Everybody: Adrian Fontes here, Democrat running for Arizona’s Secretary of State, and I was a marksmanship instructor in the Marine Corps. I taught Marines how to shoot. Why is that important? Because I think there are a lot of people who don’t understand what the Second Amendment actually means in the context of the whole Constitution.
The confusion is, “I can just be a militia by myself. And a well-regulated militia just means what I want it to mean.” That’s not true. It’s a hundred percent not true, and I’m going to use this copy of the Constitution that the League of Women Voters gave me to show you why. Here’s what the Second Amendment says.
” A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” And everybody always says, that’s great. What does militia mean? What does this mean? What does that mean? Guess what? Article One, Section Eight, clauses 15 and 16.
Here’s what a militia is for those of you, especially part of the fetishizing gun weapons kind of crowd. Here’s what it means.
“Congress shall have the power to call forth the militia, execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” The militia, in the context of our Constitution, is enforcing the laws of the union.
They work for the government, not against some tyrannical fantasy government that you guys are fetishizing against. That’s not what it’s supposed to be. It says, so right here. It also says that “Congress shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia.” That means you get your militia arms from the government.
You don’t buy them yourself. That’s what the Constitution says. Then it goes on to say, “and for governing, such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the state’s respectively, appointment of officers.”
So, it’s a whole unit. There’s discipline; they arm it. It’s organized under Congress’s rules reserving the state’s appointment of the officers and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress. Congress provides the rules for the militia. Congress provides the arms for the militia. Congress calls up the militia.
You don’t just get to be a militia on your own. And if you look carefully at Heller, you can see that Scalia hedged in his free for all opinion. He hedged. He put just the right hedge in there because he knew that giving everybody the right to have any weapon they want was wrong.
And why am I passionate about this? Why do I know about this? Not just because I’m running for Secretary of State and ran an election in Maricopa County right here in Arizona. But because back when I was in Yuma as an active-duty Marine, I was a marksmanship instructor digging through some stuff. I found this manual that I used to use, this giant thick manual that Marines used to train each other on how to fire weapons and look at this thing.
This is what we had to teach Marines. It’s a two-week course. Marines have to go through this every single year to be qualified to shoot with the M-16 A2 service rifle, which is like the AR-15, but an 18-year-old doesn’t have to go through any of that training, can grab an AR-15 and do damage like they’ve done and murder kids in classrooms like they’ve done, like they continue to do.
It’s crazy, and when it comes down to it, sure, some of the Democrats have a little blame, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. But what about the Republicans like Ted Cruz that are out there blaming doors? What about all the Republicans who are not standing up and doing what their constituents want them to do in their own red states?
The kind of regulation that we’re talking about — universal background checks, banning assault weapons — these are all very, very popular, and none of the Republicans are backing any of that stuff. So, you can go out there and say, oh these two Democrats, but it’s all of the Republicans. They all need to get on board and do what the American public wants them to do.
I’m Adrian Fontes. I’m running for Secretary of State in Arizona, and this Democrat is not going to go quietly into the night. We’re going to fight, and we’re going to win.