Tag Archives: Militia

Militia Commander Does Me Proud

Not only my home state but my adopted home state are involved in this crazy man’s story:

MINNEAPOLIS — A member of the Minnesota National Guard and self-described commander of a militia group was charged Wednesday with stealing names, Social Security numbers and security clearance levels of roughly 400 members of his former Army unit in Fort Bragg, N.C., so he could make fake IDs for his militia members.

According to a federal complaint and affidavit obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, Keith Michael Novak, 25, of Maplewood, threatened to use violence if authorities came to arrest him.

“I’ve my AK in my bed. If I hear that door kick, it’s going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I’m just going to start putting them through the (expletive) wall,” he told an undercover FBI employee in July, according to the affidavit unsealed Wednesday.

Novak was charged with committing fraud in connection with identification documents. He was in federal custody Wednesday and unavailable for comment. His father has an unlisted number, and attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. The federal defender’s office has the case, but an attorney had not been selected to represent him by Wednesday evening.

Such a tortured life this man must lead.

On Guns, Defense and Militia

I can remember arguing the position just 10 – 12 years ago with conservative friends of mine that the 2nd amendment protected the rights of citizens to keep arms within a regulated militia.  That the amendment did not create an unlimited right to own any weapon in any quantity for any reason.

Interestingly it was a liberal friend that convinced me that states and cities that had much more lenient gun laws had lower crime rates.  That data, combined with a better understanding of individual liberty, has shifted my position to the right; how far is still unclear.

With that said, I have a question for the gun control advocates:

Would you trade the right of individual citizens to keep weapons in exchange for the creation of local militia outside the jurisdiction of the federal government?

That is, if the city of Raleigh decided that it needed stores of weapons, ammunition and other instrument of war, it could assemble such armament and recruit or conscript soldiers, train them and command them?  Further, this militia would e subject to no law other than state law and would not be subordinate to the President?

I strongly resonate with the argument that citizens do not need weapons of war.  And I don’t think that it’s healthy to stockpile weapons either.  However, I’m neither convinced that a rifle, with a magazine of arbitrary size, requiring a trigger pull for each shot, is necessarily a weapon of war or less lethal than a handgun, or 4.  However, I DO acknowledge that the founders clearly were concerned of a tyrannical government and the people’s right to defend themselves against that government.

I would love to be able to sit and have a beer with Jefferson, who argued that a standing army was among the greatest threats to the liberty of citizens.  Would he still feel that way in light of today’s Geo-poltical conditions?

Anyway.  When gun control advocates use the militia defense in their argument for more and more control, what does that mean?