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82 A.B.A. J. 112 (1996)
The Law according to Barefoot Bob

handle is hein.journals/abaj82 and id is 1280 raw text is: The Law According to Barefoot Bob
Cyberpatriots have their own 'vision' of the Constitution on the Internet

Like a lot of lawyers, I once laughed
at the militia movement. There's nothing
in the Constitution giving these yahoos
the right to stockpile automatic weapons,
threaten government officials, and ig-
nore court orders and tax bills.
Then I cruised their Internet sites
and discovered it's not so funny. The pa-
triots of 1996 use the information super-
highway for the same reason the patriots
of 1776 published broadside pamphlets-
to bypass the establishment media and
get their revolutionary ideas directly to
the people.
From the militia movement's elec-
tronic broadsides, I learned that as a law-
yer I am living a lie. Nothing about the
Constitution is as I understand it. For a
short course in constitutional law accord-
ing to the militia you should know:
Lesson 1: American citizenship
-take it or leave it.
You probably think that all Ameri-
cans share the rights and duties of na-
tional citizenship. If so, check out the
Citizens Forum Web site, where you will
learn that the Framers did not recognize
U.S. citizenship. Under the original Con-
stitution, Americans had primary alle-
giance to one of the several states.
By renouncing U.S. citizenship, the
Sovereign Citizen Research Council ex-
plains, you become a sovereign state citi-
zen beyond the reach of the federal gov-
ernment.
Lesson 2: The Second Amend-
ment-a guarantee of guns galore.
This is the Holy Grail of the move-
ment and its gun-toting legal scholars.
The Militia of Montana home page as-
serts that the Founders intended the pro-
vision to thwart the tyranny and treason
of a run-away governmental bureaucracy.
In yet another attempt to confuse
and trick us, federal, state and local
laws have been written regulating the
use of 'firearms,' warns the citizen coun-
cil. Never admit to owning 'firearms,'
[which are] legally defined and regulat-
able by the government. The only thing
free men and free women should ever
admit to owning are 'arms,' as mentioned
in the [Second Amendment].
Lesson 3: If the feds come to take
you away, you can take them out.
The right to keep and bear arms
William C. Smith is a lawyer in
Philadelphia. Opinions expressed in Per-
spective are those of the writer and do not
necessarily reflect ABA policy.

might come in handy if you disagree with
an FBI agent on the proper scope of the
Fourth Amendment. Patriots have ready
response to unreasonable searches and
seizures-lock and load. Citizens may
resist unlawful arrest to the point of tak-
ing an arresting officer's life if neces-
sary, counsels the Constitution Society.
Lesson 4: Juries don't have to
obey the law.
The judge explains the law, and the
jury applies the law to the facts. That is,
unless they decide they don't like the
law. Then they can ignore their oath as
jurors and do what they please. Saying
that there is something holy about such
an oath is simply stupid because the oath
was written by the wolves as a means to
control the sheep, explains a posting on
misc. activism.militia.
Lesson 5: Lawyers can't make
laws.
Most lawyers mistakenly believe
that the 13th Amendment banned slav-
ery and involuntary servitude. The Bare-
foot Bob Freedom and Survival Web site
corrects this thinking with an explana-
tion of the missing 13th Amendment.
This phantom provision, supposedly rati-
fied in 1819, states that Americans who
accept, claim, receive, or retain any title
of nobility or honour are stripped of citi-
zenship and barred from public office.
Although courts have never found,
much less interpreted, the missing
amendment, Barefoot Bob has figured
out that its language and historical con-
text show that its principle intent ..
was to prohibit lawyers from serving in
government.
 'Esquire' was the principle title of
nobility which the 13th Amendment
sought to prohibit. ... Why? Because the
loyalty of 'Esquire' lawyers was suspect.
This missing amendment might
provide a legal basis to challenge many
existing laws and court decisions previ-
ously made by lawyers who were uncon-
stitutionally elected or appointed to their
positions of power; it might even mean
the removal of lawyers from our current
government system.
Someday, the constitutional vision
of the cyberpatriots may be the law of the
land. If it is, it will be both bad news and
good news for lawyers.
The bad news is that we will all be
destitute, disgraced and despised. The
good news is that it will be a lot easier to
buy the weapons needed to protect our-
selves from our new leaders.         U

112 ABA JOURNAL / NOVEMBER 1996

BY WILLIAM C. SMITH
The militia
movement
wants to stop
the 'tyranny
and treason
of a run-away
governmental
bureaucracy'
any way
it can.

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