I got this in response to something I said here. I decided to pass it along to you.

Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:03:19 -0400 From: Steven Furlong Subject: Constitution, gun rights, et al

force with trained leaders. You said you don't know the word to descibe it.>

Sounds like a militia. In at least some implementations, the private soldiers, and I use the term advisedly, trained once in a while to familiarize them with group movements, but didn't have any other peacetime responsibilities. Officers were also "regular folks" but they got more extensive training in tactics, communications, logistics, and the whole shebang.

That worked when the basic tools of war were the soldier's personal long guns and horse-drawn wagons, and the scope of the militia was much smaller, with all members of a company, including the leaders, being drawn from the same community. I don't know that it would be effective with today's complexity of weapons systems and logistics systems. The scale of military operations is another problem. I have some ideas on simplifying the technical systems. Bringing the scale of military operations back to a militia level is a political and social question, and I don't think it can be addressed in the US without some major societal changes.

I'm sending this via email rather than by posting to the c-punks list because I'm not a subscriber to the list. It seems that I _could_ post, but think it would be rude. Feel free to quote this message if you want to post a response.

----- End of forwarded message from Sean Roach ----- I see the point he's making, I think it makes some assumptions that aren't realy valid though. At the federal level you have: army, navy, militia. All are managed by Congress unless they hand authority to the President. In all cases the funding and regulation comes from Congress. The states do get to appoint the officers of the Militia however. I assume this is under the presumption that such officers are more likely to refuse to follow federal orders if those orders are clearly outside the line. It's a sort of checks and balances. Now if we look at the section on states, that I claim gives the states the responsibility to keep an indipendant force in time of invasion, there is no stipulation as to who or how they are to be selected, organized, or funded; other than it ain't federal or state doing it. One could argue that this would then mean counties/parishes and then indipendant municipalities before it gets to individual citizens, but that seems to beg the question in my mind; not to mention they are not involved in the government of the US. It can't be federal because there is no delegate that directs the Congress to allocate funds for this use. It can't be the states doing the funding since they are specificaly prohibited from doing this, without permission from Congress, until an actual invasion or a situation that 'will not admit delay'. This implies the sherrif and associated folks going from house to house asking for help from the citizens as they see fit. Bubba and all his rowdies (those that haven't been co-opted by the federal forces so far) along with Grandpa and the two Jones' sisters ( :) ) getting in their pick-ups and going hunting. It seems to me that it is the lower civil authorities deputizing the commen citizen as a last ditch defence effort. I think 'deputized citizen' is a more accurate term to describe the participants of this last ditch effort to retain freedom. As to the claim of militia or citizen soldiers not being effective, there are plenty of bush wars going on right now that would argue contrary to this. -- ____________________________________________________________________ When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------