description who created the UN's long-term plan to abolish private firearms ownership and build a global dictatorship - in the name of "world peace." That plan, which was unveiled decades ago, doesn't call for the "abolition" of weapons, but rather for the creation of a UN monopoly on weapons, including firearms. While each national government would be allowed to have armed "internal security" forces, they would operate under the authority of the UN's globe-spanning "Peace Force."

In 1958, Wall Street lawyer Grenville Clark and Professor Louis B. Sohn outlined the UN's disarmament objectives in their book World Peace Through World Law. Written to guide future revisions of the UN Charter, the Clark-Soha study called for the creation of a "World Police Force" that would "be regularly provided with the most modern weapons and equipment," including nuclear weapons. In its earliest stages, the arsenal of the World Police Force would come "from the transfer of weapons and equipment discarded by national military forces during the process of complete disarmament." For Clark and Sohn, "complete disarmament" meant removing guns from the hands of local police and civilians, as well as from national military forces.

The vision described by Clark and Sohn became official U.S. policy in September 1961, when President John F. Kennedy, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, unveiled Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World. This plan originally sketched out in this document has served as the foundation for subsequent U.S. disarmament proposals. But always in the background of these proposals has been the hint of civilian disarmament.

During the UN's 2000 "Millennium Forum," Cora Weiss, the head of the UN-connected Hague Appeal for Peace, reiterated the objective of creating a "World Police Force" to enforce the organization's disarmament decrees.

"Small arms [and] light weapons...pose a big threat to human security," declares The Hague Agenda, which Weiss co-wrote and which contains an endorsement from Secretary-General Annan. "Full-fledged demobilization programs must remove and destroy weaponry." This would include "collecting, removing and destroying surplus weapons from regions of conflict ... and creating norms of non-possession of firearms. The term "surplus weapons, incidentally, refers to weapons not under the control of national governments or UN "peacekeepers."

How are those weapons to be collected and destroyed? According to Weiss, the UN should be prepared to use deadly force, if necessary, to pry guns out of the hands of "non-state actors" - that is, civilians.

"I propose the activation of chapter VII, article 47 of the UN Charter, which provides for a Military Staff Committee to assist the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace," stated Weiss in her address to the Millennium Forum. The section of the charter she referred to empowers the UN to conduct aggressive military action in the name of "peace."

With these words, Weiss was demanding that the UN literally declare war on individual gun owners.

Disarmament, Despotism, Destruction

Throughout history, would-be tyrants have sought to disarm their subjects, and often this disarmament was a prelude to mass murder. Such was the case in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge Communists. Literally tens of millions of human beings have learned -- too late -- that civilian disarmament is often a prelude to genocide.

In its propaganda film Armed to the Teeth, the UN insists civilian disarmament is necessary to prevent tragedies like the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which as many as 1.1 million people were slaughtered in a 103-day period. But the truth is that the Rwandan tragedy illustrates the fatal consequences of the UN's prescription for human security.

Most of the genocide victims belonged to the Tutsi ethnic group. At the time of the massacre, the Rwandan government was controlled by the Hutu ethnic group, who had been involved in a civil war with the Tutsis. After the UN arranged a cease-fire, it sent a peacekeeping force to Rwanda to help the government carry out an arms collection program, which was an extension of the country's existing anti-gun policies. Over several decades, the civilian population in Rwanda had already been largely disarmed.

The presence of UN troops was intended to reassure the disarmed Tutsis that no harm would befall them. "We saw all these blue helmets," recalled one survivor of the genocide, "and we [thought] that even if Hutus start to attack us the three thousand men of lithe UN mission] would be enough." Even though General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the UN force, learned in early 1994 of the Rwandan government's genocidal plans, the Tutsis' confidence in the UN proved to be their death warrant.

Dallaire learned from an informant that the Tutsis were being "registered" for slaughter, and that armed killing squads were being organized. He requested permission from the civilian head of UN peacekeeping operations to raid the arms caches being assembled by the killing squads in order to prevent the slaughter.

As UN-linked arms control researchers Jeffrey Boutwell and Michael T. Mare report, "Before the killing began, the Hutu-dominated government had distributed automatic rifles and hand grenades to official militias and paramilitary gangs. It was this firepower that made the genocide possible." More specifically, it was the government's monopoly on firepower that made the genocide possible, as the anguished testimony of a Rwandan survivor makes clear. "They take lithe victims] from this building, this church," cried refugee Jeanne Niwemutesi to the New York Times as the massacres were underway. "They have guns and knives and machetes, the people from the Government party, so we can't fight back. We don't have arms."

General Dallaire's plan had been to disarm the government-organized killing squads before the massacre could commence. But Dallaire's superior vetoed this plan and told him to share his information with the Rwandan government -- the same government that was planning the genocide. Subsequent investigations described that decision as a "green light" for genocide.

The official who gave that green light is Kofi Annan -- who, in his current role as secretary-general, is escalating the UN's campaign against civilian firearms ownership.

The right to bear arms is the right that protects all others -- and the UN is the most powerful enemy of that right. If it succeeds in disarming Americans, the ability to resist tyranny will be eroded, and the stage will be set for a reign of terror unlike any in American history.