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A Republican lawmaker in Idaho has proposed an amendment to the state Constitution that would require all adults to be militia members in an effort to preserve their right to bear arms.

At a Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee on Wednesday, state Sen. Jim Rice (R) said that he feared that the U.S. Supreme Court would change the definition of the Second Amendment and allow the federal government to confiscate guns owned by individuals, according to The Associated Press.

But Rice argued that the federal government could never take away people's guns if the Idaho Constitution was changed to make all adults members of the state militia as a "backstop."

The Caldwell Republican hopes to let the voters decide on the amendment in the November 2014 election. Rice said that there was no issue that was more important to his constituents than gun rights.

Article XIV of the Idaho Constitution says that "[a]ll able-bodied male persons, residents of this state, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, shall be enrolled in the militia." The section also provides an opportunity for conscientious objectors to opt-out of serving in the militia.

While Rice hasn't offered specific language for his proposed amendment, he indicated that the age and gender requirements would be dropped, making all adults eligible for service.

"Today we held a print hearing on my proposed state constitutional amendment that will eliminate age and gender discrimination from our definition of the state militia," the lawmaker wrote in a message posted to Twitter. "This will allow the state to backstop the individual right to keep and bear arms in an effective way that is supported by the reasoning in all the U.S. Supreme Court decisions."

"We will actually run this concept next session since it needs to be on the 2014 general election ballot. The idea is that Idaho citizens get the opportunity to begin the discussion of this now."

The National Rifle Association has endorsed Rice with an A rating. His Facebook page is filled with pro-gun postings, including a message about buying his wife handgun and videos of him shooting a fully-automatic Thompson submachine gun with his son earlier this year.

"The Thompson submachine gun is a very fun gun to shoot!" Rice wrote in a 2012 blog post.

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It appears the former militia leader and wingnut extraordinaire Mike Vanderboegh is far from done causing trouble yet. It seems he wasn't too happy after the Supreme Court made its ruling on the Affordable Care Act this Thursday, to put it mildly.

Ex-Militia Blogger Who Spawned Fast And Furious Scandal Predicts Armed Insurrection Over Health Care Decision:

Mike Vanderboegh, the ex-militia blogger who calls himself one of the "midwives" of the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, recently predicted that if the Supreme Court declared the health care reform bill to be constitutional, it would lead to violent insurrection against "government tyranny."

The blogger posted the statements, which come from a recent unpublished interview, the same day the House of Representatives voted to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over his unwillingness to release documents related to Fast and Furious.

In the excerpts Vanderboegh posted on his blog "which deal with the decision today," he says of a then-potential decision upholding the health care law, "You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response." He further predicts the response of his ilk: "If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed -- unless we kill them first. ... I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime." Read on...

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I'm not sure what the Gun Owners of America's Larry Pratt thought he had to gain by going on the air with The Young Turk's Cenk Uygur, but he found himself getting blasted after defending George Zimmerman for murdering Trayvon Martin and claiming he had a right to shoot him dead.

Pratt's argument; that one witness claimed he saw Zimmerman on the ground being beaten up by the unarmed kid who was 100 pounds lighter than him and once the guy he was stalking was getting the better of him in a fight, he had the right to shoot him dead. Unbelievable. Needless to say, Uygur went off on him for promoting that level of vigilantism.

This guy is a real piece of work. The Southern Poverty Law Center has this on his background from a report they issued in 2001.

False Patriots - Profiles of 40 antigovernment leaders:

Eight Lanes Out
Larry Pratt, 58

Larry Pratt, a gun rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as "eight lanes to the right" of the National Rifle Association, may well be the person who brought the concept of citizen militias to the radical right.

In 1990, Pratt wrote a book, Armed People Victorious, based on his study of "citizen defense patrols" used in Guatemala and the Philippines against Communist rebels — patrols that came to be known as death squads for their murderous brutality.

Picturing these groups in rosy terms, Pratt advocated similar militias in the United States — an idea that finally caught on when he was invited for a meeting of 160 extremists, including many famous white supremacists, in 1992.

It was at that meeting, hosted in Colorado by white supremacist minister Pete Peters, that the contours of the militia movement were laid out.

Pratt, whose GOA has grown since its 1975 founding to some 150,000 members today, hit the headlines in a big way when his associations with Peters and other professional racists were revealed, convincing arch-conservative Pat Buchanan to eject him as a national co-chair of Buchanan's 1996 presidential campaign.

The same year, it emerged that Pratt was a contributing editor to a periodical of the anti-Semitic United Sovereigns of America, and that his GOA had donated money to a white supremacist attorney's group.

Pratt is today close to the extremist Constitution Party and its radical theology.

And here he was back in 2009 arguing on Hardball that we should have everyone packing heat at presidential events.

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A crank or another Timothy McVeigh is probably what the FBI would like to know. The Michigan Militia is a well-known extremist group as well, so I imagine any ties with their members will be examined closely.

Video is from WWTV in Traverse City, Mich.

(AP) TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Federal authorities say a Michigan man bought and hid more than 4,000 pounds of explosives with enough potential firepower to equal the Oklahoma City bombing and told an undercover informant that “when the government takes over, we will be mercenaries.”

John Francis Lechner, 64, was arrested last week on a charge of possessing explosives while facing other charges and ordered held following a U.S. District Court hearing Monday. His attorney said Lechner, a builder and farmer from Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula, obtained the materials years ago for construction projects.

“He’s not a terrorist, he’s not a mercenary, he’s not some freedom fighter,” defense attorney Charles Malette told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “He intended no type of violence, pro- or anti-government. The man is not like that.”

However you slice it though that's a staggering amount of explosives.

DeClaire said he obtained a search warrant the same day and found 83 bags of the mixture, each weighing about 50 pounds. The combined weight was about 4,150 pounds. The next day, he found a supply of explosive boosters, detonating cord and blasting caps at Lechner’s mother’s nearby home. Another box of blasting caps was recovered in Sault Ste. Marie, he said.

During the hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Greeley asked how big an explosion could result from detonating the materials.

“The quantity we’re talking about would be at least that of an Oklahoma City bombing or more,” DeClaire replied, according to The Mining Journal of Marquette (http://bit.ly/nIoxFU ).

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August 12, 2009 News Corp