young men cannot get or renew a driver’s license or financial aid for college. They can even be charged with a crime, all for failing to follow one of the very few regulations imposed upon the militia.
This interpretation is inconsistent for a couple reasons. First, selective service is for the Army, a federal institution; Militias are directed at the state level, so it’s not really appropriate to conflate selective service with a Militia. This might be a rational argument if selective service was for the National Guard.
Further, if Militia and People are synonymous as you suggest, you’re implying that everyone who isn’t registered (women, children, men over the age of 25) aren’t People.
How can they be punished for not fulfilling their militia duty if they are not militia?
Again, Army ≠ Militia. The Selective Service Act is for conscription into the standing Army, which is a constitutionally distinct entity. Additionally, selective service didn’t exist until 1917.
I started by asking “who is the militia?”, nothing more. The legislature told me who they thought was the militia (every able bodied male citizen aged 17 to 45) and I asked why women weren’t included. Then I realized the definition the legislature used was not the definition used in the Constitution, and I allowed it to expand to as broad a concept as Congress would have access to: everyone.
Yes, once again I repeat that you are deciding what conclusion you want to reach, and then selecting definitions and justifications that support your conclusions, because the established definitions don’t. This is extremely poor logical form.
Your interpretation of “no training, no militia” is not unreasonable as a practical matter, but we are talking about constitutional law, constitutional rights. If there are any rights attached to the concept of “militia”, liberty demands we assume the broadest reasonable interpretation; if there are any infringements attached to the militia, the narrowest definition possible.
This doesn’t make rational sense. The definition is what it is, and the rights and infringements thereon lay where they lay. Picking and choosing to minimize responsibilities and maximize benefits to suit your personal disposition is an abomination to legal consistency.
I defer to Johnson’s Dictionary when nitpicking definitions of words used by the founders, as it was literally the definitive authority at the time. Militia is defined as “The trainbands; the standing force of a nation”, and since ‘trainbands’ is an archaic term, I’ll include that it is defined as “The militia; the part of a community trained to martial exercise”. Eliminating that little loop, we arrive at the accepted definition of Militia at the ratification of the Constitution: the standing force of a nation; the part of a community trained to martial exercise.
‘People’ is simply defined as “A nation; these who compose a community”. The Militia is a part of that community, specifically the part which is trained to martial exercise. The Constitution underwent many revisions, poring over every word. When they meant People, they wrote People; if they wrote Militia, they damn well meant exactly “Militia”, as literally defined. Any other interpretation is willfully disingenuous.
“Well regulated militia” is not the “gotcha” that hoplophobes think it is.
It’s a prefatory clause, intended to communicate vital information. If the information included in that clause was not important to the interpretation of the text, it would have been excised during revision. No other amendment justifies itself that way, despite the fact that they all have justifications. The only honest conclusion is that the founders intended that clause to be Included for a material purpose.
Claiming that this one clause in the entire document was included for no real reason and can be safely disregarded is, again, willfully disingenuous and an abomination against our most sacred foundations.