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> Lloyd R. Parker (lparker@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu) wrote:
>
> I've seen no evidence for this. The Constitution doesn't mention
> "select" and neither does any reference I've consulted. The Const.
> mentions the militia once in the main body -- Congress shall
> provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia; and
> the militia shall be used to execute the laws, repel invasions, and
> suppress insurrections. The militia, one. It is also
> contradictory for RWI's to say the RKBA is so the militia can
> overthrow the gov't if need be when the Const. specifically says
> the militia is to be used to suppress insurrections.

Here we have another example of Mr. Parker's selective scholarship. Or is
it just that if the reference _supports_ the 2nd Amendment as an individual
right, not a state right, then it's not _really_ reference material?

After the successful revolution, the maintenance of a citizen militia was a
primary concern of the framers of the Constitution. General Washington's
Inspector General, Baron Von Steuben, proposed a "select militia" of 21,000
that would be given government issue arms and special government training.[1]
When the proposed Constitution was presented for debate, anti-Federalists
complained that it would allow for the withering of the citizen militia in
favor of the virtual standing army of a "select militia." Richard Henry
Lee, in his widely-read _Letters from the Federal Farmer to the
Republican_, warned ratifiers that a select militia had the same potential
to deprive civil liberties as a standing army, for if "one fifth or one
eighth part of the people capable of bearing arms should be made into a
select militia," the select militia would rule over the "defenseless" rest
of the population. Therefore, wrote Lee, "the Constitution ought to secure
a genuine, and guard against a select, militia ... to preserve liberty, it
is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be
taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."[2]

[1] Hardy, _Armed Citizens, Citizen Armies: Toward a Jurisprudence of the
    Second Amendment_, 9 HARV.J.L. & PUB. POLY 559, 560 (1986), at 600.

[2] W. Bennett, ed., _Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican_
    21, 22, 124 (1975). Lee sat in the Senate that ratified the Second
    Amendment.


As for the purported contradiction of "the RKBA is so the militia can
overthrow the gov't if need be" contrasted with the power of Congress to
call up the militia to suppress insurrection:

_The Federalist Papers_ looked to the state militias, comprised of the
armed populace, as the ultimate check on government. As James Madison put
it, "the ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone." Madison
predicted that no federal government could become tyrannical, because if it
did, there would be "plans of resistance" and an "appeal to trial by
force." A federal standing army would surely lose that appeal, because it
"would be opposed by a militia amounting to near half a million citizens
with arms in their hands." Exalting "the advantage of being armed, which
the Americans possess over almost every other nation," Madison contrasted
the American government with the European dictatorships, which "are afraid
to trust the people with arms." Note that half a million was the
approximate unmber of male citizens at that time.

Alexander Hamilton explained that "If the representatives of the people
betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the
exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all
positive forms of government." Hamilton reassured skeptical
anti-Federalists that no standing army, however large, could oppress the
people, for the federal soldiers would be opposed by state militias
consisting of "a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them
in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights
and those of their fellow citizens."


Many delegates to the state conventions that ratified the Constitution
expressed discontent over the Federalists' assurances about existing
protection of the right to possess arms. New Hampshire provided the key
ninth vote that ratified the Constitution only after receiving assurance
that a Bill of Rights would be drafted with a protection for the right of
individuals to own firearms. The New Hampshire delegates suggested that the
new Bill of Rights provision be worded as follows: "Congress shall never
disarm any citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion."

At the Virginia convention, Patrick Henry had stated, "Guard with jealous
attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you
give up that force, you are ruined. . . . The great object is that every
man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun." During the
ratification process five state conventions demanded protection of the
right of citizens to bear arms, more than demanded protection of free
speech.

The first Congress delegated the duty of writing a Bill of Rights to James
Madison.Madison obtained copies of state proposals and attempted to combine
them in a succinct passage that all state delegates would accept. The
original intent of the second amendment remained consistent with the
intentions of the states that demanded it.

Madison's use of the phrase "well-regulated militia" was not a code word
for theNational Guard (which did not even exist). The phrase was not
esoteric, but had acommonly-accepted meaning. Before independence was even
declared, Massachusetts patriot Josiah Quincy had referred to "a
well-regulated militia composed of the freeholder, citizen and husbandman,
who take up their arms to preserve their property as individuals, and their
rights as freemen." "Who are the Militia?" asked George Mason of Virginia.
He answered his own question: "They consist now of the whole people." The
same Congress that passed the Bill of Rights, including the Second
Amendment and its militia language, also passed the Militia Act of 1792.
That act enrolled all able-bodied white males in the militia and required
them to own arms.

Although the requirement to arm no longer exists, the definition of the
militia has stayed the same; section 311(a) of title 10 of the United
States Code declares, "The militia of the United States consists of all
able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and . . .under 45 years of age."
The next section of the code distinguishes the organized militia (the
National Guard) from the "unorganized militia." The modern federal National
Guard was specifically raised under Congress's power to "raise and support
armies," not its power to "Provide for organizing, arming and disciplining
the Militia." (House Report No. 141, 73d Cong., 1st sess. (1933), pp. 2-5.
Congress did so in order that the National Guard could be sent into
overseas combat. The National Guard's weapons cannot be the arms protected
by the Second Amendment, since Guard weapons are owned by the federal
government. 32 U.S.C. $ 105[a][1].)

James Madison wrote the Second Amendment in order to prevent the right to
bear arms from vesting only in "select militias" like state national guard
units. The Second Amendment was written to secure an individual right to
bear arms that provided an ultimate check on government and any of its
"select" militias.

The core of the Second Amendment therefore was that state militias --
comprised of individual citizens bringing their own guns to duty -- would
have the power to overthrow a tyrannical federal government and its
standing army.

To persons accustomed to think of the "right to bear arms" as a privilege
to own sporting goods, it must seem incredible that the authors of the
Second Amendment meant to ensure that the American people would always own
weapons of war. But that is precisely what the historical record
demonstrates. The only commentary available to Congress when it ratified
the Second Amendment was written by Tench Coxe, one of James Madison's
friends. Coxe explained:

	The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America
	from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths,
	entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any
	possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the
	militia? Are they not ourselves... Congress have no power to disarm
	the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of
	the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... The unlimited
	power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or
	state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain,
	in the hands of the people.


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