Legal Introduction

(This was my opening article for several years.)

Gun Control Incorporated asserts the Right to keep and bear Arms is linked to membership in a well-regulated Militia. While there is no explicit written legal link, they are morally correct. Congress has the power to call upon the fit adult male population, to enforce the laws, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions. Congress has the power to specify how the militia is to be trained. The states have the power to appoint officers, and to implement the training as specified by Congress. These powers are definitely linked to a well-regulated Militia, and the Right to keep and bear Arms.

Because the government has failed to exercise these powers, the Militia is useless as an effective force in keeping the peace. However, because the government has failed to exercise its powers, it does not follow that the people lose their rights. The Second Amendment was intended to protect either the People (the clearer reading) or the Militia (a plausible reading) from being disarmed by the government. It is absurd to claim that because the government has failed to provide training to the Militia, the government thus gains legal authority to disarm the Militia and the People.

Nor are the claims that the National Guard or the State Guards are the modern Militia legally valid. Congress has the power to approve or reject any state-raised troops, and can refuse to finance any federally raised troops. The National Guard are the latter. They are legally a Federal standing army. Congress can quash any standing army. The Second Amendment was not intended to protect standing armies. It was intended to protect the Militia, to protect the People.

The status quo in terms of gun crime is perhaps unacceptable. If the Right to keep and bear Arms is obsolete, the powers of the Congress and the State to call upon the adult male population to keep the peace are also obsolete. They should go at the same time, in the same constitutional amendment. They should go with the rest of the Constitution still intact, with a government that still respects the laws that are supposed to govern it, and with the Supreme Court lacking legal precedent to dismiss and revoke elements of the Bill of Rights based upon a premise that the times are changed.

The Right to keep and bear Arms might possibly be obsolete. Rule of Law is not.

The alternative, if gun crime is such an emergency, if the modern experiment in standing professional police forces is such a failure compared to the good old days of yore, if abuses of power by the FBI, IRS, DEA, and BATF indicate a standing police force can become as much a threat to Freedom as any standing army, perhaps the Militia should be organized again? Might the days when the People shared Responsibility for the Common Defense be revisited?

With Rights, with Powers, come Duties. The Founding Fathers understood this. The NRA should not be demanding their Rights, unless they are ready also to take up their ancient and honorable Duties. Firearms are not toys. The original intent of the Second Amendment was not to protect people who enjoy playing around with lethal force.

Still, the Government should not be trying to attack the Rights of the People, when they have so clearly abandoned their half of the Contract. The Government has failed in their Duty to Protect the People. More importantly, they have forsaken all pretense of preparing the People to protect themselves.