Joanne Dale Eisen

Independance Institute · Senior Fellow genocide

On January 6, 2025, the Second Amendment community lost one of its most dedicated champions. Joanne D. Eisen passed away after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer, leaving behind a legacy of tireless advocacy and impactful writings.

Over 100 years of global disarmament efforts have failed to bring 'collective security.' Recognition of this failure is widespread. This paper details the failure of the Arms Trade Treaty and the cover-up that has followed. Originally the ATT was intended to limit large weapons systems possessed by countries (e.g., ICBMs and landmines), but the UN...

KEY WORDS: Unless you are a gun owner who is hiding his uncle's war souvenir in the back of your closet because you are afraid to touch it and get rid of it, virtually all gun owners have something in common. Gun owners know that their guns are a benefit in their lives. But just how much benefit is there in a machine that can be lethal? We shall sh...

This article relates to events in Ethiopia on the border of Oromia and Somali states in 2017, and explains that genocide scholars do not accept political motives as an excuse for any government to commit genocide. However, it is shown here that government policy led to violent acts of relocation resulting in deaths within a targeted group. Hence, i...

This study argues that the genocide denial narrative that is repetitively used by genocide deniers globally is also used by the government of Ethiopia. The paper explains how Ethiopia deceives Western donors into accepting the denial narrative it manufactures, in part, because donors wrongly choose to accept the possibility that the minority Tigray...

In Ethiopia, we show how the ruling elites have long understood the reality that their donor nations have abhorred the horrific violence that is common in their country. Our analysis of media attention shows rapid shifts in government policy in response to global publicity and the global public understanding of massive death, especially of children...

The Oromo people have been suffering a slow genocide by attrition. This paper focuses on sexual atrocity as a tactic to reduce the reproductive capacity of targeted Oromo elite men and women. A history of the Abyssinian practice of covering up barbarous acts is presented as part of the explanation of why sexual atrocities remain covert. The tactic...

The “Weapons Effect” hypothesis suggests that guns can psychologically control people and cause them to be violent. In this article, Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisen analyze previous research about the weapons effect and examine more recent studies to test their agreement with the hypothesis. The authors conclude that evidence does not support the...

Currently, the United Nations is drafting an Arms Trade Treaty to impose strict controls on firearms and other weapons. In support of hasty adoption of the Treaty, a UN-related organization of Treaty supporters is has produced a report claiming that armed violence is responsible for 740,000 deaths annually. This Article carefully examines the claim...

Advocates of the proposed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) promise that it will prevent the flow of arms to human rights violators. This Article first examines the ATT, and observes that the ATT, if implemented as promised, would require dozens of additional arms embargoes, including embargoes on much of Africa. The Article then provides case...

Human rights activists who support a binding global Arms Trade Treaty [ATT] miss an important dimension of global reality: many people the world over own firearms primarily to protect their families and communities from government-sponsored genocide and other abuses. Governments historically have been, and still are, the primary perpetrators of vio...

How did September 11 affect the gun control debate in the United States? The gun control lobby attempted to use terrorism fears to promote some of their long-standing action items—such as restrictions on gun shows, and bans on .50 caliber firearms. The gun control efforts were generally unsuccessful. The pro-gun lobby gained some marginal benefit f...

This article examines human rights abuses stemming from the enforcement of confiscation or similar laws. Part I conducts a case study of the U.N.-supported gun confiscation program in Uganda, a program which has directly caused massive, and fatal, violations of human rights.Part II examines a similar gun confiscation program, with similar results,...

Does a woman have a human right to resist rape or murder? Do people have a human right to resist tyranny? The United Nations Human Rights Council has said no - that international law recognizes no human right of self-defense. To the contrary, the Human Rights Council declares that very severe gun control - more restrictive than even the laws of New...

Closely examining the Darfur, Sudan, genocide, and making reference to other genocides, this Article argues that the genocide prevention strategies which are currently favored by the United Nations are ineffective. This Article details the failures of targeted sanctions, United Nations peacekeepers, and other antigenocide programs. Then, this Artic...

Guns and Violence tells a remarkable story of a society's self-destruction, of how a government in a few decades managed to reverse six hundred years of social progress in violence reduction. The book is also a testament to the amazing self-confidence of British governments; Labour and Conservative alike have proceeded with an extreme anti-self-def...

Using case studies from Latin America, Kenya, and Zambia, this article examines the claim of gun prohibition advocates that the presence of small arms is a cause of economic underdevelopment. The article also details the harmful effects of UN policy regarding malaria and AIDS in the Third World.

The international gun prohibition movement seeks to severely restrict of eliminate the possession of firearms by non-state actors. This article argues that the prohibition on arms possession by non-state actors is contrary to the fundamental principle that the people, not the government, possess the sovereignty. The article examines the relationshi...

Today, many international gun prohibition advocates have recognized that, even though world-wide gun prohibition is not achievable in the near future, gun prohibition can be advanced in individual nations. Single-country (or single-region) gun prohibition is called micro-disarmament. Success stories of micro-disarmament are a very important part of...

A commonly-cited statistic is that 500,000 people around the world every year are killed by firearms: three hundred thousand in war, and two hundred thousand in peaceful countries. Examining the international data, the article concludes that the data supported by the organizations which created the 500,000 figure do not support the figure. In parti...

Responding to an article in the previous issue, this Article suggests that gun prohibition has often been harmful to human rights. We examine Jamaica, Bougainville, Karamoja (Uganda), and East Timor to detail the futility of attempts to prohibits, and to detail how such attempted prohibitions harm other human rights. The article also notes that, wh...

The authors reexamine the events surrounding the mass shooting at Port Arthur which led rapidly to change in Australia's firearm restrictions, including their gun buy-back in 1966. The focus is whether Martin Bryant could have committed the atrocities himself. If he did not, then who else participated and why was the investigation cut short? Key wo...

The direct relationship between the condition of a diabetic and his oral health has been recognized for close to a century, but the dental profession has not yet adequately focused on this special group of patients. Herein, we review what is known, what one should be on the alert for in known and undiagnosed diabetic patients, and what is needed to...

The "Weapons Effect" hypothesis suggests that guns can psychologically control people and cause them to be violent. In this article, Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisen analyze previous research about the weapons effect and examine more recent studies to test their agreement with the hypothesis. The authors conclude that evidence does not support the...