A child soldier with the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). (Photo credit: Mount Holyoke University)
The National Rifle Association (NRA), the chief gun industry lobby in the United States, doesn’t just want to stop gun reform here — it is also working to keep guns in the hands of warlords and those who deploy child soldiers abroad by attacking the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and making sure the U.S. doesn’t join it.
Watch a recent Al Jazeera English documentary about the Arms Trade Treaty and the effort by 150 countries to regulate the flow of arms into conflict zones:
Last Friday, the Senate voted 53-46 for an amendment by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to prevent the Obama administration from joining the ATT. Every single Senate Republican voted in favor, and seven Democratic Senators joined them.
These Senators all offered their own arguments and reasons for voting against the ATT, but the money they received from the NRA speaks for itself. Ai??The Senators who voted against the treaty received $69,499 from the NRA. When you add in funding from the further-right “Gun Owners Of America,” that number jumps up to $78,543. Ai??But that just includes direct contributions to campaigns. If you add in the amounts the gun lobby spent on independent expenditures — outside ad-buys in support of one of these Senators — the number jumps up to a whopping $225,377 this election cycle alone.
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