Militia

13 April, ‘07
“An armed man is a free man. A disarmed man is a slave”.
Anonymous

In writing about the federal courts recent rediscovery of the Second Amendment, I decided to do a bit of research into the concept of the “militia” in the United States of America, as it applies to the Second Amendment. The wording of the second amendment to our Bill of Rights seem fairly simple and straightforward to me, so I’m quite puzzled as to why so many American politicians, jurists, and academics can’t seem to understand, even if imperfectly, their meaning.

According to an on-line encyclopedia, the English language term "militia" is derived from the Latin: miles /MEE-lace/: a fighter or warrior, and -itia /EE-tee-ah/: a state, quality, or condition. In its original sense militia meant "the state, quality, or condition of being a fighter or warrior." In common usage, a "militia" is a group of citizens who have taken up arms to respond to a violent emergency. Thus the bearing of arms changes the status of a person from peaceful citizen, to warrior citizen. This is apparently a complex semantic issue to some people.

In general, there are three types of militia; The Constitutional, or unorganized militia, which consist of every able-bodied man ages 18-45 who can be called into active service through congressional power and who, according to various militia acts (Militia acts of 1792, 1852, 1903) are encouraged to train in marksmanship with arms provided by themselves in order to prepare them for military service. The Select-militia, which originated in early state forces and the constitutional militia, consist of State and Federal militia forces like the National Guard and Reserve formations, which were created by statutory law rather than constitutional power. The third type are the so called private-militia forces, which are made up of unorganized militiamen who have, on their own authority, organized into para-military organizations based on their own interpretation of the concept of the militia. These militia believe that private militia are supported by the principles of the common law of England (as found in Blackstone's Commentaries) and the intentions of the Founding Fathers of the United States as found in the Annals of Congress and various other publications of the period. These are the folks that gathered so much bad press a few years back, and somehow managed to attract a few mental cases like Timothy McVeigh.

The delegates of the Constitutional Convention granted Congress the power to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining (regulating and training) the Militia," as well as the power to raise an army and a navy. The US Congress is granted the power to use the militia of the United States for only three specific missions, "To provide for the calling of the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions." The Militia Act of 1792 clarified whom the militia consists of; " Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia”

The National Guard was created by the Militia Act of 1903, as a federalized portion of the State militias which were converted into regular troops kept in reserve for the United States Army. The National Defense Act of 1916 later amended under the National Guard Mobilization Act to place all National Guard units under the control of the United States Army, making them regular troops, and effectively ending their status as constitutional militia forces. The current United States Code, Title 10 (Armed forces), section 311 (Militia: Composition and Classes), paragraph (a) states: "The classes of the militia are: (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia."

As to “disciplining” the militia as noted above, the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) is a US government chartered program that promotes firearms safety training and marksmanship training for all qualified citizens, with special emphasis on youth. Any U.S. citizen who is not legally prohibited from owning a firearm may purchase a military surplus rifle from the CMP, provided they are a member of an affiliated gun club. The CMP was created by congress as part of the 1903 War Department Appropriations Act, while its history traces back to the late 1800s, when programs were first established to help ensure that the general populace could shoot straight, in case the militia had to be raised to defend the country. Due to a nearly total information blackout in the mainstream media, most Americans are unaware of the governments stated policy on firearms training. That policy was updated, practically in secret, by the 1,000 page National Defense Authorization Act of 1996. Title XVI, (Public Law 104-106, 10 February 1996) created the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice & Firearms Safety (CPRPFS) to take over administration and promotion of the CMP, from the US Army.

Trench Coxe, an American political economist (1755-1824) who attended the constitutional convention at Annapolis, explained (in the Pennsylvania Federal Gazette on June 18th, 1789) the founders' definition of who the militia was and why they chose to create it as follows: “Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

To my redneck mind, this indicates that the militia presently consists of all able bodied citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 residing within these United States, and not merely a mob of kill crazed, anti-government, right wing fanatics, as commonly portrayed by the mainstream media. Further, the US government expects all those militiamen to possess privately owned firearms, and to practice regularly with their weapons, which is why we have the second amendment protecting our right to keep and bear firearms, rather than an all encompassing nation-wide Brady bill. Finally, the militia exists to execute our laws, as well as protecting the nation and its citizens from foreign invasion, and insurrection. They also exist as a means to keep the federal government on the straight and narrow.

‘Nuff said?