Buried in Executive Order 14199 signed by President Trump on January 7 is the directive to defund the United States’ participation in the United Nations “Register of Conventional Arms,” one of 66 different initiatives from which the U.S. is withdrawing, but perhaps one of the most significant given the U.N.’s hostile view towards American ownership of firearms.
“I have considered the Secretary of State’s report and, after deliberating with my Cabinet, have determined that it is contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to the organizations listed,” Trump wrote in the Executive Order, adding, “For United Nations entities, withdrawal means ceasing participation in or funding to those entities to the extent permitted by law.”
“The U.S. withdrawal from this program delivers a major blow to UN efforts to impose global gun control schemes on American gun owners. NAGR, backed by committed members like you, has spent years raising the alarm about the UN’s gun-grabbing agenda. The work is paying off, and this marks yet another clear defeat for the UN,” said the National Association for Gun Rights in a post on X.
The United Nations Register of Conventional Arms is quite literally a disarmament program, falling under its Office for Disarmament Affairs, as noted by their site. The Register of Conventional Arms (also known as UNROCA) was established in 1991 via resolution 46/36 L. Through this mechanism, member states agreed to provide annual “voluntary” reporting on seven categories of conventional arms. “The Register plays an important confidence-building role by discouraging excessive and destabilizing accumulation of arms,” states the site.
In 2003, a U.N. working group recommended adding an eighth category of “small arms” to the reporting structure. Today, that list includes “small arms and light weapons,” which the report defines to include (non-exhaustively):
- revolvers
- self-loading pistols
- rifles and carbines
- sub-machine guns
- “assault rifles” and light machine guns
- heavy machine guns
- handheld under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers
- recoilless rifles
If that list looks familiar, it’s because it largely resembles firearms that are legal for Americans to own as enumerated by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, albeit with varying levels of difficulty, permitting, and fees depending on the arm and jurisdiction.
The 2003 report states in no uncertain terms that the goal is universal participation, including the word “universal” 15 times, along with the optimistic statement that “it was appropriate to consider measures that would continue to keep the Register relevant to an increasing number of States, thus supporting the goal of universal participation.”
Today, the United States possesses a disproportionate percentage of global small arms, with some estimates as high as 590 million, or anywhere between 40-46% of the global total. In U.N. terms, that would be considered both “excessive” and “destabilizing.” The United States is also the world’s largest gun exporter, according to Reuters, making the country a natural target of the U.N.’s disarmament program. These are facts celebrated by patriotic Americans who love their civil liberties and distrust government, but loathed by globalist groups who would rather have a singular police state and disarmed populations.
As the U.N. continued to advance its agenda in a typical slow, cancerous progression, it introduced the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in April 2013, noting, “… there was no global set of rules governing the trade in conventional weapons. The ATT sets robust international standards to help guide governments in deciding whether or not to authorize arms transfers.”
The treaty entered force on December 24, 2014. The U.S. (under President Obama) was a signatory to the treaty, but never ratified it, which would have taken an act of Congress via a two-thirds vote.
In 2019, during his first term, President Trump officially confirmed the non-participation of the United States during an NRA convention, stating, “We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.” The United States’ non-participation can be confirmed by visiting the U.N. site for the U.S., which states:
National Coordination Body/Mechanism
A National Coordination Agency has been established.
National Action Plan
No National Action Plan has been established
National targets
No National Targets has been set
Amazingly, there are even “gender considerations” within the U.N. reporting structure: “Disaggregated data are collected on gender and the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons.” It’s not hard to imagine a gender-focused disarmament agenda, although gun ownership in the United States is rapidly evolving to include women as the fastest-growing demographic.
Today, the U.N. agenda continues, with the UNROCA site celebrating the achievement that “Over the past two decades, UNROCA seems to have captured over 90% of the global arms trade.” And, if Democrats were in power, the U.N. would likely find willing allies in forcing adoption by the United States.
Democrat support for the ATT was strong in 2013. Prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand have served as the domestic cheerleaders of anti-gun measures. They have for years called for the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a 2005 law that protects gun manufacturers and dealers from being held liable for crimes committed with their products. This publication has reported extensively on how blue states have attacked the very same legal protections and firearms manufacturers at the same time. As recently as 2024, Democrats attacked the firearms industry, claiming there was a “humanitarian crisis” of illegal weapons flowing out of the country via straw purchases.
The Trump decision to completely defund the U.S. participation in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms is not only welcome and long past due, but necessary to protect U.S. sovereignty and the unique civil liberties of its citizens.
