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Trump Believes Second Amendment Should Be Forced On Other Countries

Horton

Cat
Administrator
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48076262

So yep. Trump has withdrawn from a UN arms treaty. He seems to have the first amendment as the modus operandi here.

This is odd and implies that it's ok to basically force the 2nd Amendment on other countries according to him AND that the 2nd covers Tanks and Planes. Though that's one thing common in neocon foreign policy, it's less malicious and more based on the idea that we're doing good by bringing Democracy to the world. To quote CS Lewis, an intelligent man who's own desire for more people to think like him drove him into some questionable logic, said this and it rings true today and always has done

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ― C. S. Lewis


The thing about this type of move is that it's very very hard to calculate how much damage what he's doing has done, likely a lot though as the US is a big producer of arms and has a history of supplying places with them like Saudi Arabia. In someways there is the argument that if we didn't supply those places, they'd just buy them elsewhere, BUT what we're seeing here is a multilateral argument among countries that could do serious good in parts of the world, as a lower supply of weapons means a higher cost and people will be less likely to shoot indiscriminately. They will shoot still, BUT when you have a situation in which it's harder to get those weapons, you're less likely to use them unless needed. This means this will dis-proportionally effect innocents, not actual insurgents.

I'm also amused by Trump's hypocrisy, is not trade bad? Is not trade deficits bad? So I ask "Why do you do this when this will increase trade?", once again proving his a hypocrite. But the GOP have always been like that, socialism is bad unless it's for GOP people, deficits are bad once the dems are in office, capitalism is good...unless it's trade, etc.
 
So that means Iran is free to arms whatever group they want?
 
"Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone," he said. "We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your second amendment freedoms."
He thinks he's doing US exceptionalism, when in fact he's doing isolationism. Trump's America will be first in a group of one.
 
He thinks he's doing US exceptionalism, when in fact he's doing isolationism. Trump's America will be first in a group of one.
I think he forgets that he only has power because people believe he has power, as is the case with any leader. Rather then some type of magical power where in can point his hand and make stuff happen.

Which applies to IR as well. Kick people in the face enough and the castle comes crashing down. Other countries are realising this and slowly taking things out from America under their feet.

Trump's damage to the third world will carry on until 2024 as the US appointed an economist with a history of failed economic forecasts to the World Bank; it's a little known fact, but the US president is actually the one who appoints to the WB their president. So we went from a guy that actually was previously critical of the former policies of the WB and tried to move it into a better direction, with a Republican idiot that completely fails to get things right. Again something that was never used as an argument in the media, because it's too away from home.

So we can look forward to stupid ass policies from the WB in the next 5 years that will likely throw millions of third world people into poverty, while Trumpie pumps weapons into those countries and they start killing each other.

Is it any wonder why I'd always vote for Dem if American? Because every time a Republican gets voted in, shit like this happens...with Bush it was Iraq and with Trump it's this stupidity.
 
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There's a general undercurrent of a late imperial disease: a hyperfocus on pandering to domestic affairs to the detriment of external politics. There's no legitimate reason that groups like the NRA should be concerned about the ATT, as it does not at all limit the second amendment towards citizens or any other internal policies. But of course they're well-funded by certain interests.

On the other hand, I have doubts that the US typically had a leadership role in this specific flavour of treaties, as some of the criticism (e.g. from Stimson Center) imply. The rejection of the Ottawa and Oslo treaties suggests that perhaps this is a return closer to the US normal, and it's ATT that was exceptional.

The US has historically always been rather loath to ratify treaties that limits its sovereignty in general (and even when US policies are de facto consistent), and well, the ATT does do that, especially as it is inherently an evolving target based on UN understanding of human rights, rather than meeting specific, static criteria. Therefore, this coming from an anti-progressive administration is ultimately unsurprising, but I also think that's a more fair characterisation of this move: that it's ultimately aimed against a progressive commitment to human rights, rather than imposing a second amendment on other countries.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_Trade_Treaty#Criticism

The UN General Assembly of 2 April 2013 (71st Plenary Meeting) adopted the ATT as a resolution by a 154-to-3 vote with 23 abstentions. North Korea, Iran, and Syria voted in opposition. China and Russia, among the world's leaders in weapon exports, were among the 23 nations that abstained.[23] Cuba, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan also abstained. Armenia, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Vietnam did not vote.[9]

Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and several other major powers aren't signatories to it, either. All that will happen if the US voluntarily agrees to restrict arms exports is that nutbags who want to blow their neighbors to kingdom come will buy AKs and Kornets instead of M16s and TOWs.

Furthermore:

Opposition to the ATT can be broken down into state opposition and civil society opposition. Over thirty states have objected to various parts of the ATT during negotiations, the majority of which held strong concerns about the implications for national sovereignty.[30] From a civil society point of view, groups concerned about national sovereignty or individual rights to armed defense have been negative of the ATT. While not fundamentally opposed to an ATT, these groups are keenly sensitive to ensuring an ATT does not undermine national constitutional protections and individual rights. The most vocal and organized civil society groups opposing aspects of the ATT originated from the United States. These groups include the National Rifle Association (NRA), the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Second Amendment Foundation,[31] and The Heritage Foundation. The NRA and the Gun Owners of America say that the treaty is an attempt to circumvent the Second Amendment and similar guarantees in state constitutions in order to impose domestic gun regulations.[32]
One of the largest sources of civil opposition to the ATT has come from the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), which is the lobbying arm of the NRA. In July 2012, ILA stated that:
Anti-gun treaty proponents continue to mislead the public, claiming the treaty would have no impact on American gun owners. This is a bald-faced lie. For example, the most recent draft treaty includes export/import controls that would require officials in an importing country to collect information on the "end user" of a firearm, keep the information for 20 years, and provide the information to the country from which the gun was exported. In other words, if you bought a Beretta Shotgun, you would be an "end user" and the U.S. government would have to keep a record of you and notify the Italian government about your purchase. That is gun registration. If the U.S. refuses to implement this data collection on law-abiding American gun owners, other nations might be required to ban the export of firearms to the U.S.[33]
For instance, I recently purchased a CZ 75 SP-01. The Czech Republic is a signatory to the treaty. If I purchase a pistol that was made by Česká zbrojovka and imported to the US, is the US Federal government obligated to give my information to the Czech Republic and keep a record of the purchase for a period of 20 years? That's bullshit.

This treaty would have absolutely no effect on how warlords arm themselves. Most of them get their weapons on the black market, or through being covertly supplied by intelligence agencies, like Iran-Contra, Operation Cyclone, or Timber Sycamore. Small arms that were legally sold or acquired in one country by a middleman get diverted through back channels where they end up in the hands of violent non-state actors. The treaty will only restrict legal arms sales, which would hurt the US economy because the US is a huge exporter of weapons.

The intention behind the treaty - the restriction of the flow of small arms into war-torn third-world countries - is generally noble, but I fail to see how it achieves that goal. People who want small arms will always be able to get them, no matter what, even if they have to bend AK-47 receivers in a thatched-roof shack way out in the deserts of Dogshitistan.





If we were serious about arms control, we would adopt an anti-war and isolationist stance and let Middle-Eastern and African dictatorial strongmen tend their own damn gardens instead of blowing their countries to kingdom come and reducing them to ten different warring tribes all vying to elect their strongman as supreme leader. I am amazed at the sheer hypocrisy of the UN in advancing a treaty to control arms exports, but still agreeing to resolutions that involve NATO military intervention and the destabilization of countries so that they become hotbeds of illegal arms trading, human trafficking, and narcotics trades. You can literally buy a belt-fed machine gun on Facebook in Libya, something that wouldn't have been possible if Gaddafi was still in power.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35980338

Trump should repeal parts of ITAR, next. America's ridiculous export laws on firearms and defense products are such that even a defense contractor making a YouTube promotional video for one of their products counts as "exporting technical data", even if the product in question has no secret classification. This has a chilling effect on the discussion surrounding new armaments and their capabilities. You can be treated as a criminal simply for detailing the specifications of a weapon in a critical context, and publishing the info online where Russia or China might see it. Even if you're lambasting the US government for buying smart cluster munitions and the like, if you go into too much technical detail on how they function, you can get nailed for "exporting ITAR-controlled information". This is why, for instance, Lockheed Martin are forced to blur out images of avionics on new Sikorsky helicopters in their own promo vids. The Feds also tried using ITAR to go after things like 3D-printed firearm receivers (if it's online, that's "exporting").

http://www.potomacinstitute.org/images/RSEC/ITAR.pdf

Do our export laws have a chilling effect on the media and on coverage of US weapons tech? Yes. Does it stop foreign reverse-engineering and plunder of US R&D? No, if China wants samples, they can always get them.
 
For instance, I recently purchased a CZ 75 SP-01. The Czech Republic is a signatory to the treaty. If I purchase a pistol that was made by Česká zbrojovka and imported to the US, is the US Federal government obligated to give my information to the Czech Republic and keep a record of the purchase for a period of 20 years? That's bullshit.
Why would that happen?
ATT said:
Article 12 Record keeping
1. Each State Party shall maintain national records, pursuant to its national laws and regulations, of its issuance of export authorizations or its actual exports of the conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1).
2. Each State Party is encouraged to maintain records of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) that are transferred to its territory as the final destination or that are authorized to transit or trans-ship territory under its jurisdiction.
3. Each State Party is encouraged to include in those records: the quantity, value, model/type, authorized international transfers of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1), conventional arms actually transferred, details of exporting State(s), importing State(s), transit and trans-shipment State(s), and end users, as appropriate.
4. Records shall be kept for a minimum of ten years.
That seems to cover only records of (a) who's exporting arms out of the Czech republic, and what they're exporting, and (b) who's importing arms into the US, and what's they're importing. It doesn't obligate the US to share anything about the end consumers with anyone it doesn't want. Unless you yourself are transferring Czech arms over international borders, it doesn't touch you at all. The subsequent article on reporting also specifically mentions only 'measures' and 'authorized or actual exports and imports'.

I mean, there's some argument to be made this may make the treaty ultimately ineffective, or other reasons for that, but that's very from the situation you describe in this specific instance.
 
Absolutely nothing about this requires Trump personally to believe anything whatsoever. That it serves some internal US interests and also looks good for his base is reason enough.

However, the the position of not limiting their sovereignty is a long-running theme in US politics, including regarding the UN. For example, the US is one of the states not party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It's even more stark when one looks at treaties touching human rights or ecology, e.g. Convention on the Rights of the Child (literally the only state in the world not to ratify!), Biodiversity Convention (alone again!), Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (one of few), Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (one of few again).

So sure, Trump administration is worse than usual, but overall, let's not pretend that 'we are special and you can't tell us what to do' isn't a long-running US normalcy.
 
Why would that happen?

That seems to cover only records of (a) who's exporting arms out of the Czech republic, and what they're exporting, and (b) who's importing arms into the US, and what's they're importing. It doesn't obligate the US to share anything about the end consumers with anyone it doesn't want. Unless you yourself are transferring Czech arms over international borders, it doesn't touch you at all. The subsequent article on reporting also specifically mentions only 'measures' and 'authorized or actual exports and imports'.

I mean, there's some argument to be made this may make the treaty ultimately ineffective, or other reasons for that, but that's very from the situation you describe in this specific instance.

Hmm...

Article 8 - Import
1. Each importing State Party shall take measures to ensure that appropriate and relevant information is provided, upon request, pursuant to its national laws, to the exporting State Party, to assist the exporting State Party in conducting its national export assessment under Article 7. Such measures may include end use or end user documentation.
2. Each importing State Party shall take measures that will allow it to regulate, where necessary, imports under its jurisdiction of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1). Such measures may include import systems.
3. Each importing State Party may request information from the exporting State Party concerning any pending or actual export authorizations where the importing State Party is the country of final destination.

Article 12 - Record keeping
1. Each State Party shall maintain national records, pursuant to its national laws and regulations, of its issuance of export authorizations or its actual exports of the conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1).
2. Each State Party is encouraged to maintain records of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) that are transferred to its territory as the final destination or that are authorized to transit or trans-ship territory under its jurisdiction.
3. Each State Party is encouraged to include in those records: the quantity, value, model/type, authorized international transfers of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1), conventional arms actually transferred, details of exporting State(s), importing State(s), transit and trans-shipment State(s), and end users, as appropriate.
4. Records shall be kept for a minimum of ten years.

I think what the NRA is taking issue with here is the language of "end use/end user documentation" in Article 8.1, and the mention of "end users" in Article 12.3. They're worried that this counts as de facto gun registration, since it would mean that the Federal Government would have to keep a database of people who purchased imported firearms like H&Ks, Berettas, SIGs, and so on. No such database currently exists. Article 8.1 also seems to imply that the US Government can tell the exporter exactly who their guns are going to, by providing end user documentation.
 
He thinks he's doing US exceptionalism, when in fact he's doing isolationism. Trump's America will be first in a group of one.
He said nothing about Domestic Bureaucrats. :(

Also I agree with the premise, but hes decades too late to use 2nd Amendment stuff as an angle of economic and security arm twisting. More privately owned guns for everybody. Put a limit on .50 BMG for round weight aside from shotguns, and you can only own firearms which you can carry the firearm and the ammunition required to fire it at full cyclical rate for a minute and march them 1 mile on foot. OG AKs and FNs for everybody and take away the miniguns from rich douchebags.
 

Ya know, I actually thought of that argument when reading about it, the issue is we're ignoring a few things here when using it:

The US makes a large bunch of the worlds arms trade currently, a significant amount of the worlds export in weapons in fact, from 2012 to 2016, they made up 33% of the worlds arms trade, in that same period Russia made up 23% and China 6.2%. France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain made up 21.7%. That was actually one of the things that has helped the US establish it's current hegemony, the fact it has enough weapons to flood the markets of some smaller countries, meaning any insurgency if wanting to gain high quality weapons like AQ in the 80s just needs to get on the US' good side. So it in fact has a soft power effect from this that allows it to arm insurgencies with pro American sympathies.

This long term move towards high levels of weapons production in the US is partly one of the reason for it's bloating arms industry and military budget. The US has hit the point where weapons manufactures can ship weapons all over the world to groups that serve US interests, which is a semi mixture of it's size and power in itself and the fact that it's very profitable when you can underprice other countries in the arms trade, due to the fact they have a massive comparative advantage in production, due to their bloated budget in the first place. Other countries have not anywhere near the amount of R&D that the US has.

So...we cut out a third of the worlds production from these countries, FROM markets that are already under priced. What happens to the price of weapons? They go up, up and up and likely higher then simple supply/demand would predict due to the aforementioned cheapness and monopolies the US already has in weapons. So what happens if weapons are a lot more expensive? Well, incentives would suggest that war zones are less likely to kill civilians and innocents intentionally, as ammo is now worth a lot more then it was before: Why use that to kill people that aren't hostile, when you're much better off killing actual enemies? I mean you can still kill people, but lacking massive amounts of cheap ammo means you're less likely to commit war crimes.

And bare in mind this is a conservative estimate. One interesting factor here is the US due to it's influence and prominence in the world, can easily start a chain reaction causing other nations to eave as well, this hasn't happened yet, but international institutions can be described as social contracts on a geopolitical scale. Once you brake down confidence and faith in the institutions themselves, everything comes crashing down. This hasn't happened yet, but very possible with the way IR works. Nations could even think on your terms that it's just giving the US advantage and them being in it won't make much difference, creating a chain reaction. Before we say here that if that was the case, China and Russia would've done the same, refer to my earlier point about the price of US weapons in the first place.

Please, as if Trump believes in anything except Trump's greatness. I'm automatically suspicious of any attempts to explain Trump's behavior by ascribing them to some kind of belief or principle. He's doing this cause he wants to sell guns to people, mostly Saudi Arabia probably.
We have to factor in pressure groups here. If Trump's cabinet like Bolton and Pompeo are involved, it's a lot more likely that it wasn't even Trump here and more like he was influenced by them with the argument that it'd would "Make America Great Economically"

As personally I'd be surprised that Trump is aware of stuff like this going on in the first place without being told, as he apparently doesn't read and I doubt Fox really are going to put up serious stuff that's happening on an international scale with the UN and rather focus on anecdotes, from my encounters with the RW.
 
Right. Better to save the ammo for enemy combatant. Civilians? Thats what machetes were invented for.

Weapons manufacture and ammunition manufacture are a drop in the bucket for US military expenditure. Only nonsense like the hyperbloated and obviously corrupt F35 makes a dent, most of the excess is spent on permanent global deployments that have been rendered redundant, and maintaining a frankly stupid amount of US Army personnel. The other issues are the VA costs which are set to a permanent rise, or cutoff when and if it is considered unlikely to cause serious protests with real consequences. We could solve the current yearly budget issues by dumping approximately half the US Army, walking away from African, European and Middle Eastern commitments, and. We could make that a long term solution by raising taxes and properly enforcing them.
 
We could solve the current yearly budget issues by dumping approximately half the US Army, walking away from African, European and Middle Eastern commitments, and. We could make that a long term solution by raising taxes and properly enforcing them.
I'm all for US letting other nations be, but I'm afraid the situation is a bit more complex. China is trying to do to you what you did to the European colonial powers in the first half of the 20th century - take over your markets and resource base. And you leaving an area means OBOR comes right in...
 
I'm all for US letting other nations be, but I'm afraid the situation is a bit more complex. China is trying to do to you what you did to the European colonial powers in the first half of the 20th century - take over your markets and resource base. And you leaving an area means OBOR comes right in...
I know. A lot of people know. And a lot of people would just LOVE for China to be the one sitting on the Middle East forever. Let them spend the money and blood beating their heads against a wall.
 
I know. A lot of people know. And a lot of people would just LOVE for China to be the one sitting on the Middle East forever. Let them spend the money and blood beating their heads against a wall.
That also means to let them become the strategic partners of the wealthy petro-kingdoms of the ME. It means to let them convince the Saudis to sell oil for yuans. It means to let them sell their weapons, machinery and other products to those wealthy people. I doubt that those who rule the US, and who make a lot of money on the ME market, are just so willing to do so. Your MIC sells them weapons, your oil companies make billions on extracting and processing the oil and gas there, your pharma sector sells them drugs and whole hospitals...
 
So he intends to... What?

Buy several hundreds of millions firearms and airdrop them in major cities around the world?

Well I guess the gun manifacturers would be ecstatic and the people over at /r Donald frothing in the mouth with fanatic glee?
 
I know. A lot of people know. And a lot of people would just LOVE for China to be the one sitting on the Middle East forever. Let them spend the money and blood beating their heads against a wall.

China plans to either bypass the Middle East entirely or tread really lightly there, which I think the Arabs and Persians would rejoice at, compared to the bungling way America did business in the region.
 
That also means to let them become the strategic partners of the wealthy petro-kingdoms of the ME. It means to let them convince the Saudis to sell oil for yuans. It means to let them sell their weapons, machinery and other products to those wealthy people. I doubt that those who rule the US, and who make a lot of money on the ME market, are just so willing to do so.
Yes and?
Your MIC sells them weapons, your oil companies make billions on extracting and processing the oil and gas there, your pharma sector sells them drugs and whole hospitals...
The refining and selling them drugs would still happen, atleast for the next decade.

Seriously, let them have it. We don't want it anymore and honestly? Placing additional constraints on our douchenuggets so that wildly demanding war is nonviable for distractions is favorable to domestic ends.

China plans to either bypass the Middle East entirely or tread really lightly there, which I think the Arabs and Persians would rejoice at, compared to the bungling way America did business in the region.
They cannot bypass the Middle East. Thats where everybody east of Iran gets their oil from, save a few pipets in the Indonesian archipelago. They can either sit on it and hold it down, pick a side and let that side win, or do without the vast majority of their crude. And if China doesn't do it, South Korea, Japan and whatever allies they can finagle up certainly will. The Chinese can not and will not tolerate Japanese domination of Middle Eastern oil reserves.
 
Ideas that require force are worthless. Trump is an authoritarian, a bully, and all-around despicable person. This is just yet more evidence of that.
What an utter catastrophic failure of a human being.
 
Ideas that require force are worthless.
Bruh. Segregation, and possibly slavery, would still be a thing if this massive logical fallacy was true.

Also, look at this guy. Another one that actually beleives Trump as the arch reactionary that he was elected to be. Amazing.
 
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