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The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy - U.N. looks at taxing gun purchases by individuals July 31, 2003 By Larry
Pratt The UN has earned its reputation as the largest anti-self-defense organization in the world. Their lust for depriving individuals of firearms for self-defense is strong and growing. They have been promoting a universal gun registration program in order to set the stage for confiscation. Consider who comprises the UN. Communist China is the largest thugocracy in the world. Other countries suffering from a variety of crooks and thugs include Syria, Sudan, Lybia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. We are supposed to take them seriously because they send their goons all dressed up in suits to UN meetings. The only contact we should have with these tyrants is through the guns that we should be
selling to freedom fighters in their countries. That is precisely why the UN - the mouthpiece for most of the world's organized criminal syndicates - wants to disarm individuals. The UN is on record wishing to restrict gun sales to governments only. Jaques Chirac, that well-known champion of freedom for the Iraqi people, has entered the debate with a proposal only a socialist could love - a tax on gun purchases by individuals to be collected by the UN. Perhaps Chirac is seeking to replace the billion dollar piggy bank that UN Secretary General Kofi Anan lost when Sadam Hussein stopped signing over oil checks to the UN. Anan had unsupervised access to the UN fund built up from its cut of the Oil for Food (actually Palaces) deal with Iraq. Chirac seems undisturbed that Anan's fiscal probity is a bit lacking and might not be the best place to put any revenues. Ironically, Chirac had one group of folks who would be exempt - manufacturers. He wants to stick it to individual buyers since France makes lots of guns. Chirac helpfully suggested that taxing gun buyers might be easier to impose than the Tobin tax. The Tobin tax has been proposed as a levy on currency transactions. Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, a socialist gun grabber, suggested that taxing weapons manufacturers would be a good way to eliminate world hunger. Of course, he is not interested in the hungry of the world as he claims, because he really wants to use the tax to price guns out of the reach of all but government buyers. A question none of these folks deal with is - where is the authority for the UN to levy a tax? Most Americans do not make this an issue with our elected officials, so the UN mess continues to rock along. But we should be asking them: "What is their authority?" Unhappily, these socialists have a somewhat plausible argument. When the U.S. agreed to join the UN, we agreed to allow the UN to tell the U.S. how much tax money to send to the international body (our dues). Since our Constitution says that the House of Representatives is to originate all revenue bills, joining the UN without amending our Constitution amounts to an unconstitutional act. Worldnetdaily.com (June 8, 2003) quotes a State Department official who requested anonymity regarding the UN's gun control proposals saying: "Those are just recommendations - and surprisingly, a number of countries, including the U.S., take them up on those recommendations. In fact, we support all 24 of those recommendations" (June 3, 2003). UN gun taxes plus UN gun control equals big trouble. This is an important reason for supporting Rep. Ron Paul's bill (H.R. 1146) that would get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S. While the bill does not say where the UN should go, I can think of several capitals where it would more suitably headquartered: Beijing, Damascus, Khartoum, Tripoli, Harare, Havana, Teheran, Pyong-Yang - you get the idea. © 2003 Larry Pratt - All Rights Reserved
Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom to keep and bear arms. GOA lobbies for the pro-gun position in Washington and is involved in firearm issues in the states. GOA's work includes providing legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the federal firearms law enforcement agency. Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio and TV programs such as NBC's Today Show, CBS' Good Morning America, CNN's Crossfire and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Phil Donahue show and many others. He has debated Congressmen James Traficant, Jr. (D-OH), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Vice President Al Gore, among others. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country. He published a book, Armed People Victorious, in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense of Liberty was published in 2001. Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature of Virginia, serving in the House of Delegates. Pratt directs a number of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice-Chairman of the American Institute for Cancer Research. The GOA web site is: http://gunowners.org. Pratt's weekly talk
show Live Fire is archived there at: http://gunowners.org/radio.htm
E-Mail: ldpratt@gunowners.org |