Posts Tagged militia

Right To Self Defense Knows No Bounds

From Reason:

Last Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky, about 300 armed members of the NFAC (Not Fucking Around Coalition), a self-described “black militia” based in Atlanta, had what the Louisville Courier-Journal called “a tense standoff” with about 50 armed Three Percenters, which the paper described as a “far-right…militia.” While the incident, which ended without violence, could be seen as yet another sign that the country is descending into 1968-style chaos, it was also a striking illustration of the Second Amendment’s enduring practical and symbolic importance that scrambled conventional stereotypes about the right to armed self-defense.

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The NRA And Memorial Day

From NRA’s First Freedom:

When dedicating the Gettysburg National Cemetery in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln honored those who gave their “last full measure of devotion” to defending American freedom. A few years later, Americans began to commemorate “Decoration Day” on May 30 as a time to visit the graves of those who had given their lives during the Civil War. Later, Decoration Day became Memorial Day, honoring the sacrifices of all American soldiers.
Just a few years later another institution was created that is closely related to Memorial Day: the National Rifle Association.
Founded in 1871, the NRA began by dedicating itself to the safety of American soldiers. Because of the efforts of the NRA over the ensuing century and a half, many more American soldiers have been able to accomplish their missions and to return home alive.

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George Washington: Illegal Militia Founder

From Reason:

Without formal legal authorization, even from the Continental Congress, Americans began to form independent militias, outside the traditional chain of command of the royal governors. In February 1775, George Washington and George Mason organized the Fairfax Independent Militia Company.

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Slate Concerned About Right Wing Violence, Silent On Left Wing Violence

From Slate:

Though they vary across the states, the anti–private army laws target the same basic phenomenon: forming armed groups not answerable to civil authorities, providing paramilitary training for use in civil disorders, and falsely assuming police or military roles. The constitutional provisions and statutes can form the basis for injunctions prohibiting members associating together while armed or setting up training camps, restrictions on public events like rallies, and even criminal prosecutions.

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The Wide Militia Movement

From Reason:

Two more factors muddle the picture even more. One is the white nationalists of the alt-right, who sometimes draw on the same pool of potential recruits as the militias, though relations between the two movements are frequently frosty. The other consists of the armed “counter-recruitment” organizations that imitate the militias’ iconography while advocating leftist (usually anarchist) politics.

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Academic Paper Re-examines The Second Amendment

From David T. Hardy:

This article proposes third approach, which is better founded in the historical record. The militia clause and the right to arms clause are completely separate concepts. They have different origins, one looking back to the Renaissance, the other forward to the Enlightenment. In 1787-91 they largely had different constituencies: some Americans were concerned that the new Congress would neglect the militia, others that it might disarm the people. For most of this period, drafters of State declarations of rights, or of proposals for a Federal bill of rights, chose either to praise the militia as an institution, or to guarantee an individual right to arms, but never both.

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Opinion: Arm Everyone

From PJ Media:

This has to stop. I’m proposing that we campaign to reduce gun violence, and to meet our constitutional duty, by requiring that every member of the militia — which, of course,  we’ll redefine to eliminate the obvious sexism and make it all adults — must own at least one long gun, one handgun, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition for each, or pay an annual $1,000 tax for failing to do so. As I pointed out the last time I brought this up, the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare makes it clear that it’s constitutional to require people to buy a product, so that shouldn’t be a problem. And, federal law would override the local laws in rogue cities like Chicago that prevent members of the militia from fulfilling their constitutional duty.

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The Militia Clause

From Mises.org:

Fearful that a large federal military could be used to destroy the freedoms of the states themselves, Anti-Federalists and other Americans fearful of centralized power in the US government designed the Second Amendment accordingly. It was designed to guarantee that the states would be free to raise and train their own militias as a defense against federal power, and as a means of keeping a defensive military force available to Americans while remaining outside the direct control of the federal government.

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Second Amendment History

From National Review Online:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In 1791, the Founding Fathers placed into the U.S. Constitution a set of ten amendments that we refer to collectively as the “Bill of Rights.” Among them was an innocuous measure designed to protect state militias against federal overreach. Until the 1970s, nobody believed that this meant anything important, or that it was relevant to modern American society. But then, inspired by profit and perfidy, the dastardly National Rifle Association recast the provision’s words and, sua sponte, brainwashed the American public into believing that they possessed an individual right to own firearms.

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Heller Was The First Step In Repealing The Second Amendment

From The Federalist:

The Second Amendment was repealed, in effect, by Heller’s majority opinion. The opinion went beyond questions raised in the case and laid out a rationale by which Congress, states, and courts could ban the private possession of many offensive and defensive arms today and all such arms of the future.

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Veteran: It’s A Citizen’s Duty To Be Prepared

From The Truth About Guns:

Guns are a tool. I used them in the military to accomplish our mission and most of all, to protect myself and those around me. Law enforcement officers use the same tools for the same reason. As an American citizen; self-defense is a primary consideration. Civilian ownership of firearms also serves a mission. That mission is to be prepared to form the Reserve Militia to back up the Federal and State government’s forces. Without civilian ownership of military-type firearms in common use, their capability as a backup to the military is severely diminished.

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Machine Guns On Trial

From Ammoland:

A panel for the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a district court ruling and sided with the government against a man who was authorized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to manufacture a post-1986 machine gun through a trust, only to have the permission rescinded and his property confiscated. In doing so, and by ignoring founding intent behind the Second Amendment, the panel ruled the right of Americans to own militia-suitable firearms can not only be infringed, but that it’s not even a right.

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Americans and Other Foreigners Fighting ISIS

From New York Times Magazine:

I found a 26-year-old American civilian named Clay Lawton standing alone, just outside the village. Square-jawed, with large eyes and bright teeth, he was a volunteer freedom fighter with the local militia. ‘‘I’m from Rhode Island,’’ he said. ‘‘You know it? Most people confuse it with Staten Island or Long Island.’’

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Border Patrol Shoots at Militia

From the AP:

Border Patrol spokesman Omar Zamora said agents had been chasing a group of immigrants east of Brownsville Friday afternoon when an agent saw a man holding a gun near the Rio Grande. The agent fired four shots, but did not hit the man. The man then dropped his gun and identified himself as a member of a militia. Zamora said no other details were immediately available.

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Civilians Take Security of Border Into Their Own Hands

From The Houston Chronicle:

Militia groups along the Texas-Mexico border have grown to more than 10 active “teams” from El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley, despite warnings from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and state lawmakers.

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