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Don’t let the NY Times redefine it. Or Chuck Schumer. The militia referred to in the Second Amendment is not the National Guard or the U.S. Military.
Hamilton pointed out the great, centuries-old historical definition of the militia. It is a huge group of citizens. It is everyone but the politicians. It is the armed neighborhood. It is “the great body of the yeomanry,” he wrote, “and of the other classes of the citizens.”
Hamilton favored the idea that some of that militia is further selected-out into a national military corps, and Federal law reflects this definition in Section 246 of Title X of the US Code: “The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.”
Then, it further divides the militia into two distinct parts:
(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.
Both groups are part of the one nationwide, American militia.
According to Hamilton, both groups are indispensable. A small “select corps” will lessen the need for a standing army because it gives the federal government a military force to call on if needed, for the defense of the nation against invaders.
Hamilton is careful to recognize that the citizen militia is a check and balance against tyrannical politicians or a tyrannical military. Citizens, well-organized at the local level, can always fight back against a federal military with their own military grade weapons if and when tyrannical politicians force soldiers to oppress citizens.
He put it this way: “That army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.”
Notes:
Yeomanry definition: generally, it referred to middle class, responsible, civilian citizens, all of whom were armed with military-grade weapons.
Second Amendment: “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.”
See Federalist 29 here
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-21-30#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493342
“A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.”
Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”, p.7
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James Madison, 1795
Somebody typed a prompt, and a virus came out.
Sixteen of them. Genomes written by artificial intelligence, ordered as synthetic DNA, assembled on a bench, and grown into stocks that replicated and threw off offspring. Thirteen carried mutations that match no known natural sequence. The scientific paper ran in the publication Science, and its senior author disclosed funding from the Gates Foundation.
Six years ago, on April 6, 2020, Bill Gates sat with Trevor Noah and said a vaccine was the only thing that would let us return to normal — and announced that his foundation would start building the factories before anyone had seen efficacy data. Scale during testing, he said, rather than waiting for results. A great many people heard optimism. Some of us heard a schedule.
-- Dr. Peter McCullough
