'Self-Defense' Bill Introduced in House of Representatives

From Cybercase News Service.

James Madison, more than two hundred years ago, proposed twelve amendments to the Constitution, of which ten were ratified immediately. The second of these reads:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the existence of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The twentieth century has seen a patchwork of laws, commonly called "gun-control laws," ostensibly aimed at reducing the level of violence in our society. Actually they were an emotion-driven response to a number of high-profile crimes involving guns, including the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, which was the bloody climax to the gang war between "Scarface" Al Capone and "Bugs" Moran, and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. They are totally inappropriate, for three reasons:

1. People who use guns to break laws will break laws to use guns. Therefore these laws will accomplish nothing except to disarm ordinary citizens who might otherwise be able to fight back.
2. The militia is not the National Guard or any armed-service reserve. It is the body of individual citizens and lawful residents who possess firearms and know how to use them. As such they are the core defense against territorial invasion.
3. The militia are also the guarantors of individual rights. Rights are a dead letter if the holders of those rights cannot defend them. Some have even called the militia, properly understood, the "reset button on the Constitution."

And so we come to Representative Bartlett's bill (HR 47, referred to the House Standing Committee on the Judiciary). Normally I'm wary of any bill that gives someone a cause of action in the federal courts against the State, county, or municipality wherein he resides. Before I could support such an obvious extension of federal power, I need to see what compelling interest the federal government has in the exercise of that power. And here is the compelling interest: the security of our homeland requires the reconstitution of the original militia--the armed citizenry using their weapons to defend against territorial invaders--or against fanatical saboteurs and mass murderers, which we commonly call "terrorists." The militia were the actual tamers of the Old West--the famed US Marshals rarely could face down a gang of cutthroats alone, but had to appoint special deputies or raise a posse comitatus from among the local townfolk or homesteaders, as the actual records clearly show.

Obviously someone will rejoin that after all, it took the federal government to break the Chicago mobs, because no city-dwelling "militia" formed to fight Capone and his rivals. But if Chicago of the 1920's (and other cities) tolerated the Mafia and other ethno-centric criminal syndicates, that is only because the inhabitants of those cities welcomed the vice that the syndicates peddled and continue to peddle--the speakeasies, the casinos, and the brothels--and all that mattered was who was in charge of it, a thing about which the average city dweller couldn't care less. Not, that is, until the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre shocked everyone and made people think. (I still am not convinced that legitimizing vice is the way to beat the syndicates. After all, the syndicates will often invest in legitimate businesses--and everyone knows that the syndicates still control, or partially control, even legalized gambling in this country.)

Tolerance of vice aside, gun-control laws, by creating an artificial distinction between the ordinary citizen and the professional soldier or law-enforcement officer, create a passivity that a society can ill afford. A passive citizen becomes more tolerant of vice in his own life and thus more susceptible to manipulation by organized criminals. Worse yet, he is a sitting duck in the event of an invasion--and neither the police nor the armed services can be everywhere. Indeed, the armed services need to be busy doing something else--carrying the war to the enemy--and not standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the border. That's what the militia is for.

So I'm going to cite this as the required compelling interest, and urge my congressman to support HR-47, the Citizens' Self-defense Act of 2005. And I urge you all to do the same.