FreeRepublic.comSnyder, a practicing Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian, said that, “Archbishop Celestino Migliore’s public support for the proposed UN international arms control treaty is a direct attack on the God-given right of law-abiding citizens to self-defense. As such, it is an attack on the very right to life itself. Coming from an official of the world’s purportedly premier pro-life entity, it comes as a shocking example of public hypocrisy.”
Migliore last month endorsed the United Nations Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. This program calls for actions that could abridge the individual Second Amendment rights of people in the United States. These include the establishment of (1) a comprehensive program for worldwide gun control, (2) an international tracking certificate which would be used to ensure United Nations monitoring control over the export, import, transit, stocking and storage of legal arms and light weapons, (3) worldwide record keeping, for an indefinite amount of time, on the manufacture, holding, and transfer of small arms and light weapons, and (4) national registries and tracking lists of all legal firearms.
“When push comes to shove,” said Snyder, “the ability of an individual to defend life from terrorist and other violent criminal action depends on whether or not that individual can get and use guns. To promote a policy that would take away that ability from the individual and turn it over to a government shows a complete lack of regard for the right to life of the individual. There hardly can be strong enough language with which to condemn outright such an attitude. Shame on this Vatican bureaucrat. Shame on him and on his supporters in this endeavor. They must be trying very hard to drive people away from church.
“Governments generally are history’s greatest mass murderers. Governments, such as those led by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, perpetrated all the genocides of the last century. These governments first had disarmed their citizens through gun control policies, including gun registration policies. How can any supporter of restrictive firearm control policies honestly maintain he supports a right to life? That simply is not credible.”
Snyder said further that, “I and many of my co-religionists, including an untold number of priests and nuns, have been saddened and sickened by the recently-exposed outrageous perverted behavior on the part of some Catholic clergy, including Catholic prelates. Church officials’ support for policies contrary to the right of self-defense and the concomitant right to life just ads insult to injury. These guys may think they are untouchable, but they’re not. They should keep in mind that Our Lord Himself took forceful action against corrupt religious authorities in the first century and today could do the same through what the Second Vatican Council termed the People of God.”
A former NRA editor, Snyder is the author of “Gun Saint,” published by Telum Associates, LLC, the story of St. Gabriel Possenti, a Catholic seminarian who used handguns to rescue Italian villagers in 1860 from a gang of terrorists. Pope Benedict XV canonized Possenti in 1920. “Gun Saint” details the history of the international gun saint movement for Possenti’s Vatican designation as Patron of Handgunners.
Named “Dean of gun lobbyists” by The Washington Post and The New York Times, Snyder is Public Affairs Director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Treasurer of the Second Amendment Foundation.