Ali Shahabi, WVPU international relations graduate student, shares his commentary on US and international arms control.
By Alireza Shahabi Sirjani
The unresolved debate
The internal unresolved debate of gun control in the United States could be affecting international arms control. US conservatives and gun lobbyists could find common ground with sovereign states and their calculus on international arms treaties in regard to the intrusive infringement by the federal state. Moreover, national security concerns of states as individual actors are not so different from a citizen’s granted rights and liberties. It could be said that by not acknowledging individual privileges, the full acknowledgment of the person may fall under question.
This could possibly be because of the instinctive understanding of a basic read of the realistic nature of things, or perhaps the rebellious nature of a social beast’s fanatical will to live free with the ability to defend itself. It is a matter close to the hearts of all conservative nodes foreign and domestic to the United States. Even though the US identifies itself as a nation “of the people,” US conservatives are weary of their government curtailing freedoms, and there are most certainly parallels to be drawn between the weariness of (conservative leaning) US citizens and the global community: both wanting less meddling from Washington in their rights of self-defense.
Gun control in the US
The topic of gun control in the United States is a highly charged and sensitive topic triggering emotional reports from opponents and proponents. This loaded matter cuts deep into the hearts of many Americans who value the right to defend against threats to their life, liberty and God given freedoms. Any debate that infringes upon a person’s right to bear arms is seen as an open challenge to their values and freedoms.
In 2013 former President Barack Obama signed the international Arms Trade Treaty and passed it to the Senate for ratification. After which he received pushback from the American people as some believed the ATT would threaten their rights under the Second Amendment and subjugate them to “international rules and restrictions.”
Speaking at the National Rifle Association's annual meeting on April 26, 2019 in Indianapolis, President Donald Trump stated “American citizens live by American laws and not the laws of foreign countries” and he will not allow foreign bureaucrats and the activities of misguided individuals to threaten the constitutionally guaranteed rights of Americans to bear arms under the Second Amendment. “Under my administration we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone,” President Trump proclaimed. Making it very clear that he would not allow “foreign bureaucrats to trample on [American] freedoms.”
In the past few years the global community has been shell shocked and numb with disbelief by the United States’ actions that decrease credibility and go contrary to international norms and standards it has labored to construct and sponsor. The United States’ unprecedented belligerent exceptionalism and political revisionism could be an emerging result of internal systemic side effects brought about by security concerns of a hegemon grappling with the contemplation of waning power and the unwillingness to share it.
Lead by example
There seems to be parallels between the decisions of certain sovereign states and their adherences to arms control treaties and argumentations put forward by conservative anti-gun control lobbyist in the United States. The indecisiveness of the country to commit to international self-drafted or suggested norms and the unwillingness to lead by example detracts from its soft power capability and self-touted leadership position, making the adoption or enforcement of international agreements even more difficult or unlikely.
A well thumped and repeated statement by anti-gun control opponents is: “first they take your guns, then they take your freedoms, your rights and then they kill you”. From their perspective there are compelling historical references that correlates with state-wide executions and violence against citizenry after the introduction of gun control laws. In Turkey, for example, 1.5 million Armenians were “purged” from 1915 - 1917, the Soviet Union “exterminated” 20 million between 1929 – 1953 and the Nazi Germans’ eradication of 17 million people.
“first they take your guns, then they take your freedoms, your rights and then they kill you”
Defend life, liberty, and property
The schism raises from the fear that when the freedoms and right to defend oneself are taken away by an outside force, an imbalance is created leaving one party at the mercy of the other’s will, thus ultimately exaggerating asymmetric power and capacity.
It is understandable that emotions become inflamed when an individual’s right to defend their life, liberty, and property are threatened. When “the security of a free state” is infringed upon, feelings of dread, helplessness and the need for self-preservation are induced. But where’s the middle ground between the two sides of this fiery debate? Universal background checks and the responsible possession and curtailing of certain automatic weapons could be a start.
Before a mass crowd of cheering onlookers at the NRA Indianapolis event, President Trump signed an order calling on “the Senate to discontinue the treaty ratification process and return the now rejected treaty” to him so that it can be disposed of. Under the ATT, states are to regulate the export and prohibit the transfer of arms “that would be contrary to international legal obligations, or where the state knows the arms would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity and certain war crimes.”
Gun control and global arms trade
If we were to take this big-red-button topic of US gun control and widen the lens to encompass the globe, there are parallels that can be drawn on the matter of gun control and the global arms trade. The topic of arms control weighs heavily in the thought processes of individual sovereign states, their relations, and interactions.
Technological advances could have helped inflate the problem of what might be considered as rational conventional weapons for self defense, in dimensional relation to the individual and the state. Is the position of heavy weaponry such as sub-automatic guns with armor-piercing bullets necessary for individual security? Would nuclear, biological or chemical tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles be needed to ensure national security?
Melting pot
The United States as a “melting pot” is a fantastic subject for day-to-day conversation and scholarly study because of its central position in global affairs and the ramification of its internal conversation and external action on the lives of billions of people globally. From its inception, the United States has been a beacon for revolutionaries and idealistic thought, whose internal debates and path of self-identification has helped others question their own trajectory, norms and morals. Arguably though, the States’ immense wealth in soft power could outpace its massive coercive hard power capability. Even so, it has demonstrated how it is ready and capable of wielding its soft power as an indiscriminate blunt weapon with a high potential for collateral damage.
The US has served as a prominent architectural actor in building and securing global norms after the devastation of the World Wars, yet today we are witnesses to the fractioning of these very global norms. If the United States wants to see greater global adherents to norms it helped establish, it might need to settle the divide at home first. The US Federal Government is the largest and most influential dispenser of arms worldwide and has the prerogative to deny its services to any state it wishes. The US competence to certify whether its citizens have the right to bear arms and to what capacity, is a privilege that doesn’t carry externally and would be hard to justify if the US views itself as an exemption among equals. Otherwise states will continue to project or declare similar responses like that of former NRA President Charlton Heston, in response to gun control lobbyists, “from my cold, dead hands.”
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Alireza Shahabi Sirjani studied his BA in International Relations at Webster Vienna Private University where he is currently studying his MA in the same field. Prior to studying IR at WVPU, he studied Architecture at the Technical University of Vienna. He has interned in a number of architectural offices as well as international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is a member of the CTBT Youth Group and his interests in the field of international relations fall mainly in the area of arms control.
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For more on this topic see:
FOX 10 Phoenix. (n.d.). NRA CONVENTION: President Trump FULL Speech.
Parker, Kim. (2017) Among gun owners, NRA members have a unique set of views and experiences. Pew Research Center.
Woolcott, P. (n.d.). The Arms Trade Treaty.
Strasser, M. R. (2008). Second Amendment.
Yanker, J. (n.d.). From my Cold Dead Hands: the role of the NRA in the lack of gun reform in the United States from 1996-2014. 86.
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