Reply #48: Because Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always... [View All]

[jmg257]

"Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."


This process began in 1903 with the Dick Act and the eventual creation of a select federal "militia" to replace the constitutional Militia of the several States. By usurping power to create this force - and to make it a reserve of the Standing Army, and by controlling its arms, and by making it serve overseas, and by using federal funding to force its acceptance on the States, the National Guard made the true Militias - and we, the people's role in it - obsolete. Oh we are still members of the "unorganized militia" of the United States - but effective arms are highly restricted, and there is no provision for calling us out.

On the other hand, this new federally armed and controlled "militia", AND the standing Army can now be called out in the country for ANY reason the president thinks necessary.

The framers never set a time-table for tyranny when they took such great strides to prevent it, when they warned about it, but it seems we are right on schedule.



HR Select Committee, Proposed amendment to the Constitution:
"A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms."

"This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed. Now, I am apprehensive, sir, that this {religious clause} would give an opportunity to the people in power to destroy the constitution itself. They can declare who are those religiously scrupulous {read - arbitrarily decide who is unfit} and prevent them from bearing arms.

"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. "

Rep Gerry, Amendment Debates, 1st Congress 1789