Armed Militia Quotes

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.

A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves... and include all men capable of bearing arms.

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.

If you're one of those delusional 2nd Amendment types who believes you and your trailer park 'militia' might need to take on the Army, the Navy, the 101st Airborne and SEAL Team 6; not only should you be denied the right to bear arms -- but the right to your belt & shoelaces as well ... 'cause you're stark, ravin' batshit!!!

No militia or political leader is so powerful - his name never so influential - as when he is dead, enshrined on wall posters and gateposts amid naively painted clusters of tulips and roses, the final artistic accolade of every armed martyr in Lebanon.

I only wish the NRA and its jellyfish, well-paid supporters in legislatures both State and Federal would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated or restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a member of a well-regulated militia.

They are manned by gangs or narcotraficantes or police (who may also be narcotraficantes) or soldiers (who may also be narcotraficantes) or, in recent years, by autodefensas—armed militias formed by the inhabitants of certain towns to protect their communities from cartels. And these autodefensas may also, of course, be narcotraficantes.

Right to Self Defense + Right to Peaceably Assemble = Militia.

It is in no small part to Henry’s resistance that the Constitution owes the Second Amendment in particular—the one that promises “the right to keep and bear arms” in order to have “a wellregulated militia”—and it too was, in part, about slavery, because in the South, the militia was understood to be identical with the slave patrols that were constantly on guard.

Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers. A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better.

In Madison’s formulation, the right to bear arms was not inherent but derivative, depending on service in the militia. The recent Supreme Court decision (Heller v. District of Columbia, 2008) that found the right to bear arms an inherent and nearly unlimited right is clearly at odds with Madison’s original intentions.37

Right, he can kill the dead. What happens when he realizes we're training him to kill the living?

The whole military power of the State is at the disposal of the Governor. He is the commander of the militia, and head of the armed force.

Truth is mightier than the sword.” “And granddad’s squirrel gun,” he added. “The militias need to know what they are up against in order to be as effective as this country needs them to be.” “Granddad’s squirrel gun is no match for DARPA,” Mark agreed. “Squirrel guns in the hands of potentially 200 million people have the Feds sweating, though.” Becraft smiled. “They won’t be able to disarm this country. There are too many people already awake, aware, and armed.” “If the latest TV polls tell the people they are disarmed, they might blindly follow it,” Mark speculated. “People are what they’re told, and they love to be told what the majority is doing so they can do it too. It’s a socially engineered herd mentality.

That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well-regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free state..." -George Mason - Father of the Bill of Rights

The Right is General - It might be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia as has been elsewhere explained consists of those persons who under the law are liable to the performance of military duty and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrollment of all who are fit to perform military duty or of a small number only or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all and if the right were limited to those enrolled the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is that the people from whom the militia must be taken shall have the right to keep and bear arms and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose.

But George Mason still had concerns; he reasoned that though Congress would have had to call up the militia and the army, the president would have no restrictions on his power once in command of the armed forces.5 This fear has been justified in the modern era.

Centuries later, it is often presumed that such a pious tone and environment would create boredom, cynicism, and even open rebellion among any militia. But in an era when faith was a fact of life, prayer was ubiquitous, ritual respected, and the presence of clergymen taken seriously, the result was a fresh discipline and respect - even a chivalric courtliness - among many of the troops. Joan herself was so obviously and sincerely devout that the major captains of her met-at-arms and crossbowmen were more than impressed: they followed her example as best they could.

Never before did the second amendment mean so much to the people of the United States. There were many well-regulated militias that became necessary for the security of every state, which meant the right of the people to keep and bear arms was detrimental for their survival and that right should not be infringed. Otherwise, the strong would surely overpower the weak.

At an NRA annual meeting in Cincinnati in 1977, Second Amendment “absolutists” took control of the NRA from previous leaders who thought the organization was really there to protect marksmen. Gun nuts call this event the Revolt at Cincinnati. Our modern epidemic of mass shootings can, more or less, be traced to these yahoos winning control of that organization. The ammosexuals reformed the NRA from the generally benign conglomeration of Bambi killers to the grotesque weapon of mass destruction we know it to be today. It was this new NRA that invented the radical rationalization of the Second Amendment as a right to armed self-defense. It was this new NRA that gained political supremacy in the Republican party. It was this new NRA that got Ronald Reagan, who once signed one of the most sweeping gun restrictions in the nation, to sign the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, an act that rolled back many of the restrictions from the Gun Control Act. The NRA’s wholesale reimagining of the Second Amendment hasn’t just lured Republican politicians, it’s become part of the gospel of Republican judges. The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, the two outside interest groups most responsible for telling Republican judges how to rule, have fully adopted an absolutist, blood-soaked interpretation of the Second Amendment. These groups of alleged “textualists” read “well regulated militia” clear out of the text of the Amendment. Instead, they substitute self-defense as the “original purpose” of the language. There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery.

In August 1917, white, Black, and Muskogee tenant farmers and sharecroppers in several eastern and southern Oklahoma counties took up arms to stop conscription, with a larger stated goal of overthrowing the US government to establish a socialist commonwealth. These more radically minded grassroots socialists had organized their own Working Class Union (WCU), with Anglo-American, African American, and Indigenous Muskogee farmers forming a kind of rainbow alliance. Their plan was to march to Washington, DC, motivating millions of working people to arm themselves and to join them along the way. After a day of dynamiting oil pipelines and bridges in southeastern Oklahoma, the men and their families created a liberated zone where they ate, sang hymns, and rested. By the following day, heavily armed posses supported by police and militias stopped the revolt, which became known as the Green Corn Rebellion.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries. A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.

In Connecticut the electoral body consisted, from its origin, of the whole number of citizens; and this is readily to be understood, *a when we recollect that this people enjoyed an almost perfect equality of fortune, and a still greater uniformity of opinions. *b In Connecticut, at this period, all the executive functionaries were elected, including the Governor of the State. *c The citizens above the age of sixteen were obliged to bear arms; they formed a national militia, which appointed its own officers, and was to hold itself at all times in readiness to march for the defence of the country.

In a 2007 cable about Nauru, made public by WikiLeaks, an unnamed U.S. official summed up his government’s analysis of what went wrong on the island: “Nauru simply spent extravagantly, never worrying about tomorrow.” Fair enough, but that diagnosis is hardly unique to Nauru; our entire culture is extravagantly drawing down finite resources, never worrying about tomorrow. For a couple of hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth, burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere - because we can’t see them - will have no effect whatsoever. Or if they do, we humans, brilliant as we are, will just invent our way out of whatever mess we have made. And we tell ourselves all kinds of similarly implausible no-consequences stories all the time, about how we can ravage the world and suffer no adverse effects. Indeed we are always surprised when it works out otherwise. We extract and do not replenish and wonder why the fish have disappeared and the soil requires ever more “inputs” (like phosphate) to stay fertile. We occupy countries and arm their militias and then wonder why they hate us. We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can’t afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse. At every stage our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the powers we are unleashing - a certainty, or at least a hope, that the nature we have turned to garbage, and the people we have treated like garbage, will not come back to haunt us.

Rich planters learned from Bacon’s Rebellion that poor Whites had to be forever separated from enslaved Blacks. They divided and conquered by creating more White privileges. In 1680, legislators pardoned only the White rebels; they prescribed thirty lashes for any slave who lifted a hand “against any Christian” (Christian now meant White). All Whites now wielded absolute power to abuse any African person. By the early eighteenth century, every Virginia county had a militia of landless Whites “ready in case of any sudden eruption of Indians or insurrection of Negroes.” Poor Whites had risen into their lowly place in slave society—the armed defenders of planters—a place that would sow bitter animosity between them and enslaved Africans.9

During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric. John Smilie, for example, worried not only that Congress’s “command of the militia” could be used to create a “select militia,” or to have “no militia at all,” but also, as a separate concern, that “[w]hen a select militia is formed; the people in general may be disarmed.” Federalists responded that because Congress was given no power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, such a force could never oppress the people. It was understood across the political spectrum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.

The US was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq after an extremely costly decade-long military occupation, leaving in place a regime more closely allied to Iran, the US’ regional adversary. The Iraq war depleted the economy, deprived American corporations of oil wealth, greatly enlarged Washington’s budget and trade deficits, and reduced the living standards of US citizens. The Afghanistan war had a similar outcome, with high external costs, military retreat, fragile clients, domestic disaffection, and no short or medium term transfers of wealth (imperial pillage) to the US Treasury or private corporations. The Libyan war led to the total destruction of a modern, oil-rich economy in North Africa, the total dissolution of state and civil society, and the emergence of armed tribal, fundamentalist militias opposed to US and EU client regimes in North and sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. Instead

That silence is not accidental. The eighteenth-century origins of the “right to bear arms” explicitly excluded Black people. 19 South Carolina encoded into law that the enslaved could not “carry or make use of fire-arms or any offensive weapons whatsoever” unless “in the presence of some white person.” Moreover, the state’s various militias had the “power to search and examine all negro-houses for offensive weapons and ammunition.” In Delaware, there could be no valid earthly reason that any “bought Servant, or Negro, or Mulatto slave … be allowed to bear Arms.” Georgia was even more direct. Not only were Blacks forbidden from owning or carrying firearms, but white men were required to own “a good gun or pistol” to give them the means to “search and examine all negro houses for offensive weapons and ammunition.” The distinction was clear: “Citizen( s) had the right to keep arms; the slave did not.” 20

Not every gun owner is as sane or self-possessed as the plumber from Sutherland Springs, after all, and if, as the NRA argues, law-abiding Americans should be and must be armed to protect themselves against the lawbreakers who threaten our safety, vast numbers of fearful, often irrational people will be empowered to make split-second decisions that will inevitably lead to more killings of unarmed strangers. To put a gun in everyone’s hand would turn the United States into a country of soldiers and thrust us back to the early colonial days when every citizen was a musket-bearing warrior and did lifetime service in the local militia. Is that what we want from America today—the right to live in a society of permanent armed struggle? If the problem is too many bad men with guns, would it not be wiser to take those guns away from them rather than arm the so-called good men, who in many if not most instances are considerably less than good, and thereby eliminate the problem altogether, for if the bad men had no guns, why would the good men need them? As my mother used to say to me whenever I spun off into one of my wild, passionate speculations about how to improve the world: “Dream on, Paul.

There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery. The Second Amendment is in the Constitution because Patrick Henry (Virginia’s governor at the time that the Constitution was being debated) and George Mason (the intellectual leader of the movement against the Constitution, the “anti-federalists”) won a debate against James Madison (the guy who wrote most of the Constitution and its original ten amendments). Henry and Mason wanted the Second Amendment in there to guard against slave revolts. Although, overall, white Southerners outnumbered their enslaved populations, that numerical advantage did not hold in every region. In parts of Virginia, for instance, enslaved Black people outnumbered whites. Predictably, whites were worried about slave revolts because, you know, holding people in bondage against their will is not all that easy to do without numerical and military superiority. The principal way of quelling slave revolts was (wait for it): armed militias of white people. Gangs of white people roving around, imposing white supremacy, is nothing new. But the slavers worried that the new Constitution put the power of raising militias with the federal government and not with the individual states. That would mean that the federal government, dominated by Northerners, could choose to not help the South should their population of oppressed humans demand freedom. In a May 2018 New York Times article, Professor Carl Bogus of Roger Williams University School of Law explained the argument like this: During the debate in Richmond, Mason and Henry suggested that the new Constitution gave Congress the power to subvert the slave system by disarming the militias. “Slavery is detested,” Henry reminded the audience. “The majority of Congress is to the North, and the slaves are to the South.” Henry and Mason argued that because the Constitution gave the federal government the power to arm the militias, only the federal government could do so: “If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither—this power being exclusively given to Congress.” Why would the federal government “neglect” a Southern militia? Henry and Mason feared the Northerners who “detested” slavery would refuse to help the South in the event of a slave uprising. Madison eventually gave in to the forces of slavery and included the Second Amendment, along with his larger Bill of Rights.

Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II succeeded in using select militias loyal to them to suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents. Under the auspices of the 1671 Game Act, for example, the Catholic James II had ordered general disarmaments of regions home to his Protestant enemies. These experiences caused Englishmen to be extremely wary of concentrated military forces run by the state and to be jealous of their arms. They accordingly obtained an assurance from William and Mary, in the Declaration of Right (which was codified as the English Bill of Rights), that Protestants would never be disarmed: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” This right has long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second Amendment. It was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia. To be sure, it was an individual right not available to the whole population, given that it was restricted to Protestants, and like all written English rights it was held only against the Crown, not Parliament. But it was secured to them as individuals, according to “libertarian political principles,” not as members of a fighting force.

The profilers’ plan to coax me out of the woods resembled a comedy skit. During their search of my Cane Creek trailer, the feds had found dozens of books on the Civil War. And interviews with my friends confirmed that I was a bona fide Civil War buff. The profilers looked at all this Civil War “stimuli” and concluded that my hiding in the mountains was a form of role-playing. Starring in my own Civil War fantasy, I was a lone rebel fighting for the Lost Cause, and the task force was a Yankee army out to capture me. To talk On August 16, the task force pulled out of the woods while Bo and his rebels went in. They had to look the part, so the FBI profilers dressed them in white hats with the word “REBEL” stenciled in red letters across the front; and around their neck each rebel wore a Confederate flag bandanna.me into surrendering, they needed some of my rebel comrades to convince me that the war was over and it was time to lay down my arms. Colonel Gritz and his crew were assigned the role of my rebel comrades. They were there to “rescue” me from the Yankee horde. Bo’s band of rebels pitched camp down in Tusquitee, north of the town of Hayesville. Beginning at Bob Allison Campground – the place where I’d abandoned Nordmann’s truck – they worked their way west into the Tusquitee Mountains. They walked the trails, blowing whistles and yelling “Eric, we’re here with Bo Gritz to save you.” They searched for a week. I lost it when I heard on the radio that the profilers had dressed Gritz’s clowns in “REBEL” hats and Confederate flag bandannas. I laughed so hard I think I broke a rib.

Article VI No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility. No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue. No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King, Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain. No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage. No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.

The militia of which the Second Amendment speaks is not the National Guard, but the assembly of patriots who are willing to gather to repel invasions. They were the patriots who stood at Lexington and Concord. They were the snipers and guerilla fighters who fought with Francis Marion—better known as the Swamp Fox—to repel the British throughout the South. The militia is not an organized, standing military force; our militia is the armed citizenry. Throughout history, enemies have avoided invading our soil for a very simple reason: not only would they have to contend with the strongest military force known to man, but they would have to contend with millions of gun owners. Grandmas with handguns, ranchers with rifles, college students with Glocks—the threat of an intense guerilla war has just been too much for the enemies of America. We haven’t been invaded since the War of 1812. After decades of fighting to prop up the ludicrous notion that the Second Amendment supports a collective right to gun ownership, the 2008 Heller decision from the Supreme Court dashed the fading dreams of antigunners when they declared gun ownership to be an expressly individual right.

The weapons were delivered aboard the Sky Bird in mid-1992 – with two UN arms embargoes being violated by a single deal. In order to avoid detection, the shipping manifests were altered. Repeating their previous ruse, it was claimed that the shipment was intended for the Lebanese Christian militia.27 Umag, a port city in Croatia, was the real destination, with an end-user certificate provided by the Finance Minister, Martinovic.

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.

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

The “Lost Day” film and the comments by Putin and Medvedev have revealed a great deal: that the invasion of Georgia in August 2008 was indeed a preplanned aggression and that so-called “Russian peacekeepers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia were in fact the vanguard of the invading forces that were in blatant violation of Russia’s international obligations and were training and arming the separatist forces. The admission by Putin that Ossetian separatist militias acted as an integral part of the Russian military plan transfers legal responsibility for acts of ethnic cleansing of Georgian civilians and mass marauding inside and outside of South Ossetia to the Russian military and political leadership. Putin’s admission of the prewar integration of the Ossetian separatist militias into the Russian General Staff war plans puts into question the integrity of the independent European Union war report, written by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini that accused the Georgians of starting the war and attacking Russian “peacekeepers,” which, according to Tagliavini, warranted a Russian military response.

[W]hen the Constitution means “states” it says so.… The ultimate right to keep and bear arms belongs to “the people,” not the “states.”... Thus the “people” at the core of the Second Amendment [are] the same “We the People” who “ordain and establish” the Constitution and whose right to assemble ... [is] at the core of the First Amendment.... Nowadays, it is quite common to speak loosely of the National Guard as “the state militia,” but [when the Second Amendment was written]... “the militia” referred to all Citizens capable of bearing arms. [So] “the militia” is identical to “the people”....

I don't think I have to mention the infringements against the Second Amendment which reads '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.' I won’t insult your intelligence today by enumerating the infractions by this administration in violation of the Second Amendment.

Americans tried to explain to their European customers that slavery in the United States, unlike in Saint-Domingue, was safe—not least, as Tench Coxe put it, because of the presence of a powerful white militia and because slaves have “no artillery nor arms. Tho they are numerous they are much separated by rivers, Bayos and tracts thickly peopled with whites.” But concerns remained.45

the civil war began, and day by day outside the capital the conflict and killing escalated. When the authority of the government broke down, many powerful men gathered armed militias around them and jockeyed for power. Five groups were armed with automatic weapons, explosives and hatred for their rivals. The army, the police, the Sunni militia and the Shia militia were four of the five. The fifth group was made up of criminals we called The Mafia, who masqueraded as soldiers or rebel fighters. They took advantage of the chaos to steal, threaten, kidnap and extort money from an already terrified people.

A citizenry “trained up unto their arms, which they use not for the defense of slavery but of liberty,” composes “the vastest body of a well-disciplined militia that is possible in nature.

But even after the surrender of the Confederacy—a surrender that presaged the final destruction of slavery—there were Democrats who refused to accept the outcome. One of them, John Wilkes Booth, decided to take action. Booth was a Confederate sympathizer from Maryland. Earlier Booth had joined a volunteer militia of Democrats in attendance at the hanging of abolitionist John Brown. Booth and the Democrats came armed to prevent abolitionists from rescuing Brown from the gallows. Two days after Lee’s surrender, Lincoln gave a speech at the White House in which he suggested that some blacks should get the vote. That did it for Booth, who gathered a group of likeminded Democrats who resolved to assassinate not only President Lincoln but also the vice president and the secretary of state. This was nothing short of an attempted coup.

It was a matter of faith for Americans that standing armies were a threat to liberty and that the militia in the form of a “people numerous and armed” was the only acceptable way to defend a republic.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.” -Thomas Jefferson

a city broken into segments, each of them ruthlessly controlled by an alliance of militias”—then Kingston had evolved into something that could scarcely be called a city at all: from a distance, it might look like a single contiguous stretch of urban terrain, but in fact it was a balkanized patchwork of entrenched strongholds perpetually at war with each other. Within each stronghold the formal institutions of the Jamaican state were almost entirely absent, but nonstate armed groups (initially licensed by the dominant political party, but increasingly independent over time) exercised informal governance responsibilities, including law and order.

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,” he recited.

The 'Right to Bear Arms' has been grossly misunderstood and defined wrongly by people with unconstitutional motives. In order to understand why this 'Right' was written, you must understand the people who wrote it and their beliefs. The 'Right to Bear Arms' means that every U.S. citizen has a right to own firearms in order to protect this country from their government and themselves from each other. This law has nothing to do with owning firearms for the purpose of protecting this country from foreign attacks; although, it would be a huge benefit in such an attack.

manifest in the IRGC’s support for armed proxies like the Lebanon-based Shiite militia Hezbollah and the military wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas—made the Iranian regime Israel’s single greatest security threat and contributed to the general hardening of Israeli attitudes toward possible peace with its neighbors.

The conflict between Arabs and Jews had been an open sore on the region for almost a century, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British, who were then occupying Palestine, committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in a region overwhelmingly populated by Arabs. Over the next twenty or so years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine and organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements. In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

See, the one thing that I do really agree with with the right to bear arms, I really agree with… That the real reason it was written was so that you could form a militia to fight against a tyrannical government. In case the government became a bunch of cunts, you could all get your guns and fight back, and that’s why it was written. – [Audience cheering] – Yeah! And that made a hell of a lot of sense when it was just muskets. But you do know the government has drones, right? You get that? You’re bringing guns to a drone fight! If we went back to muskets, I’m all for it! Keep the Second Amendment. If we all have muskets… Muskets are awesome! Every cunt should be carrying a musket with him at all times. You know what’s good about the musket? It gives you a lot of time to calm down. Someone calls your wife fat, and you’re like, “Fuck you, buddy! Ah, you’re not a bad guy. You’re all right.

The simplest boundary separates fascism from classical tyranny. The exiled moderate socialist Gaetano Salvemini, having abandoned his chair as professor of history at Florence and moved to London and then to Harvard because he could not bear to teach without saying what he thought, pointed to the essential difference when he wondered why “Italians felt the need to get rid of their free institutions” at the very moment when they should be taking pride in them, and when they “should step forward toward a more advanced democracy.” Fascism, for Salvemini, meant setting aside democracy and due process in public life, to the acclamation of the street. It is a phenomenon of failed democracies, and its novelty was that, instead of simply clamping silence upon citizens as classical tyranny had done since earliest times, it found a technique to channel their passions into the construction of an obligatory domestic unity around projects of internal cleansing and external expansion. We should not use the term fascism for predemocratic dictatorships. However cruel, they lack the manipulated mass enthusiasm and demonic energy of fascism, along with the mission of “giving up free institutions” for the sake of national unity, purity, and force. Fascism is easily confused with military dictatorship, for both fascist leaders militarized their societies and placed wars of conquest at the very center of their aims. Guns and uniforms were a fetish with them. In the 1930s, fascist militias were all uniformed (as, indeed, were socialist militias in that colored-shirt era), and fascists have always wanted to turn society into an armed fraternity. Hitler, newly installed as chancellor of Germany, made the mistake of dressing in a civilian trenchcoat and hat when he went to Venice on June 14, 1934, for his first meeting with the more senior Mussolini, “resplendent with uniform and dagger.” Thereafter the Führer appeared in uniform on public occasions—sometimes a brown party jacket, later often an unadorned military tunic. But while all fascisms are always militaristic, military dictatorships are not always fascist. Most military dictators have acted simply as tyrants, without daring to unleash the popular excitement of fascism. Military dictatorships are far commoner than fascisms, for they have no necessary connection to a failed democracy and have existed since there have been warriors.

In 1798, in an address to the Massachusetts militia, President John Adams said, “We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

the Shower Posse solely as the U.S. embassy cable did—as an “international criminal syndicate”—is to describe only a small part of the group’s role. The Shower Posse was (and is) both local and transnational, a nonstate armed group that nests within a marginalized and poor but tightly knit local community in Kingston, yet is connected both to the Jamaican government and to a far broader international network. It was and is as much a communitarian militia, social welfare organization, grassroots political mobilization tool, dispute resolution and mediation mechanism, and local informal justice enforcement system as it is an extortion racket or a transnational drug trafficking organization. Drug trafficking doesn’t define what an organization like Coke’s group is; it’s just one of the things the group does.

1848…..they returned to Cologne to begin a new working-class group there. By April it had eight thousand members. Almost immediately, Marx disagreed with its leader Gottschalk over tactics. Gottschalk preferred explosive rhetoric about worker’s rights and arming a people’s militia, communist notions that terrified the middle classes of Germany who were afraid the rights just won would be lost with a revolt by the more numerous lower classes. Marx, however, believed that although the pace of change was frustrating, historical development was slow, and before there could be proletariat rule, there had to be middle-class rule. In any case, a proletariat ‘class’ barely existed in Germany. The number of people who labored with their hands was great, but they were disorganized and did not as yet recognize their own strength. To support the ultimate goal of that group, Marx believed one had to work for middle-class democracy. Viewing upcoming elections as just such an opportunity, he encouraged participation to ensure by democratic candidates over reactionaries who would roll back on reforms. Marx further believed that any newspaper he and his associates published In Colgne had to be democratic not communist, because in Germany democracy was the ideology with the greater immediate potential. If they had chosen to produce an ultra-radical newspaper, Engels said, ‘there was nothing left for us to do but to preach communism in a little provincial sheet and to found a tiny sect instead of a great party of action.’ The pragmatic approach was not unlike the one Marx had taken during his tenure as editor…

By the early eighteenth century, every Virginia county had a militia of landless Whites “ready in case of any sudden eruption of Indians or insurrection of Negroes.” Poor Whites had risen into their lowly place in slave society—the armed defenders of planters—a place that would sow bitter animosity between them and enslaved Africans.

I stood on a rise, overlooking the plague valley. Matthew was beside me. The last thing I remembered was crawling into my sleeping bag after the whiskey had hit me like a two-by-four to the face. Now my friend was here with me. “I’ve missed you. Are you feeling better?” How much was this vision taking out of him? “Better.” He didn’t appear as pale. He wore a heavy coat, open over a space camp T-shirt. “I’m so relieved to hear that, sweetheart. Why would you bring us here?” “Power is your burden.” I surveyed all the bodies. “I felt the weight of it when I killed these people.” “Obstacles multiply.” “Which ones?” A breeze soughed over the valley. “Bagmen, slavers, militia, or cannibals?” He held up the fingers of one hand. “There are now five. The miners watch us. Plotting.” “But miners are the same as cannibals, right?” He shuffled his boots with irritation. “Miners, Empress.” “Okay, okay.” I rubbed his arm. “Are you and Finn being safe?” His brows drew together as he gazed out. “Smite and fall, mad and struck.” I looked with him, like we were viewing a sunset, a beautiful vista. Not plague and death. “You’ve told me those words before.” “So much for you to learn, Empress. Beware the inactivated card.” One Arcana’s powers lay dormant—until he or she killed another player. “Who is it?” “Don’t ask, if you ever want to know.” Naturally, I started to ask, but he cut me off. “Do you believe I see far?” He peered down at me. “Do you believe I see an unbroken line that stretches on through eternity? Centuries ago, I told an Empress that a future incarnation of hers would live in a world of ash where nothing grew. She never believed me.” I could imagine Phyta or the May Queen surveying verdant fields and crops, doubting the Fool. “Now I tell you that dark days are ahead. Will you believe me?” “I will. I do. Please tell me what will happen. How dark?” “Darkest. Power is your burden; knowing is mine.” His expression turned pleading, his soft brown eyes imploring. “Never hate me.” I raised my hands, cradling his face. “Even when I was so mad at you, I never hated you.” “Remember. Matthew knows best.” He sounded like his mom—when she’d tried to drown him: Mother knows best, son. I dropped my hands. “It scares me when you say that.” “Do you know what you really want? I see it. I feel it. Think, Empress. See far.” I was trying! “Help me, then. I’m ready. Help me see far!” “All is not as it seems. What would you sacrifice? What would you endure?” “To end the game?” His voice grew thick as he said, “Things will happen beyond your wildest imaginings.” “Good things?” His eyes watered. “Good, bad, good, bad, good, good, bad, bad, good-bye. You are my friend.

Edward I (1272–1307) was less a scholar than his father, and more a king; ambitious, strong of will, tenacious in war, subtle in policy, rich in stratagems and spoils, yet capable of moderation and caution, and of farseeing purposes that made his reign one of the most successful in English history. He reorganized the army, trained a large force of archers in the use of the longbow, and established a national militia by ordering every able-bodied Englishman to possess, and learn the use of, arms; unwittingly, he created a military basis for democracy.

Once beyond school age, individuals were all expected to carry out two functions: to contribute to production and to take part in military operations. The whole system was based on the “Four Military Lines.” The key tenets were “arm the entire people,” “fortify the entire nation,” “build a nation of military leaders,” and “complete military modernization.” So various militias were formed. When I grew too old for the Youth League, I had no choice but to join one of these militias. In my case, it was the Laborers’ and Farmers’ Red Army. I enlisted when I graduated from high school and embarked on a period of training. The training was professional enough. We learned how to dig trenches and fight to protect our position. We were well trained as snipers. Groups of individuals who were used to working together were formed into military units. The idea was that, in the event of a crisis, the units could be mobilized very quickly. We had exercises twice a year, at the hottest and the coldest time of year. We’d do things like climb a mountain or dig trenches out of the frozen ground. Right from the start, the one thing I kept asking myself was this: What was with the party’s obsession with militarizing the entire nation?

The Cuban Military includes the army, air and air defense forces, navy and various youth groups and reserve components. As a United Military Force it is called the “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias – FAR” or “The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.” “FAR” extends into the civilian sector controlling 60% of the economy. Because of the overlapping interests, it is difficult to separate the various military branches which have been and are still controlled by Raúl Castro. In his speeches he frequently has stressed the military as the people's partner in the operation of the country. The General Officer’s, have duties that extend beyond their responsibilities to the military. Prior to the 1980’s, the Cuban military depended on the Soviet Union to support them and in return, Cuba supported the Soviet Union militarily in Africa, South America and the Middle East. Throughout the 1980’s, the amount of military equipment they received gave Cuba the most formidable military in Latin America. Because of corruption and drug trafficking by the Cuban army in 1989, a move was instituted by Raúl Castro to rout out the offenders, executing some and reassigning others to the Ministry of Interior, which became part of a much smaller army. Presently Cuba has deepened its military training program with China. The Cuban military has been reduced to 39,000 troops however the Territorial Militia Troops, the Youth Labor Army, and the Naval Militia, now more defensive in nature, still retains the potential to make any enemy invasion costly.

Article VII. [The governor of this commonwealth for the time being, shall be the commander in chief of the army and navy, and of all the military forces of the state, by sea and land, and shall have full power by himself, or by any commander, or other officer or officers, from time to time, to train, instruct, exercise and govern the militia and navy; and, for the special defence and safety of the commonwealth, to assemble in martial array, and put in warlike posture, the inhabitants thereof, and to lead and conduct them, and with them to encounter, repel, resist, expel and pursue, by force of arms, as well by sea as by land, within or without the limits of this commonwealth, and also to kill, slay and destroy, if necessary, and conquer, by all fitting ways, enterprises, and means whatsoever, all and every such person and persons as shall, at any time hereafter, in a hostile manner, attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance of this commonwealth; and to use and exercise, over the army and navy, and over the militia in actual service, the law martial, in time of war or invasion, and also in time of rebellion, declared by the legislature to exist, as occasion shall necessarily require; and to take and surprise by all ways and means whatsoever, all and every such person or persons, with their ships, arms, ammunition and other goods, as shall, in a hostile manner, invade, or attempt the invading, conquering, or annoying this commonwealth; and that the governor be intrusted with all these and other powers, incident to the offices of captain-general and commander in chief, and admiral, to be exercised agreeably to the rules and regulations of the constitution, and the laws of the land, and not otherwise.

Utanga refugee camp was their home for four years. When Ilhan turned twelve, a Lutheran church sponsored her family to go to the United States. Ilhan arrived in Arlington, Virginia, in possession of two English phrases: “Hello” and “Shut up.” Her classmates yanked at her hijab, stuck chewing gum to it, and bombarded her with questions like, “Do you have hair? Do you have a pet monkey? Does it feel good to wear shoes for the first time?” Every day, the girl who had survived armed militias and a refugee camp was reminded that she was different. “This is the first time I realized the stigma that I carried as an immigrant and a refugee, and a Muslim person who was visibly Muslim, with a headscarf,” she told The New Yorker. “And that my blackness was a source of tension.” But as the kids bullied her, Ilhan remembered her grandfather telling her as a child: “Everything is temporary.” His words gave her courage.

The planters responded to this challenge by adopting a three-part strategy to break the will, or at least the ability to fight, of a people who had been snatched from their homeland and brutalized and who were overwhelmingly “hostile to those who controlled their labor.” 14 In a series of moves that would scar the United States well into the twenty-first century, colonial Virginia deployed this triad of brutal control. It denied the enslaved the right to bear arms; ignored the right to self-defense for Black people; and put in place a “large-scale military machinery,” the militia, “to crack down [on] any conspiracies or uprisings.” 15

The several States agree 'not to keep troops or ships of war in time of peace.' 194 They further stipulate that, 'a well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

The Iranian presence in neighbouring Syria has given Tehran a ‘land bridge’ across the Middle East, stretching from its capital to Beirut. It has used this bridge to increase its arms shipments to the huge Hezbollah Shia militia. Analysts suggest Hez-bollah now has an arsenal of up to 150,000 missiles, some of them guided, others long range. If and when Hezbollah in Lebanon uses its larger and longer-range rockets to reach deep into Israel on a significant scale, the response will be massive.

It denied the enslaved the right to bear arms; ignored the right to self-defense for Black people; and put in place a “large-scale military machinery,” the militia, “to crack down [on] any conspiracies or uprisings.” 15 As early as 1639, Virginia prohibited Africans from carrying guns because “what white Southerners feared the most … [was] an armed black man unafraid to retaliate against both the system of slavery and those who fought to defend it.

Whether they trusted them or not, the plantation owners voiced concerns that if they didn’t use “great caution … our slaves when armed might become our masters.” 31 South Carolina then formally merged the separate slave patrol with the militia to strengthen the colony’s internal and external defenses.

Under the laws in effect in Georgia in that epoch, bearing arms was required. Conflicts with Native Americans prompted a 1770 enactment that "every male white inhabitant of this province, (the inhabitants of the sea port towns only excepted who shall not be obliged to carry any other than side arms) who is or shall be liable to bear arms in the militia . . . and resorting . . . to any church . . . shall carry with him a gun, or a pair of pistols."17 Each man was required to "take the said gun or pistols with him to the pew or seat," and these arms were to "be fit for immediate use and service.

Thus, "the people" had a right to religious freedom and to have arms. Regarding the latter, New York followed Virginia in beginning with the declaration "that the people have a right to keep and bear arms," and then including a separate clause declaring the militia to be necessary for a free state. While Virginia referred to the militia as "composed of the body of the people, trained to arms,"27 New York characterized the militia as "including the body of the people capable of bearing arms.

As to the arms guarantee, the above tracked the language of the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights of 1776 in guaranteeing the right to bear arms for self-defense and defense of the state.19 Similar to what would become the federal First Amendment, which begins "Congress shall make no law," the above proposed that a free press "shall not be restrained by any [federal] law" and that "no law shall be passed for disarming the people" as a whole "or any of them"—except that criminals or other dangerous persons could be disarmed. Bearing arms to hunt was not out of place in a bill of rights, in that British authorities had been notorious for disarming the people under the guise of game laws.20 The above clarifies that the term "bear arms" is not linguistically restricted to matters of the militia or the national defense.

Coxe responded to the Dissent of the Minority under the pen name ''A Pennsylvanian" in "To the Citizens of the United States, III," published in the Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788. He wrote as follows: The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of america from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American . . . . [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.

Dissenting, Justice Stevens argued that the Second Amendment extended only to the individual “right to use weapons for certain military purposes”8—a curious position, given that militia service is a compulsory duty, and no person has a “right” to bear or use arms as he chooses in a militia or even to be a member thereof. It is noteworthy that no Justice supported the now-discredited “collective rights” theory.

The above were key events that led the Founders to adopt the Second Amendment. A tyrannical government supported by a standing army had sought to disarm a people through various artifices. It took these repressive measures against both citizens organized as militia and against citizens as individuals. The patriots then exercised their right to keep and bear arms to protect both this right and their many other rights.

A general militia composed of all citizens capable of bearing arms was seen as superior to a select militia consisting of a selective group, which bordered on a standing army, the bane of liberty.

Boys on horseback resupplied the militia.31 Militiamen on the way to Lexington and Concord stopped at a farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. To their amusement, 8-year-old John Quincy Adams, son of Abigail and John Adams, was executing the manual of arms with a musket taller than he was.

John Dickinson of Delaware supported both Mason and Ellsworth. A most important matter was "that of the sword. His opinion was, that the states never would, nor ought to, give up all authority over the militia."10 He proposed that the federal power extend to only part of the militia at any one time, "which, by rotation, would discipline the whole militia."11 Mason then incorporated this idea of "a select militia" into his proposal.

Luther Martin of Maryland replied that "the states would never give up the power over the militia; and that, if they were to do so, the militia would be less attended to by the general than by the state governments."21 After Gerry warned that granting Congress powers inconsistent with the existence of the states would lead to civil war, Madison rejoined that "as the greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies, it is best to prevent them by an effectual provision for a good militia.

required in the colonies to serve in militias during their lifetimes for the purpose of raiding and razing Indigenous communities, the southern colonies included, and later states’ militias were used as “slave patrols.” The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, enshrined these irregular forces into law: “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 continuing significance of that “freedom” specified in the Bill of Rights reveals the settler-colonialist cultural roots of the United States that appear even in the present as a sacred right.2

When emerging markets cannot pay foreign debts, options vanish. Unavoidable defaults shut off access to global capital markets. Without access to capital, economies contract. Local currency becomes worthless. Printing more money invites inflation and hyperinflation. Poverty proliferates. Governments that cannot provide for their populations do not last long. Chaos opens the door to empty promises by authoritarians armed with populist slogans and freelance militias. Advanced economies are not invulnerable, as history has shown repeatedly. It’s worth noting that in 1899 cautious investors sought safety in one-hundred-year bonds issued by the Habsburg Empire that ruled Austria-Hungary. When the anarchist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austria’s archduke Ferdinand in June 1914, an act that ignited World War I, sovereign Habsburg bonds were still holding their value relative to other European bonds. In other words, no experts saw the end coming. Within four years, the Habsburg Empire was history. Two decades later, the postwar debt and reparations bills that nearly smothered Germany helped usher in World War II.

Surprise. Kill. Vanish.” This is where TITUS could excel. Small groups of armed individuals operating from a network of allies and supporters using prepositioned ammunition and weapons.

a marked change occurred between 2019 and 2020. The dual crises of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests ran slam into the twin dangers of Q-Anon and the consolidation of the Trump paramilitary. In 2019, there were sixty-five incidents of domestic terrorism or attempted violence, but in the run-up to the election in 2020, that number nearly doubled, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Twenty-one plots were disrupted by law enforcement.5 Violent extremists in the United States and terrorists in the Middle East have remarkably similar pathways to radicalization. Both are motivated by devotion to a charismatic leader, are successful at smashing political norms, and are promised a future racially homogeneous paradise. Modern American terrorists are much more akin to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) than they are to the old Ku Klux Klan. Though they take offense at that comparison, the similarities are quite remarkable. Most American extremists are not professional terrorists on par with their international counterparts. They lack operational proficiency and weapons. But they do not lack in ruthlessness, targets, or ideology. However, the overwhelming number of white nationalist extremists operate as lone wolves. Like McVeigh in the 1990s and others from the 1980s, they hope their acts will motivate the masses to follow in their footsteps. ISIS radicals who abandon their homes and immigrate to the Syria-Iraq border “caliphate” almost exclusively self-radicalize by watching terrorist videos. The Trump insurgents are radicalizing in the exact same way. Hundreds of tactical training videos easily accessible on social media show how to shoot, patrol, and fight like special forces soldiers. These video interviews and lessons explaining how to assemble body armor or make IEDs and extolling the virtues of being part of the armed resistance supporting Donald Trump fill Facebook and Instagram feeds. Some even call themselves the “Boojahideen,” an English take on the Arabic “mujahideen,” or holy warrior. U.S. insurgents in the making often watch YouTube and Facebook videos of tactical military operations, gear reviews, and shooting how-tos. They then go out to buy rifles, magazines, ammunition, combat helmets, and camouflage clothing and seek out other “patriots” to prepare for armed action. This is pure ISIS-like self-radicalization. One could call them Vanilla ISIS.

1813, a British navy flotilla composed of three frigates, three sloops, and ten other vessels made its way from Bermuda to Baltimore. There they landed a force of 2,500 British regulars who began the quick march toward Washington, D.C. The American militia, poorly armed and dramatically less experienced than the British, gathered at Bladensburg, Maryland, attempting to fend off the British army. The battle was a disaster for the Americans. Upon receiving news of the British success, President James Madison fled the capital for Virginia. The British commanders marched in triumph into Washington, D.C. Down the city’s grand avenues the troops paraded, arriving at the President’s House before nightfall. There the British commanders ate the supper that had been prepared for Madison—before burning down the mansion, the treasury, and several other public buildings. The militia of the nation’s capital had proven incompetent in the face of the British army—and America had suffered an embarrassing defeat.

There must also be an option and real possibility for settlers to remain where they are and to become permanent residents or citizens of the State of Palestine. If they are willing to become citizens of Palestine, to recognize Palestinian sovereignty and Palestinian laws, and not to be armed militias, the State of Palestine should be willing to accept them.

maidservant of the family. All but two of the squad of militia were out patrolling around the field where the habitants were at work. In those dangerous days it was not thought safe for the people of the seigneury to scatter to their various farms. All worked together in one field and then went on to another, and always with an armed guard. In the spring of that year 1692, raiding bands of Iroquois had kept the country around Montreal and for many miles downriver in continual alarm. Seeding had been delayed, the fields farthest from the stockade had lain untilled, and harvest was late in those that had been planted. Though the middle of October was now past, there was still work to be done, fall plowing and clearing and burning of refuse, before winter settled down on the St. Lawrence. So the soldiers had gone to the fields with the workers, leaving only two on guard within the stockade.

York City, as bloodthirsty mobs of enraged working-class Whites roamed Midtown Manhattan “armed with clubs, pitchforks, iron bars, swords, and many with guns and pistols,” looking for any African Americans they could find.1 Marching through the streets, those with weapons fired toward anyone in their way, even at New York City policemen. On the corner of Twenty-Ninth Street, “a crowd who had been engaged all day in hunting down and stoning to death every negro they could spy” lingered in plain view of the Twenty-First Precinct police station. It was undermanned because thousands of New York State Militia troops who would have served as backup had been sent to the Battle of Gettysburg.2 Nothing was spared. The Colored Orphan Asylum at Forty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, home to more than two hundred disadvantaged Black children, had been burned to the ground. Horses pulling streetcars had been shot to death and the cars smashed to pieces. The homes of prominent abolitionists were being looted and destroyed. Railroad tracks had been torn up and telegraph wires cut. Dozens of public buildings, including churches, were ransacked and torched. Even the house of the New York City mayor, George Opdyke, was raided and set on fire. It was mayhem. Ever since President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, the city’s poorest Whites feared that freed slaves would migrate to Manhattan and steal their jobs. Then in March, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, which made all able-bodied adult males immediately eligible to be drafted into the Union Army. This reality sank in when the names of New York City draftees were published leading up to “Draft Week.” Making matters worse was that under the Enrollment Act, any wealthy man could escape the draft by paying a $300 fee (the equivalent of more than $6,500 today).3 He would be replaced by some poor fellow who simply couldn’t afford to pay that.

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 toxic effects of the West’s semi-covert intervention in Syria—where the United States and its allies contributed billions of dollars to the arming and training of Islamist militias that ultimately fought under the black banners of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—continue to reverberate to this day.

she said. “They’re all worried about Iran.” By the time I took office, the theocratic regime in Iran had presented a challenge to American presidents for more than twenty years. Governed by radical clerics who seized power in the 1979 revolution, Iran was one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. At the same time, Iran was a relatively modern society with a budding freedom movement. In August 2002, an Iranian opposition group came forward with evidence that the regime was building a covert uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, along with a secret heavy water production plant in Arak—two telltale signs of a nuclear weapons program. The Iranians acknowledged the enrichment but claimed it was for electricity production only. If that was true, why was the regime hiding it? And why did Iran need to enrich uranium when it didn’t have an operable nuclear power plant? All of a sudden, there weren’t so many complaints about including Iran in the axis of evil. In October 2003, seven months after we removed Saddam Hussein from power, Iran pledged to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing. In return, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France agreed to provide financial and diplomatic benefits, such as technology and trade cooperation. The Europeans had done their part, and we had done ours. The agreement was a positive step toward our ultimate goal of stopping Iranian enrichment and preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 2005, everything changed. Iran held a presidential election. The process was suspicious, to say the least. The Council of Guardians, a handful of senior Islamic clerics, decided who was on the ballot. The clerics used the Basij Corps, a militia-like unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, to manage turnout and influence the vote. Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Not surprisingly, he had strong support from the Basij. Ahmadinejad steered Iran in an aggressive new direction. The regime became more repressive at home, more belligerent in Iraq, and more proactive in destabilizing Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Afghanistan. Ahmadinejad called Israel “a stinking corpse” that should be “wiped off the map.” He dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth.” He used a United Nations speech to predict that the hidden imam would reappear to save the world. I started to worry we were dealing with more than just a dangerous leader. This guy could be nuts. As one of his first acts, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would resume uranium conversion. He claimed it was part of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program, but the world recognized the move as a step toward enrichment for a weapon. Vladimir Putin—with my support—offered to provide fuel enriched in Russia for Iran’s civilian reactors, once it built some, so that Iran would not need its own enrichment facilities. Ahmadinejad rejected the proposal. The Europeans also offered

sorting

On September 16, 1775, the Committee of Safety of the New York Provincial Congress ordered the seizure of arms from "any person who has not signed the general association in this Colony"—who would have included not only Tories, but also persons who wished to avoid joining either side. Such impressed arms were to be appraised and were promised to be returned (or the value thereof paid) at the end of the conflict. Under the direction of the county committees, the local militias would enforce the seizures.

By 1777, confident of a British military victory, Colonial Undersecretary William Knox circulated to members of the ministry a comprehensive policy entitled "What Is Fit to Be Done with America?" Besides a state church, unlimited tax power, a standing army, and a governing aristocracy, the plan anticipated: "The Militia Laws should be repealed and none suffered to be re-enacted, & the Arms of all the People should be taken away, . . . nor should any Foundery or manufactuary of Arms, Gunpowder, or Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without Licence . . .

James Jackson of Georgia argued that "the people of America would never consent to be deprived of the privilege of carrying arms. Tho it may prove burdensome to some individuals to be obliged to arm themselves, yet it would not be so considered when the advantages were justly estimated." He noted some positive historical examples: The Swiss cantons owed their emancipation to their militia establishment—The English cities rendered themselves formidable to the Barons, by putting arms into the hands of their militia—and when the militia united with the Barons, they extorted Magna Charta from King John—In France we recently see the same salutary effects from arming the militia—In England, the militia has of late been neglected—the consequence is a standing army . . . . In a Republic every man ought to be a soldier, and be prepared to resist tyranny and usurpation, as well as invasion, and to prevent the greatest of all evils—a standing army.

Jackson opined that anyone objecting to militia duty should pay an equivalent, for "bearing arms was one of the most important duties we owe to society. One great object men have in view, by forming themselves into a state of civil society, is to protect their persons and property; to afford this protection it is necessary . . . that every one either give his personal assistance, or pay an equivalent for it.

John Laurance of New York defined the militia as "every man in the states who is capable of performing military duty, though not actually enrolled in any particular body," noting that "when the constitution was framed, some states were as yet unprovided with militia laws." Accordingly, "the militia must mean all persons without exception, who are capable of bearing arms in defence of their country . . . ."48 He argued that if conscientious objectors were to be exempted, it must be by state law, not the federal enactment—the view that would prevail.

New York politician and physician Samuel Latham Mitchill, in an address the year after passage of the Militia Act, noted that the militia "proceeds upon the principle, that they who are able to govern, are also capable of defending themselves. The keeping of arms, is therefore, not only not prohibited, but is positively provided for by law . . . . " 'These weapons serve for the defence of the life and property of the individual against the violent or burglarious attacks of thieves, a description of persons happily very small among us.

While assuring the authorities of their loyalty, the patriots made thinly veiled threats concerning their prowess with firearms. The Boston Gazette declared: "Besides the regular trained militia in New-England, all the planters sons and servants are taught to use the fowling piece from their youth, and generally fire balls with great exactness at fowl or beast.

Moreover, the Redcoats did seek to suppress militia activities in Boston, albeit not necessarily with success. In a December incident, it was reported that a parry of the militia being at exercise on Bosron common, a parry of the army surrounded them and rook away their fire arms; immediately thereupon a larger party of the militia assembled, pursued the Army, and retook their fire arms. Whereupon the Governor ordered the man of war to fire upon the Town, which was instantly obeyed; several houses were damaged, and only 6 people killed.

John Hancock averred in his oration on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre: "From a well regulated militia we have nothing to fear . . . . They fight for their houses, their lands, for their wives, their children, for all who claim the tenderest names, and are held dearest in their hearts, they fight pro aris & focis, for their liberty, and for themselves, and for their God." Hancock added that "no militia ever appear'd in more flourishing condition, than that of this province now doth

A Carolinian" wrote under the sarcastic title "Some of the Blessings of military Law, or the Insolence of governor gage" as follows: With all the plausible Pretences to Protection and Defence, a standing Army is the most dangerous Enemy to the Liberties of a Nation that can be thought of . . . . It is much better, with a well regulated Militia, to run the Risk of a foreign Invasion, than, with a Standing Army, to run the Risk of Slavery . . . . When an Army is sent to enforce Laws, it is always an Evidence that either the Law makers are conscious that they had no clear and indisputable Right to make those Laws, or that they are bad and oppressive. Wherever the People themselves have had a Hand in making Laws, according to the first Principles of our constitution, there is no Danger of Non-submission, nor can there be Need of an Army to enforce them.