HISTORICAL

Armed citizens have been a fundamental idea for an extremely long time. The Magna Carta (1215AD, though re-written several times), considered to be one of the first documents to provide for people's rights, allowed for the arming of the people. That year, at Runnymede, several Barons forced King John to guarantee certain civil and political liberties among which was their ability to have armed subjects. Even as far back as the Spartans we can find the idea of the populace being armed. When the people who wrote the Bill of Rights got together, they had a knowledge of just how important an armed citizenry was to the freedom of those citizens, both from invasion and from tyrants. Several times in England, rulers had attained or retained power because of armed citizens. Also, several times in England, disarmed citizens had been cruelly oppressed by the military. These lessons were not lost on the authors, as they had recently come out victorious in a conflict with the greatest military power on Earth, due in no small part to the fact that they were privately armed.

England's move to seize an arsenal and control the weapons and powder, keeping it out of the hands of the people, was what precipitated the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord. During the following war, personal weapons were crucial to the cause. Having no standing army, men came to battle armed with what essentially were hunting arms. And while the first volunteers were a rag tag guerrilla army, their weapons were often times far better than the standard military arms of the British. The hunting rifles of the Minutemen were so much more accurate than the British smoothbores and inflicted such heavy loses at Breed's Hill (AKA Bunker Hill) that the British hired some 30,000 Hessian Jeagers armed with rifles to counter the threat.

The need for people to have arms was extremely important to a concept of having no or a small standing army. For one thing, in the event of an invasion, insurrection, or general lawlessness, the military would be unable to quickly respond to the threat. The people would need to be their own army. Another consideration was that if the armed populace outnumbered the military, the chance of a military coup was very slim. And if the government became tyrannical or oppressive, the people would be able to overthrow it. Today, some would scoff at the ability of people armed with firearms to hold off or defeat a military equipped with tanks, planes, and missiles. These modern devices are commonly referred to as "force multipliers". And the modern military would need as many multipliers as they could get if today's 1.5 million person active duty force were to run up against the 230+ million private firearms in the US.

Many times it is heard that our forefathers could not have envisioned weapons of today. Perhaps their precognitive abilities could not revealed to them an M-16 or Glock, but consider this, they had seen several advances in weaponry. At the time of the Revolutionary War, there had been flintlocks, wheel locks, and firelock arms. Rifling was gaining acceptance over the old smoothbores because it was more accurate and had a longer range. And the gun was finally becoming a more fearsome weapon than the British longbow, which until after the war could still shoot farther, faster, and more accurately than any long gun built in Britain. So advancements were nothing new to these people. They knew that longer ranges, faster shots, and better accuracy were goals of new designs and they knew that such developments were crucial to their own cause.

THE FIRST MILITIAS

While Spartans were armed citizens, they were all members of the military first, other vocations later. Militias are the other way around. You are primarily a butcher, farmer, etc., but when the need arises, you form a military.

Most historians trace the militia back to King Alfred the Great in England (reign 871-899AD). Others take it back further to the Fyrd of 690 AD. The militia is not a new concept; it is 1100-1300 years old. The militia was expanded upon after 1066 AD and the Norman conquests and again in 1181 and 1253.

Even in these early centuries, some restrictions on arms were being applied. Things really got going in the early 16th century. This was in part due to the increasing presence of firearms, though it was for a different reason than one might think. Restrictions of firearms were in place because they were deemed not sufficient to be military weapons! Eventually, these restrictions had to be lifted as the firearm became more accepted in the military.

Just as many countries today look at the US and point to us as a gun culture, so did other countries treat England in the 16th century. This is ironic in today's situation where England has banned nearly all firearms!

Elsewhere, private armies held the Moors out of central Europe when private armies were finally able to blunt the offensive.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

In the 17th century, specifically from about 1640-1690, the militia played important and varying roles is England. The armed people were variously armed, disarmed, re-armed, and disarmed again in this very tumultuous 50 years. Strife from Charles I, Cromwell, Charles II, Long Parliament, the Rump Parliament, James II, William (of Orange) and Mary all took its toll on England. Many of the events from this period were foremost in the minds of the founding fathers. Repressions, disarmament, controls of the press, speech, and of religion were all in affect.

In 1689, with William and Mary in power, parliament passed the Declaration of Rights, an important document limiting the power of the monarch and securing several individual rights to include the right to arms.

All of this was not going unnoticed across the ocean. Buffered by the time of transport between England and America, much of the strife was filtered out, but the effects were not. People living in America were able to watch from the outside, see what was happening, and learn.

THE BIRTH OF A CONTROVERSY

After the Revolutionary War, the former colonies established the Articles of Confederation (1781). This loose organization of the states in a flimsy federal scheme had many problems. There was no standing military, it was feared by a great many people, which led to problems of national security, especially at sea. There was no standardization for currency, creating interstate and international trade problems. The economy went into a depression and many veterans were not paid their promised compensation for service in the war. Farmers and small landowners were being foreclosed on or having property confiscated for failure to pay debts and taxes. In Massachusetts, a rebellion began in 1786. One of the leaders of this rebellion was Daniel Shays, a former Captain during the Revolutionary War.

Shays' group formed a militia and sporting twigs of hemlock in their hats, disrupted court proceedings in order to stop the confiscations and foreclosures. In September of 1786, they forced the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Springfield to adjourn. Governor James Bodwoin declared an emergency and called on the state militia to put down the insurrection (the US military at the time consisted of about 80 men caretaking the arsenal at West Point). Revolutionary War figure Gen. Benjamin Lincoln headed up a force of about 6000 men to counter Shays. Fellow Revolutionary War Gen. William Shepard and a unit of about 1500 moved in and established control of the federal arsenal in Springfield and when Shays' group of 1200 tried to seize it in January 1787, they were run off by Shepard's defenders and four rebels were killed. Gen. Lincoln's remaining units then pursued the rebels until about 150 of them were caught. Shays and 13 others were convicted and sentenced to death for treason in February 1787, but were later pardoned and set free. Only two people were ever executed for the uprising.

This episode of American history is important because here we have militia vs. militia confronting each other and we have people using their ultimate form of redress for grievances. Much has been written about this incident, especially from the standpoint of Thomas Jefferson, then Ambassador to France. This has also been pointed to as a pivotal moment in the establishment our current government, the catalyst for the Constitution.

In reality, the groundbreaking for a new government had begun 1785 when representatives of the Virginia and Maryland legislatures met at the home of George Washington to discuss navigation of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay which defined the common borders of those states. It was readily apparent that a better system was needed to address interstate issues and a call was issued for all the states to send representatives to a meeting on the subject in Annapolis (1786). Though only five states attended the Annapolis Convention, they were able to establish the need to fix the Articles of Confederation and received the Continental Congress' permission to hold a convention in Philadelphia, during May of the following year (1787). All of this had transpired before Shays' Rebellion had started. Was Shays' Rebellion the pivotal moment? Probably not. Did it lend extra momentum to an almost certain event? Probably.

After the Constitution was written, several states refused to ratify it because it did not provide enough restriction on the federal government and it did not contain a "Bill of Rights" like several states had and even the English had. After promising to make that a first order of business, the Constitution became the new law of the land. True to their word, the government set about to create a Bill of Rights similar to those of the states and of England. 12 amendments were proposed 10 of which became law. The issues behind these debates were captured in the Federalist Papers, a series of newspaper articles addressing various things. Less well known were a series of counter-point articles called the Anti-federalist Papers. Congress then began to fulfill its new duties, one of which was to provide for organizing and arming the Militia. In order to do that, a series of acts were passed to address aspects of this issue. The most famous of these is The Militia Act of 1792, also known as Uniform Militia Act passed in May 1792. In all, three acts were passed. The first act was passed on 2 May and provided for calling up the Militia. The second (the Uniform Militia Act) was passed on 8 May and provided for arming and organizing the Militia. The Militia Act of 1792 would remain the law of the land for 111 years until the Dick Act of 1903. There was a third act passed on 28 Feb 1795 and prescribed conditions for which the President could call up the Militia.

The Militia at that time was considered to be every able-bodied white male age 18 to 45. This is a little sexist and racist, but it was 1792 and equal rights were still a long way off.

Interestingly, the Militia Act of 1792 actually defined an organized militia and separate enrolled militia.

This distinction, recognized by the Framers in the Constitution, was first codified in the Militia Act of 1792, which defined both an "organized" militia, and an "enrolled" militia. [4] The unorganized or enrolled militia were not actually in service, but were nonetheless available to assist in the common defense should conditions necessitate either support of the organized militia or possibly defense against internal oppression. As fully explained later, the members of the unorganized militia were expected to be familiar with the use of firearms and to appear bearing their own arms. Obviously, they could be so prepared only if all individuals were guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. - Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution (1982)

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