A Dec. 7 WorldNetDaily article by Leo Hohmann takes WND’s usual one-side-only approach, quoting only opponents of a United Nations small arms treaty. In this case, Hohmann is serving as a form for the rantings of Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation:
The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty requires nations to keep records tracking every transaction involving firearms.
“The only way to do that is to set up a national database, and that is what the U.N. wants every country to set up and maintain. We know that’s been one of the objectives of this administration from Day 1 anyway, so under the color of the U.N., that’s what they’re going to try to do,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb is distorting the treaty. As PolitiFact details, the treaty impacts only arms trade between countries, not within them, stating that the claim made by Gottlieb and accepted by Hohmann as fact “takes a treaty intended to curtail illicit weapons trade between countries and describes it as a step toward confiscating gun owners’ property”:
The treaty emphasizes that the U.N. is leaving regulation of the arms trade within a country entirely up to that country. The preamble says the parties to the treaty reaffirm “the sovereign right of any state” to regulate arms in its own territory “pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” It also says the parties are “mindful of legitimate trade and lawful ownership.”
But because Hohmann is simply serving as Gottlieb’s stenographer instead of an actual reporter, he lets Gottlieb’s false claims stand and makes no effort to fact-check them.