Lawrence Auster
Saturday, July 14, 2001

While the backers of global gun control keep claiming that the mere physical presence of firearms in any country is a genocidal threat, Innis, longtime head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), points out that most of the 800,000 victims of the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994 were killed or maimed by pangas (machetes), spears and axes. "These are all implements of agriculture," Innis emphasizes in his pleasantly deep, Caribbean-tinged accent.

Similarly, while America is cast as the villain for allowing "weapons of mass destruction" (translation: pistols, revolvers and rifles) to be spread around the world, Innis remarks: "The Sierra Leone hand choppers were not using American guns for that, but pangas," which came from China. (Innis is referring, of course, to the rebel army led by Foday Sankoh that chopped off the limbs of thousands of adults and children in Sierra Leone's civil war. This same Foday Sanko was later admitted into a coalition government at the behest of then-President Bill Clinton and his special African envoy, Jesse Jackson.)

Even when it comes to actual guns rather than steel blades and axes, Innis continues, the greatest damage has not been caused by U.S.-produced M16s but by AK-47s, which are sold by such countries as China and Russia.

Speaking on Thursday, before NewsMax revealed that the regular U.S. delegates to the conference from the State Department were moving toward compromise language on the conference's Program of Action, Innis professed a degree of hopefulness about the outcome. "I will confess to you that I did not know the American position was going to be as strong as it was. [Undersecretary of State] John Bolton has raised the bar.

"Bolton's speech was strong; it set a good tone. That set a framework that the other delegates have to deal with, because America is now like Rome at the height of its power.

"I'm optimistic that the extreme document that was first intended will not come out that way. But the NGOs [Non-governmental Organizations that mostly back the radical draft Program of Action] are very well financed; they will raise a moral banner against us. But it's we who should raise the moral banner, which is the right of people to defend themselves.

"I keep getting clear assurances from all members of our delegation that the goal must be to bring the world to our standards, to standards consistent with American law. We are not a bad model to follow."

When I asked him if any legitimate concerns had been raised by the anti-gun majority at the conference, he replied:

"There are problems that must be dealt with, but don't try to solve one problem by creating even worse ones. We don't want bandits to have all these weapons, but we also don't want to take away people's ability to defend themselves from bandits. I'm convinced the Rwanda genocide would not have happened if the Tutsis had had even one or two pistols to fight back with.

"We should ask people who want to do something about the excesses of illegal guns to be careful about curing that disease by creating a greater disease. Recognizing that civilians in Switzerland have guns and are required to have guns proves that you can't say that more guns leads to more crime. Bandits don't like armed civilians. Tyrants don’t like armed civilians."

Innis said that not all the U.N. delegates were ideologues. "Among the delegates from other countries, you have good people. They don't all have an agenda, but they don't understand that if the village chiefs in Sierra Leone had had a few guns, there would be fewer children with missing arms and legs."

I read him the passage from the conference Web site that said populations must be disarmed to keep them from resisting the "blue helmet" U.N. peacekeepers, and he replied:

"They're not analyzing it properly. What is the solution? How do you solve that problem? You don't do it by disarming decent citizens. If you try, you won't be able to disarm the hoodlums, but you will disarm the good citizens. The best thing for the blue helmets would be an enlightened, decent, but armed citizenry who would help them. The only reason these countries need the blue helmets is that the regular citizens are disarmed."

When I said this shows that the U.N. doesn't believe in the ability of societies to govern themselves but instead wants outside bureaucracies to do it for them, Innis observed: "This all comes out of the old socialist thing. A global welfare state is also part of this agenda, and comes from European Union. They lost the Cold War, but they're winning the peace. If you're not careful, you end up sacrificing your freedom for the perception of safety."

Lawrence Auster can be reached at lawrence.auster@att.net.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Guns/Gun Control
United Nations

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