“No free government was ever founded, or preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and the soldier in those destined for the defence of a free state…
— Josiah Quincy II, prominent spokesman for the Boston Sons of Liberty, written in 1774 and quoted on Heritage.org
As I was writing this editorial, the Daily Post received two emails from the San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, NM.
The first email:
Due to the crisis in Farmington, New Mexico today, San Juan Regional Medical Center locked down the hospital and established our Incident Command Center in order to respond to the needs of our community. We worked closely with law enforcement to ensure the safety of our patients and caregivers. We thank them for their service. We are grateful today and every day to our caregivers who respond and stand ready to serve.
We extend our condolences and prayers to the families of those who lost loved ones and to those who were affected by this incident. As a community owned hospital, we will continue to serve our community and fulfill our mission.
The second email read:
San Juan Regional Medical Center received 7 patients from this incident. This includes the two officers.
Yesterday, we looked at some data and some definitions, concerning “public mass shootings”. In an article dated May 9, in USA Today, reporter Grace Hauck had written:
The massacre at Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, on Saturday already marks the sixth public mass killing of 2023 − about one-third of the way through the calendar year. That’s not a good sign, Fox said.
According to the article, Dr. James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University, has been studying mass killings for 40 years.
Six “public” mass killings since January 1. Or so it was reported in the media.
Yesterday’s shooting in Farmington will apparently not be counted in this database, however, because only three people were killed. The database only tallies incidents where four or more people are killed. This website explains why the database uses this definition.
A different database shared on Wikipedia documents public and non-public mass shootings since January 1, 2023. These numbers are based mainly on newspaper coverage. (I am including schools, restaurants, bars, hospitals, streets, parks, gas stations, and parking lots as “public” spaces. I did not include “drive-by” shootings.)
88 “public” mass shootings so far, in 2023.
The Wikipedia page apparently includes incidents where at least four people were killed or injured by gunfire.
If we also include shootings in “non-public” places, the U.S. has reportedly seen 188 mass shootings so far this year. 258 people have been killed; 567 have been injured. I have no idea how many others were traumatized by these events. Maybe we needn’t be concerned about PTSD?
So, since January 1, either “Six public mass killings” have occurred, as reported by USA Today… or 88 public mass shootings have occurred, as reported by Wikipedia.
Or some other number?
One thing I find interesting in this discussion is the lack of people’s names among the data. We can learn that 825 people were killed or injured in mass shootings since January 1, but they are presented merely as “numbers”. They aren’t presented in the data as real people with actual lives, and families.
That’s one problem with data. In addition to the problems posed by “definitions”, carelessness, and intentional falsification, “data” turns real people into numbers.
All of this, being a somewhat long-winded introduction to the subject of “a well-regulated militia”.
I don’t own a gun. My son-in-law Chris, with whom I live, owns an antique shotgun. So we do have a gun in the house.
According to what I find on the internet, most Americans report that they do not have a gun in their home. Nevertheless, other reports state that we Americans collectively possess nearly 400 million guns. About 120 guns to every 100 people. Apparently, most of these guns are handguns. Handguns are not generally used for hunting; they are meant for killing people, at relatively close range.
The term, “a well-regulated militia” comes from the U.S. Constitution, in the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads:
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.
The militia is also mentioned in Article I, Section 8, Clause 16:
[The Congress shall have Power…] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress…
For a better understanding about how these these regulations appeared in the Constitution, we might refer to the constitutions of a couple of U.S. states that were written prior to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. For example:
Virginia State Constitution, 1776:
13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided, as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
Pennsylvania State Constitution, 1776:
XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
North Carolina State Constitution, 1776:
XVII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of the State; and, as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under the strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
We note, here, a shared distrust of “standing armies” among the American colonists, who considered them dangerous to liberty.
The proposed alternative, for the protection of liberty, was the maintenance of well-regulated citizen militias.
That alternative was essentially rejected in 1789, at the request of President George Washington, when the U.S. Congress passed “An Act to recognize and adapt to the constitution of the United States, the establishment of the troops raised under the resolves of the United States in Congress assembled and for other purposes.”
President Washington had his reasons to create a standing army. The U.S. Constitution mentioned “militias” but also gave the President the following responsibilities in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…
Following the “Act” of 1789, the U.S. Army consisted of about 7,000 professional soldiers, a number which grew to about 35,000 during the War of 1812, and then to 1 million during the American Civil War (that’s just the Union Army, not the Confederate Army.) The number declined to about 25,000 by 1898… and then grew to 8 million during World War II. The Army numbered about 1.5 million during the height of the Vietnam War.
The Army currently reports about 485,000 soldiers, plus all the ammunition and equipment necessary to fight terrorism around the globe.
But that’s just the Army. We also have the Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard…
…and most recently, the Space Force…
