DO THEY REALLY WANT US TO FORM MILITIAS?

Every so often, I get e-mail to the effect of, "You're one of those
liberals who wants to take away our guns." I patiently respond that I'm
pretty close to an absolutist on the Bill of Rights, and that I have never
supported any new gun laws.

As far as I'm concerned, it's none of my business or any government's if
you keep and bear anything from a single-shot .22 for rabbit hunting to a
heat-seeking missile for taking out helicopter-borne trespassers.

On the other hand, although I've owned guns in the past and may again
someday, I don't own any now. Guns are a lot of work - not just their safe
storage, but cleaning and other maintenance, along with finding a practice
range and remembering that the slide on a given pistol will eat the webbing
between my thumb and forefinger if I hold it in a way that looks sensible
but isn't. Further, ammunition isn't cheap.

Also, a gun wouldn't make much sense for me in defending my household
against intruders. By the time I found my glasses so I could see to shoot,
the intruder could have carted off the TV, the stereo and all the
computers. If the intruders were in uniform, perhaps executing a no-knock
search warrant at the wrong address, my gun would just give them an excuse
to kill me, and the taxpayers would be out for the time and money that the
district attorney had to expend in fabricating a whitewash.

That said, let's look at the latest developments in Second Amendment
interpretation. The text is short: "A well-regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Over the years, this has inspired two schools of thought. One is the recent
liberal reading - I say "recent" because Eleanor Roosevelt, patron saint of
American liberalism, carried a pistol in her purse whenever she left the
White House grounds - that sees "the right of the people to keep and bear
Arms" not as a right to be exercised by individuals, but as a sort of
communal right to be exercised through local or state militias.

This reading doesn't make much sense in the constitutional context of what
the Founding Fathers meant by "people." Go on down to the Fourth Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers

... " Obviously, they meant an individual right for us "people."

So it was refreshing to read last week that the Bush administration agrees
with a common-sense interpretation of at least one provision in the Bill of
Rights - that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep
and bear arms. One can only hope that Attorney General John Ashcroft
continues his reading in this area and reaches the sensible conclusion that
the War on Drugs is a gross violation of the Constitution. However, such
fantasies tend to breed in one's mind, and in the process, I wondered what
might happen if anyone took the gun-controllers seriously - that the right
guaranteed in the Second Amendment applies only to people in duly organized
militias.

The dictionary at hand offers several definitions for militia, among them,
"The armed citizenry as distinct from the regular army." That one won't
help the gun-controller argument, since they have a problem with an "armed
citizenry," so let's consider the other primary definition: "A citizen army
as distinct from a body of professional soldiers."

The appropriate question here is "citizen of what?" We are American
citizens, of course, but we are also Colorado citizens, as well as citizens
of various towns, cities and counties.

Presumably, any of these political jurisdictions enjoys a constitutional
power to establish and maintain a volunteer militia, and there's some
Currier-and-Ives charm in the image of the local militia out drilling on
the village green.

In days of yore, the militias were generally organized to protect the
settlers - who weren't in a position to get timely assistance from their
state or federal government - from Indian attacks, which aren't much of a
threat now.

But Colorado communities still face threats and invasions, and it's
possible to imagine how a local militia could help them defend against
developers, subdividers, water exporters, big-box retailers, strip- mall
franchises and other threats to their way of life.

Even the most rabid gun-controller would have to support these militias,
since local citizen militias would conform perfectly to their reading of
the Second Amendment.

Now, I don't know that I'd feel safer if both Salida and Poncha Springs had
militias the next time they wrangled about water rights. But you can ask
the gun-controllers about that. As far as I'm concerned, the Second
Amendment is an individual right.