Rand Paul Email Touts False Gun Conspiracy

ThinkProgress has the story:

In an email to supporters, Paul warned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the “global gun-grabbers” are out to “strip you and me of ALL our freedoms” by signing a treaty designed by the “petty dictators and one-world socialists who control the UN” to “CONFISCATE and DESTROY” all civilian firearms across the world. With his trusty sidekick the National Association For Gun Rights and a financial contribution from his base, Paul can “lead the fight to defeat this radical treaty.”

...Paul’s conspiratorial email is missing one tiny footnote: there is no U.N. Small Arms Treaty. While the U.N. has been considering the feasibility of such a treaty, Paul’s “piece of scarelore” is “erroneous in all its particulars.” Clinton has never signed such a treaty. Nor could she, Congress, or the President ever do so. The Supreme Court’s Reid v. Covert decision established that the Constitution — which still includes the Second Amendment — supersedes international treaties. In fact, the only treaty that Clinton said the U.S. would possibly consider is a treaty that combats the illegal, international trade of small arms by setting “international standards” to “close gaps” that “allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.” The policy has “nothing to do with restricting the sale or ownership” of guns inside the U.S. A point so salient that even the NRA felt compelled to squash the nonsense.