The Constitution Of The United States: Fill & Download for Free

From the Code of the U.S. Fighting Force, also known as the Military Code of Conduct:Article I:I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.Article II:I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.…Article VI:I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.As I am an honorably discharged United States Marine, and since I am a de facto member of the unorganized militia of the United States, I hold myself to be accountable to the same code of conduct as when I was on active duty.Edit: it was pointed out to me that I neglected to mention that according to 10 U.S. Code § 246, I am also a de jure (by law) member of the unorganized militia.(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.(b) The classes of the militia are—(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.End edit.Furthermore, when I first enlisted, and again upon subsequent reenlistment, I swore an oath:"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."Now, as I am no longer enlisted, I am not subject to military regulations or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, nor am I subordinate to the President of the United States, and obviously, there are no officers appointed over me. If the militia were called up for active service in a case like this, then that would change, but as it stands, the remaining provisions of my oath are:that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the sameWell, any such attempt by the U.N. would be an attack on the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, thus clearly making U.N. troops foreign enemies. As true faith and allegiance to the Constitution means supporting and defending it on its entirety, that includes Amendments to it, in which, in the Bill of Rights, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is the affirmed in the Second.In this event, my first duty is to the Constitution. Even if the militia WERE called up for active service, or even if I were drafted back into active duty, my duty to the Constitution would override any duty to officers or the President, if they were contrary to the Constitution itself. Therefore, if the President decided to collaborate with the foreign invaders, and order the military to comply, it would be my duty to refuse to obey those orders.If it came to that, however, then the President, and any collaborating officers would have made themselves domestic enemies to the Constitution, requiring me to support and defend the Constitution against them as well. This means that the duty of any similarly oath-bound individuals would be to arrest said officials, and swear out charges against them so that they can be tried according to applicable laws.The only way around this for a collaborative government would be to repeal the 2nd Amendment by the constitutional amendment process. They would also need to repeal all of the other rights and freedoms in the Constitution that protect an individual's rights to property, due process, right against self incrimination, and such.But, by doing so, not only would they be coming awfully close to being de facto domestic enemies of the Constitution (“true faith” meaning a belief in the fundamental principles of the Constitution, and not in whatever form others might try to mangle it into), but they would also be making a very strong case that the time had come to apply the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence:…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…“these ends” being previously specified as securing the inalienable rights of the people, which include the right to keep and bear arms, as is stipulated in the 2nd Amendment to be an inherent right of the people.Now, obviously, this is an extreme example, and about as unlikely to ever occur as anything else I can imagine. Short of this, there's an awful lot of grey area in which, although I may personally believe that certain laws and acts are contrary to the principles of the Constitution, they are carried out within the legal framework allowed by the Constitution itself. In these cases, my duty as a citizen is to vote for representatives who I believe will support the Constitution, communicate with those representatives to change unconstitutional laws, and to obey the laws, or to refuse, and challenge unconstitutional laws in court, abiding by the decision of the court, while exercising my right to appeal my case to higher courts.In the event that the U.N. decides to literally send troops to violate our rights and sovereignty, however, my duty is to resist them, and to fight back until either they have lost the will or ability to continue, and to never surrender as long as I still have the means to resist.Any way you slice it, surrendering my firearms is not an option, and you can expect to see an awful lot of blue-helmeted corpses littering the country.

This is a great question, and I’m glad you asked, Sullivan Wenger!*Rubs hands together, cracks knuckles.*The history on this is rather fascinating.The first thing to understand is that the people who went to the Continental Congress in 1787 didn’t initially show up to write a Constitution. They were there to tweak something called the Articles of Confederation.When the thirteen original colonies decided to declare independence from the British, they didn’t see themselves as one big happy country with sub-unit provinces. Each of these colonies viewed themselves as independent nation-states, as sovereign as Germany or Denmark. The Continental Congress was a confederation style government, sort of a loose coalition more akin to the United Nations or European Union, with trade and mutual defense purposes.The Articles of Confederation allowed for the Continental government to request money from the States, but they were under no obligation to actually send it. However, the Continental government also shouldered much of the burden of the Revolutionary War. By 1787, it was pretty much flat broke.And that meant it was having trouble giving back pay to Revolutionary vets, who were, of course, entirely fine with not getting pai… just kidding. A disgruntled vet named Daniel Shays decided he was going to get his money one way or the other, gathered up a mob of other disgruntled vets, and marched on the armory at Springfield, Massachusetts to seize their weapons stockpile. While the rebellion was put down, the Continental government was pretty much powerless in the process.There was relatively little support to create a stronger central government initially, though.Again: keep in mind that these colonies were founded on the strong belief in self-governance and an almost anarchist-level distrust of centralized government. The idea of ceding back a bunch of self-governance to a stronger government was, in many minds, just a giant leap back towards the tyranny of monarchy.The Constitutional ConventionHamilton and Madison pulled one of the greatest bait-and-switches in history at what would become the Constitutional Convention in 1787. After everyone showed up to tweak the Articles, they proposed what was at the time a very untested political model: the federation.Confederated governments were nothing new; they had been used for centuries at that point. Enlightenment thinkers had written extensively about the political theories of confederated governments. Federated governments, with a stronger central government and quasi-sovereign sub-states, had been theorized, but as far as most Enlightenment thinkers were concerned, it was highly untested. (This tends to ignore a couple of successful federal system governments even in Europe that predated the United States, such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and arguably the Holy Roman Empire to an extent.)Two factions quickly broke out: the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay, and the Anti-Federalists, led by George Mason, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams.George Mason, in particular, was vehemently outspoken about the dangers of granting power to a centralized government. He was deeply worried about the potential abuses of power.Hamilton and Madison argued that the new centralized government would be deliberately weakened and power divided enough to require strong consensus from all stakeholders, even if it was stronger than the Continental government under the Articles.Hamilton in particular argued that the proposed Constitution would create a government of enumerated powers. It would only be allowed to do the very narrow, specific things that the Constitution provided for it to do, nothing more, nothing less.The Anti-Federalists worried that this would be used to trample on the rights of individual states and individual freedoms. They wanted specific rights outlined in this proposed Constitution that would be protected, and specific provisions in the Constitution prohibiting the proposed centralized government from infringing on those rights.The Federalists were also worried about the rights of states to govern themselves and individual freedoms, but were nervous about spelling out certain rights to be protected. What if they missed one or more? They had deliberately included a provision to amend the Constitution, but it was really difficult to do that. If they started listing rights and didn’t think of something, it would be really tough to protect that right.And worse, if a right was drafted into the Constitution and they didn’t word it carefully enough, that right might get misinterpreted or even twisted into something it was not meant to protect.That was the basis of Hamilton’s argument for not including a Bill of Rights: if the government was only granted specific, certain powers, all other rights were by extension automatically protected because the government wasn’t specifically empowered to infringe upon those rights.The Continued Constitutional ConventionAfter the initial Continental Congress meeting of May through September in 1787, the draft Constitution was sent out to the States for debate and ratification.But the Anti-Federalists were not to be swayed about ratification, and it became clear relatively early on that even if the proposed Constitution and its carefully enumerated powers were agreed upon, it would not be ratified by the States without a specific Bill of Rights.Eventually Madison and the other Federalists caved and in 1789, in order to get the holdout states on board, Madison proposed almost 20 amendments to the proposed Constitution.About a dozen of them survived committee in the House and Senate and were moved for ratification to the States. Ten were ratified and became the Bill of Rights we know and love today. The proposed First Amendment would have established how big the House of Representatives would be based on population, and the proposed Second Amendment prohibiting Congress from raising its own pay during the same session was eventually ratified in 1992 as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.One of the chief compromises was what would become the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Ninth was to appease the Federalists, enshrining the idea that there were lots of other rights out there and we just couldn’t think of them and write them down but they’re totes still protected. The Tenth was to appease the Anti-Federalists, enshrining the idea that everything that wasn’t specifically given to the new Federal government was the domain of the individual States. For example, the new Constitution didn’t give the Federal government much in the way of police powers - so that belonged to the States.Some of the Amendments went through almost crazy revision processes. The Second Amendment in particular ended up jamming together language from the House and the Senate with commas placed almost seemingly at random. The first proposed drafts are all over the board. One put the right to bear arms in with the rights of free press and a “right of conscience” because the people of the United States are peaceable citizens, while another draft was clear that the right to bear arms was for the purpose of militia service, “but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.”One of Madison’s proposed Amendments that failed to pass committee would have specifically prohibited the individual States from abridging “the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases,” which could have immeasurably changed the early history of the country.Two Years Later…Now, keep in mind that the Constitution itself had been drafted, agreed upon, and the first draft sent to the States for ratification in 1787 - it was two years later when the Federalists caved and proposed adding these amendments to the Constitution.At the time, Madison was quite vehement that they should not be appended to the Constitution as Amendments, but that they should be interwoven into the original document itself.Madison also wanted to add a sort of pre-preamble that would have buried the whole “we the people” bit into the middle of the preamble and added this bit to the beginning:“First. That there be prefixed to the Constitution a declaration, that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.That Government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their Government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.”Madison’s proposal to add this to the beginning and interweave the changes into the rest of the Constitution both failed, and eventually the various proposals for the Bill of Rights were drafted into separate, individual amendments. Congress’ chief concern was that it would look like the Constitution was being rewritten instead of amended, and eventually Madison just gave up on the fight during the floor debate in the House and let everything get tacked on to the end of the Constitution instead.In SummarySo, there you have it: the reason the Bill of Rights wasn’t in the original draft of the Constitution mostly comes down to that the folks in the Convention were largely afraid of missing something, the reason it was eventually added two years later was to appease the opponents of the proposed document, and the reason it was added as amendments instead of woven into the document itself was essentially Congress saying “we don’t really like the formatting and it might confuse people as to which version we’re on.”Here’s a kitten as a reward for reading a moderately long answer about political history.You’re welcome.

There’s an easy answer that I haven’t seen posted to this question.Yes, the United States has the finest military in the world, but it is not made up of tanks, guns, planes and other weapons systems. The US military is made up the approximately 2 million people under arms. What most people who don’t understand is, a person enlisting in the US does not take an oath to support the President, the Congress or any other person. The enlistee doesn’t take an oath to defend and support the government.No, a person enlisting in the American military takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. A significant portion of basic training is taken in explaining what is a legal order by those appointed (or elected) to office, and what is not. It eventually boils down to this: does the order being given comport itself with both the letter and spirit of the Constitution?Now armed with that information, ask yourself how many soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are going to receive an order to unleash all of the hellacious power from those US military weapons systems on the American civilian population and wonder if their government hasn’t gone completely off the rails? How many of those personnel are going to be willing to engage civilians in lethal combat to protect a rogue government?There will be some. But the majority - the VAST majority - will abandon their posts under such circumstances. A sizable number of those will likewise see it as their duty to take up arms against that government.****UPDATE****I see many people in the comments asking if the military is so unlikely to fire upon civilians, then why do we need the Second Amendment? The reason for that is only the unaware would think the only way a government can - or will -attempt to repress our liberties is by the institution of martial law and suspension of habeas corpus. The reality is that government, even the US government, will first attempt to circumvent liberty by the institution of a police state, using various federal law enforcement agencies to engage in said repression. Those assets are not limited to just the FBI, DEA and INS.In Nevada, a tract of land known as Gold Butte is the center of a dispute between the State of Nevada, the federal government and a rancher named Cliven Bundy. Nevada and the federal government both claim the area as theirs. In the meantime, the Bundy family has grazed their cattle there for 4 generations. Until 1993, Cliven Bundy paid the fees asked by the federal Bureau of Land Management. After the territory came in to dispute, he ceased those payments. After 20 years without a resolution, the BLM attempted to seize Mr. Bundy’s herd of cattle, even going so far as to arrest David Bundy. An armed standoff between ranchers and the BLM ensued, and eventually, the BLM relented, releasing David Bundy and the cattle.This is an example of the proper use, and necessity, of the Second Amendment. It is why the Founders insisted (yes, insisted) that it be included in the Bill of Rights for ratification of the Constitution.