One might reasonably ask why, with all the various shooting sports available, it is the tactical shooting sports that have grown exponentially in recent years. The answer is simple: There is a growing recognition in the United States that average citizens may, in the not-too-distant future, have to defend themselves against ungovernable crime — or tyranny. [More]
Just because Congress is deliberately indifferent to it’s mandated militia obligations under Article.1. Section. 8. doesn’t mean DIY isn’t an option… all except for the organizing part. Gun groups focused exclusively on self-defense really ought to put some energy into convincing “our beautiful Second Amendment” president-elect into promoting that and removing state “legal” barriers against…
[Via Dan Gifford]
I think some attention should be paid to the question of whether or not it would be good for the “unorganized militia” to be more organized, and if so, by whom?
If we borrow something from Bruen, the original colonial militias were mostly community originated within some legal frameworks that were passed by a colonial legislature, often in defiance of a Royal Governor who had been appointed by the king of England. In many cases, that Royal Governor was openly hostile to the existence of an armed force in his colony that he did not control. There may be a model we can use in there somewhere but it might be difficult to tease out. But in essence, the “well regulated militia” described by Josiah Quincy II after being more or less legitimized by colonial ordinances, was mostly self organized, self provisioned, and self trained by design to give it independence from government(s) that were often overtly hostile to their existence.
Or people might go back further and, recognizing that the Founders borrowed inspiration from the system binding disparate Swiss cantons into a federation, see if there’s some model that could be created out of how the Swiss “militia” functioned then and how it functions today.
Back in the day, “well regulated” meant something along the lines of “capable of fulfilling its intended role.” Perhaps the correct starting point would be to define what the “intended role(s)” of a “new and improved” militia might be. What purpose(s) would it be intended to fulfill? Who, if anyone, would it report to? Would it be intended to respond to natural disaster, defend the state from FedGov, defend the people from the state, act like a post-Katrina “Cajun Navy”, bottle a corrupt Sheriff’s department up in the county jail until Federal help arrived ala “Battle of Athens” or some or all of the above?
One thing that can be guaranteed, there are those that want no such organizations to even exist. We need only look as far as the responses to Florida’s creation of its “state guard” to see that.