Posted by
BrianR on Friday, August 10, 2012 12:34:08 PM
(Dick_Morris Is Nuts)
Political commentator Dick_Morris (among others) has been
running around all over the place bleating about how the passage of the United
Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is going to result in the loss of the gun
rights currently enjoyed by Americans under the Second Amendment to our
Constitution.
He was doing it again on Sean Hannity’s radio show on
Friday, 3 Aug. Here’s Morris’s thesis:
Obama signs the treaty
(which has currently died in the UN because of lack of agreement, actually)
after he’s re-elected. For a treaty to bind the United States it must be
ratified by 2/3 of the Senate, per the Constitution. But according to Morris –
who acknowledges that such ratification is virtually impossible – under the
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties if the Senate fails to act on
ratification the ATT will automatically take effect solely on the basis of
Obama’s signature, and that Harry Reid will refuse to bring it to a vote if the
Democrats retain control of the Senate. The treaty then becomes the “supreme
law of the land”, superseding the Constitution and the Second Amendment and
enabling Draconian gun laws, confiscation, the sky falling, etc.
Phew!... Follow me so far? Okay.
Morris’s thesis is so full of holes that if it were cheese
it would be a premium Swiss. I don’t know where Morris comes up with this
stuff. He must just “hear” something and, without doing any research at all,
run wild with it. Anyway, here are the facts.
The Vienna Convention went into effect in 1980, but
unfortunately for Morris’s thesis, even though this country is a signatory, the
Convention has never been ratified by the Senate and so has absolutely no force
and is not binding on this country, just like any other treaty that isn’t
ratified. Period.
Further, there’s nothing that I’ve read in the Vienna
Convention that does what Morris claims, anyway. Nothing at all about
unratified presidential signatures making a treaty binding on a country whose
own constitution requires treaty ratification. So his theory of an Obama
signature on the ATT without Senate ratification actually meaning anything is
ridiculous.
Morris also clearly doesn’t understand the Supremacy Clause
of the Constitution. Let me quote it for you:
:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which
shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the
Land;…”
So far, so good. But here’s where the rubber meets the road:
“… and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any
Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding.”
In other words, what it’s saying is that the Constitution,
federal laws, and treaties take precedence over STATE laws and constitutions.
That’s all. There’s not one syllable in there about treaties having more power
than the Constitution itself.
The reality is that no treaty can be used as a de facto amendment to the Constitution,
as the Constitution is quite specific about how it can be amended and allows
only two methods: the clearly detailed amendment process requiring 2/3
ratification by the states, or a constitutional convention. Any treaty that
conflicts with the Constitution or its amendments is automatically null and
void.
And in fact, in the 1957 landmark case of Reid v. Covert the Supreme Court held
exactly that, stating “this Court
has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a
treaty,".
It’s time for Morris and
others Chicken Littling this issue (yes, I’m looking at YOU, NRA!) to drop it. It’s ridiculous and meaningless, and lying
for political gain is no less disgusting coming from the Right than it is from
the Left. Frankly, I consider it even worse, because we have the facts on our side. We don’t have
to resort to lying and political chicanery.
This stupid UN treaty has no more chance of affecting our
national gun laws than I do of beating Shaq at basketball.
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