UN treaty doesn’t mandate international gun registry

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, a Friendswood Republican, said in a recent fundraising letter on behalf of the National Association for Gun Rights that a United Nations treaty mandates a “new international gun registry.”

Stockman also wrote that the treaty “sets the stage for confiscation on a global scale. Such a registry, we suppose, might facilitate that by telling the United Nations where everybody’s guns are.

This claim, though, adds up to a blank.

Nations that ratify the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, which has not won U.S. Senate approval, must track conventional arms that move across their borders, share some information about the transfers with the U.N. and other countries, then report the imports and exports in broad categories such as “battle tanks” each year.

Under the treaty, countries must also regulate arms brokers, but requiring them to “register” is optional. Recording details such as the quantity and model of weapons in a shipment is also optional.

We’ve posted this fact check and a couple of others related to the U.N. to the right.