Author Topic: What Is a 'Well Regulated Militia,' Anyway?  (Read 842 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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What Is a 'Well Regulated Militia,' Anyway?
« on: November 06, 2019, 04:07:46 am »
Reason 11/3/2019 by Brian Doherty

The Founders liked militias, but they also liked an armed citizenry. To them, the two ideas were inseparable.

Gun control advocates love to hate District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case in which the Supreme Court recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms. They may be protesting too much. Federal courts in the decade since have found many restrictions on the right to own and use weapons perfectly congruent with that decision. Heller merely says the government can't enforce laws that prevent (most) Americans from possessing commonly used weapons in their homes for self-defense.

Courts have found that Heller does not preclude laws that prohibit anyone younger than 21 from buying guns in retail stores; laws that bar people who committed a single nonviolent felony from ever owning a gun; laws that severely restrict the ability to carry a gun outside the home; laws that ban commonly owned magazines of a certain capacity; or laws that require handguns to incorporate untested, expensive, and unreliable "microstamping" technology. The Supreme Court so far has avoided taking up any of those questions.

Still, many activists and legal scholars, along with at least two of the Supreme Court justices who dissented in Heller, believe the Second Amendment, properly construed, never guaranteed an individual right at all, or at least not one related to personal self-defense in the home.

More: https://reason.com/2019/11/03/what-is-a-well-regulated-militia-anyway/

Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: What Is a 'Well Regulated Militia,' Anyway?
« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2019, 09:03:08 am »
But the Second Amendment wasn't about how the Federal government regulated the organized Militia.

It was about the People retaining the Right to Keep and Kear Arms so The People could do so, if the need arose.

The discussion of the concept of a Federal standing Army, a Federal Militia was carried out in Federalist 46.

Quote
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.

The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes.
But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.[2]

The last paragraph is the justification for the continuation of the State Militias, under control of their respective and sovereign State Governments.

Keeping in mind that each State had its own Militia (not the National Guard, which came well after the Civil War, but its own Army), not subject to Federal call-out but to the State Government, and that individuals who brought their arms had been the cornerstone of the force which defeated the British Military imposed rule, it was the full intent that The People would keep the Federal Militia well regulated (controlled) when it came to a response to the abuse of the power of that standing Army.

Certainly, it was argued, there needed to be a Federal force to repel invasion, and to settle, when necessary, disputes between the States, but that is only part of the security of the Free State, that addressing outside and inter governmental threats to security. In order for a free state to remain secure from the threat of abuse of power from within, and especially at the Federal Level, that force, in turn, had to be controlled, and the logical object to do that is The People.
The People cannot do that without a fundamental familiarity with arms, and logically, their own, therefore the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was to be left unmolested by Federal Law.
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« Last Edit: November 06, 2019, 09:05:47 am by Smokin Joe »
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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis