We strongly encourage your administration not only to uphold our country’s constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership, but to ensure — if necessary, by breaking consensus at the July conference — that the treaty will explicitly recognize the legitimacy of lawful activities associated with firearms, including but not limited to the right of self-defense. As members of the United States Senate, we will oppose the ratification of any Arms Trade Treaty that falls short of this standard.
We want any treaty to make it more difficult and expensive to conduct illicit, illegal and destabilizing transfers of arms. But we do not want something that would make legitimate international arms trade more cumbersome than the hurdles United States exporters already face.