The
Office for the Second Amendment is an element of the Executive Office of the President that was started under the Thurman administration early in his administration. During the 2120s, there was a rapid growth of private paramilitary militias, particularly on the frontier in the Outer System, and President Benjamin G. Thurman hoped to be able to coordinate and support them through the White House. While named after the Second Amendment, the Office for the Second Amendment primarily deals with private militias, which can be broadly divided into political, religious and personal militias. The office coordinates and funds militia activities on the frontier, and even offers contracts for private military service--quite controversially since many of the militias are union militias and pro-Democratic.
Thurman named former federal judge Bryan Beyeler the first (and so far only) Director of the Office for the Second Amendment--his so called Militia Czar. Beyeler was known for his strong, originalist stance on the Second Amendment and for the protection of gun rights. He stepped down from the federal bench in 2121, and it was rumored that he joined the Second Order of the Consecrated Jurists--a secretive Columbianist monastic order that recruits retired judges, lawyers and scholars as a sort of pro-Second Amendment, pro-gun rights think tank. It's membership is extremely secretive, and the only members who appear in public are mute pages. Beyeler's selection for the post (which did not require Congressional approval) was quite controversial because of his past views regarding gun rights and because nobody had any idea what he'd been doing with himself for the past 12 years--his official White House biography simply says that he spent those 12 years vacationing, spending time with friends and staying up to speed with modern jurisprudence.
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One of the older and most well known militia groups are a loose collective of militias known simply as "union militias". In 2094, an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act allowed for national service veterans to retain some military equipment after they mustered out: ballistic vests, rifles, sidearms, ammunition, webbing, etc. This formed the basis of the union militias, which operate almost entirely on an ad hoc basis on the frontier. Since almost all workers are veterans of the regular military or the Minutemen, they have the training and equipment necessary. The unions draw on this cadre of young, experienced workers for emergencies and for defense of factories, farms, mines, towns, etc.
The AFL-CIO created the Select Committee for the Defense of Labor in 2117 in order to better coordinate these union militias. The current chair of the committee is
Gerald Cermak, who had previously been the Deputy Premier of Valhalla and the President of the United Mineworkers of America in Valhalla. Cermak was brought in to clean up the Labor Defense Committee and to institute standardization of regulations and usage. Cermak has helped draw up the Meridian Declaration, giving local, state and commonwealth union chapters great autonomy in calling up militias, but within certain conditions. Since then, union militias have been used extensively across the Outer System frontier, on every world and in every territory and having fought alongside the Minutemen, alongside other militias and independently.
However, the success of the union militias has not been without controversy. The union militias are controlled by the AFL-CIO and its constituent trade unions, who provide the Democratic Party with votes, donations and infrastructure every election cycle (it doesn't help that orange is the color of organized labor in the United States and the color of the Democratic Party, and that the union militias make heavy use of orange hardhats). There have been many Republicans who have taken shots at the Labor Defense Committee and the Democratic Party, saying that there is a very clear and potentially dangerous conflict of interest--there were rumors that union militias were used to suppress the Republican vote on the frontier in 2132, but a Department of Justice investigation turned up no evidence of such voter suppression. All Republican hopefuls heading into the 2136 presidential election have pledged to shut down the Office for the Second Amendment despite pressure from the National Rifle Association, the Sportsman Guild and the Sierra Club.
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On a chilly October morning, a small Catholic Church on Tethys was attacked and burned to the ground by aborigine insurgents. Nearly thirty Americans were killed in the attack, including five members of the Military order of Solomon's Temple in America--the modern Knights Templar. The most prominent death was that of
John Patrick Brunett, the founder and Superior General of the Knights Templar. Brunett was a veteran of the United States Marine Corps who left the Corps after a near-death experience. He settled down initially as a parish priest on the frontier, but something still wasn't right. After witnessing an attack that leveled his whole village, Brunett founded the modern Knights Templar. He--along with all those who died that night in White Falls--would be canonized in April 2129 by Patriarch John Paul III.
The Knights Templar are one of two major military orders in the Free Catholic Church, the other being the Catholic Zouaves. The Zouaves are a light infantry force, comprised of volunteers and fully outfitted with light armored vehicles and a very small contingent of aircraft. The Knights Templar, on the other hand, are an all-male monastic military order that doubles as a mobile infantry force that uses surplus M4555 Fenrir IV powered armor. They are much smaller due to higher costs, but provide a heavier element than regular light infantry. The structure of the Catholic military orders is mirrored by the Columbianists: the light infantry Janissaries and then the mobile infantry Valkyrie orders (though the Valkyries are an all-female monastic order). The Templars and Valkyries both rely heavily on government support due to higher costs, but in recent years, they have accumulated a great deal of personal wealth due to land holdings and alliances with local unions.
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When Bracken Kessler was first elected Governor of Utah in 2108, he came on board as an energetic and charismatic reformer who had accumulated a great deal of personal wealth following his career as a real estate developer. He was re-elected in 2112, but his decision to run for the Senate in 2114 proved to be his political downfall. He was a vocal expansionist but was faced with a national party that was quietly reconsidering isolationism. Falling behind in the primary, he left the Republican Party and ran as an independent, but lost to his own Attorney General in the general. After his defeat, his finished his final two years as a Democrat before retiring from politics completely in 2117. After his retirement, he joined the board of directors of several companies and returned to his old real estate business, all while donating millions to political campaigns and PACs to support pro-expansionist Republicans and Democrats.
In 2119, his son--who was living on Titan at the time--wrote to him and told him about the dangers of frontier life. Kessler--who'd majored in history in college--remembered the early Mormon militias. Forming a plan, he approached the church leadership with a proposal. The Catholics and Columbianists have their own military orders, so why not the Mormons? Initially met with skepticism, the Red Rock Massacre of 2120 on Titan changed the church's mind. The LDS Church formed a military order, naming it after the historical
Nauvoo Legion. Like the Catholic Zouavees and the Columbianist Janissaries, the Nauvoo Legion is a light infantry combined arms force that assists other militias and regular military forces on the frontier. In particular, the Legion, backed by Columbianist Valkyries, has been heavily involved in the defense of the Puckian territories--all five have the highest percentage of Mormons in the Saturnian system. Kessler was named a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 2126 and he has been nicknamed the "Mormon Defense Secretary" for his service.