Why Does the N.R.A. Oppose the Global Arms Trade Treaty?

LONDON - In the immediate aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre, a shocked world is looking once more at gun violence in the United States and wanting to know why Americans don't change their gun ownership laws. Some global supporters of gun control, in particular, say the Connecticut shootings underline the urgent need to implement a proposed treaty curbing the international trade in small arms, in part to prevent such tragedies.

The latest mass killing in the United States highlights the need for an Arms Trade Treaty, Renee Ponce Figueroa, a Venezuelan human rights lawyer, tweeted:

Camilo Louis in New York expressed the hope that United Nations member states would adopt robust measures when they gather in that city next March with the aim of finalizing the treaty:

And Alaphia Zoyab, a U.K.-based activist with the Avaaz social activism organization, regretted that:

However, linking the proposed A.T.T. to the issue of gun violence in the Uni ted States may be a case of wishful thinking on the part of gun-control advocates.

Even proponents of the treaty acknowledge it is not aimed at the domestic U.S. weapons trade.

The U.S. gun lobby, however, does not agree. The National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) and other groups have campaigned vigorously against the proposed A.T.T. Some gun-rights advocates have claimed the treaty would allow a hostile U.S. administration to make an end-run round the Second Amendment.

Opposition to the U.N. treaty extended to the Senate last summer where 51 members warned the Obama administration they would block ratification of an Arms Trade Treaty that in any way restricted the rights of law-abiding American gun owners.

Proponents of arms control say pres sure from the gun lobby, and President Obama's reluctance to push gun control ahead of the November presidential election, scuppered plans to have the treaty adopted at U.N. negotiations last July.

“The primary responsibility for the failure to adopt a treaty at the end of the conference in July lay with the United States,” Martin Butcher of the Oxfam charity told a British parliamentary committee this month.

“It was undoubtedly difficult, given the politics of an election year - and in some ways particularly poisonous politics this year - for the Administration to agree to something that the N.R.A. was trumpeting was all about Hillary Clinton going to the United Nations to take away people's guns, when the treaty has nothing to do with that. ”

Mr. Butcher and others in the international arms control lobby are confident the situation will change in a second Obama term after the U.S. last month joined 156 other states in voting to finalize the A.T.T. next March.

The treaty's backers say it will stem the flow of arms to abusive regimes and warlords in conflict zones and reduce the level of violence in a world where one person dies every minute as a result of armed violence.

Whether it could protect U.S. citizens against random acts of violence is another matter, even if it were intended to. Any treaty would have to be ratified by the Senate and no treaty that is judged to violate the Constitution may be adopted.

Given these realities, why is the gun lobby making so much effort to resist the A.T.T.?

Some American commentators and gun-control advocates have asserted tha t gun lobbyists get much of their funding from gun manufacturers who could stand to lose from an international arms control deal.

The U.N. treaty might not dent U.S. manufacturers' domestic market, but it would potentially impact exports that by one estimate were worth $336.5 million last year, making the U.S. the world leader.

“Is the N.R.A. working for casual gun-owners, many of whom, according to polling, support tougher restrictions on gun ownership,” Lee Fang asked in The Nation this week. “Or is the NRA serving the gunmaker lobby, which is purely interested in policies that will promote greater gun sales and more profits? Any gun control policy debate should be gin with this question.”

An Online Plea to China\'s Leader to Save Tibet\'s Culture

BEIJING - Nearly 90 scholars of Tibet at universities and institutes around the world, from Melbourne to Warsaw to Vancouver, have issued a plea to Xi Jinping, China's new Communist Party leader, to reverse state language policies and practices that “jeopardize the continuing viability” of Tibetan civilization, something many experts say is stoking resentment of Chinese rule in Tibet.

The scholars have launched an online petition, against a backdrop of rising self-immolations by Tibetans - nearly 100 since February 2009, as my colleague Andrew Jacobs reports.

Titled: “An Appeal to Vice-President Xi Jinping from the International Tibetan Studies Community,” the petition doesn't focus on the self-immolatio ns, though it does note the “tragic events” taking place.

Instead, the scholars, noting that they are all specialists of the Tibetan language, culture and religion who hold formal academic positions, focus on language policies which they say threaten Tibetan culture.

“Over the last several years, the authorities have been trying to institute new measures that eliminate or severely restrict the use of Tibetan as the language of instruction in Tibetan-speaking areas,” they wrote.

“We know the value of Tibet's civilization and we regret that the Tibetan language, which is its fundamental support, is seemingly marginalized and devalued in the TAR,” or the Tibet Autonomous Region, as Tibet is known in China, “and in various other Tibetan autonomous administrative units at the same time that it is increasingly being taught and studied in universities around the world.”

Examples in the petition include: replacing Tibetan with Chinese as the m edium of education in Qinghai province in 2010; and replacing textbooks written in Tibetan with Chinese textbooks in Rebkong, or Tongren county, also in Qinghai province, in March 2012.

The policy “has already been active in the Tibet Autonomous Region for several years and has led to well-known results: students destined for senior positions in the public or private sectors now have only a superficial knowledge of their own language and civilization,” said the scholars.

China says it supports a “bilingual” education policy in Tibet and surrounding Tibetan counties in Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces, and that it has done much to educate and develop Tibetans and their society.

This official Chinese site provides more on the Chinese state's view of Tibet.

The site also offers details of a recent program, “National Territory Consciousness Education in School, Community and Media,” which was apparently l aunched in December with a goal to “further improve the awareness of identity among primary and middle school students and consciously maintain their consciousness of national territory.”

According to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a rights group set up by Tibetan exiles in India, “patriotic education” programs, of which this is one, are stirring anger in Tibet.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the issues the scholars describe are widespread.

Tashi, a Tibetan from Qinghai province who lives in Beijing, who asked to be identified only by one name for fear of reprisals, said getting a driver's license in his home county had become difficult in recent years as the written part of the test was only available in Chinese. Many ordinary Tibetans cannot read or write Chinese well.

Tashi added this did not appear to be official policy but a local problem. Frustrated, people bribe the local authorities for a license instead, he said.

The scholars appealed to Mr. Xi to give Tibetans greater language and cultural rights, as guaranteed in the Chinese constitution.

Today, “at the time when new leadership is taking control of the country, we address you collectively with the hope that you will be sympathetic to the aspirations of Tibetan citizens of China; that you will work with them to find peaceful solutions to this crisis that will allow for the promotion and development of Tibet's language and culture,” they wrote.

IHT Quick Read: Dec. 15

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European Union leaders pledged on Friday to take further steps to set up common banking rules for the bloc, but they delayed plans for a shared budget for the euro zone nations as pressure appeared to be easing on the single currency. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

The lesson of Japan's last major election, which ousted the long-dom inant Liberal Democrats, was that a growing hunger for change had seemed to reach a threshold. But voters look ready to return that party to power Sunday, determined to punish the governing Democratic Party for failing to rein in bureaucracies and mishandling the 2011 nuclear crisis. Martin Fackler reports from Kanazawa, Japan.

At the global treaty conference on telecommunications in Dubai, the United States got most of what it wanted. But then it refused to sign the document and left in a huff. What was that all about, and what does it say about the future of the Internet? Eric Pfanner reports from Dubai.

The U.S. defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, signed a deployment order on Friday to send 400 American military personnel and two Patriot air defense batteries to Turkey as its tensions intensify with neighboring Syria. Germany and the Netherlands will also send Patriot batteries. Thom Shanker and Michael R. Gordon report.

Xi Jinping, the new Communist Party chief and civilian commander of the Chinese military, is moving quickly to make strengthening the country's armed forces a centerpiece of what he calls the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation. Edward Wong reports from Guangzhou.

Nearly a decade after the German government embarrassingly failed in an attempt to ban the country's leading extreme-right political party, the upper house of Parliament on Friday voted to launch a new effort to have the National De mocratic Party deemed unconstitutional. Melissa Eddy reports from Berlin.

SPORTS It's tough to find a place where this Olympic year didn't leave a trace, from hermetic Saudi Arabia to tiny Grenada. But for Britain, 2012 was a true annus mirabilis, and the London Games were not the only force behind it. Christopher Clarey looks back.

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