Due to recent events, it has come to my attention that this
State is not fulfilling the obligations of the Second Amendment to the
Constitution. We will therefore enact
the following:
1.
All weapon-owning residents of this State will
report once a year to a State center with all of their weapons. At that center, they will receive training in
operations as members of a State militia and in use of those weapons for
militia purposes, via State-certified instructors. If the obligation is fulfilled correctly, including
following the regulations established by the instructors, those residents will
receive a State certification of their ability to act as members of the State
militia. This obligation will continue until the resident dies or no longer
owns a weapon.
2.
The object of this training will be to protect
the State against those threats to it not covered by the Federal
Government. Specifically, the training
will be for call-up at any time to fight against persons in the State who seek
to overturn all or part of the State by force. Such call-up and training can
only be done by a State-certified or Federally-certified authority, and during
training and call-up weapon-owning residents shall be deemed in violation of
regulations if they attempt to use their weapons other than under the
supervision of such authority and under the regulations governing the militia.
3.
Penalties for failure to act as part of the
militia shall be as follows: first,
failure to rightfully gain such certification or to fulfill such call-up each
year shall cause, in the first year, a fine of $100, in the second such year, a
fine of $1000, in the third such year, a jail term of a minimum of one month
with confiscation of all weapons for that term, in the fourth such year a jail term of a minimum of one year with
confiscation of all weapons for that term, and for the fifth and ensuing such
years, a jail term of a minimum of twenty years. If it shall be found that a resident has
concealed weapons or failed to train for longer than the time period since the
last training, he or she shall be liable for all such years so
established. Second, use of weapons
outside of training or call-up in such a manner as to indicate inability to use
them properly as a member of the militia, and specifically use in commission of
a felony crime or use by the gun-owning resident or another person deemed
legally improper and causing harm such as accidental death shall be deemed a
crime separate from and with penalties in addition to all other related crimes,
and will involve a minimum jail term of one month. Third, the State shall
distinguish between weapons useful for purposes of the militia and weapons not
so useful, and use outside of training or call-up as described above shall also
be deemed a crime separate from and with penalties additional to all other
related crimes, and will involve an additional minimum jail term of one month.
Fourth, sellers of weapons who fail to verify that the resident has
certification will be personally liable for the same penalties, and their
corporations as people shall be liable as well, for one million dollars per
felony crime committed.
4.
Failure of the State to adequately fund and
staff such training shall not be a cause for voiding these requirements.
Moreover, the State may not in its funding assess those who do not own guns
more highly than those who own guns.
Let me add two comments on this change to our State
laws. First, there seems to be a
pervasive misunderstanding of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, involving
in many cases those of the legal branch.
The Second Amendment does not state
that the people in general in the
United States may bear arms. Rather,
it states that the people as well-regulated
members of States may bear arms. This is made clear in the very first words
of the Preamble to the Constitution, which states not “We the people” but
rather “We the people of the United States,”
thus defining the word “people” for the rest of the document. I find that
commentators often overlook this – a mistake comparable to saying that “I believe”
(in the tooth fairy?) rather than “I believe in God[s]” is an expression of
religious faith.
The implication of this is that the right “of the people” to
bear arms extends no further than their rights as members of a State (and, of
course, where Federal law does not intrude).
Whether they have any rights to bear arms when their State has allowed
militias to wither, I leave to others – my personal opinion is that they do
not, unless the State law specifically establishes such a use and its relation
to the interests of the State. However, it is very clear that in the absence of
such laws, establishment of such a militia, as I have done above, means that
weapons may be used only for the purposes of a State militia. Moreover,
registration of weapons for purposes of a State militia is in no sense a
violation of individual Constitutional rights, but rather a right and proper duty of residents
of a State.
Second, it should be understood that while residents of this
State have a right to acquire or sell any weapon they wish, they also have an active
duty once any weapon is acquired to use weapons in a manner consistent with the
purposes of the State, and that neither ignorance of the law nor passive
failure to comply with the militia’s regulations will serve as an excuse for
failure to do so. I believe that the net
effect of this will be that, while residents and visitors may continue to use
weapons for such purposes as hunting and self-protection, weapons used for killings
(mass and other) will be more difficult to acquire and retain, and users far
less likely to cause unintended deaths.
Finally, I view this enactment as the minimum necessary to
re-establish our State’s proper fulfillment of the Constitution. Any attempt to “water down” the necessary
laws shall simply remove the rights of weapon owners altogether, since without
Constitutional sanction there are no legal weapon rights.
