“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The above is the text of the Second Amendment of the Constitution. One of the hot button issues of our time. It is interesting to read the Second Amendment. It sounds so simple. The effects have been so wide-ranging in the times in which we find ourselves. I contend that one of the problems with the interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it has two parts. I only want to address the first part of the Second Amendment.
The first part addresses a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State. Militia does not mean the National Guard although some interpret it in this way. Militia means a policing body in each of the 50 states. The Founding Fathers wrote this into the Constitution in order that the states would have the means to protect themselves in the case of a federal government gone wild. They are under the control of the governor of each state.
According to sources, all 50 states do not have active militias. The state militias that are active seem to be a fluid thing so it is difficult to find an accurate list of those that are active at any given point in time. Some define the membership of the state militias as the police forces in the states. That may be true for some states but it is not true for all states. Some states’ militias are composed of general citizenry with police perhaps being a part of the militia. Perhaps not. The members of some state militias are known to the general citizenry. Others prefer not to be known.
Still other state militias have devolved into paramilitary anti-government groups rather than militias that protect the citizenry in times of crisis. The question is do these anti-government paramilitary groups that call themselves state militias have as their purpose the protection of all the citizenry of their state against the tyranny of the federal government? Do they have another purpose? If they are protecting the citizenry of their state against tyranny, how do they define tyranny? The definition of tyranny according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is two-fold. First, it is defined as the cruel and unfair treatment by people with power over others and second, as a government in which all power belongs to one person, the rule or authority of a tyrant. I contend that some of the paramilitary groups practice tyranny themselves.
State militias that are truly state militias and that intend to protect each and every citizen against tyranny should stand up and be counted. They should certainly be well-armed. I do not agree that they no longer have a purpose. I think they will always have a purpose.
But there is another issue. What about the anti-government paramilitary groups that exist that are too cowardly to stand up and be counted and would rather operate in secret and in the dark? Many pretend they are state militias but we all know what they really are and they are not state militias. They are nothing more or less than terrorist groups right here on our own soil. Their purpose is to terrorize at least a group of our citizens. They are a scourge. I have no hope that they can be rooted out. I do have hope that fewer and fewer American citizens will allow themselves to be recruited by such organizations and that more will actively campaign against them. They think they can quietly and secretly take over our country while we aren’t paying attention. I hope they are wrong. #blogging #amwriting #writing