UN Approves First Global Arms Treaty

The United Nations has overwhelmingly voted for a treaty that will make it more difficult to ship weapons into conflict zones.

Raymond Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam America, tells host Marco Werman that although the treaty may not always be enforced, it can “shine a light” on arms shipments to human rights violators.

“In its simplest of terms, what it does is it institutionalizes, on a global level, the existing system of export and custom control that presently exist within the United States,” Offenheiser says. “We license all imports and all exports of weapons, and we monitor where they’re coming from and who they’re going to when we’re in the business of exporting them externally.”

Offenheiser says the treaty has no impact on Americans’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.