Obama urged to back global U.N. arms treaty

Democracy Now!:

As the debate over gun control intensifies in the United States, work continues on an international treaty to regulate the global arms trade. On Monday, the United Nations General Assembly voted to reopen negotiations on the treaty. The United States dropped its opposition after stonewalling talks in July, a move that prompted critics to accuse President Obama of caving to congressional Republicans and the National Rifle Association in an election year. "I have not seen anywhere else in the world a gun lobby that has the same level of influence on its own government as the NRA does in the United States," says Andrew Feinstein, author of "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade" and a former African National Congress member of Parliament in South Africa. "The U.S. buys and sells almost as much weaponry as the rest of the world combined. So what happens in the U.S. is going to have enormous impact on the rest of the world."