Constitutional Militia

 Of all the times I have looked over our Constitution, I swear that the following passage just went past my eyeballs without sinking in at all. It seems that I am not alone either because if more than a few of our fellow citizens, especially anyone considering politics had actually read this passage, we might have avoided a few decades of confusion:

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; 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” ~ Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8, Clause 15

I've always been a little confused by the wording of the Second Amendment. In fact, I’ve written about this before. It seems that the writers would have wanted to be a bit clearer about such an important issue. Especially as they were emerging from a colonial legal system wherein weapons and the people who were authorized to carry them had been strictly regulated. It always bothered me that the founders would have been so quick to make firearms available, if not outright encouraged to anyone who wanted them. After careful study of this passage, it now is quite clear: The framers of the Constitution had a very clear idea of exactly what described a Militia! It was never intended to be a bunch of self-appointed weekend warriors. In fact, in colonial times, every able-bodied male was considered to be a member of his local militia.

It was certainly never imagined that a “well regulated” militia would be convened with the express purpose of defending the people from tyrannical overreach by the United States’ government. Especially as there are other parts of the Constitution that were expressly written for the purpose of defending against such an event. There are Amendments to deal with the legal removal of any office holder, including the President, for reasons ranging from abuse of power to incompetence. The fact that the system seems to be broken has little to do with any of that. Our problem is that we have allowed our legislators to be bought and paid for by the plutocracy, but that’s a topic for another time.

The reason that militias were thought to be necessary was that in those times, it was thought that the country had little need for a standing army to defend the country from foreign invasion! It was thought that if need arose, Congress could simply call up the various militias. Looking back at our history, this seems to have been the standard up until the First World War. If we look back at various conflicts, especially the Civil War, the initial call-up of troops were from the local militias. This turned out to be a fiasco leading to the formation of an actual Army.

I’ve discussed in the past that the founders could not have guessed the development of modern weapons. In the late 18^th century, a high-tech weapon was a musket that had a rifled barrel! It simply beggars belief that even such forward thinkers as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson thought that they were drafting a document that would allow un-“infringed” keeping and bearing of something like an AR-15. If anything, it seems to this grantedly biased observer, that they would have perhaps envisioned something like modern-day Switzerland. The Swiss are required to attend regular training and exercises, and must keep and be practiced with a government issued weapon so as to be ready to be called up if needed for the defense of their country.

Bottom line? If you really feel the need to play with assault rifles or crash around the landscape in camos and body armor, join the fucking military! If you and your buddies are practicing for an armed rebellion, there’s a word for that, too and it isn’t Militia. The word you are looking for is TREASON!