By Ralph Benko and Rachel Alexander
In politics, you are known by the quality of your enemies. Thus, we took it as a great sign when one of the hardest left of the mainstream magazines, Mother Jones, recently devoted its “The Big Feature” to protesting the official recognition of a Virginia well-regulated Militia.
The Board of Supervisors of the Bedford and Campbell County governments and first term Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) gave recognition to the Bedford Militia. This is big. It could represent an important, perhaps even transformational, first step in the restoration of our Constitutional right to well-regulated Militias. Per Mom:
“Virginia is the only state where local governments are legitimizing their regional militias. In Bedford County and its neighboring Campbell County the local governments are trying to rebrand their militias from extremist paramilitary groups operating on the fringe of society into an official arm of the state—one with a more family-friendly image of protecting neighbors rather than bombing government buildings. ‘It’s sad at this point that the militia is a scary term, because historically it’s not a scary term,’ Jonathan Falls, the commander of the Bedford Militia, told his troops at the muster. ‘Historically it’s a very honorable thing to do in your community, and so part of our mission is to change the definition of the militia back to what its original, historical meaning was.’”
Of course, Mom (who typically sympathizes exclusively with left-wing paramilitary groups such as Seattle’s riotous CHOP, where one of the rioters killed someone) clutches her pearls at the prospect of militias becoming what they Constitutionally were constituted to be (and long and happily were), “an official arm of the state.” And woe is me says she to well-regulated militias regaining their authentic “family-friendly image of protecting neighbors rather than bombing government buildings.”
In the immortal words of America’s greatest yogi, Yogi Berra, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice but in practice there is.” Thus, we are delighted to help spread the word of the emergence, in practice, of what we recently proposed here in theory, something which the Sentinel’s editor proposed long before we did: a well regulated militia.
In a recent article in the issue of the Bill of Rights Sentinel, “Demand Restoration of the Full Second Amendment,” we took a strong stand that gun rights advocates simply must demand our orphaned Constitutional right to a well-regulated militia together with the right to keep and bear arms. Of course, devotion to protecting the Second Amendment’s second clause in no way justifies Bill of Rights defenders’ caving on the first. We wrote:
“There’s no justification for how self-styled defenders of the Second Amendment defaulted facing abdication of the guarantee of the right to ‘a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…’ A proper defense of the Second Amendment must defend it in full. Not by halves. The first clause of the Second Amendment must be held as sacrosanct as, per the Heller case, the uninfringeable personal right to keep and bear arms, lest the entire bundle of rights to arms be weakened. We must not let leftists pull the rug out from under us by blithely ignoring the Second Amendment’s first clause, thereby setting an insidious precedent.”
We were unaware, when writing this, that much of our position had been anticipated by gun rights thought leader and long-time Sentinel editor-in-chief Alan Korwin in his 2015 Daily Caller column “A Well-Regulated Militia IS NEEDED For the Security of a Free State” wherein he wrote with characteristic trenchancy:
“Because this is a matter of national security, a pure constitutional function, Dept. of Homeland Security dollars can be legitimately allocated to encourage Americans to go to the range, become better marksmen, and be prepared.
“Television alone should have you supremely aware that authorities are excellent at closing the barn door after the horses are out. They show up in overwhelming numbers, beautifully attired for battle, after the battle is over. The ‘news’ crews record them all decked out, never dirty, then show the same few short clips of them standing around aimlessly, doing nothing on a street corner like idle teenagers.”
That said, however, we were not surprised by the anxiety of one good Sentinel reader who wrote to express his fear that our demand for respect for the full Second Amendment “has the potential to play into the hands of the antis.” We, as constitutional originalist lawyers, well understand that those opposed to our civil rights will attempt to reinterpret, in devious and preposterous ways, the plain language of the Bill of Rights to deprive us of such rights. It’s what they do.
Yet as the Heller case shows, their typically flimsy propagandistic arguments will fail when argued in front of a high integrity, constitutional originalist court. That said, anticipating the inevitable effort by the left to pervert the plain language of the Constitution is no justification for ignoring the plain language of the Constitution.
There can be no clearer statement of a right than the first clause of the Second Amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….” And we demand it be both honored and not allowed a distorted interpretation. As John Philpot Curran famously said, in 1790 Dublin: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”
As we said in our previous Sentinel article, yet bears repeating:
“The purpose of the Second Amendment was to create a balance of power — a bulwark against a tyrannical federal government. Even the denialist Washington Post, by publishing historian Noah Shusterman, was forced to admit that Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, called a well-regulated militia ‘the most natural defense of a free country.’ His anti-Federalist critics agreed with the need for a citizens’ militia, writing that ‘a well regulated militia, composed of the Yeomanry of the country, have ever been considered as the bulwark of a free people.’ Conservatives and originalists like us don’t airbrush words out of the Constitution. Ignoring plain constitutional language is a reprehensible but familiar left-wing tactic. The Second Amendment, in its fullness, recognizes that a well-regulated Militia is indeed necessary to the security of a free State.”
And there you have it. The Second Amendment recognizes an unequivocal right to a well regulated Militia. And the Yeomanry of this country, now, starting in Virginia, are successfully gaining official recognition of our orphaned, yet still legitimate, right.
Could be big! Could become a movement.
We encourage the Sentinel’s readers across America to follow the Bedford Militia’s sterling example and seek official recognition from their own counties, states and Members of Congress.
Thank you, Commander Jonathan Falls, both for your visionary leadership and your eloquence in reasserting our right to a well regulated Militia.
Thank you for your potentially history-making leadership to the supervisors of Campbell and Bedford County.
And thank you, Rep. Bob Good, for honorably fulfilling your oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by courageously making it a priority, as all Members of Congress should, to defend the Bill of Rights!
Reprinted by permission of the authors. Originally published in the December 2021 issue of the JPFO Bill of Rights Sentinel.
