Fact check: False claim that US is signing treaty to establish international gun registry

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·5 min read
12

The claim: US set to ratify treaty that will establish an international gun registry

A viral Facebook post claims President Joe Biden recently decided to add the U.S. as a signatory to a United Nations treaty that seeks to establish an international gun registry.

"Joe Biden has just announced that he is adding America as a signatory to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, setting the stage for a full ratification vote in the U.S. Senate," reads part of the Aug. 29 post.

The post goes on to claim the treaty "would establish an international gun control registry, allowing Communist China, European socialists, and 3rd World dictators to track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world."

The post was shared more than 8,000 times in two months.

But the claim is false. The U.S. is not set to join any such treaty, according to a State Department spokesperson. Experts said the Arms Trade Treaty, which appears to be the treaty referenced in the post, would not establish an international gun registry.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment.

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US is not part of treaty, according to State Department

There are no announcements about the U.S. joining an international weapons treaty on the White House's website, and USA TODAY found no evidence that any such "U.N. Small Arms Treaty" exists.

The post appears to be referring to the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in April 2013 and enacted in December 2014. The treaty seeks to regulate the international trade of conventional weapons, according to the U.N. website.

"There is no U.N. Treaty on Small Arms," said a State Department spokesperson in an email to USA TODAY. "The Arms Trade Treaty, which was negotiated at the UN and entered into force in 2014, does include small arms and light weapons, but it also includes heavier weapons such as tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles and missile launchers."

Former Secretary of State John Kerry signed the treaty on behalf of the Obama administration in 2013, but the Senate never ratified it. In 2019, President Donald Trump sent a notice withdrawing the U.S. from the treaty. The notice stated that the U.S. has no obligation to adhere to the treaty's stipulations.

The State Department spokesperson said the Biden administration is "continuing to work on finalizing an updated Conventional Arms Transfer Policy for the United States" and that once this policy is finalized, "the United States intends to turn to other arms transfer issues, including the determining the proper relationship of the United States to the (Arms Trade Treaty)."

Treaty tracks arms deals between nations, not people

In any case, the arms treaty doesn't create an international weapons registry.

Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty file reports of international weapons sales that can be accessed by participating governments. However, the annual reports only include information such as the number and kinds of arms shipped and which nations sent and received them, not which individuals possess them, according to Rachel Stohl, vice president and director of the Conventional Defense Program at the Stimson Center, an international security think tank.

The information provided by parties to the treaty can be a little more detailed than what nations already submitted to the U.N.'s Register of Conventional Arms, a voluntary reporting process that started in 1993 with similar goals, Stohl said. Both reporting processes track what are broadly defined as conventional weapons, such as handguns, rocket launchers, fighter jets and tanks.

The Arms Trade Treaty contains language formally recognizing the "sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system." Stohl, who helped draft the treaty as a consultant to the U.N., said that language was specifically included as a nod to the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“That line was included for the U.S.,” she said.

Creating a federal gun registry has been prohibited in the U.S. since the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act was signed into law in 1986.

The claim has also been debunked by The Associated Press and PolitiFact.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the U.S. is set to ratify a treaty that will establish an international gun registry. The U.S. is not set to ratify any such treaty, according to the State Department. The treaty referenced in the post tracks the cross-border sales of conventional weapons between nations; it doesn't detail which specific people end up with weapons.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: False claim that US is joining international gun registry