Sen. Murphy urged President Obama to sign international Arms Trade Treaty
In a prepared statement, U.S. Sen. Chris
Murphy, D-Conn., urged
President Barack Obama "to sign the international Arms Trade Treaty," which
became available for his signature this morning.
Murphy released the following
statement (unedited here):
There are currently
more international regulations for the cross-border sale of armchairs than
firearms. In fact, furniture, fruit, and iPods are just a few of the things
that cross international borders every day with more stringent regulations than
the illegal weapons that fuel wars and genocide around the globe today.
That simply has to
change.
It is time to come
together to stop the illicit arms trade that has brought devastation and horror
to places like Mali, the Balkans, Israel, and Mexico. In Africa, about 95
percent of the weapons most commonly used in conflict—derivatives of the
Kalashnikov rifle – come from outside the continent, often illegally. Conflicts
fueled by the unrestricted sale of the deadliest arms have destroyed families,
inflamed ethnic hatred, and caused the tragic death and maiming of millions of
men, women, and children.
And yet the National
Rifle Association is working hard to stop this treaty, putting out distorted or
misleading information about it in an effort to ensure that there is no barrier
to the international trade in weapons such as tanks, machine guns and
shoulder-fired missiles. The NRA is in extremely bad company here: when the
treaty came for a vote before the United Nations, the only countries to oppose
it were Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
The goal of the Arms
Trade Treaty is to prevent weapons from reaching the hands of warlords and
human rights abusers, and does not interfere with domestic arms sales or
legitimate international trade. It will do nothing to infringe on Americans’
Second Amendment rights. This treaty will help save countless lives—President
Obama should sign it and the Senate should ratify it without delay.
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