Frequently Asked Questions

No.

Your donation goes to a campaign committee set up to help elect Adrian Bonenberger governor of Connecticut, based on the promise that he will deliver on a voluntary state guard. It helps pay for staff, advertising, videos, and initiatives to organize volunteers to get him on the ballot. As a petitioning candidate without support from anyone — major or minor parties — his campaign depends exclusively on donors like you.

Certain forms of donation that aren’t financial must be declared as “in kind” and having said that, although the Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer will probably have a fit: yes, absolutely, we do.

While rules vary across the 50 states — and not every state fields a state guard — in Connecticut the State Guard is different from the National Guard. Currently it fields about 120 people across two cavalry units and two light infantry units, all of which date back centuries.

The biggest difference between the voluntary State Guard that Bonenberger proposes and the National Guard is that the National Guard can be mobilized by the president of the U.S. in case of an emergency. When the National Guard comes down on orders for Active Duty, that means troops in the Guard are subject to direction and deployment by the Pentagon — to places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Los Angeles, or the border.

Connecticut residents need a way to serve their state and town or city without having to worry about whether they’ll find themselves on patrol in the desert halfway around the world, looking for IEDs and insurgent ambushes. The voluntary State Guard will never deploy outside Connecticut borders, and guard members will drive the guard’s agenda — not some faceless bureaucrat in Hartford or Washington D.C.

The voluntary State Guard will not compel anyone to serve, nor will any training exercise or event be compulsory. A person’s service will be bound by their word and their sense of honor, not by any legal mechanism. If you don’t want to serve, you don’t have to.

Towns and cities will have wide latitude to describe how and under what circumstances the weapons their units have are stored. For administrative units, it’s possible no guns are needed — neither pistols nor rifles. For a unit of infantry, of course, it could be practical to store rifles at the local Police Department or Fire Department while they’re not being used for training or during a deployment. Alternately, a town might require citizens who are part of the guard unit to own and maintain their own weapons. This choice must be left for individual towns and cities to make. It’s possible that there will be some increase in guns in the state, but there will also be an increase in training around how to use them.

The voluntary State Guard is “a well-regulated Militia,” and therefore is “necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Why call it a State Guard instead of a State Militia? Because although the National Guard has been abused and incorrectly sent to war for decades, eroding people’s confidence in the meaning of the word “guard” and maybe on a certain level in language itself, Connecticut’s voluntary State Guard will abide by the intent implicit in its name, and limit its duty and scope to state boundaries.

Vigilanteism is more of a concern when the power of a state to enforce the law is weak; the power of the U.S. and Connecticut to enforce laws is unmatched in the world. The U.S. just captured a foreign head of state (Maduro) and is trying him for crimes in New York City — truly, “Team America: World Police” is at its apex today.

When mobilized for duty, the State Guard will almost always partner with local law enforcement or emergency response services such as your town or city’s fire department; mobilizing the State Guard on its own for defensive purposes means the country is at war, and local defensive formations are urgently needed with direction at the State level.

It’s difficult to imagine a scenario where the voluntary State Guard could be misused as a vigilante group.

On a fundamental level, this campaign is about decentralization. Decentralizing power from the federal to state level, and then from the state to towns and cities. The democratic revolution begun by America’s founders centuries ago was a revolution in decentralizing political and military power away from the aristocratic and elitist status quo. This campaign seeks to continue that revolutionary American practice wherever possible and to the greatest degree practical.

If you want people to have more real power, this campaign is for you. If you want to spend a lot of money on people to do everything for you, sacrificing your autonomy and independence for convenience, it probably isn’t.

Adrian Bonenberger thinks very highly of the National Guard. He doesn’t think it’s appropriate that the National guard be used outside the borders of the U.S. unless part of a war against some dire existential threat to the Republic; a war that has been declared by Congress. The National Guard is not for foreign adventurism. Furthermore he believes that the best use of the National Guard’s time is training for war because as he’s seen firsthand, war is very difficult, particularly the form the U.S. practices. He’d be happy to explain at greater length at a speaking event if you’d like to accept responsibility for organizing one.

In conclusion, the National Guard is a great organization that has been abused and misused by every Presidential administration for decades.

All of the current planning for U.S. defense involves scenarios where the military (active duty, national guard, reserves) have been mobilized and are serving elsewhere — in the Pacific, in Europe, in Africa, or in the Middle East. There hasn’t been a war-game engaging selective service (the draft) in decades and mechanisms for widespread mobilization are dilapidated and of questionable effectiveness. In a world where it’s easier than ever for even small nations to mount sophisticated and deadly drone attacks, every state should be asking itself: how do we plan to defend ourselves when war breaks out (as it inevitably ultimately will)? If you ask local officials and they say “someone else will take care of it” or “law enforcement has it handled,” that’s the wrong answer. The truth is, we’ll be asked to organize ourselves for defense as we were when WWI and WWII broke out. Why wait?

Of course the governor has a great many responsibilities. Forming a voluntary State Guard is Bonenberger’s top priority, as it is the place where effort and energy is most urgently needed, but he will not neglect the other duties of the office.

The State Guard must be a nonpartisan institution that has buy-in from Democrats, Republicans, and Independents regardless of background or political views. To run for governor on this platform as a Democrat or Republican, even if Bonenberger were to win, would mean dooming the State Guard to partisanship from its inception.

Reach out to us via the contact form and someone will respond to your inquiry or offer within a week. Door knocking, speaking events, and fundraisers all appreciated.