ABSTRACT
Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives and one-time Republican presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, made an unusual claim in 2012. Accordingly, from the late 1990s, the international arms control community - national gun control groups, NGOs working in the field of peace, security and development, weapons trade researchers had been working through the United Nations to build an international framework for global arms control. Responding to what they represented as a global United Nations inspired global threat to civilian gun ownership and a challenge to the Second Amendment and Constitution, US firearms lobbyists began to mobilise with a global discourse of their own. At times, the cultural imperialism script has been specifically projected outwards to influence gun control debates in other societies. Malcolm presents widespread civilian firearms ownership as the crucial guarantee of responsible and democratic civilisation, a legacy that successive British Governments have criminally squandered.
