One point I would add is that the president becomes CIC “when called into the actual service of the United States” but only during a large enough (multi-state) threat where the militia are called forth to “execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrection, and repel invasion”. When not called forth they remain in their respective states to execute state laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions, perform disaster relief, etc.
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It isn’t enough to just be armed, people have to be organized, trained, et al.
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Fair enough
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I still am not seeing any meaningful distinction between your description of a militia and the National Guard or existing Law Enforcement. Nor am I seeing how Antifa or Drug Gangs wouldn’t use the program as a means to cause trouble.
The only distinction I’ve seen is that people can volunteer and the state organizes it. So I don’t see it as anything more meaningful than simply a state run club?
I mean say the Texas militia wanted to do anything at all?
What jurisdictions do they have that isn’t already covered by an existing body?
If there are no unique jurisdictions, why/how is the militia more of a solution than the existing entities?
If this is mostly for increasing participation in civic engagement, I can see that (though not sure exactly how much I agree)… It sounds similar to mandatory service in the US military…
I’m all for increasing civic understanding and engagement.
I think the mechanism/form that takes matters a lot.
Look into Tactical Civics.
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We’re in contact with Tactical Civics; but if you’ve a contact in there worth adding, hit me in the DMs.
Brandon Hayes
President NLI
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True as noted in the Declaration of Independence;
“But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”
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And let’s not forget that the Second Amendment is pretty much the one thing that has prevented a full scale invasion on our soil. Be sure to vote for those who support that right lest this all becomes a moot point.
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Help me distinguish “The Revolutionary War” vs “The Civil War” in this context…
Both were considered rebellions.
Both were fought against by the current established government which was seen as tyrannical by the revolutionaries.
Both revolutionaries were primarily fighting against what they saw as the imposition of oppressive economic policies.
I’m not quite sure exactly how you expect/see this “throwing off of such government” is supposed to go if not as a preemptive force against the established government…
The ARMY national guard is an adjunct of the army as the name suggests so they get their directives from the standing army which constitutional militia do not. this is why the constitution has the president wearing separate hats as commander in chief of the armies, navies and of the militia of the several states when called into the actual series of the United States. these are all separate and distinct command structures.
In terms of law enforcement, there is a difference because current LE is separate and set apart from the people making them easily corruptible because they don’t want to lose their paycheck. Because they are separate and set apart from the people they are willing to break the law under color of law, we see this all the time and see hem receive special privileges for doing so.
The militia, properly organized would not oppress/suppress itself and has more incentive to follow the actual law maximizing liberty for the people.
Constitutional militia are compulsory, consisting of “every able bodied free male” so almost universal participation on a rotational basis. This enables the mass of the population to be trained, well organized, and equipped to deal with threats (man made or otherwise). just think how much better suited a well trained and organized citizenry would be than say, FEMA?
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sent 
We need to also add this:
Equate all funding into our national military to that of what is funded towards civilian militias. Every citizen militia group needs to be armed and ready no less than our military.
There’s no need to distinguish between the two in today’s America. We see the same tyrannical abuse going on in Washington DC causing the same kind of oppressive policies.
“Congress and the administration must act to move the nation off the untenable long-term fiscal course on which it is currently operating,” said Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO. “The federal debt level is growing at a rate that could threaten the vitality of our nation’s economy and the safety and well-being of the American people. Both spending and revenue issues need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive long-term plan.”
I guess I’m not being clear enough in my point, which was about how the federal government should not view the militias as a potential opposition force to the federal government.
If we had 50 militias, one in each state, and conditions like the civil war era conditions re-emerged; for example, we passed a US Constitutional amendment that said “sex is determined by biology” and used military force to ensure that states protected women’s spaces and the people of the Pacific Ocean states all said “Nope! We ain’t having it, we’re out of this United States thing.”
Or in reverse, there was a Constitutional Amendment that effectively said “Gender is a state of mind” and the federal government used military force to ensure anyone who called themselves a woman could enter women’s spaces and the people of the states opposed to such an idea we’re like “No! We ain’t having that”.
Wouldn’t the entire purpose of the militias in these cases be to engage against the use of federal force by whatever interpreted definition of “tyrannical” these local militias were using?
I mean as I understand it, the entire point of their existence is, by definition, as a “just in case” check against the federal government’s use of force.
I’m a huge 2A advocate for exactly this reason, and I would like to see more of these kinds of community social groups.
Here I’m looking to understand what the intended guidelines in this policy are to figure out what general conditions need to be true for us to start shooting bullets at federal law enforcement and military units?
I’ve not been able to find anything that says this…
Everything I’ve understood about the National Guard says that it is “more or less” federally funded and Army trained but State controlled. I’m not super versed on this obviously, but my mental image has always been that the National Guard is a moral equivalent to a State’s militia/Army and voluntary enrollment.
It appears that the only two entities with the authority to “activate” the National Guard are Governors and Presidents (Presidents are very special cases, and generally speaking the President requests of the Governor the use of National Guard troops).
Title 32 enables the federal funding of the National Guard to keep them trained and ready but not under the command of the President (who commands the Army). While there is a National Guard Bureau with a Chief that is part of the Army and is a member of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, the function of the Chief is primarily to keep the National Guard in a state of readiness while inactive and is not authorized to “command” the National Guard.
That the NG members only report to their state’s chain of command, which I thought terminated with the Governor.
This description of the NG seems to my eye exceedingly close to your description of the state militia, a state controlled militarized force that is well organized and can be activated in times of need…
There are some other policies on this site that also advocate for compulsory inclusion of citizens (usually male only, but not always) in the Armed Services. I bring up the idea of directing those citizens to the National Guard instead of the typical standing federal military branches to prevent our uncontrollable war-monger political class from getting millions of compulsory bodies to go fight in these stupid foreign wars but still get the benefits of civic duty, organizing, and patriotism you described.
I don’t exactly understand how you’re making a distinction here…
They are also made up of “the people” and local citizens of the areas they serve.
But my main point about LE is that all the jurisdictions you mentioned for use of the militia have overlap with current LE or the NG so I don’t see the distinction of when you would use LE/NG and when you would use the militia for the same intended purposes?
All organized institutions are corruptible.
I guarantee you within a generation or two at the most, the militia, assuming it has any real meaning in society, will be a target for corrupting just like all other institutions that were established “for the people’s benefit”. It’s the nature of the beast.
I would like to think, as I’ve mentioned before, that each state have control over such groups as a militia, to the point of having a state run office similar to the DoD with oversight. That said, you clearly cannot stop the actions of every lunatic out their who thinks he/she is a cat, or a catawba worm, can you?
No, there has to be common sense leadership and discipline in such a force or it’s just another bunch of armed people with no direction.
Check out this FAQ from the National Guard’s website:
https://www.nationalguard.mil/About-the-Guard/Army-National-Guard/Resources/News/ARNG-Media/FileId/137011/
Second sentence:
It is also the organized militia of 54 separate entities: the 50 states, the territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.
This is not meant in any kind of a gotcha way at all because I had genuinely never looked this deeply into it, but it seems my original generalized understanding is correct, our National Guard services are exactly what is being requested here, a formalized state-run militia.
So the real question in my mind would then be, why don’t we all, as citizens, clearly know and understand this?
That each soldier holds positions in the state NG and U.S. Army or U.S. Air Force, is interesting. I would assume this is for access to military bases and training purposes and perhaps to bring them under the legal jurisdiction of the federal military police. Maybe that’s not so good a thing? I don’t know enough about it to say.
The dual mission, a provision of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Code of laws, results in each Soldier holding membership in both the National Guard of his or her state and in the U.S. Army or the U.S. Air Force.
The governor of each state is commander-in-chief of the National Guard in their state during peacetime (includes the Army NG and Air NG) through the state adjutant general. The adjutant general is appointed by the governor. The adjutant general is the de facto commander of the state’s military forces. This might change if we go into wartime.
What would a state office do that is different from the current state controlled National Guard? Is the idea for each state to, for example, set their own training standards? Should each state be funding military research like the DoD? Is it that any structural mixing with the existing Armed Forces or leveraging of training resources from them is largely inappropriate? Is it that the President has any authority whatsoever to co-opt command of the National Guard (presumably in times of war)?
I know someone else asked this, but who is paying for the state run militia?
Currently the federal government pays for the National Guard and the NG Chief, Army Director, and AF Director ensures that it stands ready which I believe standardizes the practices and performance levels of the National Guard across all the states.
I’m assuming each state would then decide how much of their GDP they would spend on the militia, or individual citizens would be responsible for its funding (like a local club), creating a huge disparity between states like Texas and Florida which I think would value such an institution and states like Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York which would likely resent such spending.
I obviously wasn’t asking about individuals, we already have that risk today, I’m asking what are the conditions, general guidelines, the militia would be used to resist federal force (which is the primary “just in case” reason given for this militia to exist). Who/How is deciding what an “unacceptable level of tyranny” is/means?
I’m asking because I’m trying to determine why/how the militia shouldn’t be viewed as a standing military force whose members are trained to consider it their personal duty to be prepared and stand ready to resist the federal forces of “tyranny”…
If the militia is run by a state office, then I assume that office would decide when too much tyranny has occurred, and that most likely would mean that, more or less, the governor decides. So the conditions for activating the militia to resist federal force would seem to be when the governor believes that federal force should be resisted? That unless the Governor has made such a call, action by the militia would be, in most circumstances, unjustified.
I think the NG is really close to the presented vision, perhaps tweaking some of the NG structural details is a better policy objective? Maybe the state simply needs to have more visible NG recruitment offices or visible presence at citizen meetings?
We could make service in the National Guard compulsory which I believe would accomplish many the stated goals.
The NG has 8 levels terminating at the governor.
The NG is administered by the existing federal Armed Services (Army and Air), I believe as a means of alleviating the state of the more mundane aspects of keeping the NG well-regulated (which I believe the individual states would ultimately shirk their duty on) and standardizing the funding resources across the many states and territories.
Maybe this hybrid structure could be used as some kind of surreptitious means intended to undermine the readiness of the NG to empower federal “tyranny”, but at least on its surface, I see this organization structure as a surprisingly efficient and good allocation of training resources and other more mundane management duties to ensure each of the state’s NG militia remains in good shape.
Here is a simple video, very short, if you’d like something longer I can provide that as well. There is an understandable misconception about this topic as a whole, for the most comprehensive treatise on the subject that exists today I would refer you to the following link.
“The Militia of the several states” are not subject to “foreign adventures” so funding them would be a lot easier than funding the NG. On top of that, as the United States withdraws from the global order our federal tax burden would be able to lessen significantly and some of that could remain in the states to fund actual homeland security. this also ignores the fact that monetary policy needs to move back to the treasury department and not in the hands of international bankers.