Budget deal nixes ammendment.........

[Dirty Dan Dawkins]

Tonight I listened in on Erick Ericsons show he went on and on about a budget amendment eventually thrown out dealing with UN Treaties and the second amendment. End result is the state department can send all the money and support they wish to UN or whomever to aide in passing arms treaties.

Has anyone heard of this? He went on for a good 30 minutes on dogging Paul Ryan and Crying John Bohener.

[StirrupTrouble]

I am not familiar with this particular amendment, but I am not sure how a budget amendment could modify how we would deal with treaties. Wouldn't that require a Constitutional Amendment?

[FriscoCounty]

I think this may be the gist of what Erickson was talking about:

"What this treaty would do in effect is bypass the 2nd amendment and be the achievement gun control happy leftists have been dreaming for years. Now treaties typically need presidential approval or ratification in the Senate to take effect, but cause of the Vienna Convention the treaty doesn't need outright approval from the Senate to take effect. Meaning that Democratic Senators don’t have to put their political lives on the line. But my Senator Jim Inhofe has inserted a provision in an appropriations bill which bars all funding to the treaty for the coming year and I highly doubt Democrat Senators are risk their political careers by allowing the treaty to take effect. It bars it from taking it effect for a year so that means it’ll take a Republican Senate to forever kill it."

 

Now, it appears to be bear baiting. First, as far as I know, the US Senate has never ratified the Vienna Convention. (http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf). As far as I can tell, and I haven't looked at the fine print, the treaty only clarifies who can negotiate and sign a treaty for a given country based on its internal laws. Even if it did provide for a bypassing of a State's internal processes, Reid v Covert established that no treaty can contradict or override the US Constitution. So, the treaty would be invalid from the git-go and any and all international treaties still need be ratified by 2/3 of the US Senate.

 

It may be that Sen. Inhofe did attempt to include a provision to defund the implementation of the UN Small Arms Treaty during the coming year as part of the budget negotiations, but this would have just been posturing, since there is no way the treaty would be ratified in the coming year. Or any year, for that matter.

 

That's my opinion, anyway.

[Dirty Dan Dawkins]

I think this may be the gist of what Erickson was talking about:

"What this treaty would do in effect is bypass the 2nd amendment and be the achievement gun control happy leftists have been dreaming for years. Now treaties typically need presidential approval or ratification in the Senate to take effect, but cause of the Vienna Convention the treaty doesn't need outright approval from the Senate to take effect. Meaning that Democratic Senators don’t have to put their political lives on the line. But my Senator Jim Inhofe has inserted a provision in an appropriations bill which bars all funding to the treaty for the coming year and I highly doubt Democrat Senators are risk their political careers by allowing the treaty to take effect. It bars it from taking it effect for a year so that means it’ll take a Republican Senate to forever kill it."

 

Now, it appears to be bear baiting. First, as far as I know, the US Senate has never ratified the Vienna Convention. (http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf). As far as I can tell, and I haven't looked at the fine print, the treaty only clarifies who can negotiate and sign a treaty for a given country based on its internal laws. Even if it did provide for a bypassing of a State's internal processes, Reid v Covert established that no treaty can contradict or override the US Constitution. So, the treaty would be invalid from the git-go and any and all international treaties still need be ratified by 2/3 of the US Senate.

 

It may be that Sen. Inhofe did attempt to include a provision to defund the implementation of the UN Small Arms Treaty during the coming year as part of the budget negotiations, but this would have just been posturing, since there is no way the treaty would be ratified in the coming year. Or any year, for that matter.

 

That's my opinion, anyway.

That adds more clarity as I could find no more info on this.