WASHINGTON—Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz submitted an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill Tuesday to ban anyone from using Pentagon funds to implement the Arms Trade Treaty. Similar language is also included in the lower chamber’s version of the legislation.
The text of the amendment states, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this division may be obligated or expended to implement the Arms Trade Treaty until the resolution of ratification of the Treaty is approved by the Senate.”
The Arms Trade Treaty[1] (ATT) is a 2013 United Nations treaty to regulate the $70 billion global arms trade signed by then Secretary of State John Kerry on behalf of the United States and sent to the Senate by President Obama in 2016 for ratification following Hillary Clinton’s election loss. The Congress opposed this treaty, and it remains unratified.
Nevertheless, unratified treaties, like the Ottawa landmine and Oslo cluster munitions accords, have managed to find their way into U.S. policy.
Jim Shields, head of the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Ammunition said[2] in May of 2017 that U.S. policy on both mines and cluster munitions were “shaped” by these unratified treaties even though the U.S. had not signed either, so Second Amendment advocates became concerned with the now unratified ATT.
Second Amendment advocates including the National Rifle Association[3] and the Heritage Foundation[4] have both called upon President Trump to “unsign” the treaty, the previous administration agreed to.
Pro-gun activists remain concerned the treaty has unclear language that could be broadly interpreted by domestic gun control advocates to impose further regulations on the American people.
Fundamentally, the ATT, demands that participant nations
