“Since Platos time many political theorists have concluded that the best way to insure that there will be open and honest government is to guarantee the right of the people to keep and bear arms as an unorganized militia. The idea that the people be armed weighed heavily in the minds of the English Puritans and radical Whigs who were writing substantial political philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They returned to the major premise of antiquity: that only freemen may be armed and that the mark of a freeman was his right to keep and bear arms. While there were some assumptions that only an armed citizen could resist the proverbial intruder in the night and that a citizen might use arms for recreation and hunting, there was, constantly, the clear commitment that the state had made that the best and ultimate defense and protection of the state rested in the hands of the citizen-soldiers trained at arms. In medieval law there was a three fold obligation shared by all freemen. They must repair and maintain public roads and bridges and the like; they must serve as an ancillary police force; and they must be prepared to bear arms in defense of the state as a militia. Both the posse and the militia requirements were based on the need for privately owned arms. Medieval law in these areas developed slowly, but was always based in common law and practice. Each man was required to keep in his home the arms of his socio-economic class and have these in order ready to use in case of emergency. Regular practice with ones arms was a general requirement. At least one English king attempted to discourage participation in any form of recreation except practice with arms, primarily with the long bow.” ~ James Biser Whisker, The Milita, Edwin Mellen Press, 1992
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 00:49:38 +0000
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