Deadly disarmament: U.N. gun control.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Citings

IN JULY, as the United Nations convened a conference on controlling the illicit trade in small arms, Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced, "To halt the destructive march of armed conflict and crime, we must stop such purveyors of death." He was silent on a related topic: the victims of U.N.-supported gun confiscation programs, which have served as a pretext for murder, rape, torture, and arson in Kenya and Uganda.

In a report released during the conference, Independence Institute Research Director David B. Kopel and two of his colleagues noted that a disarmament campaign targeting pastoral tribes along the Kenya-Uganda border has displaced "tens of thousands of people, turning them into starving refugees" In both countries gun possession is illegal except for a politically favored elite, and in recent years the two governments, acting under U.N. auspices, have renewed a drive to disarm tribesmen who keep guns to protect their herds against predatory neighbors.

"The government has decided to disarm the Pokot by force" Kenyan Security Minister John Michuki told Parliament in April. "If they want an experience of...