Part of the never-ending dispute over the Second Amendment is the interpretation of “a well-regulated militia”, over whether that meant the population at large or just that portion serving in the militia. At the time, the two were synonymous; so what if they were again? Would you be for or against a new national Militia Act which made military training mandatory for almost all able-bodied adult citizens? I’ll stipulate the following:
[ul][li]the usual disqualifications for criminal past, mental illness, health, etc.[/li][li]the ironclad guarantee that citizens could NOT be sent overseas to fight unless they volunteered or there was a congressional declaration of war.[/li][li]you could be called upon to do the same things the National Guard does now, and if necessary you could be deputized as a police auxiliary.[/li][li]allowance for a limited number of conscientious objectors, but the standards would be very strict; you would NOT get to plead that you “hate guns” for example.[/li][li]the government would provide tax breaks for you to afford your service rifle, which you would then privately own and keep in your home.[/li][li]As a member in good standing of the public militia you would have an unrestricted right to own and carry handguns, rifles and shotguns. Things like derringers or cell-phone guns could still be banned. Publicly carrying full-auto weapons could be regulated under militia rules.[/ul][/li]
The thing is, not only would a lot of anti-gun people object as you’d suppose, but a lot of pro-gun people would as well; they’d object to being regimented by the government. What say you?
Sounds like a NRA proposal to me. I vote no.
Sounds like a lot of expense for little or no return. You didn’t mention paying anyone for their service but otherwise it sounds like indentured servitude.
I don’t think such a universal militia would be a bad thing in general, but it just strikes me as being slightly wasteful for us in particular, given the strategic situation of the 21st-Century U.S. We don’t really need tens of millions of riflemen.
For a country like Israel who is surrounded by enemies, it’s probably a good idea. For the USA, not so much. I was in the military while there was still the Draft. Those drafted tended not to be the best soldiers, sailors, or airmen. Good people, but not good military members as a whole. Of course some found out that they liked the military once in it. Forcing someone to do something that they don’t really want to do for a few years is usually NOT a good motivator.
The policy is totally and completely of the wrong era. Modern militaries have irrevocably turned into a profession that requires substantial training and the increasing integration of technology into fewer, more capable units, weapons, and people. The idea of needing to train millions of people to stand by for militia duty is just a huge waste of time and money. It is like proposing that high school students need to spend a month on a farm using only hand tools in order to be a real Amrican citizen, what with our agrarian roots.
Yeah, more or less the same thing happened in ancient Rome. A citizen militia was fine as long as they were defending the half of Italy surrounding Rome; it was hopeless once they had to occupy an empire that eventually stretched from Britain to the Levant.
ETA: Switzerland has retained the militia model probably because they are and always will be sharply bounded by geography.
This sounds like a solution in search of a problem. Can you name any event in the last 50 years where the supply of National Guardsmen outstripped the demand? If essentially all adults are in the Jr. National Guard, who precisely are they out there helping? “There’s a hurricane coming! Call up the JrNG! Go board up your own homes and businesses, then hand out emergency rations to…yourselves?”
How much training are you calling for, and how frequently? The disruption to people’s jobs and other obligations vastly outweighs any public good that could be derived from a 200 million person sandbag and bottled water dispensing service. If you come banging on my door one weekend per month expecting me to go play Jr. National Guard, expect a big go fuck yourself, I got shit to do. That goes double for folks who work shifts or days on/off rotations.
It is an even worse deal than universal military conscription. Instead of wasting a couple of years of everybody’s life on a job that doesn’t need doing, you want to waste some unspecified amount of everybody’s life, every year, until they die.
Emphatic NO as a result of your conditions which are simply targeted as justification for gun ownership without sacrifice, risk or true commitment of service to ones country (I detest bullet #2)
Emphatic YES to universal (men and women) service for 1 or more years at age 18. Civilian and military service options with GI bill type benefits for longer/military service.
Above and beyond any desire on my part, the idea is definitively illegal- the 13th amendment prohibits it. Even if it weren’t, though, it wouldn’t have my support; this kind of forced labor is grossly immoral (and we already fought two wars to prove that).
I never understood the whole bullshit “service guarantees citizenship!” notion that some people have that spending a couple of years in some variation of the military or Peace Corps is a cure-all for societies ills. We need smarter, more educated people - scientists and engineers and competent business people. Not more ditch diggers and and riflemen.
This country already has more guns per capita than any country on Earth. 50% more than the runner up - Serbia.
We already spend more on our military than the next dozen countries combined.
The effectiveness of “juvenile boot camps” to actually make kids straighten up and fly right over the long term have been indeterminant at best.
And we are already $15 trillion in debt paying for all the programs we already have.
So what “problem” do you think that some sort of mandatory pseudo-facist Junior Homeland Troopers program would solve?
It sounds like a pointless, expensive non-solution to me. It would screw up everybody’s life for no return.
The proposal is to take millions of people and force them to work for the government. Leaving aside the civil liberties issues, this means you’re disrupting the private economy by taking all of those people out of their regular jobs. And then the government becomes responsible for them - taxes go up as we pay for the upkeep of this militia. And what purpose does it serve? Do we need ten million poorly trained troops on standby in case Canada invades?
Sounds like a huge boondoggle. The people pushing for this idea would hate it if it didn’t involve uniforms.
I think the OP is kind of trying to think out what it might be like if we implemented something similar to the Swiss militia/reserve system.
Personally, I think it would be a good idea if we were actually threatened in some way that might actually require the raising of large predominantly infantry armies, or that would require a lot of militarily trained manpower.
In today’s world though, there’s no existential threat to the US, and most everyone who’s hostile to us is across an ocean. Training and equipping millions of militiamen is just a giant waste of money.
If there’s a shortage of NG types in disasters, etc… due to Federalized NG units, maybe the states should expand their state guard programs instead of having a nationwide Federal Service plan.
These are good points. Israel is surrounded by nations with which it maintains a fragile relationship and there is a constant danger that relations will go south and e.g. Egyptian troops will start pouring across the border bent on conquest. That’s when having lots of civilians with arms (rifles, shotguns, handguns, maybe some grenades and a sword or two) becomes helpful. The early militias of the US were based around the idea of being ready to fight an invading army or at least an organized band of insurgents with guns and swords. Remember the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. The chance that the US will face this sort of conflict on US soil grows increasingly less likely. The US does face the danger of individual strikes against military and civilian targets committed from afar or by small numbers of individuals. Having 700 decent riflemen and 50 crack riflemen available in your town with Garands and AR-15’s in their closets and 500 rounds each doesn’t do squat in preventing someone from driving into town with a car bomb and setting it off near the refinery.
As well as the idea of not having a standing army in peacetime. So much for that idea!
Why does the Swiss even have such a system? They are a neutral country of 8million people surrounded by Alps.
I feel like this is a system better suited to tiny countries that are either constantly under military threat or never under military threat but feel the need to maintain some sort of quasi-paramilitary force for emergencies.
Other than that, the only people who endorse mandatory service seem to be the sort of people that think freedom is best protected through institutionalized discipline.
Like President Lincoln said, all the armies of Europe, Africa, and Asia combined cannot by force take a drink from the Ohio or make tracks on the Blue Ridge.
People have been saying for years that the military doesn’t want a draft, but in the event that one was forced upon them, they have plans in place to gear back up to Vietnam-level induction & training. I don’t see how this would be any huge benefit, and it would be a huge inconvenience for a great many people.
Simpler just to rewrite the 2nd amendment so that it makes sense in modern English, and then modify laws so they accomplish a stated beneficial goal.