Cougar, I'm not upset that it didn't get signed though I can see how my posts would make it look that way.
What concerns me is that I don't think the pro-gun lobby or news sources are reading the language of either the proposed treaty or the "final" text from last week correctly. I certainly understand the tendency to be doubtful about ~any~ gun related legal language, though, and agree that caution regarding such things is appropriate. The treaty simply doesn't have the affect on the 2nd amendment that the NRA says it would, though.
For example, the word "export" is in each clause that you quoted except for #4 which, I've posted elsewhere, is the only one I thought was open to misinterpretation by gun control interests. The US already does all this. The treaty doesn't mandate registration of privately sold and owned firearms, it mandates records of weapons exported - which we already do. If weapons are sold via a local dealer that might export them then those records are mandated as well, which FFL dealers are already required to do for each and every sale - and those are domestic sales let alone international exports which are even more difficult.
Controlling firearm parts is also already covered, to the degree necessary to not "circumvent" the rest of the treaty, by the US definition of the receiver as the "firearm" and these are already all serialized and controlled to the same degree as assembled firearms. These controls already exists for domestic sales even though the treaty would only suggest they are required for exports.
Even in later parts of the treaty where the word "transfer" is used it still mean "international transfer" as defined by Article 2, Section B, Item 1. There is simply nothing in this language that mandates national registration of private ownership.
As far as the export of munitions, this again would have zero affect on domestic sales of ammunition and zero affect on the import of surplus ammunition to the US.. unless the US were to become a hotbed of illegal, firearms fueled conflict. And for the exports of munitions.... the US already keeps records enough to satisfy the avoidance of "circumventing" the treaty's main goal of creating accountability for arms sales. The BATFE is already all over this stuff - not for safety's sake but to make sure Uncle Sam gets his cut of the sales.
The reason this concerns me is that an unbiased reading of the language doesn't support the outrage and fear that characterized the reaction gun owners in the US actually had. The "final" text is specifically not applied to domestic sales and ownership at all. In fact, there was the possibility that the treaty would actually ~support~ the pro-gun perspective that the existing gun control laws are more than sufficient since the US has existing laws that already fill all of the requirements laid out by the treaty. Its no exaggeration that the US already has very high standards for international sales. This treaty was actually a chance for the US to rub that fact into everyone else's nose while posturing like the good guys we say we are on the international stage. Instead we asked for more time and were joined in that by the dubious company of China and Russia.
The fact that the gun lobby proudly claims responsibility for eroding US public support for the treaty based on vastly exaggerated reports of its potential affect on the 2nd amendment makes the pro-gun lobby look exactly like the unreasonable, myopic people the gun controllers claim they are. The whole public outrage over the past month has clearly shown that the gun lobby doesn't understand, or that it doesn't care about presenting truthfully, the limits the UN has in its control over member nations. The gun lobby is just as guilty of using the UN as a boogeyman to drum up pro-gun outrage as the gun controllers who use every shooting as a rallying cry without having any evidence that their gun control measures would actually make anyone safer from such shootings. That concerns me far more than the treaty itself because the truth and the law of the land supports the pro-gun stance without the need for such exaggerations. Domestically, at least.
As for international transfers, that is the real reason the US backed off from the treaty even though it got everything it wanted during the negotiations over the past month: we are simply too invested in the export of arms and technology, along with using them as tools to further our national interests in ways that would at times be at odds with the UN treaty.
To me the whole things smacks of how irrelevant the truth is in our public process and in our information sources. Not unexpected, of course, but for some reason I still get disappointed when I see it.
Probably way more answer than you asked for, Cougar, but that is what was really concerning me about the whole treaty process over the last couple months.