To see how the “community activist” model of gun control is working internationally, gun owners need look no further than the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a London-based gun group headed by notorious gun-confiscationist Rebecca Peters.
IANSA has recently used the the Gaza crisis as a means to promote an Arms Trade Treaty, and IANSA works closely with gun-takeaway efforts by the United Nations.
A IANSA release said, “Most media coverage of the conflict has ignored the importance of preventing arms transfers to the region. Yet weapons supplied from outside have been used in violations of international law resulting in large numbers of civilian deaths.”
“Both sides in the Gaza conflict appear to have committed violations of international law,” said Rebecca Peters, IANSA director. “Yet some states continue to supply weapons to the protagonists [Israel and Hamas]. Some of these transfers are ‘legal’, meaning approved by the exporting and importing governments. The most obvious case here is the continuing US supply of arms to Israel.”
The release continued, “A strong and effective global Arms Trade Treaty would have prevented these transfers, and more importantly would have prevented transfers in the past few years, reducing the protagonists’ capacity to wage their deadly war.”
A further discussion of how IANSA tries to equate Israel with Hamas and how arms shipments for self defense to an ally like Israel would be made illegal under a proposed IANSA treaty can be found in Dave Kopel’s Jan. 30 blog on the Volokh Conspiracy website.
IANSA’s work has been funded by several domestic gun-confiscation advocacy groups, including the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Compton Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Institute, Samuel Rubin Foundation and Christian Aid.
