Convention of States: Good or Bad?

[*michaelsean*]

(09-20-2017, 01:45 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Most of the writing I have seen is in the vain of an armed citizenry being vital to the continuation of the republic. It is the same reasoning, and works in conjunction with, the standing army situation.

The framers felt that a standing army was a threat to the republic and a tool of tyranny because if the government became one that was not "of and by the people" they could then use the standing army to oppress the people. The usage of citizen militias as the ground force prevents this. With no standing army, there is no one to turn against the people, and if they attempt to call the militias you have buffers at the state level, as well as the citizens themselves. These militias could also be raised if the federal government ran afoul of the people and overthrow it. So the 2A was put in place because the states wanted to ensure there was a mechanism in place to prevent the federal government from stripping them of their rights to form their militias. Without an armed citizenry, they could not raise them.

In all seriousness, and this isn't even me just trying to continue the debate or just arguing for fun like I do sometimes. This is what all of the writing of the framers points to as the intent behind the issues of a standing army and the 2A. What has caused this to be corrupted (and I use this term not when negative connotations, just on its base meaning) is a textualist reading of both Article 1 and the 2A. When you take only a textualist approach and ignore all of the other context, you get what we have today. I'm not giving an opinion of what is right or wrong, especially legally speaking, all I can say is that this is what is made clear as the intent of the framers during the creation of our current government and because that ambiguity was not clarified in the founding documents, we have veered from that.

But for the people who lean toward the militia side of the amendment, I can just declare myself part of the militia.  There are no requirements in drilling, training, organization etc.