Second Amendment Is About Arms and Militias Not Weapons

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Why do you think the Constitution goes into such detail?  Why did the Virginians spend almost a week debating the militia clause in their convention to ratify?  They were terrified of the consequences of disarming the militia, meaning making the militia not an army; making them a bunch of skeet shooters.  That’s not a militia.  That’s an invitation to get invaded and killed.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

(N.B. This story was originally published on 27 February, 2013)

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

This page is supported by your Founders Pass Subscriptions, please take our membership tour & consider a 1 year membership

Mike:  Let’s talk to Amos in New York.  Hello, Amos.

Caller Amos:  Good morning, Mike.  Good morning, Andrew.  Thanks for taking my call.  I really appreciate it.  This is the first time I’m calling into your show.  I have a couple of thoughts.  Actually, the last lady was pretty interesting.  First of all, isn’t every single corporation in the United States bound by a nondiscrimination clause in hiring somebody?

Mike:  Unfortunately.  Let me restate that, unfortunately.

Caller Amos:  I heard you.

Mike:  I just want to make sure Media Matters is getting this.  Unfortunately they’re bound by some silly, arbitrary nondiscrimination clause.  To which discrimination do you refer?

Caller Amos:  In this case, race, creed.

Mike:  I say that in half jest, which discrimination do you prefer?  I wonder how many members of the American Nazi Party have been hired by Media Matters.  If they’re not hiring those members, aren’t they discriminating?

Caller Amos:  Correct.

Mike:  So why is their discrimination, or what they say is discrimination, better than —

Caller Amos:  I know.

Mike:  Amos, look.  The phone lines have died since I said Jesus Christ or since Christie said Jesus Christ.  We’re going to have to say something to get people back on the phone.  Proceed.  We scared everyone away.  It’s the Brad Birzer effect.  It happened again, Birzer.  I brought up the darn Transcendent and bam, like roaches when a light comes on, they fled.

Caller Amos:  Mike, for you bringing up the Transcendent, I actually pray your extraordinary blessing.

Mike:  Thank you.

Caller Amos:  So you got my point.  I have a little bone to pick with every single broadcaster in conservative radio, and that’s stop using the word “weapons.”  The Second Amendment says we were given the right to bear arms.  Philosophically speaking —

Mike:  Amos, let me just say, for my own horn to toot, you’re going to love my Project ’76 audio when it comes out tomorrow, the title of which is “Militias Are Good and They’re Good For You, Too.”  I emphasize, going back to 1788 with wonderful historical research, insight and humor that only we do at Founding Father Films, am going to bring to life exactly what you just said.  As a matter of fact, I correct my daughter and say: No, it says arms.  It doesn’t say anything about weapons.  It says arms.  What did arms mean I 1788, Amos?

Caller Amos:  I heard somebody else say this and I tried researching it myself, but it was that which a man could carry to protect himself.

Mike:  If you’re going to keep and bear arms in the same paragraph with the militia, that meant to shoot the enemy.  That was part of an arm-y.  It was a weapon to be used by the army.  In other words, the militia would have the same weapons the regulars had.  After you had an army that would have been called regulars — that’s what they called them.  In 1776 Patrick Henry called them British regulars.  The regulars would have the same weapons that the militia had because the regulars would be drawn from the militia.  When people say, [mocking] “You don’t need to have some kind of weapon the military has.  You can have a bird gun or a hand gun.”  No!

I actually gave this some thought and I think I actually may have misstated this at one point in time.  If the army is using M1 Garands, the militia is going to be using M1 Garands.  If the army is using a lock and loaded ARs or AKs or whatever the case may be, whatever it is we outfit them with these days, then the militia would be using the exact same thing.  You would train them to use them in case they ever had to be called into defense and be part of the army or the regulars.  They’d already know how to use their weapons.    Why do you think the Constitution goes into such detail?  Why did the Virginians spend almost a week debating the militia clause in their convention to ratify?  They were terrified of the consequences of disarming the militia, meaning making the militia not an army; making them a bunch of skeet shooters.  That’s not a militia.  That’s an invitation to get invaded and killed.

Caller Amos:  Absolutely.  I would love for you never to say the word “weapon” again unless it’s in the context of someone having killed, hurt, maimed or did some harm to some other person.  Before that, it is nothing more than a tool.  It is an arm and our right.  That message needs to stay consistent with all of you.

Mike:  The consistency has to be that the Second Amendment is directed and a prescription against the national legislature from trying to disarm members of the militia in the states.  You can’t do it.  You left the power then in the hands of the state to say our militia carries British officer fusils, yours doesn’t.  We shoot one ounce or one-and-a-half ounce balls with 250 grains of gun powder; they don’t.  That’s how you regulate the militia.  You prescribe what it is they will carry, that they have to be armed, that they have to buy their own ammo, so on and so forth.  It is obvious that the power to regulate the militia, unless there was a war that was declared, was left in the hands of the state legislatures.  That’s the end of the story.

I hope that when “Militias Are Good and They’re Good For You, Too” comes out and people listen to it, they listen to George Mason and Patrick Henry and James Madison explain this, especially when they listen to James Madison explain in the first Congress in 1789 — Madison proposed an amendment that would have abolished any proscription or any prohibition that the states could have placed on arms, on religion, and on speech, matters of conscience he called them.  It didn’t make it out of committee, Amos.  Don’t give me that crap about [mocking] “Everybody knows the Bill of Rights was intended for the states.”  No, it wasn’t because there was a rights of conscience amendment that would have done exactly that.  It would have exterminated any prohibition that existed in any state establishing a religion, prohibiting the exercise of prohibitions on free speech, on how to petition the local government for redress of grievances.  It would have abolished all of them.  It didn’t make it out of committee.  He couldn’t get a committee vote on it in the first congress.  It was rejected in favor of the twelve, eleven of which have now been ratified.

I think the historical record is abundantly and absolutely clear.  The founders and framers left us a marvelous and wonderful paper trail to follow if we’ll just open our eyes and follow it and stop following the NRA.  Stop following members of the talk radio mafia that have not researched this.  The history and facts are crystal clear.  It should not be in dispute amongst us, yet they still are, Amos, they still are.

End Mike Church Show Transcript