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Possenti Society Blasts Vatican UN Gun Grabbers for 4th of July Insult to American Gun Owners
Earned Media ^ | 6/29/06

Posted on 07/01/2006 1:56:18 PM PDT by Libloather

Possenti Society Blasts Vatican UN Gun Grabbers for 4th of July Insult to American Gun Owners; Urges Church Collection Protests
Contact: John Snyder, 703-212-9863

ARLINGTON, Va., June 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- John Snyder, Founder/Chairman of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, issued the following statement today:

As we approach next week’s 230th commemoration of the signing of our Nation’s Declaration of Independence, we face the reality of three institutional insults to our country’s Fourth of July celebration of freedom.

The first insult comes from a United Nations group meeting in New York, taking place now through July 7, to undermine the traditional, individual Second Amendment civil right of law-abiding American citizens to keep and bear arms.

Although some UN officials deny it, the “UN Conference to Review Progress Made in the Implementation of the Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects” in reality is a direct assault on American sovereignty and on the civil rights of our citizens. Included in the UN Program are proposals for mandatory global gun registration to be implemented and enforced at the international level, international regulations for manufacturing, distributing and retailing of guns and ammunition, and UN devised and sanctioned limitations on the possession and use of small arms, including rifles, shotguns and handguns, and ammunition.

Some American legislators in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have become so concerned with these UN developments that a number of them are sponsoring a Second Amendment Protection Act. The proposal would withhold American funding from the UN if it abridges the rights recognized by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The second insult comes from the Vatican Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, who is working to promote the UN’s anti-gun owner program. Praising “the promotion of disarmament,” he endorsed “the efforts made by the open-ended Working Group to negotiate an international instrument to enable states to identify and trace, in a timely and reliable manner, illicit small arms and light weapons.” The clear objective of these negotiations is to place small arms and light weapons under UN government control.

History has shown that government is the world’s greatest mass murderer, responsible for modern genocide. For example, the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, Soviets and Chinese Communists, were all made possible by first disarming the people. Therefore, we realize how dangerous, if not downright nefarious, these UN negotiations really are.

The third insult, and the one with which we are most directly concerned here, is a collection to be taken up this weekend in Catholic churches throughout the United States to support Vatican activities. And so the Catholic bishops in the United States are asking American Catholics, including millions of Catholic gun owners, to support an entity whose official UN representative works to undermine the rights we Catholics and other American citizens enjoy as recognized by the U.S. Constitution!

And all of this on the Fourth of July!

This is an attack on our right to the means necessary for self-defense, during a period of increasing criminal violence and the ever-present potential threat of terrorist violence. As such, it is an attack on the right to self-defense, on the right to defend life, on the very right to life itself!

We can tell the bishops and the Vatican to keep their hands off our guns!

We can do this by placing into church collection baskets coupons which proclaim, “Millions for charity but not one cent for gun grabbing church bureaucrats!” These coupons may be printed from the website: www.gunsaint.com.

We understand this initiative not as an attack on the Church, but rather as a protest of a terribly misguided secular political initiative undertaken by a Vatican agency and at the very least implicitly supported by equally misguided American bishops.

In fact, members of other denominations who are fed up with gun grabbing secular initiatives undertaken by their clergy may feel free to make use of these coupons as well.

The coupons feature an image of St. Gabriel Possenti flanked by silhouettes of a revolver and a lizard. In 1860, Possenti rescued villagers of Isola, Italy from a gang of terrorizing renegade soldiers with a demonstration of superior handgun marksmanship. His one shot slaying of a lizard so impressed the renegades that he was able to take complete control of a threatening situation and run the terrorists out of town. He died two years later. Pope Benedict XV canonized him in 1920.

The international, interdenominational Society honors Possenti and seeks his official Vatican designation as Patron of Handgunners. We emphasize the historical, philosophical and theological bases for the doctrine of legitimate self-defense.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 4th; american; blasts; church; collection; grabbers; gun; guns; insult; july; nations; owners; possenti; protests; society; un; united; urges; vatican
A Shot in the Dark
The National Rifle Association is enraged by a UN bid to halt the spread of guns
Mark Tran
The Guardian, 27 June 2006

The National Rifle Association, one of America's most vociferous and effective lobby groups, is up in arms, as it were, over a UN initiative to curb the spread of small arms.

Next week, government officials and NGOs will meet in New York for a follow-up conference to a programme of action adopted in 2001. That programme set out a broad set of recommendations to reduce trafficking, proliferation and misuse of guns.

According to the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), although guns kill more people than any other weapons of war, most gun deaths occur in countries or situations that have nothing to do with war.

"Some 200,000 people are shot dead every year in homicides, while a further 50,000 are victims of gun suicides," says Rebecca Peters, the director of IANSA.

The 2001 programme of action laid out several steps for countries to take. The provisions included adequate laws and regulations to prevent the illegal manufacture and trafficking in small arms; a global agreement to ensure that manufacturers mark all weapons for identification and tracing; and the prosecution of illegal gun producers and traffickers.

Progress has been patchy. There is no legally binding instrument for marking and tracing guns, nor is there agreement on how to regulate brokers - intermediaries who arrange or facilitate the transfer of weapons. Brokers often evade prosecution because the weapons they transfer never enter the country where they operate.

Nevertheless, there has been improvement, with stronger gun control laws proposed or passed in countries encompassing Afghanistan (believe it or not), Sierra Leone, Cambodia and the UK.

Excerpted. More - http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7672

1 posted on 07/01/2006 1:56:23 PM PDT by Libloather
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To: Libloather
The Vatican is not trying to take away anybody's guns.

This article is nothing but hysteria.

2 posted on 07/01/2006 2:03:01 PM PDT by sinkspur (Today, we settled all family business.)
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To: Libloather
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Wish the government would just repeal the Second Amendment and confiscate all the guns because you believe sensible people shouldn't suffer because of some idiotic notion about some antiquated “right?”

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3 posted on 07/01/2006 2:20:09 PM PDT by Dick Bachert
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To: sinkspur
You may have missed this part -

The second insult comes from the Vatican Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, who is working to promote the UN’s anti-gun owner program. Praising “the promotion of disarmament,” he endorsed “the efforts made by the open-ended Working Group to negotiate an international instrument to enable states to identify and trace, in a timely and reliable manner, illicit small arms and light weapons.” The clear objective of these negotiations is to place small arms and light weapons under UN government control.

4 posted on 07/01/2006 2:20:48 PM PDT by Libloather (They can't privatize Social Security but they can find a way to give it to illegal aliens...)
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To: Libloather
I didn't miss it. I disagree with the conclusion of the author.

The Vatican is not trying to place guns under the UN, nor is it trying to take away anybody's guns.

5 posted on 07/01/2006 2:23:00 PM PDT by sinkspur (Today, we settled all family business.)
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To: sinkspur

Yeah, any effort to disarm me gets me pretty hysterical all right.

A number of year ago, I attended a speech by one Arkady Shevchenko, then the highest ranking Soviet official to defect to the West. He had been their top guy at the UN.

He spoke, interestingly, at KENNESAW COLLEGE -- and we all know what Kennesaw is famous for!. I’m proud to have played a role in helping Mayor Darvin Purdy get that legislation through a reluctant City Council.

His talk dealt with the clear intent of the leadership of the old Soviet Union to somehow take America. He mentioned their ICBMs and the nuclear blackmail threat THEY posed.

Then he broke from his prepared remarks and offered this: "The leaders of my country are as AFRAID OF YOUR 200 MILLION PRIVATE FIREARMS as they are of your ICBMs. NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUNS."

Frankly -- and, while he had to be careful as he was under FBI protection at the time, Shevchenko alluded to this in his remarks -- I'm as concerned about some domestic tyrant (say, Hillary or Chuck Schumer) as I am about some foreign enemy.


6 posted on 07/01/2006 2:43:41 PM PDT by Dick Bachert
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To: sinkspur

Lets get the US out of the UN and that will make most Americans happy.


7 posted on 07/01/2006 3:34:49 PM PDT by ANGGAPO (LayteGulfBeachClub)
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To: Dick Bachert
...we all know what Kennesaw is famous for!

Kennesaw Mountain Landis?

The map shows Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park as located mostly in Marrietta, GA, not in Kennesaw, but there must have been some fighting in 1864 within the city limits of Kennesaw, since every inch between Chattanooga and Atlanta seems to have been fought over.

Was Kennesaw in Newt's district when he was in Congress?

8 posted on 07/01/2006 3:40:01 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: sinkspur
STATEMENT OF H.E. MONS. RENATO RAFFAELE MARTINO TO THE 56th SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS ON DISARMAMENT

Monday, 15 October 2001

EXERPT

The Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Lights Weapons in All Its Aspects has been attributed various degrees of success and failure. In terms of success, 189 countries were able to agree on a Program of Action that urges governments to enact laws, regulations and administrative procedures to prevent the illicit trafficking in small arms and to make the illegal manufacture, possession, stockpiling and trade of these weapons a criminal offense. It was also decided that a review Conference is to be held no later than 2006 to examine progress in implementing the agreement, thereby ensuring that this would be the first step in what is expected to be a lengthy effort. The Conference has also been commended for placing a spotlight on the issue of small arms and providing an important platform for civil society and concerned governments to press for serious action.

However, the success of the Conference was limited from the beginning since it only set out to discuss the illegal aspects of the small arms trade. This focus has been criticized for ignoring the fact that most illicit weapons originate in the legal export market before being diverted. Moreover, the agreement that was reached is a non-binding voluntary declaration with no enforcement mechanism, thereby raising the question of how seriously it will be taken by its signatories. Unfortunately, the Conference’s final document did not include provisions that would have regulated civilian gun ownership and restricted arms transfers to legitimate States.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/documents/rc_seg-st_doc_20011015_un-disarmament_en.html
9 posted on 07/01/2006 3:40:49 PM PDT by seowulf
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To: Verginius Rufus

Kennesaw is where they passed the first law requiring every household to possess some sort of firearm and ammo.

Crime fell to zip after they did so and remains very, very low -- especially home invasions. Ain't any.

And it was a key part of Larry McDonald's district. (Look him up.)


10 posted on 07/01/2006 4:13:28 PM PDT by Dick Bachert
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To: Dick Bachert
Now that you mention it, I remember the Kennesaw law.

I remember Larry McDonald, the Congressman who was on the plane the Soviets shot down in 1983. I have seen his name on a segment of the interstate in the Atlanta area.

11 posted on 07/01/2006 5:24:23 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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