FIRST REGULAR SESSION
House Concurrent Resolution No. 8
97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES PARKINSON (Sponsor), KELLEY (127), SOMMER, SMITH (120), BRATTIN, SOLON, LAIR, CURTMAN, LICHTENEGGER, FRANKLIN, HIGDON, CONWAY (104), GUERNSEY, BURLISON, FITZWATER, RIDDLE, MCCAHERTY, GATSCHENBERGER AND DIEHL (Co-sponsors).
AN ACT
Relating to the Obama Administration’s proposal that the Senate of the United States consider adoption of a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:
WHEREAS, the “First Law of Nature” has long been held to be the natural and fundamental right of all persons to “self preservation”, “self-defense”, and a “right of revolution” against any and all dangers to life, liberty, and property; and
WHEREAS, this first law of nature is ensconced in both a collective and an individual right to keep and bear arms, a right that has been recognized in English law since the adoption of the English Bill of Rights of 1689; and
WHEREAS, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America codified that individual and collective right by adoption and ratification of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; andWHEREAS, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”; and
WHEREAS, such codification of the individual right to keep and bear arms is derivative of the natural right and not the creation of a new right, a fact which has been recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States; and
WHEREAS, the existence and recognition of such an individual right is necessary to resist invasion, dissuade a tyrannical government, and to empower citizens in maintaining the natural right of self-defense, and is as essential as the collective right; and
WHEREAS, our nation’s Founding Fathers expressed a deep belief in the individual right to keep and bear arms, expressed by Patrick Henry in Virginia’s constitutional ratification convention on June 5, 1788, with the words: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. . . .”; and
WHEREAS, the individual right to keep and bear arms has been upheld by court opinions over the 225 years since the original thirteen states ratified the Constitution of the United States, most recently in District of Columbia v. Heller and in McDonald v. Chicago; and
WHEREAS, the state of Missouri further codifies the individual right to keep and bear arms in the Missouri Constitution’s Bill of Rights, wherein Article I, Section 23 states, “That the right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or when lawfully summoned in aid of the civil power, shall not be questioned. . . .”; and
WHEREAS, the United States Mission to the United Nations voted in November 2012 to move the Draft Paper for the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (hereinafter the “Treaty”) out of the General Disarmament Committee to the full body of the United Nations for a vote on finalization of the Treaty in March 2013; and
WHEREAS, the current form of the Treaty covers both traditional military munitions as well as “small arms and light weapons” and does not distinguish between arms such as rockets from vastly and distinctly different arms such as handguns, rifles, or shotguns; and
WHEREAS, the Treaty would allow for an expansion of federal firearms controls on the transportation of arms across national territory, require maintaining records of all arms within the territory of a country which would include the identity of individual users, and create an obligation that would require the United States to take measures that would infringe on the individual right to keep and bear arms; and
WHEREAS, passages of the Treaty as currently drafted are written so broadly as to not only possibly impair or render our military unable to assert the national right of self-defense against other nations, but to also subject citizens of the United States to violation of international laws within the borders of the United States; and
WHEREAS, ratification of the Treaty would erroneously encourage politicians and courts to view the treaty power as a separate source of federal authority for the regulation of purely intrastate matters expressly delegated to the states, including the criminal law of self-defense and the individual right to keep and bear arms; and
WHEREAS, the harmful potential of the Treaty led a bipartisan coalition of fifty-one United States Senators, including The Honorable Roy Blunt of our great state of Missouri, to express the strongest expression of concern and opposition on the potentially devastating consequences of the Treaty to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a letter dated July 26, 2012; and
WHEREAS, the adoption of the Treaty, or any document with as broad a scope as the Treaty as to imperil the individual and collective right to keep and bear arms, would constitute an absolute abandonment of the oath of office upon which every federal elected official, federal civilian employee, and military servicemember swears to upon entering office, namely the oath to either “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” or to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the Missouri House of Representatives, Ninety-seventh General Assembly, First Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby expresses its opposition to the current form of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, as well as to any treaty that infringes on the individual or collective right to keep and bear arms, in the strongest and most unequivocal terms; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Missouri House of Representatives and the Missouri Senate, as duly elected representatives of the will of the people of Missouri, strongly urge the President of the United States, the United States Secretary of State, the Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, and all members of the United States Senate to soundly reject the current form of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty or any other treaty which would endanger the individual or collective right to keep and bear arms; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution shall serve as notice to the federal government that the State of Missouri hereby claims, for its citizenry, the natural right and the codified right for both the state militia and the individual citizens of Missouri to keep and bear arms, in compliance with the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and the Missouri Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and will take all measures against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to preserve this right in accordance with the Constitutions of both the United States and of the State of Missouri; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chief Clerk of the Missouri House of Representatives be instructed to prepare a properly inscribed copy of this resolution for the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the United States Secretary of State, the Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, each member of the United States Senate, the Governor of each state, the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate of each state’s legislature, and each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation.
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