Legislator dreams of citizens’ militia

By Ellen Barry, Globe Staff, 2/1/2000

aking 200-year-old constitutional provisions for the creation of a ”well-regulated militia” to their most extreme conclusion, a Vermont lawmaker has proposed a crackdown on Vermonters who do not own guns.

Harkening back to the days of town square militia musters and citizens’ armies, House bill 760 would require residents over 18 who do not own guns to register with the secretary of state’s office and pay a $500 penalty.

Hot on its heels was House bill 763, also introduced Friday, which would make military training a prerequisite for a high school diploma in the state.

The man behind both bills is state Representative Fred Maslack, a two-term Republican legislator and quarry worker from East Poultney. Maslack, a longtime proponent of gun-owners’ rights, does not expect a mass uprising or to see his bills voted into law.

But he does fantasize about greeting gun-control activists and liberal politicians at a grand muster of a citizen’s militia under the command of Vermont’s Democratic governor, Howard Dean.

Whether or not state lawmakers want to admit it, Maslack said, the right to carry arms comes with the obligation to serve in a militia.

”What this is supposed to do is illustrate what I consider to be the only constitutionally correct view of this issue,” Maslack said. ”It certainly isn’t politically correct, I can tell you that.”

Alongside Vermont’s progressive approaches to land management, gay marriage, and school funding is a strong lobby for gun-owners’ rights that some say is a natural outgrowth of its rural heritage. Vermont has some of the country’s least restrictive gun laws and has one of the highest rates of membership in the National Rifle Association. The state also allows all adults to carry a concealed gun without a permit.

Still, lawmakers on both sides of the gun-rights debate were looking at Maslack’s legislation with amusement yesterday.

”I can’t believe it’s going to be taken seriously,” said Representative Ann Seibert (D-Norwich). ”There’s a lot of common sense in Vermont. You get heated issues, but common sense prevails.”

The two militia-related bills are not Maslack’s first effort to bolster the rights of Vermont gun owners. He joined two other state representatives two weeks ago in suing three high-ranking public officials on grounds of fraud and conspiracy in protest of Vermont’s enforcement of the Brady Law, which requires background checks on gun purchasers.

Bills 760 and 763, which he sponsored independently, aimed chiefly to make a point about gun ownership.

”Everyone gets focused on the right, and they forget about the obligations,” Maslack said. ”It’s saying, if you have a military obligation, then you have to deal with it.”

Vermont has a proud militia tradition dating back to 1770, when Ethan Allen formed an unauthorized citizens’ militia to fend off tax collectors from New York State. Article 9 of the Green Mountain State’s 1793 constitution requires financial contributions from Vermonters ”scrupulous of bearing arms” in a citizen’s army.

But historians said that the need for militias waned after the American Revolution and that by the 1830s and 1840s, most of them were poorly organized and undersupplied.

”The record overall is that if we had depended on the militias, we would all be drinking tea and eating scones at 4 o’clock,” said Saul Cornell, a historian at Ohio State University who is editing a book on militias and the Second Amendment.

Michael Bellesile, an Emory University historian who has focused on Vermont’s movement, suggested that the fine prescribed by Article 9 may have been designed to ”coerce people” into coming out for militia musters – a goal achieved in other states by supplying participants with alcohol, money, or free guns.

But in one way, he said, Maslack’s proposal falls squarely into state tradition.

”Vermonters take enormous pride in being just a little different. They love to be curmudgeons and iconoclasts,” said Bellesile, a native of Quebec. ”This guy fits perfectly.”

No state has ever required its citizens to own guns, but Maslack’s plan had a precedent in the city of Kennesaw, Ga., in the early 1980s.

City officials there said the requirement was largely symbolic, but also boasted that crime rates fell dramatically in the years that followed its introduction.

This story ran on page B01 of the Boston Globe on 2/1/2000.
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