Fred Thompson's statement regarding the UN plan to disarm civilians

Last year, the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion
and Protection of Human Rights declared that international human rights
law requires all nations to adopt strict gun control laws. These
“minimum” provisions are much more restrictive than any of those on the
books anywhere in the U.S. and would almost certainly violate the
Second Amendment of our Constitution.

Besides concluding that all nations are obligated under
international human rights law to control the small arms and light
weapons to which its civilian population has access, the UN report
remarkably denied the existence of any human right to self-defense,
evidently overlooking the work of Hugo Grotius, the 17th century
scholar credited as the founder of international law, who wrote, “It is
to be observed that [the] Right of Self-Defence, arises directly and
immediately from the Care of our own Preservation, which Nature
recommends to every one. . . ,” and that this right is so primary, that
it cannot be denied on the basis that it is not “expressly set forth.”

There is another disturbing aspect to this call for
international global gun control. Throughout modern history, the forced
disarmament of people by its government has often been accompanied or
followed by that government’s commission of often massive human rights
abuses. In fact, no genocide in the 20th century occurred when the
victim population still possessed small arms, legally or illegally,
with which to defend themselves.

So now the UN wants to disarm civilians? Where was the UN when
the massacres in Rwanda occurred? What did the UN do to protect the
victims of ethnic massacres in Bosnia? Disarming civilians under the
guise of international human rights law will only lead to more such
genocides by ensuring that civilians can never defend themselves! It
would be funny if it weren’t so perverse.

Thankfully, the Framers of our Constitution recognized this
potential peril to our liberty, and enshrined in our Second Amendment
the more basic right of self-defense. The U.N. can say what it likes
about other countries’ citizens’ possession of small arms being a
violation of human rights law, but so long as the United States is a
sovereign nation governed by its Constitution, its words will have no
effect here. And I am glad for it.

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