[quote]magick wrote:
[quote]NickViar wrote:
Good post. I thought everyone thought of militias as nothing more than a way to slow an invasion enough to get professionals there. I don’t think I’d ever even considered that some people believe that those who support militias/armed citizens think an invasion could be completely repelled by guys coming home from their 8-5s and fighting for a few hours before bedtime. Even if a people were to rely solely upon a militia in peacetime, an invasion would create demand for a large number of full-time soldiers.
I guess that I have always viewed a militia as something like a locked door- it hardens the target, but it can’t be the sole means of defending the interior of the home.[/quote]
Well, the colonists clearly believed in the concept of the citizen soldier (aka militia), and that they would be able to repel the Redcoats (They did not; in fact the citizen soldiers sucked real bad).
And the reasons they sucked is why I don’t necessarily believe in the rationales for a militia that Mikeyali gave.
Anyways, I can’t claim to know why modern hardcore militia people believe in militias. Based on comments I’ve seen here and there though, some people genuinely seem to believe that they and a bunch of like-minded people can give the U.S. army a good fight in an armed rebellion with just their AR-15.[/quote]
First off, hardcore militia people who believe in militias believe in them for the same reason that the writers of our original constitutions believed in them: because they realized that a standing army could be used as a tool of tyranny against the civilian population. History has shown this to be true. Perhaps not as much, yet, in the United States, but true nonetheless.
Second, I can’t tell if Thunder is being willfully ignorant in his implying that Mikeyali’s constitution would leave the nation wide open to invasion and conquest by Papua New Guinea, but my reading of it does not leave me with this impression. The army and navy would still exist. The Marine Expeditionary Corps would exist. A new branch of the military, the Frontier Corps, would also be created. These would be federal forces, with presumably the same class of weaponry and training as American military forces have always enjoyed.
Alongside these federal forces, each state (or territory, rather) would be responsible for training and equipping its own territorial militia, staffed with the same calibre of individual, providing the same training and equivalent weaponry as their federal counterparts.
IN ADDITION to the regular federal armed forces and territorial militia, every individual, including those NOT in a militia or the military, would have the right to PRIVATELY OWN any military weapon in current use, and its ammunition, up to and including, but not exceeding, projectiles and explosive devices with a kill radius of ten meters.
In other words, a highly militarized society armed to the fucking teeth.
And Mexico and Papua New Guinea are going to invade and conquer whom, how, exactly?
(Jefferson, am I misconstruing anything here?)