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• Jermanator Senior Member Posts: 16,135 Senior Member

  February 2018 #2

  That is how I have always seen it. Note that the "militia" was stated as men aged 18 to 45 back in the day. Not 21 or 25.

  Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

  -Thomas Paine

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• tennmike Senior Member Posts: 27,457 Senior Member

  February 2018 #3

  There is a wealth of information on what the founders said and their thinking on private ownership of firearms, and their thoughts on the militia. Taken as a whole, they would be mad as a wet hen over the state of affairs now.
  
  The militia is:
  
  https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246
  10 US Code 246 Militia: Composition and Classes
  (a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
  (b) The classes of the militia are—
  (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
  (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
  
  Tenche Coxe didn't mince words on the subject.
  •"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." --Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

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