From - Thu Dec 11 11:25:13 1997 Path: news.clark.net!usenet From: klaatu Newsgroups: alt.california,austin.general,ca.general,dc.general,dfw.general,houston.general Subject: Re: Purpose of Militia Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 02:09:30 -0500 Organization: Earth Operations Central, 1486 Harvard Street, NW, Washington DC 20054 Lines: 88 Message-ID: <348F91A9.5FFFA2F5@clark.net> References: <3470FAA6.501B@lunchmeat.com> <3488178b.10847161@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <3474237c.373594@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com> <34770f2e.3951 <6651am$bnj@news.uta.edu> <34864852.7711@hal-pc.org> <3486F8B4.2E0B@hal-pc.org> <348AF2E1.5EEF@hal-pc.org> <348BB773.54B9@flash.net> <348C1707.3D45@hotmail.com> <348ECC33.3E1A9E4A@clark.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: earthops.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.03 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.30 i486) Xref: news.clark.net alt.california:78518 austin.general:82608 ca.general:46472 dc.general:67982 dfw.general:38107 houston.general:41769 Merlin Dorfman wrote: > > klaatu (klaatu@clark.net) wrote: > > : But we certainly do need to maintain militias - they're called the National > : Guard. What I personally find troublesome is the increasing pressures to > : either disband National Guard combat, heavy equipment and C4I units, and to > : largrely reduce the Guard to a mere logistical-support service for the > : Standing Army. > > : And of course, the unorganized militia probably needs to have better training, > : and certainly needs to have access to weapons of military usefulness, > : otherwise the Second Amendment will be circumvented by limiting the > : unorganized militia to popguns. > > You mean the Second Amendment requires the Government to buy the > weapons for the militia??!? I thought they were supposed to use their > own weapons! No. I gather that you seem to think that I'm proposing that the Government (Federal) should spring for entire military systems? To a degree they do that, through standardization of National Guard equipment and promulgation of standard US Armed Forces military protocols and procedures. However, this is to some slight degree a dangerous precedent, as it tends to make the State National Guards dependent upon Federal oversight, organizations, funding and other lines of control. Or perhaps you're suggesting that either the State or Federal governments should supply the unorganized militia (all males between 17 and 36 in most cases, including not only citizens but immigrants who have declared an intention to become citizens) with a full military _equipage_ up to and including Home Armageddon Systems and basement nuclear devices? I think that would be a little extreme. However, in a heated debate in this and other newsgroups over the last two years, an interesting point was raised in the process of some folks arguing themselves into a particular, peculiar, yet rhetorically-quite-defensible corner: If indeed the sole legitimate grounds for general public armament are those grounds which proceed from the need of the State and Federal governments to have an unorganized reserve, all maintaining their own arms outside of the grounds of eminently-targetable public armories, it should therefor logically follow that any weapons which were not of military use would therefor not substantiate nor abet the purposes of the militia, to wit, serve as a distributed repository of national or local defense, if not foreign war. It thus proceeds that it can always be argued that the right to home defense is an inalienable right, proceeding from Natural Law. It can also be argued that the greater home, the homeland, is also as an inalienable right, subject to the common defense. From this proceeds militia, an ancient and honorable institution. It further proceeds that for the militia to be effective, it must have access to weapons of war, and it further proceeds by extension that _handguns_ are not protected by the Second Amendment, at least not outside of the Home, in which venue may be their only legitimate military use. However, the sum of the argument is this - under the Second Amendment, with the inalienable right of men to assemble in the common defense as a militia of a free State, _assault weapons and other military-class weapons are __inarguably__ protected_. Thus, many arguments to the Second Amendment in favor of possession of handguns are, in the face of modern semi- and fully-automatic carbines, essentially moot: A handgun has very little military use. On the other hand, assault-weapons are not only legal under the Second Amendment, but indeed, _possibly the __only__ protected arms under the Second Amendment_. thus, any bans on assault weapons are clearly unConstitutional. Quod Erod Demonstrandum or what th' flonk ever. There is insofar as I can determine no requirement whatsoever that the Federal nor State government _must_ pay for the weapons nor for that matter for the costs of the drills which would be essential for any militia, organized or unorganized, to be considered "well-regulated", a term which purportedly at that time meant "drilled in good order; a functioning cadre of men-at-arms". Hopefully this will clarify my position on militia, public ownership of military-class weapons by non-felon citizens, and so forth. -- Be kind to your neighbors, | "When the going gets weird the weird turn pro." even though they be | http://www.clark.net/pub/klaatu/home.html transgenic chimerae. | Now. Chock full of uninteresting links. --------- Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth ---------------- Each non-Internet re-transmission of this posting will be billed at $10000. Re-transmission of this e-mail expressly prohibited. The e-mail addresses for the FCC Commissioners include rhundt@fcc.gov, jquello@fcc.gov, sness@fcc.gov, rchong@fcc.gov