Two recent letters are right. Militias were vital to the United States and the Second Amendment has protected them since the nation’s founding. The U.S. government supported paramilitary militias throughout history to hunt and capture people escaping slavery, and to attack and kill Indigenous people from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the north into Mexico, and “clear” the land for white settlers. Militias were vigilante bands of men with guns who attacked women, children and men, burned thousands of Indigenous villages and farms, while U.S. government officials explicitly approved their actions or sometimes looked the other way. The policy to defend gun ownership in this nation is explicitly tied with militias. Settler militias killed tens of millions of indigenous people and eliminated indigenous nations. Militias were always approved, and Jan. 6 insurrectionists, Proud Boys, KKK and others continue the assault today.

— Peter Klotz-Chamberlin, Santa Cruz

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