Two top Bush-era officials have joined forces to pen an article falsely warning citizens of the strict gun laws the Obama administration will put into place via ceding to the authority of the United Nations.

John Yoo and John Bolton — the former Justice Department official responsible for the “Bush torture memos” and the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. respectively — took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Monday sounding the alarm against the sneaky way the Obama administration will come for Americans’ guns: the United Nations. In particular, the recently passed Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is, according to Yoo and Bolton, the vehicle that the White House means to use to go around Congress and the Constitution itself to violate citizens’ Second Amendment rights.

Yoo and Bolton see in the text of the ATT — drafted to regulate the $70 billion arms trade and keep tanks and fighter jets out of the hands of frequent human rights violators — a clear and easy way for the Obama administration to get everything the authors believe to be the end goals of the gun violence debate in the U.S. without the approval of the American people:

But the new treaty also demands domestic regulation of “small arms and light weapons.” The treaty’s Article 5 requires nations to “establish and maintain a national control system,” including a “national control list.” Article 10 requires signatories “to regulate brokering” of conventional arms. The treaty offers no guarantee for individual rights, but instead only declares it is “mindful” of the “legitimate trade and lawful ownership” of arms for”recreational, cultural, historical, and sporting activities.” Not a word about the right to possess guns for a broader individual right of self-defense.

Gun-control advocates will use these provisions to argue that the U.S. must enact measures such as a national gun registry, licenses for guns and ammunition sales, universal background checks, and even a ban of certain weapons. The treaty thus provides the Obama administration with an end-run around Congress to reach these gun-control holy grails.

Their article syncs with other conservatives dire warnings of a new “national gun registry,” despite precisely zero proposals from Democrats to enact one. The portion of the treaty Yoo and Bolton cite does not include specifics on what a “national control list” looks like, and refers to the export of arms and their components. This in turn does not imply the type of Federal individual ownership list Republicans fear and Vice President Joe Biden has made clear isn’t soon coming.
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Model international actors Iran and North Korea came together to block the adoption of a treaty regulating the $70 billion dollar arms trade at the United Nations on Thursday, no doubt endearing them to the National Rifle Association.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) has been in negotiations for the past two weeks, the second attempt to gain a unanimously agreed upon text. The final draft was put before the delegates on Wednesday, with the assumption that it was set to cruise to an easy approval. That assumption was trampled once the Iranian delegation rose to break the required consensus for the treaty’s passage. Iran’s disapproval opened the door for North Korea to join in blocking the treaty. Syria also took umbrage at the text, leading to it and Iran reportedly both objecting to the lack of reference in the treaty’s final draft to foreign occupation or “crimes of aggression.” The President of the Conference quickly suspended the debate before a final vote could be held, leaving the door open to bringing the Iranian and North Korean delegations around, but the chances remain slim.

While not perfect, the treaty had still managed to appease the concerns of many advocates for stronger treaty-language. In particular, a hard fought clause regulating the import and export of ammunition and munitions made its way into the final text. Given the United States’ past hesitance in moving forward on the treaty — including its insistence that the ATT Conference work through consensus — and its current support, the late hour block from Iran and North Korea comes off as slightly ironic. The irony is even more pronounced when one considers that the Iranian delegate, in explaining his objection to the treaty, denounced the U.S.’ influence in shaping the treaty. “The right of individuals to own and use guns has been protected in the current text to meet the constitutional requirements of only one State,” Iranian ambassador Mohammad Khazeee said.

The treaty will now likely move to the General Assembly, however, where it will find the two-thirds necessary to finally pass next week. Given the crazy rhetoric present the last time it almost passed, the eventual passage of the ATT will be sure to provoke even more inflammatory opposition now. In opposing this version of the treaty, the National Rifle Association was much quieter about its lobbying effort, including a push for provisions exempting so-called “civilian firearms” from the treaty’s effects. There is no sign of that influence in the final draft of the ATT. However, the NRA still seems set to come out with a win on this one. Either the treaty is delayed, allowing more time to take it down for good, or it passes with the individual protections it supports hard-coded into the final document.

Their domestic influence will be marshaled once more though once the treaty is signed. At that point, the ATT will go to the U.S. Senate for ratification, where several Republicans have already made abundantly clear their skepticism regarding the very idea of regulating the arms trade. For years now, conservatives have used the supposed threat that an Arms Trade Treaty would entail as a fundraising tool or way to burnish their right-wing credentials. The Heritage Foundation has been slamming each successive draft of the ATT, and will now likely begin a campaign alongside the NRA to doom it in the Senate.

The final document isn’t even complete yet, but one Republican Senator is already attempting to slip language into vital legislation denouncing the United States’ accession to a new treaty regulating the sale of arms between countries.

Representatives from around the world are meeting in New York over the next two weeks to hammer out a final agreement on how to best regulate the $70 billion arms trade between countries. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is attempting finalize passage of a budget for Fiscal Year 2014. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a noted skeptic of international organizations and the United Nations in particular, filed an amendment Thursday afternoon that brings the two efforts together:

The Chairman of the Committee on the Budget of the Senate may revise the allocations of a committee or committees, aggregates, and other appropriate levels in this resolution for one or more bills, joint resolutions, amendments, motions, or conference reports that relate to upholding Second Amendment rights, which shall include preventing the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT),by the amounts provided in such legislation for these purposes, provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit or revenues over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2013 through 2018 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2013 through 2023.

At present, it is unclear how many amendments the Senate will get to during its debate over the budget, nor precisely how much support the Inhofe amendment is set to receive. What’s clear though is that the amendment is representative of Republicans’ deep concerns over the supposed threat the Arms Trade Treaty would pose to American’s Second Amendment rights. Those concerns have been debunked by American Bar Association, making the continued attempts by Congressional Republicans to preemptively block the treaty utterly baseless.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is currently chair of the Senate Budget Committee and is unlikely to utilize the authority Inhofe’s amendment would grant. Since the language would only apply to this year’s budget, the Oklahoman’s action can be seen as more symbolic than a real threat to the U.S. The threat posed by the Senate itself, however, is very real. Even the most benign of treaties has had a tough time reaching the two-thirds approval required for ratification, thanks to Republican fear-mongering and obsequiousness.

The fight over the ATT will likely grow in volume once the conference debating it approves a final text. Already there is legislation filed in the House and Senate to condemn the treaty. Approval of a final treaty is by no means certain though, thanks to groups like the National Rifle Association, which is already working to render the ATT dead on arrival.

The National Rifle Association is once again trying to affect the completion of a new arms treaty in New York, hoping to kill the treaty for good or include loopholes to render it toothless.

A new round of negotiations aimed at finalizing a potential Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) opened on Monday in New York, picking up with the draft where the last round left off. At stake: the regulation of the estimated $70 billion global arms trade, including the sale of small arms, tanks, and warplanes between countries.

The right-wing’s opposition to the ATT last year veered between the heated and the, well, insane. The NRA in particular was extremely vocal, including a visit by Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre to Turtle Bay to lobby. Since then, the group has had to confront a series of domestic challenges, including the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut and revamped efforts to pass gun violence prevention legislation. In a firey speech to this year’s CPAC, LaPierre focused on those issues, rather than the supposed threat the U.N. poses as he did in 2012.

The NRA has not completely given up on efforts, however, to affect the final treaty:

“What we really object to is the inclusion of civilian firearms within the scope of the ATT,” said Tom Mason, the group’s executive secretary and a lawyer who has represented the NRA at U.N. meetings for nearly two decades. “This is a treaty that really needs to address the transfer of large numbers of military weapons that leads to human rights abuses. We have submitted language that you can define what a civilian firearm is.”

Requests from ThinkProgress for the NRA to clarify what it meant by “civilian firearms” went unanswered, as did requests for the language they submitted. However, Michelle A. Ringuette, chief of campaigns and programs at Amnesty International USA, believes that any inclusion of provisions for “civilian firearms” would render the treaty toothless. “There is no such distinction,” Ringuette said in a statement. “To try to create one would create a loophole that would render the treaty inoperative, as anyone could claim that he or she was in the business of trading ‘civilian weapons.’”

The last set of talks collapsed last July when the United States and others refused to allow a vote on the document as it stood. Since then, the Obama administration has reversed course, allowing the current conference to proceed, making clear they would not be in favor of any infringement of U.S. citizens’ ownership rights. “We will not support any treaty that would be inconsistent with U.S. law and the rights of American citizens under our Constitution, including the Second Amendment,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement.

Even the American Bar Association has determined that the Arms Trade Treaty would have absolutely no impact on the Second Amendment in the U.S. Despite that, gun advocates in Congress are already rushing to condemn the draft treaty, with legislation already having been introduced in the House and Senate.

As far back as October of last year, Sen. John McCain’s been urging various forms of U.S. military engagement with the blooming civil war in Syria. Appearing on PBS Newshour Thursday, McCain suggested again that the U.S. should arm the Syrian rebels, and cited a precedent of the Libyan revolution to make the case.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But would you also need some sort of ground forces in the area —

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: No.

JUDY WOODRUFF: — because Assad’s forces are operating very much in the middle of the civilian population.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: We would not.

Putting U.S. ground forces in would be not only not appropriate, but counterproductive. We just need to arm and equip these people, the same way that we did in Libya.

Watch the video:

The problem? No reliable reports ever indicated that the U.S. armed Libyan rebels. Indeed, while speculation was rife, and bureaucratic authorizations for such actions existed, administration officials consistently denied that the U.S. partook in funneling arms to militas battling late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s military.

Amid pressure to now arm the Syrian rebels, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice made the exact opposite point McCain did on Thursday:

Wolf, even in Libya, we did not take the very exceptional decision to arm the opposition. And in Syria, we know much, much less about the nature of this opposition. It’s not coherent….

So to argue that we ought to be arming the opposition is a very consequential statement. And I don’t think that those that are advocating that have fully thought through the consequences.

The Libyan rebels were instead armed by various other U.S. allies, such as the tiny Gulf sheikhdom of Qatar. Those Qatari arms flowed with the knowledge of the U.S.. The New York Times reported this week that Syrian activists said exactly the same dynamic was already at work in Syria, with the U.S. “consulted” on the weapons transfers of Qatari purchases of Turkish anti-tank missiles for Syrian fighters. “Officials in Washington said the United States did not take part in arms shipments to the rebels, though they recognized that Syria’s neighbors would do so,” the Times reported.

Speaking at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual conference today, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich advocated for extending the rights of the second amendment — which refer to the “right to bear arms” — beyond U.S. borders and, indeed, to the population of the entire world.

The former Speaker of the House offered some friendly criticism to the NRA’s leadership, accusing them of being “too timid,” before launching into a proposal for a new U.N. treaty guaranteeing a universal right to gun ownership, he explained:

A Gingrich presidency will submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet because every person on the planet deserves the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, those would exploit them, rape them or kill them.

Gingrich, who finds himself in a distant second place in the Republican primary contest, went on to attack the U.N. “small arms treaty” — which has neither been signed nor, as frequently misreported, infringes on the Second Amendment — as keeping us “psychologically on defense.” Gingrich argued that mass gun ownership could be used to empower populist revolts against global injustices:

Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed, if people everywhere on the planet had the right to bear arms. And far fewer dictators would survive if people had the right to bear arms everywhere on the planet.

Watch him:

But Gingrich wasn’t just satisfied to explain that world peace that would ensue if the number of guns in circulation — including, presumably, in war zones — were to increase. He also floated a sinister theory about the motivations behind those who advocate for global arms reduction:

Let’s take the George Soroses and the Hillary Clintons head on. They represent a world in which elites disarm the rest of us so we are then helpless when elites turn sour and when evil reappears.

Gingrich’s campaign has frequently fallen back on fear mongering and demonizing of political opponents and religious minority groups. But as his campaign runs low on funds and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney surges toward securing the nomination, Gingrich appears to be falling back on conspiracy theories and increasingly radical policy positions to keep his candidacy alive.