The National Rifle Association is in the field with a call campaign asking recipients a rather leading question — “Should third-world dictators and Hillary Clinton dictate our gun policy?” — according to several TPM readers who have reported receiving the call.
While TPM has not been able to independently verify the calls (the NRA has not responded to several requests for confirmation or comment), five TPM readers in three different states have reported receiving the calls in the past three weeks.
The call starts with a pre-recorded message from Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s CEO, warning that Clinton is meeting with the United Nations “right now” to take away guns from Americans. Then, a live person comes on and asks the question.
“I was sort of flabbergasted because it was so outrageous of a statement,” said TPM reader Miles, 42, who lives in Los Angeles, who got the call Oct. 7. Miles asked that his last name not be published. He was especially stunned that LaPierre seemed to be “equating Hillary Clinton with third-world dictators.”
Another reader, Travis Finch from Redondo Beach, Calif., got a call Oct. 12. He was also warned about the UN meeting. Other readers reported getting the calls in Wisconsin and New Hampshire.
But the question is misleading.
The call is likely about a meeting of the UN’s committee on disarmament, which began Oct. 5 to discuss, in part, “staunching the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.”
Some countries are pushing to begin negotiations on a global treaty to stop such illegal smuggling, and the NRA believes that kind of treaty would take away gun rights from Americans.
But those nations that want a treaty have specified, a resolution to begin negotiations, that countries would have the exclusive right to regulate arms trade within their borders.
That language is a concession to the United States. In 2006, the U.S. was the only country to vote against beginning treaty negotiations. Then, as now, the NRA was campaigning against UN efforts.
But when the NRA’s calls began last month, the Obama administration had not yet expressed an opinion on such a treaty.
On Wednesday, however, Clinton said the U.S. is open to negotiations, but would only sign a treaty if it has unanimous support.
“The United States is committed to actively pursuing a strong and robust treaty that contains the highest possible, legally binding standards for the international transfer of conventional weapons,” she said.
(For what it’s worth, Clinton herself is not at the committee meeting. The United States representative on the committee is Ellen Tauscher, the under secretary for Arms Control and a senior adviser to both Clinton and President Obama. She gave a statement to the conference which mostly focused on nuclear disarmament — not small arms.)
Clinton is an easy target for the NRA, though. She has, for example, blamed illicit American weapons for deaths in Mexico’s brutal drug war, where about 9,000 people have been killed since 2007.
“Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” Clinton told reporters during a trip to Mexico City this spring.
And it’s not new for the NRA to gin up fears that the UN is plotting to take away firearms from American gun owners. They’ve been doing it for years.
During a 2006 UN conference about stopping illegal small arms trafficking, for example, NRA began a letter-writing campaign against the UN. Members sent more than 100,000 letters to the conference’s chairman, demanding he not take away their guns.
In 2005, with the NRA’s support, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) to introduced legislation to withhold funding from the UN if it “abridges the rights provided by the Second Amendment to the Constitution.” Both bills died in committee.