Time for the Media to Dust Off the Old Lies Again

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1. Yes, Hamilton was a Federalist, one of the people who promoted a stronger union to replace the ineffectual Articles of Confederation. You see, the Articles of Confederation had a fatal flaw. Where laws passed by Congress conflicted with laws passed by the state legislatures, the state laws won out. That meant that the states could ignore the terms of the treaty with Great Britain that ended the Revolutionary war. And some did. They had the option of paying their assessed taxes to the national government if and when they felt like it. Some did and some didn’t. In just the few short years since they gained independence, the former colonies became aware that the system of government set up by the Articles looked good on paper, but wasn’t working. In the debates that followed, Hamilton and the other Federalists were opposed by the Anti-federalists. But one place where both sides agreed, was the concept of a “well regulated militia” that was not controlled or equipped by any government. With but two exceptions, every one of the colonies had set up, by law, just such a militia with certain common characteristics.

   1. All free men capable of bearing arms in the field were required to be in the militia.
   2. All of those in the militia were required to furnish their own equipment, firearms, and ammunition.
   3. Each militia unit was responsible for electing their own officers.
   4. The militia’s acknowledged primary purpose was to act as a check on the powers of the government.

   Again, with just a few exceptions, the newly independent states carried over their colonial era militia laws, AND, laws equivalent to what is now called the Bill of Rights, most patterned after Virginia’s “Declaration of Rights”, adopted in 1776, that forbid the colonial/state government from disarming the militia or causing it to lose its effectiveness through neglect.

   https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/virginia.asp

   Where the Federalists and Anti-federalists disagreed was whether the state declaration of rights should be carried over to the Federal government. Some said the state prohibitions would be sufficient and therefor national laws were unnecessary. Some said the proposed doctrine that national laws superseded state laws would nullify those state level prohibitions and insisted that similar language be incorporated in the new Federal Constitution.

   Hamilton and the other Federalists resisted demands for amendments to the new Constitution that they felt were unnecessary until the events unfolding in the states’ ratification processes showed that without what became the Second Amendment, the ratification would fail in too many states for the Constitution to take effect.

   No Second Amendment meant no ratification and therefore no United States of America.

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