treaty

‘They Can’t Find One Single Crime That’s Been Solved’

April 29, 2019 by GregC

Listen to “‘They Can’t Find One Single Crime That’s Been Solved'” on Spreaker.

President Trump is taking heat from political adversaries and international activists for withdrawing the United States from the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, but one of the nation’s leading crime researchers says the tactics used in the treaty have never been used to solve any crime.

The Obama administration signed onto the Arms Trade Treaty shortly before Trump took office. It would require widespread firearm registration and licensing within signatory nations. The goal is to be able to track guns and prevent them from winding up in the hands of terrorists, gangs, cartels, and other nefarious elements.

Crime Prevention Research Center President Dr. John Lott says the premise seems to make sense: if you can find the gun used to commit a crime, you can find the person responsible. However, Lott says most guns aren’t left at the crime scene, those that are are not registered, and killers do not use guns registered in their own names.

In addition to concerns about second amendment rights, Lott says there’s literally no evidence the UN approach works.

“When you look at Hawaii or Chicago or Washington, D.C. or other countries such as Canada, people have gone back and looked at the data. They can’t find one single crime that’s been solved as a result of registration and licensing,” said Lott.

In Honolulu, for example, Lott says police logged 50,000 working hours filling out paperwork for gun licensing and registration. Not only has it not solved crimes, he says it’s taking valuable time away from police work that does yield results.

“Maybe if you’d solved thousands of crimes, or at least hundreds of crimes, or at least a dozen crimes, or at least any crime, then there might be some discussion about the trade-offs that were there. Obviously, 50,000 hours of police time could have been used in traditional policing that we know works, we know solves crime,” said Lott.

Listen to the full podcast as Dr. Lott explains how the UN Arms Trade Treaty could also handcuff U.S. foreign policy and how fierce the debate over the second amendment will be in the 2020 campaign.

Is Trump Second-Guessing Decision to Ditch Climate Deal?

September 19, 2017 by GregC

Key White House officials are denying any change in President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, but supporters of Trump’s position are increasingly concerned by the growing number of treaty supporters in the president’s inner circle and by he unwillingness to kill the treaty once and for all.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal quoted European Union’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete as suggesting Trump may be mulling a change in policy.

“The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,” said Canete, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration immediately sought to pour cold water on the report.

“Our position on the Paris agreement has not changed. @POTUS has been clear, US withdrawing unless we get pro-America terms,” tweeted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

On Fox News Sunday, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called the speculation a “false report.”

“The president decided to pull out of the Paris accord because it was a bad deal for the American people and a bad deal for the environment,” said McMaster.

Trump’s top economic adviser also joined the chorus.

“Per the White House statement on Saturday and consistent with the president’s announcement in June, we are withdrawing from the Paris Agreement unless we can re-engage on terms more favorable to the United States,” said Cohn.

But that statement actually raises more questions than it answers for those concerned about Trump sticking with his decision to withdraw from the treaty.

“The position itself is inherently ambiguous. What President Trump announced June 1 in the Rose Garden was that he was going to withdraw in November 2019, taking effect the year after that, unless he found better terms. They have yet to define what those better terms are,” said Christopher C. Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who served on Trump’s transition landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Horner says the debate within the White House before Trump’s announcement in June was a battle royale and he says it still hasn’t stopped.

“The struggle that led up to the June 1 announcement and was particularly acute in May among administration staff, not just Obama administration holdovers and not just career resistance types at the State Department, but some Trump appointees at the White House in the National Security Council and elsewhere, who are fighting to reverse this,” said Horner.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has consistently advocated for staying in the treaty. On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Tillerson said remaining in the deal is still possible.

“The president said he is open to finding those conditions where we can remain engaged with others on what we all agree is still a challenging issue,” Tillerson said.

Horner says Tillerson’s position is not surprising because the State Department bureaucrats are licking their chops to implement this agreement.

“This is the biggest boon for the State Department, possibly ever. You’re talking about the creation of an enormous climate diplomatic corps,” said Horner. “They think, oddly enough, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul thinks it’s a great idea.”

“The politicos they’ve brought on board are not the ones you’d want if you wanted to keep the president’s promise,” said Horner.

Horner says the issue is simple. On Trump’s present course, the debate could rage for another two years.

“The struggle continues. Until President Trump sends that letter on November 5, 2019, this fight goes on,” said Horner.

Trump’s decision to exit the treaty via letter in 2019 is what aggravates Horner most, pushing fiercely for Trump to declare the agreement a treaty and force the Senate to vote on and likely kill the agreement.

He says by taking unilateral executive action, Trump’s decision is only good for the remainder of his presidency.

“If he wants a durable withdrawal, meaning something that President Warren cannot turn the key on on January 20, 2021, you’re going to have to have the Senate vote,” said Horner.

Horner sees multiple options by which Trump can bring an end to the issue, whether by submitting the treaty to the Senate now or renegotiating the plan and then submitting the amended plan for a vote that would still likely fail, since ratification requires two-thirds of senators to approve.

But Horner says one reason Trump may not be taking that action is because the Senate doesn’t want to touch it.

“So far the Senate has not stirred. In fact, to my understanding, the Senate told President Trump they don’t want him to involve them,” said Horner.

The treaty is non-binding, leaving many to wonder why Horner and others are wringing their hands over a possible Trump reversal or his allowing his successor to rejoin the agreement. Horner points out the deal tightens the screws on emissions every five years, so the longer we’re attached to the deal the more pressure we’ll be under to comply.

Already, he says the Germans are desperately trying to keep the U.S. in the fold.

“We have obtained records from the State Department, a cable, saying the Germans are worried that if the rest of the world doesn’t do this to themselves too they will lose billions,” said Horner.

“In other words, ‘It’s not fair that we did this to ourselves. You’re mean if you don’t do it to yourself too,'” said Horner.

Horner also explained that the real strategy is for the climate change movement to enforce the plan – both at home and abroad – is to use the courts to their advantage.

“The United Nations, just before the president made his announcement, issued a report about how activists could use the Paris treaty to really put the screws to signatories who are claiming it’s not binding,” said Horner.

“The pointed to a decision out of the Hague that’s fairly recent, in which the court said, ‘I know you’ve got your agreement and you’ve got your number here and you’ve also got decades of saying I’m so awful. I’m so responsible, I’m so obligated,'” said Horner.

Horner says the court at the Hague assigned an even more aggressive plan for reducing carbon emissions and liberal activists in the U.S. are already trying to get federal judges in the Ninth Circuit to enforce the treaty and make the terms even more burdensome.

“So you can say non-binding, but the people behind this know what they’re up to and they know who occupies our judicial benches here,” said Horner.

Not only does Horner warn that failing to get the Senate to vote on the treaty allows the next president to reverse Trump’s decision, but he says keeping the Senate out of the fray will permanently damage the separation of powers.

“This is simply a beginning point for the courts. That’s a key reason why it’s so dangerous. The other is, of course, that you have outsourced policy making to this body instead of to our Senate as our Constitution dictates. You’ve gutted the treaty power, probably forever, if you just shrug at this usurpation of the Senate’s treaty role,” said Horner.

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‘Swamp’ Aligns Against Trump on Climate Treaty

May 19, 2017 by GregC

President Trump is running out of time to make good on his promise to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate policy obligations, and the delay is largely due to many different interests imploring him to back away from his campaign pledges.

As Trump embarks on an ambitious eight-day trip to the Middle East and Europe, the pressure is only growing on him to keep the U.S. committed to the Paris deal. However, Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner, who served on Trump’s transition landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency, says all Trump needs to do is make good on his word.

“We have to go back to the campaign and remember that a decision was made and it was to get out,” said Horner. “He gave reasons why. He said this would give others control over our energy use, how much we could use the things that are reliable and affordable, as well as the massive wealth transfer. He made the decision.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute released an advertisement last month urging Trump to stay true to those campaign promises.

What has changed? Horner says a lot of different interests are pushing him to accept the status quo.

“The brakes were put on it because different influences came into play. There were what I’ll call swamp considerations, which were not obviously considerations in the campaign. In fact, he ran against the swamp. Once he got here, those interests are considerable,” said Horner.

Horner says there is a long list of people and interests looking pressuring Trump to keep the U.S. in the agreement.

“(There are) tremendous business lobbies, tremendous resistance among (the government) holdovers. I could tell you blow by blow about a lot of these officials as well as some Trump appointees. But as you also know, some family members are feeling and exerting what we’ll call Manhattan social pressures to not have to defend keeping this promise,” said Horner.

Some businesses and industries are at the forefront of protesting climate-inspired restrictions, but Horner says much of big business is on board with the climate agenda for multiple reasons. He says a lot of big companies are eager for the federal subsidies that come with compliance with the Paris accords.

“The reason is simple. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you’re guaranteed Paul’s enthusiastic support and sometimes it was Paul’s idea. So you’ve got this base of industry support, the ones who would benefit,” said Horner.

He says those same businesses also see more restrictive policies as an advantage against the competition.

“They love instituting policies that are barriers to entry to new participants or that smaller competitors can’t handle as well. Some businesses were publicly saying in news reports that, ‘We’ve planned for this so we need this to happen,'” said Horner.

Even among Trump’s top diplomats, there is deep division on the issue.

“The UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is reportedly very strong on this, even though, as I’ve said before, State will do what’s in the State Department’s interest and (withdrawing from the accords) makes Rex Tillerson’s life more difficult and not easier,” said Horner.

Horner also expects Trump’s time in Europe to be one long lobbying effort to keep the U.S. in the agreement.

“The Group of Seven, the leading economic nations who want – as a State Department cable that I found in litigation shows – they want us to share the pain, to relieve the burden of our competition of not having this agenda saddle our economy,” said Horner.

Published reports suggest multiple deadlines to make a decision on U.S. involvement in the accords have come and gone. He says that’s largely because Trump is trying to resist the tide aligned against his instincts.

“We’ve got it on pretty good authority what the president still thinks. He wants out and wonders aloud why he can’t just keep his promise. He’s surrounded by influencers saying, ‘You can’t do it for the following reasons.’ But some people are saying, ‘You have to (withdraw) for these reasons, the same reasons you said you would,” said Horner.

If Trump relents, Horner says President Obama’s promise that our electricity rates will “necessarily skyrocket” will come true and the cost of everything related to energy costs will also shoot up.

“The price will go up, leaving you with less disposable income and a less resilient lifestyle, less healthy because you’re less wealthy. There’ll be more hypothermia, more of seniors and the vulnerable dying from energy poverty. That’s what it’s going to mean for you,” said Horner.

Horner fears that if Trump was going to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement, he would have done so already. However, he is not giving up hope given Trump’s adamant campaign promises.

If Trump doesn’t make good on that vow, Horner says it will be a strong example of how difficult it is to reverse the tides in Washington.

“It means the swamp isn’t as easily defeated as a lot of people hoped,” said Horner. “This is really, so far, the ultimate test of his battle against the swamp.”

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‘A Tremendous Victory for America’s Gun Owners’

April 11, 2017 by GregC

Former National Rifle Association President David Keene says the second amendment dodged a major bullet when the vacant seat on the Supreme Court was filled by Neil Gorsuch, but he warns the threat to gun ownership is far from over.

Keene gives credit to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for refusing to advance President Obama’s choice of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court and for doing what was necessary to get Gorsuch confirmed.

“If Garland had won confirmation, that would have reversed the majority favoring the second amendment as defined by the founders and as ratified by the Supreme Court in the Heller decision some years ago as an individual right to keep and bear arms,” said Keene.

“Preventing the Garland confirmation and replacing Antonin Scalia with Justice Gorsuch is a tremendous victory for America’s gun owners, for believers in freedom and for the second amendment,” said Keene.

Keene, who is now opinion editor at The Washington Times and co-author of “Shall Not be Infringed,” firmly believes that the gun issue and the Supreme Court vacancy was a big reason for President Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton and for winning over voters in swing states who had supported Democrats in the past.

But Keene is quick to warn second amendment supporters that the fight is not over.

“It does not mean that gun owners can be comfortable in terms of what might happen during the course of the next year or so at the Supreme Court level because it simply re-establishes the majority that existed with Scalia on the court, a very shaky majority,” said Keene.

Another major threat, he says, comes from Obama’s handiwork in signing on to the United Nations Small Arms Treaty. Even without Senate ratification, Keene says the agreement puts pressure on the U.S. to violate its own Constitution.

“Even if it’s not ratified, under international law, a nation is supposedly prohibited from acting contrary to the spirit and letter of a treaty, even though it has not been ratified through processes within the country itself,” said Keene.

The U.S. can ignore the treaty, but Keene is urging decisive action against it.

“It really needs to be killed. There are two ways to do that. One, the President of the United States has the authority to withdraw this nation’s signature from the treaty. I hope that President Trump will consider doing that. The other way to handle it is for the Senate to bring it up and put a stake through it’s heart,” said Keene.

Keene says the treaty is just an international version of the gun restrictions that many Democrats want to impose here in the U.S.

“They want bans on so-called assault weapons that are in fact semi-automatic weapons rather than real assault weapons. They want limits on magazines. They want all the things that Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wanted here,” said Keene.

Despite the wind being at the back of gun rights advocates, Keene says his side must realize that gun control supporters are never going to to give up.

“They actually believe that if they snap their fingers and if firearms would disappear, there’d no longer be burglaries. There’d no longer be robberies. We’d all live in peace and I assume unicorns would dance across the horizon. It’s almost a religious fervor with which they go after firearms ownership,” said Keene.

And Keene says pro-second amendment Americans must be equally relentless in protecting their constitutional rights.

“Like most freedoms, this is a freedom that if you don’t stand up for it and if you aren’t wiling to defend it and if you’re not vigilant, it’s liable to disappear on you,” said Keene.

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Trump and the the EPA

March 17, 2017 by GregC

A leading critic of the Environmental Protection Agency who served on President Trump’s transition team is very encouraged by the administration approach to the agency in policy and budget, but he says Trump must make good on his promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement.

Trump’s proposed budget made headlines this week, as it called for big cuts in many departments of the federal government. The blueprint calls for a 31 percent reduction in spending at the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Trump plans to spend no more money on climate change projects.

“We’re not spending any more money on that,” said Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”

Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner served on Trump’s “landing team” at EPA. He is very encouraged by Trump’s fiscal approach to the EPA.

“It’s a complete departure from anything you might expect from any administration, which is usually, ‘We will just slow the rate of growth,’ no matter what they think if something. That’s sort of the worst thing they would ever consider doing,” said Horner.

He says Trump has no patience for EPA climate change policies that even Obama-era administrator Gina McCarthy admitted were more symbolic than substantive.

“He’s throwing this out the window, saying, ‘We’re trillions in debt. Symbolism is the first thing to go. This is a waste of your money.’ So I think that’s fantastic,” said Horner.

Horner says the trimming will allow the EPA do the job it’s supposed to do rather than burdening Americans with bureaucratic rules.

“They have statutory mandates. They have statutory deadlines. They’ve never met one they liked, but they go off on these very expensive, very harmful hobbies and ideological ax-grinding,” said Horner.

“What they’re saying is, ‘You seem to have an awful lot of time and other people’s money to do that. Why don’t you stick to your knitting and focus on actual environmental problems and actual environmental mandates from Congress,'” said Horner.

Horner says it’s not hard to find places to cut at EPA.

“This is an agency that has grown essentially from an executive order to, over time, consuming major parts of the economy, and tax revenues, and our debt. The expansion from the statutory mission is breathtaking,” said Horner.

Horner also says his experiences at EPA while serving on the landing team left him underwhelmed.

“The insistence by people, including those you might imagine, can’t even tell you how many people work there. But they need more money to do their job because the agency is so big. Yet, if you ask them, for example, ‘What is your role in the federal-state partnership, they will tell you it is ‘partnering.’ OK, well that’s a big flag that maybe this is a good place to save some money,” said Horner.

But while Horner is very pleased with the actions Trump is taking thus far at the EPA, he is pleading with the president to formally withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement signed by the Obama administration in its final months.

He says the consequences of not backing out soon will be very real.

“You’re going to see the pain of the sort that was pointed out in the presidential campaign of these policies but worse and worse every year with more and more promises to make it worse every five years,” said Horner.

While the tenets are effectively voluntary, Horner says every five years there will be immense international pressure and public shaming for the U.S. to keep lowering emissions levels and meeting other targets to keep up with the terms of the treaty, which Obama refused to call a treaty so as to dodge rejection of the deal in the U.S. Senate.

But because Obama took that strategic approach, Horner says Trump can exit the deal just as easily.

“For months before the terms were agreed, [the Obama administration] said, ‘I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you it’s not a treaty.’ In other words, whatever happens, we’re going to say it’s not a treaty. That is a ‘what are you going to do about it approach.’ If you live by the ‘what are you going to do about it’ approach, then it can also die by it. President Trump promised to cancel the Paris climate treaty,” said Horner.

Horner says the only argument being made against withdrawing is the international blowback that would come for the U.S. But he says the whole point of the treaty is to shame the U.S. for any reluctance to restrict emissions, so staying in the agreement would only make the criticism more intense.

However, despite Trump’s campaign promises, Horner suspects Trump won’t pull out of the agreement.

“I’m encouraged that the issue seems to be open again because I think the wrong answer was reached. So we have time, but I have to tell you I’m not very confident because people very close to the president are pushing for him to break this campaign promise,” said Horner.

He says time is of the essence.

“If President Trump doesn’t get out of this within the next two months, probably six weeks and certainly by the July G-20 meeting in Hamburg, July 7-8, then we’re probably in this forever,” said Horner.

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