Few texts have been so misquoted, misused, and abused, as the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Why is a “well regulated militia” necessary to the security of a free state (i.e., the United States as a whole, or any of its component states)? We have armed forces to repel foreign invaders. So what’s with a militia?
Simple: To protect us from internal threats. Wildcat rebellions by deadbeats who didn’t want to pay the alcohol tax. Or mobs from one state who wanted to annex part of another state. Covens of psychopaths who claimed that God wanted them to marry off as harem wives daughters who were too young to cook their own breakfast. Gangs of rowdies beyond the control of local police forces.
Sure, in all these cases and hundreds more, federal troops have been called to assert control. But the well-regulated militia (read “National Guard”) has been the first line of defense.
This isn’t conjecture on my part. Until very recently, the Supreme Court held with that definition of a militia and from that perspective defined just how far “the right to keep and bear arms” extended. Further, the Constitution clarifies that this “militia” referred to is under the control of the president, the congress, and the governments of individual states.
Article I states that the president of our nation has the duty and authority “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions...”
The constitution also spells out Congress’s job vis-a-vis the militia: “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress...”
To heck with quoting the Constitution ad nauseam: Get a copy and read it. You’ll be better for it.
The founders of our nation didn’t envision a heavily armed populace that could, at will, gather into semi-organized mobs to overthrow the government they were creating. They did, however, envision a well regulated militia, under the authority of the president and congress, to combat such threats should they emerge.
The militia was organized according to state boundaries. The appointment of officers, stockpiling of weapons, and training of the state militia was up to the government of that state, unless and until the president used his or her authority to call the militia into national service. That’s what happened when the governor of a southern state called out his national guard to prevent integration of students at a high school. The president at the time simply “nationalized the national guard” and the rebel governor (who, in my opinion, should have been imprisoned for treason) lost his military power.
These days one of the biggest internal threats to the “security of a free state” is all of the unqualified and wrongly motivated people “keeping and bearing arms.” So what is our “well regulated militia” doing about it?
It can’t do anything. We’ve waited too long.
Seventy-five or a hundred years ago the National Guard could have been called into national service to find and catalog all privately owned firearms and, maybe just to be extra safe, swords and spears as well. If the owners wanted to continue bearing arms they would be required to join up, i.e., become National Guard members. As such they would be taught that drive-by shootings and school-house massacres and the cold-blooded murder of any family member who annoyed them are not in keeping with the security of a free state. Sure, they could keep their own weapons in their homes if their commanding officers approved, provided they went through regular training in the proper use of those weapons. Ownership of weapons would be recorded just as the ownership of automobiles is already.
If your weapon were used in a crime, you’d answer for it. Simple enough. Your state needs more properly trained soldiers in uniform to enforce the law, deal with disasters, control looting, etc., well, just show up at the armory. That’s what you agreed to when you bought that 9 mm.
Some are going to say that ideas like mine want to pave the way to a dictatorship in America. Sorry, I don’t agree. I think the gun lobby, NRA, and arms manufacturers, have something too close to a dictatorship over us already.
But it’s a moot point. As I said, it’s too late. We’ve been too cowardly polite in dealing with the gun nuts and survivalists and NRA and political wing-nuts already. Trying to change things now would lead to even more gridlock in Washington and probably end in a virtual civil war.
But perhaps, just perhaps, if we keep a vision of “the security of a free state” in mind, maybe by another hundred years from now life in America can be relatively civilized again.
