Citizens have natural right to organize a local Militia

CONFIRMED BY U.S. SUPREME COURT IN THE CASE, D.C. VS. HELLER

by John Charlton

(Jan. 14, 2010) —  As the nation slides into a Marxist tyranny led by a usurper who hides his birth certificate and a Democratic super-majority which has no qualms passing unconstitutional laws, usurping the rights of the several States and their Citizens, it is crucially important for all U.S. Citizens to understand and recognize that they have a natural right to self-defense which includes the right to assemble a local Militia apart from State and Federal Control.

This natural right is confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, in its recent landmark ruling,  District of Columbia vs. Dick Anthony Heller, which was decided on June 26, 2008.

In that ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia made some remarkable statements which regard this long-forgotten natural right. The Post & Email previously reprinted the section on Citizens’ Militia.  In this article, I will draw out the conclusions of that ruling as regards the organization of local Militias.

First, he confirmed the 1939 Supreme Court Ruling which defines the Citizens’ Militia as all the able-bodied men capable of bearing arms:

a. “Well-Regulated Militia.” In United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, 179 (1939) , we explained that “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” That definition comports with founding-era sources. See, e.g., Webster (“The militia of a country are the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades … and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations”); The Federalist No. 46, pp. 329, 334 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (J. Madison) (“near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands”); Letter to Destutt de Tracy (Jan. 26, 1811), in The Portable Thomas Jefferson 520, 524 (M. Peterson ed. 1975) (“[T]he militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms”).

The import of this reaffirmation is that the Citizens’ Militia has not only not ceased to exist, but does exist; it is nothing less than all the able-bodied men of the State in which you live.

Second, Justice Scalia confirmed that the Citizen’s Militia exists, even when it is not organized by the Federal Government and hence exists apart from any specific law which would organize it:

Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise … Armies”; “to provide … a Navy,” Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” §8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence, ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force.

Third, the existence of the Citizen’s Militia is a natural right, which exists apart from the U.S. Constitution, and hence apart from the reach of Federal Power:

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents. This is what had occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.

It follows from this, that if the Bill of Rights protected the existence of the Citizens’ Militia against suppression by Federal Power (by means of the confiscation of arms of political opponents of the tyrant in power), it also guarantees and affirms the right of such a Militia to exist, against any action which could effectively outlaw or nullify its existence, whether by an act or acts of Congress, or by a non-action of Congress.  Hence the Federal Law which created the National Guard can in no way be construed as replacing or outlawing the Citizens’ Militia.

Scalia refers to this when he writes:

It was understood across the political spectrum that the right (to bear arms) helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.

It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution. Justice Breyer’s assertion that individual self-defense is merely a “subsidiary interest” of the right to keep and bear arms, see post, at 36, is profoundly mistaken. He bases that assertion solely upon the prologue—but that can only show that self-defense had little to do with the right’s codification; it was the central component of the right itself.

And hence, in the case of a tyrant usurping the U.S. Presidency, aided and abetted by a Congressional majority, it falls to the natural right of the Citizens and States not only to organize the militia and prepare for military defense of their states and persons against the tyrant, but also to organize offensive means to oust him from power and restore the constitutional order.

Furthermore, by the principle of analogy; if the Citizens have the right to assemble and organize a State Militia when the Federal Government falls under the power of or allegiance to a tyrant, it follows that the Citizens of every locale have the right to assemble and organize a local militia if their State government fails to organize a State Militia under any circumstance in which the constitutional order of the Nation or their personal liberties are threatened.

Hence, the conclusion is obvious:  in every locale in every State the citizens have the natural right, upheld by the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court, to assemble a local Militia, organize a local Militia and prepare for their own defense and the restoration of the Constitutional order by belligerent means.

Considering the rapidity at which Obama is grabbing more and more power over the States, over our individual lives, and over the economy, the organization and formation of such local Militias appears to be of the utmost urgency and necessity for the survival of a free republic.