"I've Heard ALL the Arguments..."

I've heard all the arguments over and over again for not only the right to bear arms but the unfettered manufacture and sales of all kinds of firearms -- even in the wake of tragedies such as Nickel Mines.

But my Sun mailbox is crammed with letters from the gun-obsessed with all the old arguments, including the one about how the Second Amendment guarantees us all the right to own guns, guns and more guns...

Your gun ownership makes you part of a well-regulated militia, that is, the National Guard. You must show up for training and exercises on a regular basis and, at the moment, be eligible for service in Iraq. That's what the amendment says: A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. What do you say? Are you ready to march on Tehran?

Well, Dan, like most of your kind, you’re quick to offer an unfounded opinion, but are wrong on so many counts that pointing them out becomes an exercise in tedium. Good Lord, you represent yourself to be an informed professional, but you come off like a stupid, shallow child.

That’s because none of the stuff I am going to repeat here is new. It’s been around and available and used to expose your facile assertions as bunk for, in some cases decades, in others, centuries. But we continually point them out to your side ad nauseam, only to find you either haven’t been paying attention because you’re too fanatically locked into your subversive mindset, or you’re just too ignorant and lazy to look beyond your own self-imposed insulation.

Yet you say you’ve heard all the arguments. If that’s true, Dan, that makes you an intentional deceiver, because the documented truth is quite the opposite of what you represent it to be.

As for the militia of the Second Amendment being the National Guard, here’s what the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate Ninety-Seventh Congress had to say:

Congress has established the present National Guard under its own power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.

This understanding is codified under US Code, TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES, Subtitle A - General Military Law, PART I - ORGANIZATION AND GENERAL MILITARY POWERS, CHAPTER 13 - THE MILITIA, Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes:

(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Then we have the assertion that in order to claim the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, citizens must be members of a “well regulated militia.” No less an authority than Alexander Hamilton disagreed with you, writing in The Federalist No. 29:

To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss...Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped…

I don’t expect you to pay any attention to this, Dan. I merely wanted to point out the obvious, and to put you on notice that an excuse has been taken from you. Now you really have heard some of the arguments, or at least had them made available to you. You do this again and we’ll all know you’re just a liar.

[Thanks to Mark P]