Georgia Town Passes Law Requiring Residents To Own Guns

1. Respect for the rule of law varies from place to place. Where legislators are thoughtful and do not enact oppressive or encroaching laws, there is more respect. When legislators pass unenforceable and encroaching, oppressive laws, there is less. It depends. Nelson's a nice little North Georgia town (it's very near a friend's summer cabin and my grandfather-in-law's former church) and I doubt there's much trouble there with disrespect for the rule of law. Nor has there ever been a problem in Kennesaw, and I'm up there almost every week training dogs. The only excitement we have ever had was when somebody called the police about "shots fired", and they came down to the field where we were training . . . and wound up staying to watch the dogs run (although they declined an offer to run my "pushbutton" dog on a couple of marks, I think they enjoyed themselves).

2. The law regarding all adult males to have a firearm and ammunition had nothing to do with federal conscription (which didn't exist at that time - they were very naturally suspicious of a large standing national army). If you read your Founding Fathers, you'll find that the militia was "the whole of the people" - every adult male. Georgia is still divided up into militia districts, which used to be run by justices of the peace (that office has now been replaced by magistrate judges). If some emergency or enemy action occurred, the JPs had the authority to call out the militia, which was basically anybody who could handle a rifle. But it was a strictly local, neighbors-defending-neighbors proposition.

>>> If you read your Founding Fathers, you’ll find that the militia was “the whole of the people” - every adult male.

Well, you know this... and I know this... but the majority of our congressmen and senators DON’T know this.

That’s our problem.

It is unfortunate, I believe, that any purchase should be made compulsory; and that, whether it is the purchase of healthcare insurance (as mandated by ObamaCare) or the purchase of firearms.

Moreover, to assert that one must own a gun is just as wrongheaded, in my opinion, as it is to assert that it should be illegal to own a gun. These are two sides of the same coin.

Even so, this ordinance is probably not intended to be enforced. It looks more like a mere statement than anything else...

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