Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it." A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. He is unambiguous in Federalist 29 on the point that people have a right to their weapons, and that they need not attend formal military training to be part of a militia, which would be "as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. People need firearms proficiency to defend against young soldiers of a standing army who might be, in Madison's words, "rendered subservient to the views of arbitrary power." Hamilton also elaborates on ideas that would later lead to the Second Amendment, and particularly the notion of a well-regulated militia. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist. If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. In Federalist 29, published 228 years ago, in 1788, Alexander Hamilton concurs as to why militias are necessary: īearing arms is "the right of the people" who would make up a state militia, which protects us from national tyranny (even if Madison was overly generous in describing the efficacy of militiamen during the Revolutionary War). Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.
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