"THE MILITIA OF THE SEVERAL STATES" GUARANTEE THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

"THE MILITIA OF THE SEVERAL STATES" GUARANTEE THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.

Excerpt:

One must wonder, however, why people today believe that such an argument can be valid, when obviously the Founding Fathers--who themselves explicitly conjoined the phrases "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" and "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" in the Second Amendment--subscribed to no such theory of separation in thought, nor consequentially in action, either. Certainly, "[i]t cannot be presumed, that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect".Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 174 (1803). See alsoMyers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 151-52 (1926); Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U.S. 41, 87 (1900); Blake v. McClung, 172 U.S. 239, 260-61 (1898); Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 534 (1884).

The Founding Fathers, of course, were not writing on a clean slate. All of pre-constitutional American history as well confirms this plain linguistic evidence. From the settling of the first Colonies in the mid-1600s, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" was everywhere and always coincident with a duty of the people, as individuals, to keep and bear arms for service (actual or potential) in their Colonial and then State Militia. Indeed, it is impossible to read the dozens of Colonial and State Militia Acts of the pre-constitutional period--in basic form and content strikingly similar to one another, from New Hampshire in the North to Georgia in the South--without concluding that the right and the duty to keep and bear arms were then--and, absent amendment of the Constitution, remain today--two sides of the selfsame coin. Nowhere will a researcher find a body of Colonial or early State laws explicitly recognizing, protecting, and even enabling the right of individuals to keep and bear arms outside of the context of the duty of each individual to keep and bear arms.

Rest found here:

Part 1

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin16.htm

Part 2

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin17.htm

Part 3

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin18.htm

Part 4

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin37.htm

Part 5

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin38.htm

Part 6

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin39.htm

Part 7

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin40.htm

Part 8

http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin41.htm