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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
The radical Albanese regime in Australia solicited a 60 page report on "Islamophobia" from its ‘Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia’ which conveniently never actually defined Islamophobia, but did call for “removing religion” as a motive in terrorist attack because that would discriminate against Muslims…
…and is now set to spend tens of millions on fighting this ‘Islamophobia’.
This comes not long after the Bondi Beach Muslim massacre of Jews at a Chanukah Party that was the single worst Muslim terrorist attack in Australian history.
The Australian government is now attacking critics of illegal Islamic invasion, falsely claiming that they are damaging ‘social cohesion’. No word about whether hospitals having to hide the Bondi Beach terror attack victims from Muslim nurses ‘damages social cohesion’.
A Muslim minister in the Albanese regime falsely claimed that “Islamophobia is dangerously close to being normalized”. No, but the denial of Islamic terrorism...
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
-President Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961
Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the patent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion 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!
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
-James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
