In his letter of Jan. 18, “No sacred right to keep and bear arms,” Raymond Merrill grossly misrepresented the historical relationship between the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Militia Act of 1792. Rather than restricting the scope of the 2nd Amendment to males aged 18 to 45, the Militia Act formally spelled out the terms of the social contract in which responsible, law-abiding, competent adults were charged with maintaining the security of the new republic.
The Militia Act was built upon the foundation of the 2nd Amendment, not vice versa as Merrill would have us believe. It testified to the founders’ conviction that to secure the blessings of liberty for all it was essential to foster a nationwide community of armed and united citizens, each neighbor ready to aid the other, sharing the responsibilities of keeping the peace from border to border.
The U.S. Constitution, in Article 1, assigns to Congress the task of providing a uniform code, or manual of arms for the instruction and drill of the citizen militia, and establishing minimum standards for the personal arms each participant was to provide. The Militia Act of 1792 established those standards. Nowhere is there any mention of establishing a militia, only the need to organize, properly shape and discipline (train) what already existed-the whole body of the people, the armed citizenry, the popular and decentralized militia.
Merrill also implied that the 2nd Amendment might protect only the possession of the smoothbore muskets used by the founders’ contemporaries, but it is well worth noting that those muskets represented the fastest-reloading, most devastating, state-of-the-art weaponry available at the time. And just as the 1st Amendment continues to be valid for high-speed printing presses and electronic communications networks, the 2nd Amendment still covers the small arms of military service, home defense and personal protection we have today.
The 2nd Amendment specifically protects the right of the people, not any corps of enlisted soldiers or their reserves, to keep and bear their own arms. It amplifies that common right by focusing attention on the salient political reason for addressing the issue at the federal level, namely that an armed populace, committed to maintaining civility and order, is essential to the survival of freedom and of the nation as a whole.
“The people” who are the militia of the 2nd Amendment are the same individual citizens who constitute the people of the 1st, 4th, 9th and 10th Amendments. Mr. Merrill, too, unless he is currently an active part of the U.S. armed forces or the National Guard, is a member of the general militia. It is both his birthright and his moral obligation as a responsible American to secure his own military arms and to be fully prepared to use them in defense of home and community, whether against predatory criminals or a predatory government.
That is the right-and that is the mandate-of the 2nd Amendment.
