Hilary Benn Quotes
There is an opportunity - for the first time - for a global deal to control the movement of small arms, such as AK47s and anti-aircraft rocket launchers, as well as heavier weapons like battle tanks.
Spanish troops were threatening New Orleans and the European wars were active. The President was concerned that if we exported arms and ammunition and then needed to fight there would not be sufficient available. This probably was the first strategic arms embargo and export restriction of the nation.
Stalin did not want any political opposition with its own militia. American gun control opponents often cite this quotation to show that in Russia, Stalin achieved dictatorial power by disarming the population in general and only allowing government officials to have guns. They argue that even Stalin could not have tyrannized the entire Soviet Union if every citizen had the right to bear arms as provided for by the Second Amendment.
After the First World War, the United States and other countries were very conscious of the possibility of foreign arms sales encouraging and facilitating war and aggression. Therefore, arms shipments were very limited. The exception allowed tyrannical governments often to suppress, and often kill, their own citizens. By the end of the 20th century, the United States would sell arms to almost anyone and was the largest arms supplier in the world. Much of the flip flop of position on arms exports was caused by the fact that other nations were shipping arms and getting the jobs and profits associated with those exports and almost anyone in the world with money could buy arms. So the United States allowed its arms manufacturers to compete in this lucrative business to all but a few arms embargoed nations with whom we were having international difficulty.
Hilary James Wedgwood Benn MP is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds Central since a by-election in 1999. He served in the Cabinet from 2003 to 2010, under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and was Shadow Foreign Secretary from May 2015 to June 2016. In October 2016, he was elected as the inaugural Chairman of the new Exiting the European Union Select Committee.
