Hillyer's Robert Churchill to Discuss Militia Movement in the U.S.

Robert Churchill, associate professor of history in Hillyer College, will discuss the militia movement in the United States and the debate over the right to bear arms on Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 5 p.m. in Wilde Auditorium.

The program is free and open to the public.

Churchill will also answer questions and sign copies of his new book, To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement (University of Michigan Press, 2009).

Churchill writes that in the 1990s, many militia members were motivated to join the movement because of what they saw as a rise in state violence, illustrated by the government assaults at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, and Waco, Texas, in 1993. It was this perception and the determination to deter future state violence, Churchill argues, that played the greatest role in the growth of the American militia movement.

Building on extensive interviews with militia members, Churchill places the contemporary militia movement in the context of earlier insurrectionary movements in American history that used force to resist the authority of the federal government.

A historian of early America, Churchill has published numerous articles on American political violence and the right to bear arms.


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