19 APRIL 1775 vs. THE D.C.
GUN CASE
By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. April 14, 2008
From what I have heard, the oral argument in the
Supreme Court on the District of Columbia gun
case suggested that a majority of the Justices just
might discover an “individual right” “to keep
and bear Arms” in the Second Amendment, and
on that basis might declare the District’s
draconian “gun-control” laws to some degree
unconstitutional. Such a decision might lead to
further victories against “gun-control” statutes
and ordinances in other jurisdictions. Yet it
might prove instead to be a Trojan Horse,
because it could come down larded with so
much judicial mumbo jumbo about “reasonable
regulation” and “compelling governmental
interests” as grounds for “gun control” that the
Second Amendment would be left guaranteeing
less of a “right” than of an occasion for endless
legislation and litigation. Well, one can only
hope for the best—but at the same time one
ought to prepare for something less.
My concern is what happens if the Justices
somehow do rule favorably on the “individual-
right theory.” I suspect that such a victory—after
the champagne runs out—will have the perverse
result of putting all the pro-Second Amendment
people and organizations to sleep. With their
personal “gun rights” apparently secure (at least
for the time being), they will not be worried
about how correctly to construe the Amendment,
and how really to enforce it, even though this
country needs that construction and enforcement
now more than ever before.
The inescapable fact is that whatever “individual
right” “to keep and bear Arms” emerges from
the D.C. gun case will not provide “the security
of a free State” at which the Second Amendment
aims. True, tens and tens of millions of
Americans possess firearms and ammunition;
and perhaps large numbers of these firearms are
suitable for Militia service. But the armed
individual, simply as an individual, is not
enough.
All too many individual gun owners are not even
aware of each other. Although some are
members of firearms ranges or gun clubs, hardly
any if them are organized for anything akin to
Militia purposes. They are not members of
specific units. They have no designated leaders.
They lack systems for communications within or
among units, or among individuals for that
matter. (Where, for example, is the gun-owners’
equivalent of a “Neighborhood Watch” against
local usurpation and tyranny?) Even within their
own neighborhoods, among families and friends,
they make no attempts to insure uniformity or
completeness of equipment. They lack
sufficient, and often necessary, education and
training. They have prepared no plans to deal
with various contingencies, let alone have
assigned tasks to be carried out in anticipated
emergencies. More crucially, they do not
understand their constitutional status, purpose,
and especially authority. Many, if not most, of
them have no idea what they would be
defending with their “individual rights” “to keep
and bear Arms”—other than, perhaps, simply
maintaining possession of their own firearms for
purposes of possible self-defense. So, absent
direct attacks on their own persons, how many
gun owners today, anywhere, no matter how
serious the crisis confronting the rest of society
around them, would exercise their “individual
rights”? Or could effectively do so? And to what
end?
Oh, common Americans may be individually
insulted, even outraged, by “the insolence of
office” that increasingly characterizes rogue
public officials at every level of government
today. They may rightly resent, even intensely,
the contempt with which such obnoxious
officialdom treats them. They may correctly see
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their and their families’ present financial
positions and future economic security being
destroyed by the debt-currency schemes,
speculative bubbles, and bailouts engineered by
the Federal Reserve System and its clients
among the low life of high finance. They may be
subject to endless harassment by the tax Gestapo
or the mentally jack-booted thugs in other
governmental agencies. They may even have
been the bloodied victims of para-military police
brutality. But so what? Now what? They do not
know what to do, or how to do it—or perhaps
why.
Even if some of these isolated and ignorant
individuals could somehow come together here
and there in the midst of a crisis that sufficiently
rocks society’s foundations to wake and shake
them up, they would constitute only armed
mobs, not even “militia” in the generic sense,
and certainly not “Militia” in the specifically
constitutional sense. Moreover, the very few
who are already organized, and who do train, as
“private militia” lack constitutional authority—
and often, if not usually, envision themselves as
outside of and antagonistic to “the government”
(rather than as the ultimate embodiment of
“government”). If these few individuals stood up
with their “individual rights” against the trained
and ruthless enforcers deployed against them by
a police state, they would be branded outlaws or
“terrorists”, demonized by the big media,
deserted by their fellow citizens, and quickly
picked off and packed off to morgues or
detention centers.
Such a scenario, of course, is the exact opposite
of the true Militia model, and of actual Militia
experience in American history. When
thousands of Militiamen appeared outside of
Boston, Massachusetts, on 19 April 1775, were
they acting solely in pursuance of an “individual
right”? Did “the embattled farmers” fight only as
individuals? Were they just a lawless mob? Was
their victory at the Battle of Lexington and
Concord the lucky result of martial anarchy? Of
course not.
Very few “civilians” (in the purest sense of that
term) were involved on that fateful day. Most of
the men who mustered were members of Militia
companies that had been training assiduously for
some time theretofore. (And the ones who were
not, because they were too old to be required to
serve, but who fought anyway, had been
members of the Militia when young.) Had not
that been the case, the Militia would never have
been able to assemble so many men, on such
short notice, from beyond Concord all along the
road back to Boston.
Neither did “the embattled farmers” fight merely
as individuals. They may have employed the
tactics of irregulars—neither maneuvering in
parade-ground formations nor presenting a
concentrated target to their enemies—but they
always operated in set units, typically Militia
companies, which averaged about 50 men apiece
when at full complement. The Militiamen’s
success was based upon organization—being
called out in a systematic fashion by riders,
bells, or the firing of shots; equipment—being
adequately armed and accoutred; training—
knowing what to do, under their designated
officers; morale—being psychologically ready
and confident; and especially authority—
knowing that they had the legal right, power,
and duty to take action, because British General
Thomas Gage, and the Ministerial Government
behind him, were the usurpers and law-breakers.
Particularly revealing is the background to
Lexington and Concord. Gage’s descent on
Concord was only his last misstep in a series of
oppressive maneuvers. Disarming the Militia by
means of the seizure of their
[g]unpowder was undoubtedly on Gage’s mind
when he began sending his troops on marches in
the [Massachusetts] countryside early in 1775. *
* * Each march also tested the provincial
warning system. Gage hoped that if five or six
alerts turned out to be false alarms—the regulars
were just marching along molesting neither
persons nor property—the minutemen might
grow weary or careless about responding.
Instead of growing weary, the Americans turned
out in force every time the British appeared
outside Boston. They saw these confrontations
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in different terms. When the British turned back,
the minutemen were convinced they had done so
because they had lost their nerve. [Thomas
Fleming, The First Stroke: Lexington, Concord,
and the beginning of the American Revolution
(Washington, D.C.: National Park Service,
United States Department of the Interior, 1978),
at 35.]
So, neither Gage nor the Militiamen imagined
that only isolated individuals were involved on
the patriots’ side of things. Gage knew perfectly
well that he was facing an organized body of
trained men of a single mind. And by his
reactions to their “turn[ing] out in force”, the
Militiamen believed that they were deterring
him, and gained confidence in themselves from
that belief.
On the other hand, the British miscalculated on
the basis of overconfidence born of hubris.
About a month before Lexington and Concord,
Major of Marines John Pitcairn—who later
commanded the British troops at the moment
when they fired on the Militiamen at
Lexington—wrote to the Earl of Sandwich that
[o]rders are anxiously expected from England to
chastise those very bad people. * * * I am
satisfied that one active campaign, a smart
action, and burning two or three of their towns,
will set everything to right. Nothing now, I am
afraid, but this will ever convince these foolish
bad people that England is in earnest. [Letter of
4 March 1775, in The Private Papers of John,
Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty,
1771-1782 (London, England: Navy Records
Society, G.R. Barnes & J.H. Owen, Editors,
1907-1911), Volume I, at 59.]
After the battle, though,
[Lord] Percy[, one of Gage’s best officers,]
recognized, with the eye of an intelligent soldier,
one of the least understood realities of April
19th. The Americans who responded to the
British challenge were not a mass of
disorganized individuals; they were a well-
supplied rudimentary army which had been
organizing and training for 6 months. They were
in a state of battle readiness, much better
prepared to fight than the British soldiers who
marched out of Boston. A heavy proportion of
the American officers were veterans who knew
how to lead men into battle. Their training and
the knowledge that they outnumbered the British
five to one (even counting all the men Gage had
in Boston) added to the confidence with which
they responded to the alarm when the fighting
began. In short, April 19th was a victory of
preparedness. It was not the product of
spontaneous enthusiasm. The militiamen of
Massachusetts knew their strength, and, more
important, they knew they had the ability to use
that strength effectively. [Fleming, The First
Stroke, at 92-93.]
Apparently, history is repeating itself today, at
least in part. In the manner of General Gage,
present-day rogue politicians are systematically
constructing a national police state and testing
its mechanisms—experimenting to discover how
much of the gall and wormwood of oppression
ordinary people will swallow, and otherwise
creating uncertainty, self-doubt, mutual distrust
and recriminations, fear, apathy, and resignation
among the populace. Simultaneously, they are
expanding Americans’ personal economic
dependency upon the corrupt political system—
the apex of which abjection will arrive with the
amalgamation of national health care, on the one
hand, and control of the food supply by a cartel
of gargantuan agribusinesses, on the other, so
that from day to day every ordinary American’s
very life and death will be in the unclean hands
of rogue politicians and the special interests that
pull their strings.
But, in stark contrast to 1775, while all of this is
going on, the Militia are exerting no deterrence
whatsoever. Not because, of course, there are no
“embattled farmers” (or men and women of
every occupation and socio-economic class who
suffer from oppression) today, but because today
there are no Militia.
Deterrence is the first and most important line of
defense. It is the essence of prudence, and of
good strategy, too. As Sun Tzu taught, “to fight
and conquer in all your battles is not supreme
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excellence; supreme excellence consists in
breaking the enemy’s resistance without
fighting. Thus the highest form of generalship is
to baulk the enemy’s plans[.]” [Sun Tzu on the
Art of War (Taipei, Taiwan: Literature House,
Lionel Giles translation, 1964 reprint of the
1910 edition), at 16.] Yet deterrence must be
real, such that the enemy cannot believe in its
ability to project power everywhere without fail,
cannot imagine how to maintain its control over
society (let alone regain the power it has lost),
and cannot hope for final victory—so that, thus,
the enemy finds itself psychologically defeated
before it has begun to fight.
To provide deterrence sufficient for “the security
of a free State” the size of the United States
requires collective effort on a massive scale, not
“individual rights” individually exercised in
isolation. Also, in a constitutional republic,
deterrence against aspiring usurpers and tyrants
requires legal authority, which individuals
generally lack except when exercising their
absolute right of self-defense. The Constitution
tells this country that “[a] well regulated Militia”
is “necessary”. Not just desirable—but
necessary. And the Constitution provides “the
Militia of the several States” with all the
authority they need. Under today’s conditions,
only through the Militia could sufficiently large
numbers of patriots be organized legally,
economically, politically, and otherwise outside
of the deceptive control-structures the Forces of
Darkness use to maintain their illicit power.
Once “well regulated Militia” are revitalized in
enough States, they will far outnumber all of the
thugs any unconstitutional police state could
possibly deploy. And, knowing that, both rogue
politicians and their myrmidons would have to
think twice, thrice, and more about the harsh
consequences to themselves of attempting to
clamp down on the people.
Admittedly, at first such a situation might
amount to no more than a Mexican standoff
between the Forces of Darkness on one side and
the American people on the other. But at least it
would be a standoff—and that should suffice for
starters. For Americans do not enjoy the luxury
of even a standoff now. Rather, they are on a
one-way street with the flow of traffic running
against this country at an ever-accelerating
speed. While deterrence provided a standoff,
millions upon millions of outraged Americans
could take political action, using the Militia as
their focus, to reassert popular sovereignty—
rationally, steadily, and above all
constitutionally and peacefully.
One thing is certain: Without such deterrence,
there will be trouble. As monetary and banking
crises continue and worsen, the big cheeses and
special-interest groups will sacrifice average
Americans in order to save themselves, their
wealth, their political positions, their social
status, and all the other excessive perquisites and
abusive privileges they have stolen, embezzled,
or otherwise connived to obtain at this country’s
expense. You will be taken to the cleaners, or
worse, for all you are worth—through
hyperinflationary depreciation of currency in
order to lessen the real burden of debts, or
through increased taxation, or through seizures
of individuals’ property under “eminent domain”
in order to transfer it to favored creditors of the
National and State governments, or through
some other scheme by which the powerful crime
families in big business, high finance, and
gangster politics contrive to loot the common
man while casting the blame on someone else.
And if you complain too vociferously as these
“reforms” impoverish you, or if the whole rotten
system suddenly implodes when the pressure of
this economic madness becomes too great for it
to bear, aspiring usurpers and tyrants will
attempt to crack down with police-state
repression. So, revitalizing “the Militia of the
several States” is not optional—unless your and
your family’s security, and this country’s
survival as a free and prosperous republic, are
merely optional.
Doomsayers and defeatists will contend that any
recommendation to revitalize the Militia is
merely academic or nostalgic, because the
Militia are now “outmoded”. How or why,
though, are the Militia “outmoded”? Simply by
the mere passage of time since the late 1700s?
Can time alone negate the constitutional
principle that “[a] well regulated Militia” is
“necessary to the security of a free State”? Does
not the mess in which America finds herself
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today, coupled with the absence of the Militia,
prove the wisdom of that principle, and the
foolishness of having let so much time pass
without putting it into practice? Are the Militia
“outmoded” simply because Americans are not
now properly organized, equipped, and trained
for Militia service? With the proper will to do
so, cannot the people organize, equip, and train
themselves to whatever level they need? Who,
after all, is paying for the huge police-state
apparatus rogue politicians are now
constructing? If Americans can afford to pay for
their own oppression, cannot they afford to pay a
little more for their own liberation? What choice
do they have? Will they not be forced to pay a
crushing price, unto their utter destitution, if
they fail to act before it is too late?
Rifle”, “Basic Shotgun”, “Personal Protection in
the Home”, and (for those who qualify)
“Personal Protection Outside the Home”—from
NRA-certified instructors in your own home
town. Then learn to be a real rifleman by
participating in an “Appleseed” program. See
appleseedinfo.org for full information and
scheduling. So that, when Destiny finally
summons you to exercise the “individual right”
that you imagine is more valuable (and certainly
less tiring) than revitalizing the Militia, or to go
under altogether in the dustbin of History, you
will at least be minimally prepared to do the one
rather than the other.
© 2008 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserve

If the Militia are “outmoded” today in fact—

because Americans are unorganized,
unequipped, untrained, and undisciplined—that
is the fault, first, of rogue politicians in Congress
and the States’ legislatures; and, second, of the
voters themselves, who elected such subversives
or incompetents. This sorry state of affairs
cannot be attributed to the concept of “[a] well
regulated Militia” as the Founding Fathers
handed it down—or to anything else in the
Constitution, which provides sufficient power to
accomplish, and affirmatively commands, the
proper result. In the last analysis, that America is
treading water in History’s septic tank is We the
People’s own responsibility. But, as well, that
situation lies within We the People’s ability to
correct right now. And everyone reading this
commentary knows it to be true.

Nonetheless, if you are not yet ready to help in

revitalizing “the Militia of the several States” in
your own locality through peaceful,
constitutional means while time still remains on
your side—if you stubbornly insist on your
“individual right” “to keep and bear Arms”, but
refuse to understand what that “right” really
demands in terms of civic duty and collective
action, even as your world comes tumbling
down around your own head—then at least learn
something practical that may prepare you for the
certainty of an uncertain future. Take an NRA
firearms course (or, better yet, several such
courses)—“First Steps”, “Basic Pistol”, “Basic
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