Ban "Cop Killer" Assault Pistol

I should revise this a bit.

It is true that they wanted the militia to mainly protect people by making tyranny impossible, as I described above. But if tyranny developed anyway, the Framers did want the militia to fight the feds, under the leadership of the state governments.

As far as i can see, Oralloy, you continue to put out statements from authority for which you provide no support. I do not consider that anything you offer refutes my two basic statements--that the Congress has the right to regulate fire arms, and that the individual is not effectively able to resist tyranny by the central government by the ability to purchase and keep fire arms. Once again, unless you think you can effectively organize an insurrection, which i doubt, you have no point to make.

I do not need to be able to organize an insurrection to correct your misstatements about our Constitution.

And I offered plenty to refute your claim about Congress having authority to regulate firearms.

The main point, which you've continuously avoided, is the fact that Congress' authority to regulate the arms of the militia has nothing to do with non-militia arms.

I'd think that someone with even an ounce of legal sense would take pause at the fact that the government has never even tried to use militia regulations as constitutional justification for their gun laws.

Another core point you've managed to avoid is the fact that Congress' authority to regulate militia arms was significantly modified by the Second Amendment (this was actually the very reason the Second Amendment got put in there in the first place).


Your point about lone individuals not being able to resist the government is somewhat true. But it is also somewhat irrelevant, since no one has ever proposed such an absurd means of resisting tyranny.

Once again, you have no case. You make a statement from authority that the purpose of the second amendment is devised to modify the power Congress was accorded to regulate the arms of the militia. You don't provide either the authority for such a statement nor an explanation. You've got no case to make, you only offer an opinion as though it were incontrovertible fact--i disagree, and see no force to your argument, the more so as it is based upon mere assertion.

The point about the individual armed as though to resist government is very much to the point, as without a high degree of organization, such as would be required in an insurrection, it would be futile effort. My point is that this has been advanced both onlline and in conversations i've had as a reason for the second amendment, and the true reason why citizens "need" guns. It is an absurdity to contend that such is the intent of the second amendment precisely because of the well-regulated clause, and it is an absurdity to contend it were possible without a high degree of organization.

You have no argument which can adduce any greater support than your opinion of the matter--and in such a case, anyone else's opinion has just as much validity.

I keep myself well armed to fight off the damn vegetation.

Good idea, CJ, in the UP, its a force of nature not to be discounted.

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There is, running through this thread, a set of absurd contentions. The first is the most easily disposed of. That is the implication that Congress has no authority to regulate fire arms. It may simply be my opinion that the Congress has that authority, but no counter argument is being offered with more force than that of opinion. I have no reason to abaondon my own opinion in the matter simply because someone else offers theirs, and provides no support or argument more compelling.

The second absurdity is the more pernicious, as it refers to a wide-spread fantasy about an armed populace opposing a tyranny of central authority. More specifically, it is contended that the second amendment envisioned a well-regulated militia as being the bulwark against such a tyranny. I consider the argument bootless, but for sake of argument, will stipulate that, and then look at whether or not it were a reasonable argument.

When Lt. Col. Sir Francis Smith with his "flank companies" (light infantry and grenadiers from the foot regiments) and Major Pitcairn, leading his Marines, went to Lexington and Concord, they initially met no serious opposition. Light infantry were sent over the north bridge at Concord, and ran off a body of local militia which outnumbered them five or six to one. It was only with difficulty that their commanders and NCO's (with experience in the French and Indian War) got them to stand, and then to run off the light infantry. When Smith and Pitcairn began to retreat toward Boston, they were constantly fired upon by militiamen who arrived as individuals or in small groups, and took pot shots from behind cover. The action thereafter has been realistically described as a running gun battle between regulars and an armed mob. The arrival of Lord Hugh Percy's relief column, which swept the roadsides with light infantry, finally ended the action and drove off the militia. This sort of thing would be consistent with an insurrectionary action, and the militia at no time, with the single exception of the fight at the bridge with a small body of light infantry, stood and fought the regulars on their own terms. Those light infantrymen were rescued by Pitcairn's Marines and Smith's grenadiers, the mere appearance of whom were sufficient to convince the militia that they were uninterested in entering Concord while the regulars occupied it.

In the subsequent action, known as the battle of Bunker Hill, thousands of militiamen milled about on Plowed Hill and Bunker Hill, and took no part in the action, despite the threats and pleas of Israel Putnam, ostensibly their commander. Three militia units behaved well--the Massachusetts men commanded by Colonel Prescott of Boston, who built the redoubt and held against the regulars until Colonel Prescott was shot down; and the Marbleheaders of Colonel Glover and the New Hampshire men of Colonel Stark. In the case of both of these last units, the "regiments" eventually joined the Continental line, almost in a body. In all three cases, it was the personal leadership of the commander which secured good behavior by the militia--whenever such leadership was lacking, the militia proved unreliable. Washington was to complain of the unreliability of the militia throughout the war. There were only two other actions in which the militia served well, and it was once again a case of personal leadership--at Freeman's Farm in the Saratoga campaign, the New England militiamen, who were virtually the equivalent of United States Volunteers, showed up in large numbers because they chose to serve under Benedict Arnold, one of the finest natural tactical commanders America has ever produced; and, at Hannah's Cowpens, when they served Daniel Morgan, who went around the night before telling them he wanted: "two good fires, and then you can skeddadle"--which is precisely what they did. On Long Island, at Kipps Bay, at Haarlem Heights, at White Plains, at Camden--in so many actions, the militia proved not only unreliable, but even a liability. Even after Washington's victory at Trenton, when he marched on Princeton, the Pennsylvania militia and the Virginia militia, commanded by Cadwalader and Macon respectively, broke and ran when Macon was killed, and swept the Continental Marines in their flight. It was only the arrival of Washington and his personal leadership which rallied the men, and the wise decision of the English commander to cut his losses and retire before a superior force. The revolution established a pattern which has held throughout American history--the regulars, such as the Continental Line, and volunteers, and especially those serving under men they trusted and admired, have done yoeman service, yielding the palm to no other army in the world; the militia have proven to be dangerously unreliable.

Nevertheless, Jefferson implemented his idiotic plan to defend the nation with a gunboat navy and the militia. The sailors and Marines of the gunboat navy served very well--on land, after their gunboats had been sent to the bottom, or captured by boatloads of English sailors and Marines. At Bladensburg and New Orleans, these sailors and Marines served the guns very well. At Blandensburg in 1814, thousands of Maryland and Pennsylvania militia ran away (i've read figures of 6,000 and 7,000; the official British account claims 8- or 9000, although it is common for commanders to inflate the number of their opponents). The sailors and Marines stood to their work, and in the words of one English officer's correspondence, ". . . they served the guns even after all of their officers had been shot down, and we were among them with the bayonet." The Marines fought until dark, and then marched for Washington carrying their dead and wounded. It was the heroism of the sailors and Marines which allowed the government to successfully evacuate Washington before the English arrived to burn it, despite the cowardice of the militia. At New Orleans, the creole militia served well, defending their homes, and "corset laced" with Jackson's Tennessee and Kentucky volunteers, many of whom were veterans of the Creek War. On the right bank (western side) of the river, the Kentucky militia broke and ran without even giving an organized volley. At Queenston in 1812, the New York militia largely refused to cross the Niagara River, and even among those who did, a great number later fled when they saw the English organizing a counterstroke, pushing the wounded aside, or even dragging them from the bateaux so that they could re-cross the river. Generals Brown and Winfield Scott were only able to contest the Niagara penninsula on an even footing with the English regulars when a sufficient force of regulars and voluteers was assembled.

In the American civil war, on those occassions in which local militia confronted regulars and volunteers, they were brushed aside without difficulty, whether it were the Georgia militia confronting Sherman, or the Pennsylvania militia confronting the Army of Northern Virginia. The concept that the militia could ever have been relied upon to successfully confront regulars employed by the central government to impose a tyrannay is ludicrous.

But the situation today is even more absurd. What do the proponents of such a view contend would constitute the contemporary militia? The reserve forces of the professional services? The Army National Guard? Does anyone seriously think that the National Guard could be opposed successfully to the Army which trains it and supplies its ordnance? If one contends that a well-regulated militia is a hedge against tyrrany, what does such a person claim constitutes the militia in our day and age? The entire contention is laughable.

Damn good idea. In my dreams I still see that tree....coming after me and I'm defenseless against it. I try and shoot but nothing happens. Very deep and Freudian I know but let's not go there. As Freud said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

I think it's why I hate gardening. The vegetation. I have to turn my back on it - and then........

I would go with the definition in the currently effective Militia Act. It contains the National Guard, but is not limited to it.


Your historical excursion was instructive and well-written, as your historical excursions usually are. But they don't refute my contention that an armed citizenry effectively discourages governments from becoming tyrannical. To do that, it needn't be able to win a civil war against the FBI or the Army -- just to put of enough of a fight to make it a bad deal for any government considering to turn a tyrannical.

Thomas: Any government determined to be tyrranical is one which is not going to be discouraged by a bad public opinion reaction to their methods. Your discursus earlier was fanciful in the extreme. As a significant point of descriptive order, those contemporary to the strife in England in the mid-seventeenth century did not refer to that strife as revolutions. Both contemporary observers and subsequent English historians have referred to them as civil wars--and the point is significant, as one branch of government, Parliament, made war upon the other (the judiciary not being independent of the monarchy), the Crown. There were no militia as we understand the term at that time, and Parliament took a page from Oliver Cromwell, and came to rely upon dissenters in those wars. As "the vexed question of religion" (the description of a member of the Long Parliament) was at the heart of the war between King and Parliament, the use of the dissenters was significant. Cromwell had become a respected figure in East Anglia among the small holders and "mechanics" (in the 17th century, the term for anyone who worked with his hands) because of his opposition to enclosure--and it was upon that basis that he raised his cavalry. The New Model Army was based both upon the effective discipline of the devoted dissenter (a shadowy presage of the citizen armies of the period of Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era) and dedication on the part of the other ranks to religious freedom and leveling principles. But Levelers like Gerard Winstanley were not appreciated by Fairfax, Cromwell and the Major Generals, and the consequence of the Putney debates and the Address of the Army Agitators was a severe repression of the Levelers and their influence in the Army. When Colonel Pride's troopers stood at the doors of the Parliament to seek out the Presbyterians (almost all of who wisely fled London), any pretext of broad religious toleration and political plurality disappeared.

This is significant for the issue of the miliita in English history. King Charles had attempted organize support on the basis or regional associations, the most of which were aenemic at best. However, he got his best support from the Western Association, nominally in the command of his son, Charles Stuart, it was the bailiwick of Prince Rupert, whose previous employment as the leader of Royalist cavalry and an independent commander had been destroyed by Cromwell's dissenter cavalry at Marston Moor and Naseby. The Western Association proved a disappointment nonetheless, because of the unwillingness of the bourgeois to trust the "mechanic" elements of the community, few of whom were dissenters, in contrast to Cromwell's men from the east. It is significant that, after the ascent of James II to the throne, Monmouth--the alleged bastard son of Charles II by an alleged morganatic marriage to an English commoner during Charles' exile on the continent--effected his landing and raised an army in that same West Country. It also significant that what was essentially a militia army could not stand against John Churchill's regulars (he was later to win his fame as the Duke of Marlborough). A broadly-based militia never existed in England, and was habitually as mistrusted as was a standing army.

During the brief second civil war, Langdale and Musgrave raised royalist forces in the northern marches, and joined with Hamilton's Engager army for a march to the west country, where they expected to assemble a force which could oppose Parliament. Although they did succeed in attracting quite a few of the "mechanic" class, they failed to effectively coordinate their movements, and Cromwell defeated their two main bodies in the running battle known as Preston, when two hard-fought battles took place at the bridges crossing the rivers Ribble and Darwen. The New Model had been effectively purged of those who were Levelers in political outlook and demanded a written constitution, and the notion of a popular force for change banished forever--and this in no small measure aided Royalist recruiting. The unfortunate inability of the Scots to enforce discipline on their armies and prevent looting as they marched into England served Parliament's army and alienated the popular support they otherwise might have had. After Cromwell's definitive defeat of the Scots at Dunbar, no opposition was ever again able to raise popular support for the monarchy in England. When Charles II marched south in 1651 at the head of Scots army, the looting was again the major feature of that badly disciplined force, and sacrificed whatever support Charles might have relied upon.

Thereafter, with Cromwell's position secure, neither the Short nor the Barebones Parliaments made any effort to establish a militia. Cromwell died late in 1658, and was succeeded by his son Richard, an incompetent popularly known as Tumble-down Dick. Eventually, George Monck, a former Royalist recruited in Ireland by Cromwell, marched south with the Parliamentary Guard from their base in Coldstream in Scotland, and they constituted the only military force in England. Parliament authorized the permanent establishment of the Coldstream Guard, and the Royal Artillery had been established since the reign of Henry VIII--but Parliament would otherwise not authorize a general military establishment, and each regiment which was raised in the reign of Charles II was passed by Parliament individually. No militia establishment was authorized, and when John Churchill rode west to oppose Monmouth at the beginning the reign of James II, the Crown could dispose of only a handful of troops, had no provision to raise and arm a militia, and relied principly upon a large roster of officers and a few regiments to act as cadre for levies.

Within two years, James II had fled England after being deserted by his officers, and the Whig ascendancy established the reign of William III and Mary II in what was known then and since as a revolution--the Glorious Revolution of 1688. For his harrying of Ireland, William relied largely upon his Dutch officers and Dutch troops or English troops under Dutch command. The demands of the Nine Years War lead him to wheedle a militia establishment out of Parliament, which was used for the purpose of providing levies for existant regiments or newly established regular regiments. Marlborough and Godolphin were to continue this practice in the War of the Spanish Succession, although increasingly, the Whig Parliament felt they were being cozened into providing levies for an army fighting in Germany and France when their interests lay in Spain.

Thereafter, despite the silly idealism expressed in Blackstone's comments, the militia was established on exactly the same basis as the franchise--the forty shilling freehold as a minimum qualification for either the vote or militia enrollment. There never was an intention to enroll militia for defense against tyranny. When during the Wars of the French Revolution, the army became involved in the disasterous Walcheren Island expedition, members of the militia, which had largely become what it has always been on the continent--a middle class social organization--balked at providing levies to the army, and refused to march and even rioted. The Duke of York used his prestige, and the regiments returned from the Low Countries to put down any insurrectionary militia, and the Parliament regularized the practice instituted by William and used by Marlborough, turning the militia into a source of levies for the regular establishment. The forty shilling freehold was again the qualifying standard, and levies were taken from the bottom up, so to speak, with the rate payers at the lowest level taken first.

That of course, took place after the American Revolution. Subsequent to the Napoleonic Wars, the Luddite and Chartist insurrections were quashed with regular troops, and the militia stood aside, often publicly approving the measures of repression by the Tory ministries such as that lead by Wellington. At the "Peterloo massacre" in 1819, militia dragoons were used to put down a popular trades union movement. The militia, far from being a force for opposing tyranny, worked hand in glove with the conservative government to assure the ascendancy of property owners.

In American history, the New England militias and the Virginia militia often served well. In both case, long experience of frontier warfare with the French and the Indians gave them experience that militias have historically lacked--but even then, they proved unreliable when facing regulars and volunteers. The popular contention is that the First Congress proposed the fourth amendment (it was the second amendment adopted, the first and second proposed were not immediately ratified: the first proposed will likely never be ratified, and the second proposed was ratified in May, 1992, more than two hundred years after it was proposed; the third and fourth proposed amendments were ratified as the first and second amendments to the Constitution), the militia amendment, to provide a bulwark against centralized tyrrany, but there is no reliable evidence that this were the case. This may have been a hobby horse of Jefferson--but he was not a member of the First Congress, and was in France at the time that Congress assembled. His idiotic notion that the nation could be defended with a gunboat navy and the local militias went up in flames in the War of 1812. The most likely construction of the intent of the militia amendment was to prevent the abuse of the militia as a repressive middle class organization by assuring "the right to keep and bear arms" to all citizens, effectively preventing qualifications such as England's forty shilling freehold. Daniel Shays' uprising in western Massachusetts had been put down by the militia, and resentment simmer throughout the states in the period leading up to the constitutional convention. States coopted the political power of demagogues such as Shays by granting universal white male sufferage, and i contend that the militia amendment intended the same assurance of universal white male participation in the militia.

History had already demonstrated the unreliability of the militia when facing regulars and volunteers. Subsequent history in the form of the War of 1812 was to bring that home with a vengeance. Allusions to the statutes which establish the Army National Guard do not address the issue of the ineffectiveness of the militia without the direct support and direction of the national government. Such allusions also do not address the question of what would effectively constitute such a militia apart from the Reserves and the National Guard, and how any such organization would effectively oppose centralized tyrrany.

It has required more than thirty minutes to enter my last post, because this lame web site continues to log me off, and each time i attempted to submit the post, i was given a log-in screen--four consecutive times. I had the foresight to copy my post before attempting to post it, but i seriously doubt that i will again waste so much time to reply to this thread.

Well, I had thought it had already been laid out before.

During the Virginia ratifying convention, Patrick Henry and some others raised fears that the feds would use their power to arm the militia, to disarm it.










All this resulted in the Virginia ratifying convention proposing:

Seventeenth, That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power.

Which Madison boiled down to:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

And that, Congress worked over to produce the Second Amendment.






When a populace is faced with tyranny, insurrections tend to organize themselves. Perhaps badly at first, but they learn from their mistakes and grow stronger.

A proper militia as envisaged by the Constitution would be an institution quite similar to the Swiss Militia, in my opinion.

However, if they started letting members of the National Guard keep their weapons at home, and stopped sending them overseas, the National Guard might be able to be transformed into something that would satisfy the Constitution.

I doubt that such a thing will happen. As for the Virginia militia ordinance, there is, to my knowledge, as strong a body of opinion that it does not inform the second amendment, as there is a body of opinion that it does. At all events, i've stated my opinion of the purpose of the amendment, as you have stated yours, and perhaps we can just let it lie that we disagree.

Well, even if we agree to disagree, is there some place on the web where I can find this body of opinion that says the Second Amendment came from something other than the Virginia Ratifying Convention?

Any court rulings that support it?

You've managed to get me curious.

Here's the horrible, awful, dangerous piece of hardware in question. Looks like a handgun to me. Antis love stuff like this because it gives them a chance to weasel in more gun control laws. Retards.