homesteads. Hunting was a necessary means of survival. And native Americans simply did not like the fact that all these people were coming in and defiling and stealing their land.
These are excerpts from Craig R. Whitney, Living with Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment, pgs 98-99, regarding the goals of the second amendment.
Also see his NYT op ed from 7/24/2012, "A Way Out of the Gun Stalemate" from after the Aurora shootings.
[div style='width:680px;' class="excerpt"]
The Second Amendment was not effective in achieving it's original purpose of ensuring a well-regulated militia. States could not form militias if the able-bodies men living in those states in the late eighteenth century did not have the right to own firearms and know how to use them - but neither could they form effective militias unless they regarded it as a duty and took their duty seriously. In peacetime most of them did not, until the late twentieth century. Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virgina. said that there were 49,971 men serving i the militia in that state in 1787, but that some served poorly indeed. "The law requires every militia-man to provide himself with arms usual in the regular service. But this injunction was always indifferently complied with, and the arms they had have been so frequently called for to arm the regulars, that in the lower parts of the country they are entirely disarmed." Jefferson wrote, "In the middle country a fourth or fifth part of them may have such firelocks as they had provided to destroy the noxious animals which infest their farms; and o the western side of the Blue Ridge they are generally armed with rifles."
The Uniform Militia Act passed by congress in 1792, a year after the Bill of Rights was adopted, made clear, in principle, what a militiaman's' duty was.
[blockquote style="margin:5px 20px; width:500px;"]
"Each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as herein excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia by the captain or commanding officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside... Every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot -pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutered and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service."
[div style='width:680px;' class="excerpt"]
Under the Articles of Confederation, in 1784, Congress refused Washington's request to establish a small standing army and a trained national militia, though it later authorized a First American Regiment force of about seven hundred soldiers provided by the states to defend against foreign attack, Indian raids, or domestic insurrection. The states provided indifferent support, and the regiment was incapable of dealing with Shays' Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786-87, an armed uprising against the state government by debt-ridden farmers force into bankruptcy because of the high taxes that had been levied on them to help pay off the state's Revolutionary War debt. After farmers organized an armed Minuteman force and shut down courthouses in Northampton and Worcester to prevent foreclosures on distressed properties, the government called out the state militia, but eight hundred of them joined forces with the rebels. The continental congress then stepped in to help Massachusetts draft more obedient troops, and when 1,200 rebels moved on the national arsenal at Springfield, the government militia routed them, sending Daniel Shays and Eli Parsons fleeing to New Hampshire. A year later, Major Samuel Nasson of the Massachusetts province of Maine tried to make the best of the militia's performance: "If during the last winter, there was not much alacrity shown by the militia in turing out, we must consider that they were going to fight their countrymen."
On the intention of 2nd amendment to AVOID the need for a large standing army:
[div style='width:680px;' class="excerpt"]
Having failed to bring about its first goal, neither did the Second Amendment achieve the secondary goal of its original purpose - that of avoiding the establishment of a large standing army. President Washington used the militia to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and 1795 when distillers rose up against federal duties imposed on them to help pay off the Revolutionary War debt taxes. The rebels countered by calling on armed citizens to help them defend "republican liberty". Secretary of Stat Edmund Randolph feared some of the militia might sympathize as they had in Massachusetts during Shay's Rebellion and find common cause with the rebels, raising the specter of a civil war. "There is another enemy in the heart of the Southern States who would not sleep with such an opportunity of advantage" he warned Washington on August 7, 1794. The militia rallied to the federal cause and did it's duty. The Whiskey Rebels were defeated, and Washington then gave their leaders a pardon. But a month later, Secretary Knox reported that fewer than one-third of the Americans required to be ready for militia service owned any arms, despite the requirements of the Uniform Act.
Craig R. Whitney, Living with Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment, pgs 98-99
Also see his NYT op ed from 7/24/2012, "A Way Out of the Gun Stalemate" from after the Aurora shootings.
= new reply since forum marked as read
