Arms Reform And Militia

We are seeing mass murder, almost on daily basis. Much of it perpetrated by ideologues or angry men. What to do about it? Establishment Alternatives include:

• Bring back the Brady bill, adding a prohibition on oversized magazines and “converter kits”.
• Red Flag laws –> beef up the background check system and authorize courts to issue orders allowing police to temporarily confiscate firearms from a person deemed by a judge as posing a risk of violence.
• Improve and fund the background check system.

I think a further, and common sense regulation would segue off Article 2 Section 8 of the Constitution and the Second Amendment directly. That would be a programic change to expand the National Guard to provide community reserve armories to arm people for emergencies, not with guns alone but with reserve medical, rescue and relief supplies. Those armories would be tied to local police, adult training, would have gun ranges for fire-arms training and practice, and train people in emergency response. They would be run by US Reservists in collaboration with the State and local PDs and SDs.

I think our problem as a society is that people feel left out of the political discourse. The purpose of the Second Amendment wasn’t an individual right to carry around weapons, but a right of individuals to participate in defending their homes from threats and emergencies. Fire Departments, Rescue and Emergency Response personnel, all are as much “militia” as police and troopers, as all of those capabilities developed from jobs that were originally those of volunteer militia. If police and fire come from the neighborhoods they serve they can do their jobs as intended without being perceived as invaders or “standing armies.”

If people want to own and use military grade weapons, the regulation can require them to keep those weapons with the local armory. If they want to keep a weapon for self defense they should be required to check that weapon out of the armory and provide sufficient security to prevent it falling into the wrong hands.