Trust, but verify a solid policy for anyone

This column is a bit late this time because I had written about what, it turns out, apparently is a rumor and treated it as possible fact. Luckily for me, the Frontiersman staff did some good fact checking and called me to let me know where I had mis-stepped. I appreciate their diligence here and will strive to tell things as they are, at least as best as I can determine things to be.

In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Americans have the right to keep and bear arms in any state or local jurisdiction, in addition to having that same right in a federal jurisdiction, as they ruled last year in another case, concerns have been expressed that the Obama Administration is using a backdoor approach to circumvent the Second Amendment. Recent court rulings and federal laws are supporting the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. I believe that the political left thinks the only folks who should have access to firearms are the police and the military.

The story goes that Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, had signed an international treaty which would, if ratified by the U.S. Senate, ultimately supersede our Constitution and Second Amendment and mandate confiscation of firearms from all American citizens under threat of imprisonment, or worse. I have read about this treaty in various newspaper articles and on reputable websites and ran with the implications as laid out in these various reports.

According to the website snopes.com/politics/guns/untreaty.asp this story line as detailed in the previous paragraph is not true. They cite a story that originally was supplied by the Reuters news service as the beginning of this “scarelore” rumor making the rounds.

Quoting from the www.snopes.com website: “U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not signed, nor has the U.S. Congress ratified, a United Nations small arms treaty. In fact, such a treaty hasn’t even been drafted.” The narrative continues, “The … United Nations arms treaty referenced in the Reuters article…has nothing to do with restricting the sale or ownership of guns within the United States. The aim of a potential U.N. arms treaty is to combat the illicit international trade of small arms by ‘tightening regulation of, and setting international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons’ in order to ‘close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.’ Even if such a treaty came to pass, U.S. rights and laws regarding the sale and ownership of small arms would still apply within the United States.”

The website goes on to say, “The President of the United States cannot enact a ‘complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations.’ The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States, and in the 1957 case Reid v. Covert, the U.S. Supreme Court established that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate. (Furthermore, the U.S. Congress cannot be ‘bypassed’ in any such treaty process, as all treaties must be ratified by a 2/3 vote of the Senate.)”

The website report concludes with this statement: “There is no ‘legal way around the 2nd Amendment’ other than a further amendment to the Constitution that repeals or alters it, or a Supreme Court decision that radically reinterprets how the 2nd Amendment is to be applied.”

I did not know about that 1957 Supreme Court ruling. If that is true, then there is no way any international treaty mandates which are contrary to our Constitution can be imposed and enforced against American citizens, at least within the boundaries of the United States. The unsettling thing here, though, is that a respected news service like Reuters would circulate a report which another respected fact-checking service, i.e., Snopes, would call patently untrue.

This rapidly degenerates into a question of who to believe — a news service with the obligation of reporting the truth but may not have, or a fact-checking service which calls a report false. You will have to decide for yourselves which way you go on this. Me, well I’m leaning toward the Snopes version, but I will be looking into that 1957 Supreme Court case to see if what was said is true. I hope it is, because I’ll sleep a little better knowing my rights under our Constitution are protected by the full weight of American jurisprudence.

On another topic, by the time this column sees print, I will be just another former Alaska Board of Fisheries member. I had hoped for a second term, but, as I was told in the phone call informing me that I would not be renominated, “… the governor has decided to go a different direction.”

I’ve written three previous columns about life from the inside as a board member and some of the things one is expected to deal with.

The final column in the series will detail why I was not renominated and who some of the players were in that decision. I think it is important for you to see a little of the behind the scenes reality verses the public fronts some of these groups and individuals would like you to believe exist. Look for that column in the next few weeks.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.