Christian Democrats in the United States
Global Issues - DefenseWe propose a defensive shift away from brute force military strategies, to diplomatic efforts with deals for resources and training by American expertise in civil policing. No human being can live under martial law for long, before such a system would self-destruct. We should not allow free trade to mean weapons sales or construction of military-industrial factories in hostile countries. We also advocate more publicity and openness in the intelligence community. At some point, if U.S. intelligence services do not fulfill core principles of empowering Americans and their spirits with truth, then the country will sink so far into the web of lies, it will fall.
Strategically, putting men and women on the ground with effective body armor, armored vehicles, non-lethal weapons and knowledge is a much more important goal than spending trillions on high-tech mass-murder systems that are never used. If we believe in the values of our American servicemen and women, we should enable them to do the job on the front lines.
We advocate bans on all non-precision explosives such as cluster bombs, and attest that no aerial bombs of any kind can be used in an honorable manner in urban combat. Defensive systems against mass-murder systems ought to be used as diplomatic chips to reduce all stocks world-wide of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons with the goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]solving gun control AND military recruitment
The second amendment to the U.S. Constitution: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.
I take this to mean that anyone is elegible to bear arms, but they should do so in some relation to "a well regulated Militia." The Founders clearly intended by this language that Congress and the States can regulate weapons ownership.
Consider this: Everyone who wants to own a gun should be trained to use it by a program run by a well-regulated Militia, i.e. the military, National Guard, separate militias run by state governments, or state police, sheriffs, or city police.
Congress should provide a flexible funding scheme and a standard curriculum to all such agencies for the safety training classes that should be required to own a gun. Individual agencies can then build on the standard training to suit the needs of their jurisdiction.
Citizens would have a wide choice of options of the agency they wished to train with. However, a citizen wishing to own a firearm must then register to be on call by the agency of their choice when needed to defend the community or the country, with some reasonable limits on the time they could be required to serve.
If they train with a local agency and move and don't re-register with another agency, their registration would automatically transfer to the National Guard.
This would provide police and the national guard with a pool of citizens who, by their bearing of arms, choose to volunteer to be in a well-regulated militia. It would be a voluntary choice to own a firearm, but by doing so, you could be drafted at any time to serve as a patriot in a well-regulated militia.
This measure, which conforms to the language and intent of the amendment, would have two effects:
1. Idiots who should not own guns would give them up because they wouldn't want to be drafted for militia service.
2. The National Guard would not have any recruitment problems, and soldiers who have been redeployed too many times to Iraq or Afghanistan could come home.
To solve the issue of bearing heavier arms, such as assault rifles, if the courts decide that citizens have a right to these as well (or bombs, or rocket launchers, or tanks, or surface to air missiles for that matter), then they would be required to serve in the National Guard or U.S. military for progressively longer periods of time and be subjected to performance review and psycho-analysis, just as anyone would who would operate these weapons for the Guard in service of the country.
The NRA wouldn't like it, but the NRA can shut up and deal with it. Most people are tired of hearing about kids who shoot each other by accident because their parents had not been trained for gun safety or stored their firearms securely.
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