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jimmy the one

(2,708 posts)
14. militia acts
Wed Jun 10, 2015, 01:09 PM
Jun 2015

shamash: The term "the people" is used elsewhere, in amendments written at the same time... They chose to use "the people", and "the people" in all other instances refers to individuals.

Use of the people as individuals comports fine with the militia interpretation, as individual people had the right to bear arms within militia & the individual right/duty to join militia. Duty as a right is what they wanted to convey. Individual rkba term used today is not to be confused with the individual right of the original 2ndA, which was attached to militia.

shamash: As a historical note, the number of guns in govt arsenals (state and federal) in 1792 was not sufficient to arm every potential militia member in the United States. If called to serve, militia members (i.e. everyone) would have had to bring their personal weapons.

There were no federal armories in 1792 to produce firearms - the national gunstock was largely leftover French & Belgian musquettes from the rev-war perhaps 150,000, & some fraction of the 60,000 british muskets from the French/indian war of 1756-63. Since springfield didn't start producing firearms until 1795, new militia members were encouraged (by mandating it) to bring their own firearms, but of course they couldn't bring what they didn't have, & only about 25% of militia members had a firearm they could spare, if that. In Dearborn's 1803 firearm census, only 45% of militia members had firearms, ~half+ of that supplied by fed or state armories.

shamash: It is worth noting that there is nothing in this Act about reimbursing the person for the cost of the weapon, so it is unambiguously a privately-owned weapon.

Unless it was issued by a state or federal armory, which was what occurred most of the time prior to ~1800. The requirement to bring a firearm to militia service was simply a ploy to get people to bring in any firearm they could, rather than leave it at home. As well as to prompt firearm purchases when possible (making tench coxe a happy man).

Clearly, the militia is everyone deemed suitable for fighting (in a white-dominated patriarchal society, anyway). Which means that under a "militia" interpretation, the 2nd Amendment would mean "everyone in the country able to fight is automatically a militia member and has the right to a military-grade weapon (because the government does not have enough of them to hand them out)". Not only to bear arms, but to keep arms.

Since there wasn't a real big objective distinction between 'military firearms' & civilian firearms, as there is today due evolution, you strain reasoning that musketry would apply as a military grade weapon (obviously trying to link it with today's sophisticated firearms). The bayonet would moreso have been applied to military hardware, than a musket or rifle itself.

sham: (there is also an interesting tidbit in the Act saying that the weapon a person buys for militia purposes is exempt from bankruptcy hearings and other debts. So you could lose everything else you own, but the courts and creditors could not touch your military-grade rifle and ammo...)

Right, so one could still perform militia duty to your country - preventing the scofflaw militia member from claiming the govt had taken away the firearm so he couldn't serve (tho they scofflawed anyway).
The militia act of 1792 was enabled approx. 6 months after the 2ndA was written dec 1791, so it's perfectly sequitur to believe the 2ndA defined what was needed for the security of a free state, while the militia act described it in detail.

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