Aug 23 2012: This is a little technical, but the ATT involves a formal treaty (which in due time would become part of international law), not simply a UN resolution. There are a lot of hoops that must be jumped in order for the US to accede to a multilateral treaty like this: first, the text/terms of the treaty has to be negotiated (and--unfortunately, in my view-- that step was not completed in July). Once the text has been confirmed, then the treaty is open for "ratification." Every country has its own process for ratification. In the US, it requires (sequentially), the President's signature and a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Senate has the possibility of attaching "reservations" to any part of the treaty, saying effectively, "we will abide by clauses A and B, but we will interpret C in this particular way." So there is little chance that the US will endorse something the Senate doesn't want. And even if it did, there is another level of restraint at the Supreme Court.
Even if a country does move forward with ratification, it is rather easy to apply international law selectively and there are nearly no international enforcement mechanisms. What, then, you might ask, is the point of international law? A couple quick things: one is that most countries endorse international law because they benefit from the order it brings (much like you and I are glad there is a system of traffic laws so we know what to do when we arrive at a busy intersection). Another thing is that countries who operate according to the tradition of "civil law" -- including much of Europe and almost all of Latin America -- incorporate international law into their domestic codes in a way that we (in the US, UK) don't. And finally, with regards to human rights and humanitarian law --including the Geneva Conventions -- international law has actually made some difference in the way countries behave, because they voluntarily adjust their behavior to a common code.
Aug 23 2012: I wish I'd seen this conversation earlier. I've been following the ATT issue for a long time, and the SNOPES article basically has it right, as far as it goes. The ATT is definitely not about the US Second Amendment! In fact, it has virtually nothing to do with US laws, which the State Dept has promoted for years as representing the "gold standard" of an arms-export regime. The idea for an Arms Trade Treaty grew out of the Nobel Peace Laureates' Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers, back in the late 1990s. Oscar Arias won his Nobel Prize for helping to broker the deal that ended years of war - and a flood of small arms and light weapons-- in Central America. He brought the issue of untrammeled arms flows to the Nobel Laureates, and the UN Security Council. Other Nobel Laureates - including Amnesty International -- were likewise concerned that there seemed to be no way to stop the USSR arsenal from being dumped in Africa (Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, DRC) where they were used in one human rights catastrophe after another. The Arms Trade Treaty is one effort to create a global standard on international transfers (sales and military aid) so that unscrupulous arms brokers find it difficult to exploit the differences between national legal systems across the globe. In the early 1990s, Italy caught such a broker pretty much redhanded (Leonid Minin) but ultimately was unable to prosecute him because Italian courts couldn't claim jurisdiction. That's the sort of situation the Arms Trade Treaty is intended to address, and that has been clear in all the negotiations to date. July was certainly a setback, but hopefully it's not the end of the road.
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A reply on Conversation: United Nations Small Arms Treaty
Even if a country does move forward with ratification, it is rather easy to apply international law selectively and there are nearly no international enforcement mechanisms. What, then, you might ask, is the point of international law? A couple quick things: one is that most countries endorse international law because they benefit from the order it brings (much like you and I are glad there is a system of traffic laws so we know what to do when we arrive at a busy intersection). Another thing is that countries who operate according to the tradition of "civil law" -- including much of Europe and almost all of Latin America -- incorporate international law into their domestic codes in a way that we (in the US, UK) don't. And finally, with regards to human rights and humanitarian law --including the Geneva Conventions -- international law has actually made some difference in the way countries behave, because they voluntarily adjust their behavior to a common code.
A comment on Conversation: United Nations Small Arms Treaty