Militia Movement, You Say..?

March 24, 2:56 PMLA Gun Rights ExaminerJohn Longenecker

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As a topic of political derision and division of the populace, the so-called Militia Movement is in the news. Grab a cup, this one is rather long.

Officials in the Administration are beginning to turn against the people and not the other way around. Describing the so-called Militia Movement as hostile to the United States is suspicious, because it opposes those who love this country, redress of grievances, independence, and those who have reasonable expectation of that loyalty from our public servants. Since when is oath of office unreasonable? Since when does the public servant oppose liberty of the Sovereign?

Officials soak us for money after they spend it all and then ban guns to help violence soar, then come to ban more. Now, they mischaracterize the very sovereign in this country, and they challenge our authority and not the other way around. See a pattern?

Let's take a closer look at this so-called Militia Movement.

Today, we are having a debate we should never have. We are squabbling about the force which backs our authority over officials under our system. Can you imagine some people actually rooting for the disarmament of the force which backs their very Citizen Authority in this country?

They root for the disarmament of the people in the name of safe streets. What they fail to realize is that armed citizens make for safe streets, and disarmament makes for unsafe streets – a boondoggle for the industries which thrive on violence. Today, the anti-violence movement is, itself, predatory. As things get worse in spite of every ‘sensible' program, the socialist asks more of us, and it gets worse and worse. Socialism was taught generations ago by Hegel et al, and it operates on the belief that government is served by crisis over its existence to serve the public.

Part of that political Hegelian practice is to divide people, keep them off balance, using everything from crisis to distraction to urgency before they can organize. In the formula of dividing Americans is the idea of demonizing the so-called Militia Movement.

This country was formed by a revolt against centralization of government. Centralization simply has too many abuses of powers. Many politicians at this hour are fighting for state rule and independence from national education content to funding by way of Washington. They, too, are very sick of abuses of a centralized government. Are they Militia Movement?

The original intent of the framing era appears throughout the writings of the Founders who show their work, you might say, on how they arrived at what they finally ratified. This is where you find the proof of what they really wanted for posterity, namely us. If you think Bill Clinton loathed the military, you ought to read how the Founders loathed a standing army as nothing more than backing a centralization of power within and not without, a very important thing to notice in 2009. They weren't going to return to what they had just defeated. Militia in the minds of the Founders – which is Original Intent – never meant Military. It, therefore, by law, cannot mean Military today, not exclusively.

Instead, when they wrote which would be the law of the land in the new nation and forever, was that the Citizen is Supreme Authority. Never again would people be subject to abuses of power of a single man. At the time, Militia was every able-bodied person. What we know as the National Guard [in regard to that at-issue point of state militia as in D.C. v. Heller for instance] was not even created until 130 years later, so twice we know they didn't mean the Military or National Guard.

In forming the new nation, the Founders realized that this Supreme Authority of the citizens must be backed by lethal force, and forever, so they wrote it to be absolute and not subject to due process short of another Amendment. That means that all of the rhetoric, the gun laws, the regulations on ammunition, and other devices are entirely illegal and unconstitutional. In writing the Second Amendment – and the eighth, ninth, tenth and fourteenth which support it – they were not anticipating guns of the future, they were quite mindful of abuses of power of the future. The Second Amendment and its Militia were to prohibit abuses of power.

The Militia within the meaning of the Second Amendment meant then and it means always the able-bodied everyman and further, to have arms both battery-ready and within reach at all times. From the entire wealth that was all the writings of the Founders in their Original Intent, it could not mean Military.

Over the generations, there have been official legal bills to merge the citizen with the organized military (known as Militia Acts over time), but these would have to recognize first, of course, a difference between the organized Militia and the unorganized (everyman citizen) Militia before they could ever become one. That difference is officially recognized even today under Title 10 U.S. Code, Section 311, and further, the two have not been merged. The organized militia is the National Guard. The unorganized Militia within the meaning of U.S.C. is the everyman citizen as always, one not necessarily in the military, but also is in the legal immunity from answering to the Commander-in-Chief of the United States. The original militia is independent of the Commander-in-chief and always has been.

In December, 2004, the United States Department Of Justice published precisely that answer to the U.S. Attorney General's interrogatory on whether 2A was individual or collective. DOJ's answer was that 2A is an individual right, and they showed how and where. Militia is addressed on Page 24 of that document.

D.C. v. Heller found the same. You can't file a pleading that demands that a gun owner be a member of a Militia, and then, when you lose to an adverse decision for the third time, show hostility to a so-called Militia Movement. At present, those who oppose the so-called Militia Movement are hostile to both patriotism and love of the law. After all, the Militia Movement does not disregard the law, it summons it and expects public servants to adhere to it as much and not abuse it.

The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country...
— James Madison, Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789.

In those days, the words of art well-regulated meant self-regulated. The entire nation was a matter of self-rule.

The Founders had their unsafe streets, too, and they wrote that the safest streets will always be where citizens are armed. Yes, that would be the Militia, long before there as ever a concept of a National Guard. As long as officials demonize such a liberty spirit as a Militia Movement, we face what the founders defeated, hostility to liberty and hostility to independence of the sovereign from her public servants.

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John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns — Meeting Dependency And Violent Crime With American Spirit, Independence, And Citizen Authority.