The oh-so-esteemed bureaucrats at the United Nations have been looking to slap some regulations on the small arms trade via an international treaty for quite some time, but the United States has never really cottoned on to that idea. The Senate has to ratify all treaties by a two-thirds majority, and in one of the amendment votes to their budget just last month, the Senate voted 53-46 to specifically prevent the U.S. from signing on to the U.N.’s proposed Arms Trade Treaty.

The Obama administration don’t care. The president expressed a willingness to get behind such a thing near the start of his tenure, conspicuously backing off as last November’s election approached but then jumping right back on the progressive globalist bandwagon. Now, this is happening:

The United Nations’ overwhelming approval Tuesday of an arms trade treaty opposed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) sets up a showdown between President Obama and the powerful gun lobby’s friends on Capitol Hill.

President Obama is expected to sign the treaty within the next few months after the United States joined 153 other countries in supporting the treaty.

The Senate, however, has vowed to block ratification, which requires a two-thirds majority and is needed for the treaty to be legally binding on the U.S. …

The treaty, which has been under negotiation for seven years, requires countries to create internal mechanisms to ensure that their arms exports aren’t likely to be used to harm civilians or violate human-rights laws.

The treaties’ advocates claim that the regulations are only meant to help stop terrorism, genocide, and war crimes, which sounds wonderful in theory — if only the United Nations could manage to demonstrate any kind of consistent commitment to thwarting such crimes against humanity instead of constantly serving as forum for some of the world’s worst actors to try and legitimize themselves.

UN Arms Treaty should be rejected outright by US Senate. It is international gun regulation, plain and simple & it must never be ratified

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) April 2, 2013