My ongoing research into the obscure Founding Father Tench Coxe had yielded decades of legal and historical academic literature regarding Amendment II. It seems that so much of the legal arguments in favor of the “Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” as it is understood by contemporary Americans, began with American legal theorists revisiting Coxe’s positions on Amendment II. Here, the definitions of the “Militia” described in Amendment II are where things get murky. There are a few legal theories that seek to determine who or what is the Militia, the parameters of which is what characterizes the ongoing debate on both gun control (in US domestic policy) and arms control (in US foreign policy).

The legal theories that I have encountered so far define this “Militia” as:

• The ability of the American people to act as a check on the Military-Industrial Complex insofar as both are required for America’s national defense. This includes the ability of individual Americans to hold the Military-Industrial Complex accountable through the Federal legislature responsible for funding it during peacetime and wartime, the US Congress.
• The ability of a State Government to establish its National Guard and Air National Guard, which are essentially the Reservists of the US Army and US Air Force. The US Coast Guard, however, is a branch of the US armed forces affiliated with the US Department of Homeland Security, to be brought under the control of the US Department of Defense during wartime.
• The ability of a State Government to maintain an auxiliary force of civilians who own and maintain personal firearms. Here, the “Militia” is specifically described in the legal scholarly literature as a “State Militia.”
• The ability of the Federal Government to oversee and administrate a “Party Volunteer-Corps.” The old Federalist Party, according to Coxe himself, appeared to have adhered to this definition. It would have been some kind of “Federal Militia” that would be beholden to Congress and answerable to the Presidency.

To be honest, going over the legal literature pertaining to the question of gun control, I am certain that the truth is a combination of all four. I strongly believe that nations and their citizenries should have the necessary means of defending themselves against foreign and domestic enemies. Under wartime conditions, such as those characteristic of the two World Wars, the National Guard, Air National Guard, and Coast Guard would be mobilized and serving alongside the regulars within the US armed forces. Having these civilian auxiliaries around would become necessary in those circumstances.

However, under peacetime conditions, the debate appears to have shifted away from the question of the necessity for this Militia’s existence and toward the question of whether a militarization of American life is warranted. We see this discussion to be self-evident in the militarization of US police agencies and in the militarization of civilian firearms. The militarization of US policies, as I pointed out in my critiques of Narco-Capitalism in Latin America, emerged as a natural response to the War on Drugs. The militarization of civilian firearms, perhaps personified over civilian ownership of ArmaLite AR-15 and its numerous derivatives, is far more interesting.

In the 1980s, US civilian firearms manufacturers began producing and selling “military-like firearms” like the AR-15 for reasons that have very little to do with self-defense. Civilian firearms manufacturers have been struggling for decades to stay relevant. This is an America where the Vietnam War was the last war to witness an official conscription policy, where more Americans are living in cities, and where even fewer actually live and hunt in the countryside. Not to mention the fact that more Americans tend to perform mental tasks (work in offices and stores and play video games) as opposed to physical tasks (work in fields and factories and play competitive sports). Therefore, for the sake of tomorrow’s post from a Federalist perspective, I must dare to ask the hard questions that nobody seems willing to entertain:

• Has the American people lost touch with the Rust Belt and Midwestern States, the places hit hard because of Neoliberalism in this Jeffersonian Empire of Liberty?
• Should more young Americans be interested in spending time away from the cities and especially our American Suburbia?
• Should young Americans in general be concerned about the environment and efforts to preserve it for future generations?
• Is the shift toward mental tasks in the workspaces resulted in our concurring problems with obesity insofar as it can be considered a “disease of affluence?”

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Tags: Economics, Federalist Party, Finance, Hamiltonianism, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Socialist Finance, Third Place, United States, Work-Standard