Guns in the USA, Take a Stand

[Darth Wong]

Let's keep in mind that in an occupation scenario, their goal is to outlast the occupiers, until the occupiers get sick of the quagmire and leave. A domestic scenario is totally different because the opponent will never leave. Moreover, it doesn't cost them extraordinary amounts of money to keep troops and police in the field because they're at home, so they can sustain operations indefinitely.

Indeed, however, the whole argument of 'you shouldn't have a gun, you can't fight off the government and its tanks' is overall silly anyways. We have lots of hard right hillbillies that the governement keeps a eye on; but if they went after them with a lot of force, it would just make many more rednecks flock to the banner. If it were a civil war, a lot of the people driving the tanks would have sympathies to the rednecks. It is just a lot more complicated and gray area than 'your rifle won't do jack shit to a government tank' argument.

True. However, on the other hand, you would also have a lot more collaborators. As the Bush Administration showed us, there is no shortage of people who would gladly support the clawback of their own civil rights as long as they think they're following a strong alpha male leader. There will always be the people who sign up with the bully posse, and are all too quick to dismiss dissent as treason.

[Coyote]

Wait, so states in the USA are allowed to have their own military?!

Wow, thats one excellent federal system /irony

Actually, the thing that would really put the knickers of the "'Merrika, fuck yah" crowd in a twist would be to realize that what the US originally was supposed to be was more like what the European Union is now-- a series of closely aligned, but seperate, nation-states acting in close coordination. But for a long time, they had their own police forces, militias, money and railroad gauges.

It is ironic to think that... they wanted to be you. Heeheehee.

But independent state guards is (IMO) a good idea, for precisely what we are discussing here now. What was originally an organized quasi-militia (the National Guard) became a reserve branch of the Federal army that was available to host states for internal emergencies. The problem is, in the Defense cutbacks of the last few years, the regular Army has been reduced to such a level that they cannot adequately perform their jobs without help from National Guard and Federal Reserve soldiers. In any protracted engagement, it is guaranteed that a portion of National Guard troops will be gone at any given time fulfilling overseas Federal support duty.

In the USA, this has led to serious problems. We've had a rash of forest fires the last few years, and of course we've had Hurricane Katrina. It used to be that state governors relied on the National Guard to help during these emergencies, but with the NG gone, they have almost no one left to call on except disorganized pools of volunteer citizens. State guards / militias (by any other name) are in some cases proving to be valuable tools to help fill the needs.

Any future expansion of the program will probably fall under the name "state guard" since the term "militia" is (unfortunately) affiliated with beard-scratching, sister-humping redneck "anti-gummint" types who think that neo-Confederatism is "patriotic" ( ), unless a massive PR campaign is undertaken to reclaim the term "militia" for the civic-service-minded, non-retard demographic.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Ironic thing is that the Texas State Guard doesn't answer to federal authority. Instead they're a group of, IIRC, six military police brigades that Texas keeps around separate from federal command (though under the same command structure as the Texas National Guard) for the purpose of having what are basically national guard units available to deploy in Texas in emergencies when the entire actual National Guard has been militarized under federal order and sent overseas or whatnot. A fair number of states have such organizations, but they're under military discipline and essentially fill a function as paramilitary security and rescue personnel, more a state level gendarmerie than anything else.

Wait, so states in the USA are allowed to have their own military?!

Wow, thats one excellent federal system /irony

The Texas State Guard presently consists (now that I double-checked) of six Army regiments, each actually of about battalion strength or around 400 - 500 personnel, as well as three small maritime/riverine units specializing in rescue during flood disaster, and two air wings, each of which has a couple of helicopters and small single-engine aircraft for observation. They also have a medical unit. So only several thousand personnel in all. They do however have M-113s and automatic weapons as well as some other similar military equipment. Membership is all volunteer and pay is only when active, same terms as the National Guard. Actually most states have a similar such organization. I think Texas has the strongest, though, followed by South Carolina, which has five battalions.

[Simon_Jester]

Not sure where you're going with this, then. "Bearing arms" would be much the same for anyone, regardless of the capacity in which they are bearing the arms.

I was going nowhere except to point out that "bearing arms" involves membership in an organized armed force, not just in having a gun. My "right to bear arms" should properly have more to do with whether I can be barred from enlisting in the military than with whether I have the right to a well-stocked gun cabinet. The meaning of "keep" arms is more ambiguous, because it can refer either to individuals or to communities.

Yes, but... like it or not, it is already in the Constitution.

No, it's not. Our defense strategy is not outlined in the Constitution. Even if some provisions in the text make it easier to implement the 1787 defense strategy, we don't have to use that strategy. Since the Constitution allows for a standing army, nothing prevents us from making the standing army the main line of defense of the nation and allowing the militia to atrophy. And in fact that is precisely what we have done: the state militias were huge aspects of American politics in the late 1700s; now they're practically irrelevant from a political standpoint and other issues are far more relevant in any given area.

So you have a population that ordinarily has no real access to arms, and they are expected to learn guerrilla fighting as guns are handed out once the invasion is imminent-- in other words, only slightly ahead of the curve of the "learn as you go Red Dawn style" scenario. Unless you think it is better to have people train regularly, even when no danger is imminent?

Remember the part where I said "a regulated militia trained in insurgency tactics?" Yes, I do, if our goal is to create a large militia that makes up a large fraction of the population to repel potential invasions. In that case, we can't afford any half measures; we must start training the militia now so that they will be available at need, to cause as much damage to an invading army as possible before it can settle in and start rooting the guerillas out one area at a time.

Of course, we don't actually need any such force because we are in no danger of being invaded by the kind of massive army it would take to occupy the continental US. But if we were, our current system would be a very silly way of meeting our need for a ready-made guerilla force. So claiming that we do need such a force does not justify our current system of widespread private gun ownership, because it doesn't actually solve the problem of supplying us with a large, effective guerilla force.

Also, having all the weapons collected in a handful of armories means a few single strikes by a prepared enemy (and no one would attack America without being very, very prepared) means --boom-- all the guns are gone, so grab your pointed sticks and good luck.

You're forgetting that armories can be small distributed facilities. If we are really interested in making our nation effective guerilla fighters, then the guns really ought to be stowed in times of relative peace when there is no danger of being invaded in, say, the next six months. Among other things, that makes it less likely that the nation will be torn apart by random internal movements with a grudge taking their government-supplied guerilla weapons and training and heading for the hills.

Now, each of these facilities might only contain on the order of 100 to 1000 weapons, with tens or hundreds of thousands of armories spread across the country. In that case, taking out all of them, or even a significant fraction, in a surprise attack would be comically improbable: any military with enough force to spread itself over that much territory and still succeed everywhere is so tough they're going to win anyway.

If an invasion were actually imminent (say, if tensions started growing between us and a well-armed neighbor), then as part of a general mobilization for war, the militia armory stockpiles would be spread out among the population and to even more distributed caches in remote, concealed areas. This could be done weeks or months before an enemy was actually prepared to invade.
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and partly because the intent of the 2nd Amendment requires us to be armed so we can form a militia and fight off an invading army or our own government gone wrong.

Excuse me whilst I laugh at the ridiculousness of this.

Notice I said intent, not "this is totally fucking practical".

Frankly, the argument that that was ever the intent is pretty shaky, too. Even if we ignore the question of it being practical, if it wasn't the intent of the Amendment your statement doesn't stand up well.
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The Ironic thing is that the Texas State Guard doesn't answer to federal authority. Instead they're a group of, IIRC, six military police brigades that Texas keeps around separate from federal command (though under the same command structure as the Texas National Guard) for the purpose of having what are basically national guard units available to deploy in Texas in emergencies when the entire actual National Guard has been militarized under federal order and sent overseas or whatnot. A fair number of states have such organizations, but they're under military discipline and essentially fill a function as paramilitary security and rescue personnel, more a state level gendarmerie than anything else.

Wait, so states in the USA are allowed to have their own military?!Wow, thats one excellent federal system /irony

Texas is a border state, and one that gets hit by a number of different types of interesting natural disasters on a regular basis. It does make sense to have a province-level gendarmerie in a place like that, I think. From what Duchess Zeon is saying, the Texas State Guard qualifies as a military only in the loosest sense of the word; they'd almost certainly get their butts handed to them by a normal military force of comparable size.

[Coyote]

Not sure where you're going with this, then. "Bearing arms" would be much the same for anyone, regardless of the capacity in which they are bearing the arms.

I was going nowhere except to point out that "bearing arms" involves membership in an organized armed force, not just in having a gun. My "right to bear arms" should properly have more to do with whether I can be barred from enlisting in the military than with whether I have the right to a well-stocked gun cabinet. The meaning of "keep" arms is more ambiguous, because it can refer either to individuals or to communities.

Oh, okay, you're going for the "collectivist/statist" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) the 2nd Amendment is not the right of the State to raise a militia, it is an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Remember, at the time, the "militia" was everyone (well, everyone male) from 18-45. There also was, at the time, no desire to rely on a standing army, which was seen as nothing more than a tool for oppression by tyrannical governments. Why would a people who did not want a standing army then turn around and universally conscript every able-bodied male into military service?

It also makes no sense to have a collective-statist statement as the second in a set of points that are clearly supposed to outline individual rights. The 10 Amendments are known to be a list of individual rights that the state is not allowed to interfere with (part of the reason Jefferson, IIRC, didn't like the idea of a Bill of Rights-- he feared that if there was a line drawn around 10 things the government could not take away, then the government would grow in power and assume dominion over everything else not specifically outlined in the Bill. Hence the purposeful vagueness of the 10th Amendment). If the militia refers only to State-run militia, then it stands to reason that the only "people" who have a "right to free speech and free press" are the State newspapers, and the only "people" who have a "right to free religion" are the State churches, or that the only "people" who have a "right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure" are State employees being searched on State land.

Yes, but... like it or not, it is already in the Constitution.

No, it's not.

Okay, you're saying that the 2nd Amendment doesn't even exist? I thought we were discussion how it was being interpreted, not whether or not it was even there. People are certainly arguing over something. What I was pointing out is that a lot of people say "the 2nd Amendment is outdated/stupid/only means something to Americans" --however, despite anyone thinking it is outdated or stupid, it is still there.

Our defense strategy is not outlined in the Constitution. Even if some provisions in the text make it easier to implement the 1787 defense strategy, we don't have to use that strategy. Since the Constitution allows for a standing army, nothing prevents us from making the standing army the main line of defense of the nation and allowing the militia to atrophy. And in fact that is precisely what we have done: the state militias were huge aspects of American politics in the late 1700s; now they're practically irrelevant from a political standpoint and other issues are far more relevant in any given area.

In this I agree; and I won't try to say what the intent of the writers was because I wasn't there and have no way to ask them what was on their minds. However, we do know that they were concerned about standing armies being used for tyranny, which is one reason why we have an Amendment entirely devoted to the government not forcing people to quarter troops in their houses. In a statist interpretation of the Amendments, that would mean, ironically, that the State is not Constitutionally allowed to quarter troops, and they would be required to reside in private housing.

Remember the part where I said "a regulated militia trained in insurgency tactics?" Yes, I do, if our goal is to create a large militia that makes up a large fraction of the population to repel potential invasions. In that case, we can't afford any half measures; we must start training the militia now so that they will be available at need, to cause as much damage to an invading army as possible before it can settle in and start rooting the guerillas out one area at a time.

This is essentially universal conscription, though. Regardless of the intent of the Constitition, that would be a hard sell now. Imagine the reaction if the government said "we're going to train every citizen to be a guerrilla warrior".

Of course, we don't actually need any such force because we are in no danger of being invaded by the kind of massive army it would take to occupy the continental US. But if we were, our current system would be a very silly way of meeting our need for a ready-made guerilla force. So claiming that we do need such a force does not justify our current system of widespread private gun ownership, because it doesn't actually solve the problem of supplying us with a large, effective guerilla force.

I'm not sure if that is the case, and there is no way to test it without asking someone to try to invade and see how things go. But for one, bear in mind that "defense militia" is not the only reason people own guns, it is one of the reasons (and happens to be the one prominently mentioned in the Constitution). Hunting, sport, and "because there's no valid reason to restrict them" have all been defended Constitutionally. However, in many other countries we have seen hastily-assembled groups of people carry out effective militia defense against invaders, we just calle them "guerrillas" or "partisans", "resistance", "freedom fighters" or, if we disagree with their politics, "terrorists" or "dead enders".

Also, having all the weapons collected in a handful of armories means a few single strikes by a prepared enemy (and no one would attack America without being very, very prepared) means --boom-- all the guns are gone, so grab your pointed sticks and good luck.

You're forgetting that armories can be small distributed facilities.

Which can also be targeted individually. You don't even need to blow up or attack all of them, just a few of them, to reduce milita fighting effectiveness by serious percentages. And if you want to disburse them far and wide across the country, why go through the expense of building the facilities, guarding the facilities, inspections of the facilities, and maintaining power to the facilities when you can go the extra step and just let people keep their weapons with them and impose stiff penalties for misuse? That's what we have now, and since most gun crime is carried out with cheap, disposable low-caliber pistols (that have very little "militia" use) the system seems to work well.

Also, bear in mind that actual military grade weapons are disbursed for militia defense in some countries such as Switzerland and Israel, and there is very, very little crime carried out with militia weapons in these areas. That seems to indicate that the presence of milita style weaponry is not in and of itself a prelude to committing crime; and of course there is very little gun ownership in the UK but there is still plenty of crime and violence.

If you're interested in cutting back crime, the absence or presence of military style weapons doesn't seem to have much of an impact one way or another. If you want to address crime in America, I believe there are any number of cultural issues to deal with that would be far more useful and have a greater impact that imposing draconian restrictions on law-abiding gun owners. Education, employment, and economic opportunities seem to have a much greater impact in not only curbing the negative impacts of crime, but also enhancing positive social changes in unrelated areas such as economic growth.

If we are really interested in making our nation effective guerilla fighters, then the guns really ought to be stowed in times of relative peace when there is no danger of being invaded in, say, the next six months.

I fail to see the correlation between "universal gun storage = effective guerrilla fighters". It would seem to be the opposite, actually-- people who own guns and can go to ranges whenever the time strikes them, without having to jump through hoops to do it, means that people are able to aquire familiarity and comfortable use much more easily. A lot of firearms training is muscle memory and repetition, and it is easier to repeat that training when there are not arbitrary beurecratic barriers to practice. It is also hard to rationalize such a gun storage scheme in rural areas (where most multi-gun ownership takes place) which are already disbursed among the countryside in isolated areas, and where the owners may actually need them on-hand and not in a facility 40 miles away.

Also, isn't it a bit of folly to assume that a potential enemy will file a flight plan for their bombers with us 6 months before planning an invasion? Once we have a "militia activiation plan" like the one you describe, it will become a political tool. If we're having "tensions" with a country, who wants to be the politician that says "go ahead and open up the armories and get the militia on line"? Imagine the political firestorm that would ensue-- calls of being a "warmonger" and accusations of "escalation", etc.

At what level of tension do we open the armories and activate the militia? The entire 50 years of the Cold War would probably qualify; after that we had 9/11 and the terror level hasn't been below "Elevated" ever since, so why even bother? People would turn their guns in only to come back the next day and check them out for the duration of the emergency. And then, who wants to be the politican that says "emergency's over, turn 'em back in", only to have people say "what are you talking about? Terror level is still orange, Osama's still out there... what are you, naive/soft on defense? Fuck that, I'm, keeping mine until this is over."

Among other things, that makes it less likely that the nation will be torn apart by random internal movements with a grudge taking their government-supplied guerilla weapons and training and heading for the hills.

But that's not happening in America. In fact, I think trying to initiate laws to restrict gun ownership (or at least gun availability, if you can own as many as you want but have to keep them in a government facility) will actually cause the very thing you're trying to prevent. Once the government says "turn 'em in" you'll have people asking "are you about to pull something?" Once the guns are stored in government armories, what guarantee is there that they'll be let back out? You're trying to address a problem that doesn't exist, and by addressing it in the manner you describe, may very well cause that exact problem.

As much as people like to wank and complain, there is no real danger of an actual armed rebellion/guerrilla uprising/militia takeover in the USA. Despite how much people think, life here is still good enough that most people have a vested interest in working problems out politically. Only fringe whackos have an interest in challenging the government, and again, they are seen as isolated nuts who get little sympathy from the public at large. And, it is worth remembering, those isolated nuts don't tend to use guns, but bombs. Bombs have a much larger impact, higher body count, are harder to identify and stop, and (unless you're a suicide bomber) have the benefit of being set to go off while you run away, to set more bombs later if you're successful. Unlike a gun, which you have to remain in place to use, and you will get taken down by the cops, eventually.

Now, each of these facilities might only contain on the order of 100 to 1000 weapons, with tens or hundreds of thousands of armories spread across the country. In that case, taking out all of them, or even a significant fraction, in a surprise attack would be comically improbable: any military with enough force to spread itself over that much territory and still succeed everywhere is so tough they're going to win anyway.

Who needs to bomb them with military force? The armories can also be bombed by truck bombs. Maybe even guys from another country can come to America, live here for years, get to know the place, maybe even take flight lessons join a militia and appear to be integrated into the society and then, when the time comes, attack.

Also, you only need to destroy a few armories, or an even better plan is to ransack them. Hundreds or thousands of guns, all in one place, guarded by a handful of minimum-wage mooks. Either kill the security guards at the conveiently isolated facility, or bribe, threaten, intimidate, blackmail them... or just have them be in on your cause in the first place. Armories introduce a single point of failure that can be exploited.

The thing about your plan is not necessarily that it is bad, evil, or wrong; it is in fact perfectly logical under certain circumstances, such as if the system you describe had been informally adhered to from the start. The thing that is wrong with your plan is that it is politically untenable in the United States. Implementing it would be a disaster and spark trouble where none currently exists; even if it did get implemented, any political order to issue weapons or put them back would be such a political hot potato that it is guaranteed never to be touched one way or another since it would mean the end of that politician's career. Issuiong orders to draw weapons would also require an amazingly compliant enemy willing to share its attack plans with us ahead of time, or, a sloppy enemy who's attack plans are so easily penetrated by our intelligence as to make any need for milita activation unneccessary.

There's also so threat of large-scale guerrilla uprising in the US, making that point of concern baseless, and it also addresses very little criminal concerns since most gun crimes aren't carried out by the weapons that would be addressed by a militia armory system. What few gun crimes are carried out by militia-style weapons are so small as to be not worth the political firestorm this would create.

[Coyote]

Ghetto edit; I missed this before the time lag cut me off:

There's also NO threat of large-scale guerrilla uprising in the US, making that point of concern baseless, and it also addresses very little criminal concerns since most gun crimes aren't carried out by the weapons that would be addressed by a militia armory system...

[wolveraptor]

True. However, on the other hand, you would also have a lot more collaborators. As the Bush Administration showed us, there is no shortage of people who would gladly support the clawback of their own civil rights as long as they think they're following a strong alpha male leader. There will always be the people who sign up with the bully posse, and are all too quick to dismiss dissent as treason.

Indeed, authoritarian regimes seldom come to power in any other way. This scenario that some people are envisioning in which an armed minority violently oppresses a disarmed majority isn't really true to life*. It seems to me that, at least in modern times, totalitarians are swept into power with the support, or at least the acceptance, of the majority. Arming a population does nothing when it's comprised of sheep.

*The one example I can think of off the top of my head is the Apartheid system in South Africa, but that seems more a issue of colonialism than gun rights specifically.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, okay, you're going for the "collectivist/statist" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) the 2nd Amendment is not the right of the State to raise a militia, it is an individual right to keep and bear arms.

All right, but the fact that you can't individually "bear" arms is a sign that the amendment isn't just about private gun ownership; it isn't that simple. Which suggests that "people should own guns" is a badly oversimplified version of what the Second Amendment was meant to ensure.

By the way, looking at some of the draft versions of the Second Amendment that didn't wind up as the final form is interesting on this subject; it provides a lot more insight into what the authors were thinking than just trying to guess from the final product.
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Remember, at the time, the "militia" was everyone (well, everyone male) from 18-45. There also was, at the time, no desire to rely on a standing army, which was seen as nothing more than a tool for oppression by tyrannical governments. Why would a people who did not want a standing army then turn around and universally conscript every able-bodied male into military service?

Because there was a difference in terms of organization between a standing army and a well regulated militia? That phrase was not meaningless, in my opinion; a poorly regulated militia (such as one that is arbitrarily defined to include all adult males without expecting all adult males to show up for some kind of training) is useless for maintaining the security and freedom of anyone, because it won't be able to fight its way out of a paper bag.
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If the militia refers only to State-run militia, then it stands to reason that the only "people" who have a "right to free speech and free press" are the State newspapers, and the only "people" who have a "right to free religion" are the State churches, or that the only "people" who have a "right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure" are State employees being searched on State land.

No. For a militia to function there has to be at least some degree of organization: someone actually has to run it, someone has to be accountable for the actions of individual militiamen, and so on. Otherwise, you don't have a militia, you have a lynch mob. And a poorly equipped one at that, because most people won't lay out the cash for adequate weapons on their own unless the militia's armament is being paid for by taxes.

Moreover, you're overlooking the fact that the historic contributions of militia to the defense of the American colonies came from militia units organized by colonial or local governments, not private initiatives. Private-initiative armies don't work well.
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Yes, but... like it or not, it is already in the Constitution.

No, it's not.

Okay, you're saying that the 2nd Amendment doesn't even exist?

You completely ignored what I wrote after that: The defense policy is not in the Constitution, even though the Second Amendment is. The Second Amendment does not say "The militia shall be the primary line of defense of the United States, and the standing army shall be miniscule to avoid it being used as an instrument of tyranny."

Therefore, the US government is not required to maintain huge militias and tiny standing armies, even though that was our defense policy back around 1800.
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In a statist interpretation of the Amendments, that would mean, ironically, that the State is not Constitutionally allowed to quarter troops, and they would be required to reside in private housing.

Remember that this was a restraint on the Federal government, not the state governments. The federal government didn't run the militia in the first place. The militias were a state (not State) institution, and always had been; that was one of the major reasons the colonists had state-level governments in the first place.

In the collectivist interpretation, the Second Amendment affects the Federal government's ability to control membership in and the creation of militia formations at the state level, which is where the militias that really existed (as opposed to fictional imaginary dream-militias) were formed.
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This is essentially universal conscription, though. Regardless of the intent of the Constitition, that would be a hard sell now. Imagine the reaction if the government said "we're going to train every citizen to be a guerrilla warrior".

If there was actually a threat that justified bothering to do so, which there isn't, that would be a fairly reasonable reaction. After all, you're talking about all men between 18 and 45 being in the militia, right? Unless the militia is expected to go to war completely untrained, that requires some form of conscription to make sure that all men between 18 and 45 know how to fight.

I'm not sure if that is the case, and there is no way to test it without asking someone to try to invade and see how things go. But for one, bear in mind that "defense militia" is not the only reason people own guns, it is one of the reasons (and happens to be the one prominently mentioned in the Constitution).

But if "defense militia" is even one reason for people to own guns, then we should logically be trying to make the "defense militia" work... and I don't see you advocating anything that would make the American population into a useful defensive militia. I only see you advocating private gun ownership.

Hunting, sport, and "because there's no valid reason to restrict them" have all been defended Constitutionally.

Yes, and those are all much better reasons to avoid putting too many restrictions on private gun ownership than the Second Amendment is, given how deeply entangled the Second Amendment is with the issue of militias, which most Americans today would be just as happy to forget about because of the unfortunate implication that we are all members of a militia that has no clue how to fight and is therefore useless to us.
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Wich can also be targeted individually. You don't even need to blow up or attack all of them, just a few of them, to reduce milita fighting effectiveness by serious percentages. And if you want to disburse them far and wide across the country, why go through the expense of building the facilities, guarding the facilities, inspections of the facilities, and maintaining power to the facilities when you can go the extra step and just let people keep their weapons with them and impose stiff penalties for misuse? That's what we have now...

Not really; that's more like what Switzerland has. In that setup, being a militia member means you take your training, you get your automatic rifle, and you keep it at home. The nation has a nice standard guerilla weapon, present in vast numbers, with very large stockpiles of ammunition. Happy days.

We don't have that system. Insofar as we have a defensive militia, we just expect it to buy its own guns, much as 19th century cavalry regiments were expected to buy their own equipment. That is not an efficient way to organize a defense force. So all talking points about gun ownership not meaning gun crime aside, private gun ownership is a bad way to ensure a useful national line of defense. If that's important to you, you need something additional to private gun ownership (like distributed weapons caches and regular militia training for a large fraction of the population).
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I fail to see the correlation between "universal gun storage = effective guerrilla fighters". It would seem to be the opposite, actually-- people who own guns and can go to ranges whenever the time strikes them, without having to jump through hoops to do it, means that people are able to aquire familiarity and comfortable use much more easily. A lot of firearms training is muscle memory and repetition, and it is easier to repeat that training when there are not arbitrary beurecratic barriers to practice. It is also hard to rationalize such a gun storage scheme in rural areas (where most multi-gun ownership takes place) which are already disbursed among the countryside in isolated areas, and where the owners may actually need them on-hand and not in a facility 40 miles away.

Fair enough... in which case we should go to the Swiss system and have mandatory training and mandatory weapon distribution. Or at least mandatory for volunteers- you cannot claim to be in the "American militia" unless you got the training and are taking good care of your personal private machine gun.

Also, isn't it a bit of folly to assume that a potential enemy will file a flight plan for their bombers with us 6 months before planning an invasion? Once we have a "militia activiation plan" like the one you describe, it will become a political tool. If we're having "tensions" with a country, who wants to be the politician that says "go ahead and open up the armories and get the militia on line"? Imagine the political firestorm that would ensue-- calls of being a "warmonger" and accusations of "escalation", etc.

This is no different from any other issue of war mobilization, and those issues have been addressed over and over for the past two centuries by people far more qualified to do so than I.

And then, who wants to be the politican that says "emergency's over, turn 'em back in", only to have people say "what are you talking about? Terror level is still orange, Osama's still out there... what are you, naive/soft on defense? Fuck that, I'm, keeping mine until this is over."

Now, see, that's what happens if we have an undisciplined militia. Which is kind of the point: if we want a national guerilla defense we need to go all out on it, instead of some half-assed system that lets random people flatter themselves that they are "contributing to national defense" by having rifles in every caliber known to man in racks on their walls.

I'm not actually advocating this, because I don't think we need it. But I think that if you aren't advocating it, then any call for a national defensive guerilla force (the modern equivalent of a militia) that you might make is rather silly. That's what a national defensive guerilla force looks like. You don't want us to have one, so how does it make sense for you to justify private gun ownership in terms of having one, instead of in terms of other, more sensible arguments like "why NOT have private gun ownership?"

I think it's because the national defense argument looks noble, even though it's kind of bankrupt from a military standpoint.
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Who needs to bomb them with military force? The armories can also be bombed by truck bombs. Maybe even guys from another country can come to America, live here for years, get to know the place, maybe even take flight lessons join a militia and appear to be integrated into the society and then, when the time comes, attack.

In thousands of places at once? If they can do that they'll win anyway, armories or no armories.

Also, you only need to destroy a few armories, or an even better plan is to ransack them. Hundreds or thousands of guns, all in one place, guarded by a handful of minimum-wage mooks.

Which only helps if they have the men to use all those guns... again, exactly how many undetected foreign infiltrators are we talking about here?

The thing that is wrong with your plan is that it is politically untenable in the United States.

OK, implement it along with private gun ownership, not instead of, and associate it with existing war mobilization plans we already have for things like mass callup of the Army Reserve or going to increased production of military hardware. We HAVE plans for what to do in a situation where we need to make an all-out military effort to avoid conquest; let's make this part of those plans.

Or, alternatively, let's admit that defensive militia units of this type are a chimera in the context of the modern American military and defense situation, and drop the whole question.

[Swindle1984]

The Ironic thing is that the Texas State Guard doesn't answer to federal authority. Instead they're a group of, IIRC, six military police brigades that Texas keeps around separate from federal command (though under the same command structure as the Texas National Guard) for the purpose of having what are basically national guard units available to deploy in Texas in emergencies when the entire actual National Guard has been militarized under federal order and sent overseas or whatnot. A fair number of states have such organizations, but they're under military discipline and essentially fill a function as paramilitary security and rescue personnel, more a state level gendarmerie than anything else.

Wait, so states in the USA are allowed to have their own military?!

Wow, thats one excellent federal system /irony

The Texas State Guard presently consists (now that I double-checked) of six Army regiments, each actually of about battalion strength or around 400 - 500 personnel, as well as three small maritime/riverine units specializing in rescue during flood disaster, and two air wings, each of which has a couple of helicopters and small single-engine aircraft for observation. They also have a medical unit. So only several thousand personnel in all. They do however have M-113s and automatic weapons as well as some other similar military equipment. Membership is all volunteer and pay is only when active, same terms as the National Guard. Actually most states have a similar such organization. I think Texas has the strongest, though, followed by South Carolina, which has five battalions.

Technically, the Texas State Guard maritime branch has the USS Texas BB-35 as its flagship, but this is pretty much identical to the US Navy having the USS Constitution as its flagship: purely ceremonial. Anyone who thinks a WWI dreadnaught is going to be made operational, much less put to use, is delusional.

Although, ironically, we do still have some shells for its guns on a "just in case" basis, but considering the age of the ammunition and the fact that the ship would need a complete overhaul before its guns even operated (God forbid the mess that the engine and electrical systems are in), the odds of them ever being fired are somewhere between diddly and squat.

[Swindle1984]

Because there was a difference in terms of organization between a standing army and a well regulated militia? That phrase was not meaningless, in my opinion; a poorly regulated militia (such as one that is arbitrarily defined to include all adult males without expecting all adult males to show up for some kind of training) is useless for maintaining the security and freedom of anyone, because it won't be able to fight its way out of a paper bag.

Which definition of "regulated" are you going with here? Regulated as in "supervised by the government"? If so, that's the wrong definition.

The "regulated" in the Bill of Rights means well-trained and disciplined.

A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

It's saying that individuals must, necessarily, be able to keep and bear private arms in order to form said well-regulated militia. Pretty cut and dried, if you ask me.

The founding fathers also left us their opinions of what the 2nd Amendment meant, so we understand the intent behind it pretty well:


"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322)

"The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals.... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." (Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789)

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States....Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America" - (Gazette of the United States, October 14, 1789.)

"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms." (Richard Henry Lee, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169)

"...to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." (George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380)

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, The Federalist Papers #46 at 243-244)

"the ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone," (James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper #46.)

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" (Noah Webster in 'An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution', 1787, a pamphlet aimed at swaying Pennsylvania toward ratification, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56(New York, 1888))

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." (Tench Coxe in 'Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' under the Pseudonym 'A Pennsylvanian' in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1)

"Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people" (Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788)

"The Constitution shall never be construed....to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms" (Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87)

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights, Walter Bennett, ed., Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, at 21,22,124 (Univ. of Alabama Press,1975)..)

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" (Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)

"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- (Thomas Jefferson)

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence ... From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable . . . The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that is good" (George Washington)

"...the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms" (from article in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette June 18, 1789 at 2, col.2,)

"To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed...to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless...If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defence of themselves and their country." (Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and NewYork [London 1823]

"To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm . . . is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege." [Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, at 560, 34 Am. Rep. 52, at 54 (1878)]

" 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the milita, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right." [Nunn vs. State, 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243, at 251 (1846)]

"The provision in the Constitution granting the right to all persons to bear arms is a limitation upon the power of the Legislature to enact any law to the contrary. The exercise of a right guaranteed by the Constitution cannot be made subject to the will of the sheriff." [People vs. Zerillo, 219 Mich. 635, 189 N.W. 927, at 928 (1922)]

"The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions." [State vs. Kerner, 181 N.C. 574, 107 S.E. 222, at 224 (1921)]

"The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the "high powers" delegated directly to the citizen, and 'is excepted out of the general powers of government.' A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power." [Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, at 401-402 (1859)]





Clearly, by the commentary of our founding fathers, the explanation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the general public so they could understand what it meant to them, and legal decisions that followed, the 2nd Amendment recognizes the right of an individual to both keep and bear military weapons for defense of himself and the state. Membership in a militia, government-approved or otherwise, is not necessary to keeping and bearing arms, though it is the hope that by disciplining oneself in the use of one's weapons, he is suitable for membership in a well-trained and well-equipped militia.

All laws restricting the type of arms a citizen may possess and the carrying of those arms are, therefore, unConstitutional. The problem, of course, is that the government doesn't give a rat's ass if something it does is against the US Constitution (certainly the current and last several admins haven't), and the general public is ignorant and lazy, and doesn't give a rat's ass either unless it directly impacts their ability to watch American Idol and eat McDonald's.

[Beowulf]

Oh, okay, you're going for the "collectivist/statist" interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) the 2nd Amendment is not the right of the State to raise a militia, it is an individual right to keep and bear arms.

All right, but the fact that you can't individually "bear" arms is a sign that the amendment isn't just about private gun ownership; it isn't that simple. Which suggests that "people should own guns" is a badly oversimplified version of what the Second Amendment was meant to ensure.

Why can't an individual bear arms? One of the many definitions of bear is: to carry or have on one's person (be equipped with). Why can't an individual carry or be equipped with an arm?

[Simon_Jester]

Why can't an individual bear arms? One of the many definitions of bear is: to carry or have on one's person (be equipped with). Why can't an individual carry or be equipped with an arm?

Well, I don't see any reason why they can't be carrying or equipped with an arm, though I draw the line at the right to arm bears; I just think that the argument "we need private gun ownership for the militia and we need the militia to protect our FREEDOM!" is silly for a very large number of reasons.

I don't actually care all that much about gun control, and I don't feel qualified to say whether or not it works (which is a reason I don't advocate it very enthusiastically). But seriously, there are much better reasons to support private gun ownership than "we need it so people can join a militia to protect our FREEDOM!" The best reason I can think of is "why not?", since it doesn't seem to do much harm.

The difficulty, of course, is that an argument like that can't be used by the gun owner to make themselves feel righteous, so try and catch organized gun owner groups using it. The last thing someone who collects weapons is likely to want to think of themselves as is harmless.

=======

Because there was a difference in terms of organization between a standing army and a well regulated militia? That phrase was not meaningless, in my opinion; a poorly regulated militia (such as one that is arbitrarily defined to include all adult males without expecting all adult males to show up for some kind of training) is useless for maintaining the security and freedom of anyone, because it won't be able to fight its way out of a paper bag.

Which definition of "regulated" are you going with here? Regulated as in "supervised by the government"? If so, that's the wrong definition. The "regulated" in the Bill of Rights means well-trained and disciplined.

OK, then someone needs to make sure the militia is well trained and disciplined, right? It's sure not going to be me. It's probably not going to be any other private citizen, either. Traditionally, the job of arming and training militia and making sure they can be deployed in an emergency was handled by low-level governments: in the US, at the state level.

If there is no "well regulated" militia, and you aren't seriously proposing to create one, then the idea that private gun ownership can by itself by useful as a way of getting a militia for the US is absurd. It does no such thing, because one million random guys with rifles in little cabinets are not a militia, even if they all like to think they are.

So as far as I'm concerned, if you're going to say "we need private gun ownership to make sure that we have an effective militia," then we should also do other things that we need in order to have an effective (well regulated) militia. Like instituting actual militia training schedules* at the local/state level. And having dedicated armories where the militia can go in an emergency to pick up weapons that really are too heavy to be safely stored at home (like demolition charges for making IEDs in the event of invasion). And actually punishing people who do not perform their duties as militiamen: if you claim to be part of the militia but are too out of shape to fight, or don't maintain your weapon, or don't show up for training, you would be a useless burden to the militia in the event it was actually needed, and should be fined accordingly.

If we're going to have a militia, we shouldn't do it by halves. But I don't see the country changing its mind about that any time soon. Which makes the claim that we are doing anything large scale for the sake of "the militia" misleading. And private gun ownership in the US is pretty damn large scale.

*Done properly, this could even have good effects on the physical fitness of the citizenry, an added bonus.
________

"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322)

That was all very well forty years after the document passed, among men who were actually involved. Even assuming that we should do what Jefferson says on this issue, though, we're not in a good position to do so. We cannot carry ourselves back to 1787, and we'd be idiots to try; the country today wouldn't even be recognizable compared to the country back then in any number of ways. For instance, when was the last time your isolated farming village had to defend itself against an Indian attack?

So even if Jefferson's advice on this front was good then, I'm not so sure it is now.
_______

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these States....Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America" - (Gazette of the United States, October 14, 1789.)

What's this about "military spirit, taste for martial exercises?" Does that make sense in the context of the rifle hung on my wall, or in the context of riflemen drilling in the town square? If the latter, why aren't riflemen drilling in the town square anymore? And if they aren't, why is it necessary for me to have a rifle on my wall in order that I can join the men who aren't drilling there anymore?
______

"...to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." (George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380)

Do the past two centuries prove Mason right? Is there a strong correlation between how many guns a country owns per capita and how free they are?

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" (Noah Webster in 'An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution', 1787, a pamphlet aimed at swaying Pennsylvania toward ratification, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56(New York, 1888))

Experience suggests that the people need not be disarmed in order for a standing army to rule. All that is required is that a large fraction of the people support the army's actions... which is much easier and almost certain to happen in any plausible form of tyranny that might arise in the US.
______

"The Constitution shall never be construed....to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms" (Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87)

OK. The Constitution does not bar people from carrying guns. Fine. The Constitution also does not bar people from yodeling; this does not mean that yodeling is vital to the national defense or to the survival of American democracy.
______

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence ... From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable . . . The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that is good" (George Washington)

Out of morbid curiosity... what do you think Washington would have thought of modern-day Somalia or Iraq, both of which are nations awash in Kalashnikovs?

[Lonestar]

Out of morbid curiosity... what do you think Washington would have thought of modern-day Somalia or Iraq, both of which are nations awash in Kalashnikovs?

"It's a Good things us Americans with a tradition of Rule of Law are smarter than those savages and able to control ourselves"


(The USA is more armed than both those countries, incidentally).

[Coyote]

I took some time to think about what Simon was saying and in truth it seems that in many areas we were actually more in agreement than not; I too thought that a more organized and trained militia would be a benefit to the country and could be used for things such as help during natural disasters, etc.

The militia as a justification for keeping and bearing arms is, in my opinion, weakened by the fact that as a country we have let it wither on the vine. I'd be of the notion that people would keep the weapons with them, rather than in armories, but it seems Simon was thinking more along the line of special-purpose weapons (?).

[Simon_Jester]

Well, Coyote, what I really think is that if we honestly wanted a strong defensive militia, we'd organize it more or less the way colonial Americans actually did. They really needed a militia, so they sat down and gave the problem of organizing one some honest thought, in a way that most of today's gun-rights blowhards do not.

Most militia equipment, including heavy weapons and the majority of the ammunition, would be stored in small armories in local communities where they could be distributed to the militia on a few hours' notice. There are good reasons for this: we're talking about large amounts of high explosives here, so keeping it in a secure building designed for the job has a lot of selling points.

And remember that those weapons are necessary: guerillas with rifles alone aren't nearly as effective as guerillas with antitank rockets and demolition charges, as our experience in Iraq demonstrates. Conventional armies excel at rifle-to-rifle combat, but have more trouble dealing with random bombings and IEDs; likewise, antitank rockets allow the guerillas to trade small numbers of insurgents for valuable enemy materiel.
________

As for the rest:
Personal weapons might be kept at home, or might not; it depends. Training would be mandatory for anyone who wanted to claim that they were in the militia. If you don't show up for initial training (and that's probably going to involve a drill sargeant yelling at you) and regular practice (which might not), then you are NOT in the militia, do NOT get your militia-issue gun, and are NOT to be trusted if the country is actually invaded or if the militia need to be called up for some other reason.

Historically, there were relatively few cases where an organized militia had a policy of making every man keep his weapon at home for the sake of the fastest, most reliable mobilization possible. This generally had mixed results: it was hard to find civilians who were young enough and reliable enough and in good enough condition to make good soldiers on an hour's notice. There really are not many people who qualify, and unless you make the militia program so extensive and mandatory that it amounts to universal conscription, you cannot make such people. Normally, you need to train the bulk of the militia formally for at least a short time before they can be considered battle-ready.

But if you're committed to taking a few weeks to drill the militia into shape and send home the worst of the malcontents and incompetents in any case, whether the guns are kept in individual homes or in local armories makes very little difference: what matters is whether the militia train as a unit effectively. Either way, you'll need at least a few weeks to get the troops rolling to fight a battle, and the hours lost handing out guns to the troops make little difference.

While that does make it possible for an enemy to disable the militia by striking the armories, if they can achieve such absolute strategic surprise that they are able to fan out and hit thousands of small targets spread throughout the country at will... we're going to lose anyway. The British almost pulled it off in 1775, but they had a huge unfair advantage: we were actually British subjects at the time, and felt compelled to admit them onto our own soil even if they weren't welcome. They were not invaders in the classic sense of another country's army marching onto our soil; they were merely an unpopular garrison. Once they were established in Boston, it was far more difficult to stop them from raiding the militia armies in the surrounding towns than it would have been if we'd reacted to them as an invasion threat from the moment we found out they were coming... or even the moment they arrived.

But despite that, a militia is an effective defensive arm if used intelligently, as an organized, trained body with skills in guerilla warfare. They can also be cross-trained as disaster responders, which is a nice bonus.
_______

Now, that raises the question: do we actually need such a militia? I suspect that the answer is "no, not really." We are in no danger of being directly invaded by anyone our standing army could not defeat out of hand. And the countryside isn't swarming with small groups of hostile armed natives the way it was in the 1700s and into the 1800s. This, by itself, makes the argument "we need private gun ownership for the militia!" fallacious. We can never truly need anything for the sake of a thing that isn't necessary.

On top of that, if we answer the question "do we actually need such a militia?" with a "yes," then we have to ask: why is private gun ownership the only thing so many of these so-called "militia" fans are agitating for? Why aren't they calling for local governments to stockpile heavy weapons? Or for local governments to sponsor training programs? Or for these militias to select actual officers, so that they have at least some idea who's in charge if the Martians invade tomorrow? Or for those officers to have at least some degree of liaison with the regular military, so that the militia can count on being alerted in time to respond to an actual threat of war, rather than being caught by surprise and having to burn valuable days or weeks getting their act together?

The fact that I don't see any of that being called for suggests to me that the "militia" fans in America don't really believe that the country needs a defensive militia. They just want to flatter themselves with the idea that their gun collection makes them a potent threat to enemy armies and a valuable element of America's national defenses. It doesn't, but they'd like to think it does.

[MKSheppard]

What was originally an organized quasi-militia (the National Guard) became a reserve branch of the Federal army that was available to host states for internal emergencies.

Wrong. The Guard's the state milita, who can be federalized into federal service, with the States picking up a lot of the tab for basic Guard stuff, like maintaining the armories, some of the lighter wheeled vehicles, etc etc.

The problem is, in the Defense cutbacks of the last few years, the regular Army has been reduced to such a level that they cannot adequately perform their jobs without help from National Guard and Federal Reserve soldiers.

Wrong. This goes back to the 1970s, and the aftermath of 'Nam, when the Army leadership deliberately designed the New Army (TM) to require reservists and guardsmen to actually function in a huge call up -- by shifting specialist support units like MP units, sanitation units, etc to the Guards; so that if you want to deploy 150,000 men to the middle of anywhere, you are going to have to federalize the National Guard in a lot of areas.

In any protracted engagement, it is guaranteed that a portion of National Guard troops will be gone at any given time fulfilling overseas Federal support duty. In the USA, this has led to serious problems. We've had a rash of forest fires the last few years, and of course we've had Hurricane Katrina. It used to be that state governors relied on the National Guard to help during these emergencies, but with the NG gone, they have almost no one left to call on except disorganized pools of volunteer citizens. State guards / militias (by any other name) are in some cases proving to be valuable tools to help fill the needs.

The State Defense Forces actually began in the 1970s; they're not a newish invention -- though they did begin to receive more attention after 2003-2004.

Any future expansion of the program will probably fall under the name "state guard"

Actually, the reason for the use of "National Guard" or "Guard" is the 1916 National Defense Act, which specified milita to be divided into three classes, the National Guard, the Naval Milita, and the Unorganized Milita.

Quite a few State militas had to rename themselves into State Guard units to be in compliance with the 1916 NDA.

[MKSheppard]

The funny thing is, I don't think the Dick Act, or the 1916 National Defense Act have been struck down or altered substantially.

Text of the Dick Act of 1903

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States, Territories, and the District of Columbia, and every able-bodied male of foreign birth who has declared his intention to become a citizen, who is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age, and shall be divided into two classes—the organized militia, to be known as the National Guard of the State, Territory, or District of Columbia, or by such other designations as may be given them by the laws of the respective States or Territories, and the remainder to be known as the Reserve Militia.

Later it says:

postmasters and persons employed by the United States in the transmission of the mail, ferrymen employed at any ferry on a post-road, artificers and workmen employed in the armories and arsenals of the United States, pilots, manners actually employed in the sea service of any citizen or merchant within the United States, and all persons who are exempted by the laws of the respective States or Territories shall be exempted from militia duty, without regard to age

SCORE No wait....

Later, the 1916 National Defense Act specified that the milita would be divided into three classes:

The National Guard
The Naval Milita
The Unorganized Milita

As I said earlier, quite a few State militas had to rename themselves into State Guard units to be in compliance with the 1916 NDA; but this did not apply to Naval Milita units, hence why today we have the Texas Naval Milita, etc..

[Coyote]

But Shep, you have a system of concurrent enlistment, where joining the National Guard means joining the Army, and NG members wear "US ARMY" name tapes and go through initial training at Federal facilities, and must adhere to Federal hiring practices, standards of enlistment and promotions, and organization. Wyoming can't authorize (for example) females to join the Infantry because it's OK as far as they're concerned, and California National Guard can't do away with "DADT" because they feel like it, and Louisiana National Guard can't decide that they'd rather have LeClercs and Panhards instead of Abrams and Stykers.

Alright, so let's see if we got this straight:
In order to have the militia be effective, trained, and integrate into the US Army for time of need, they were told to adhere to federal standards in the 1903 and 1916 acts, but that means that they drifted more into the Federal Army orbit and they don't fully qualify as state-autonomous militia. Organized militia became the Nat'l Guard, but everyone else was left to fester without organization until the "State Guard" idea caught on (at least it did in some places).

Now, if State Guards want to retain some autonomy (for example, if they decided they wanted to buy foreign equipment for some reason) I suppose they'd either have to do so without Federal assistance funds or strike some sort of sweetheart deal if the State Guard can prove that the US doesn't produce some special gear they feel they need and only foreign suppliers can fulfill their needs (and that the need is valid).

So everything that is left behind after the Federalization of the Milita turned the "Militia" into the "National Guard", is the "unorganized Militia" and they can organize (or not) as they see fit. So, at what level of organization and funding do these people stop being "unorganized militias" and start being "organized", and are folded into the National or State Guards?

Let's say, as a rhetorical example, someone were to get together with his friends and start a "state militia", and they all went out and bought the same types of uniforms, same types of field gear, weapons, etc; and compiled a list of what they felt were the best infantry tactics in the world taking lessons from everyone (US Army, Russia, UK, etc) and even bought a couple old SUVs and painted them green to make them "tactical", are these guys "organized militia" or "unorganized"? If they get funding or guidance from any outside agency, do they become "organized"? Are they then required to standardize their equipment with US gear and join a Guard unit?