Quotes About Militia

If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency.

In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy . It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and NCOs, but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; not titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society.

The time frame is very small to disarm the militia, to bring about a security situation in which the governing council, the 24 Iraqis or however many others they appoint, can govern the country.

I'm tired of hearing about this 'well-regulated militia' that is so necessary for American freedom.

the mob and the militia — officially every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty — were one and the same.

But guns are not the whole story. In Switzerland, every adult male is issued an assault rifle for militia duty and is allowed to keep the gun at home. On a per capita basis, Switzerland has more firearms than just about any other country, and yet it is one of the safest places in the world. In other words, guns do not cause crime.

In Switzerland, every adult male is issued an assault rifle for militia duty and is allowed to keep the gun at home. On a per capita basis, Switzerland has more firearms than just about any other country, and yet it is one of the safest places in the world.

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

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

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

Switzerland is two times the size of the state of New Jersey, which has, by far, the larger population. Yet there are nearly a million men in the Swiss Army. It's a civilian army, a trained and practiced militia, ready to mobilize instantly. Each citizen serves for thirty years. But all of them, a million of them, mind, are ready to grab their rifles and be present at mobilization points and battle stations all over the country. Within twenty-four hours.

In Denhorah's eighth grade geography right now, six days before Thanksgiving turkey, Mr Massey is saying that all of the details aren't in. That it might have been Highway Patrol that shot that Native American man just off the reservation. That it doesn't have to have been vigilantes or militia, even though this state is stacked deep with the second, all of them hoping to be the first.

The establishment of a militia, which is putting arms in the hands of the people, for their defence, was a point which the patriots lately carried in the mother country, and contended for, as essential to the preservation of their liberties.

Patrick Henry retorted in a single argument asserting both the individual right to have arms and the state power to encourage a militia consisting of the armed populace: May we not discipline and arm them, as well as Congress, if the power be concurrent? So that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, & c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed. The great object is, that every man be armed.

The Virginia Declaration did not mention the right to assemble and to petition at all; it protected a free press but neglected free speech; and it included the above militia language but not the right to keep and bear arms. Also new was the allowance that standing armies should be avoided only "as far as" possible. The author apparent was George Mason, who simply added these new clauses to the Declaration's language he had drafted in 1776.

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.

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.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army," Jefferson wrote in 1803. "To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

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.

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.

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.

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.