Ninety-five percent of the time that shibboleth is only being mindlessly parroted to demonstrate that the poster is a member of the ARFCOM cognoscenti.  Ignore it.

ETA: But to your question: IMO, any weapon that would function reliably with a milspec BCG and at least a semi-auto FCG would be acceptable.

Bring what you have - including your own ammo.

If you are trying to have a well regulated militia, you should have racks of rifles and boxes of loaded mags to hand out. Can’t train them if they show up with their grand pappy’s shotgun. If you don’t have the resources to supply rifles, then setting a standardized caliber that will be supplied makes sense. Mags and caliber makes more sense but it all depends on available resources.

If you’re suddenly facing an aggressive Canadian invasion force and need to call on all able bodied citizens, you have them bring what they have and try to have a supply of every major caliber.

Depends what your definition of "just fine" is.  Putting up with an occupying army for decades while you wait for them to get bored and go home, and accepting that you will be crushed if you stand and fight, isn't my idea of just fine.  Also, while some of those guys are using 100 year old rifles, plenty have more modern small arms.  And RPGs.  And Chinese 107mm rockets.

Bring your own ammo sounds good until you realize that a man can only carry so much, and when that runs out the 20,000 round ammo fort and reloading bench he left behind in his basement won't do him much good.  Remember, the militia is legally subject to service anywhere in the US, and to a limited extent abroad if repelling invasions includes crossing into enemy territory.  You would show up with a basic load and get resupplied  from state or federal stocks.

5.56 and stanag mags.

The point of the militia clauses in the constitution and the militia acts passed in accordance with them was to avoid the scenario in bold by having the militia organized, trained, and equipped to a reasonable standard before an immediate threat presents itself.

The only thing I have that uses g19 magazines is a Ruger PCC-9.
All my full size handguns use .45ACP mags like the military issued for many decades. Here are two that we got from the CMP

I prefer Springfields,  Remingtons, and Eddystones .

Didn’t Hamilton cover this in Federalist 29?


"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.”

What’s wrong with private militias if they’re not politically active/radical, are only active during disasters (natural or otherwise) and are safely and well trained? I never understood why a citizens militia is so controversial other than the radical militias from the 90s.

The Feds are the ones that passed the laws that resulted in States doing away with militias.  Most States were not willing to fund both voluntarily.  Those that did ended up better off, though, when WWI came around and the States lost all of their NG, but many ended up needing to use them.  They had military forces they could use immediately, while other States had to try to reconstitute their militias.  Still, Federal conscription decimated the ranks of the militia and deprived it of its best men, and the Feds also seized State arms for the militia to equip Federal troops being raised.  Some States had decided to get the latest and had M1903 Springfields, and the Feds seized these and gave them trapdoor Springfields and a smaller number of Mosin-Nagants instead.  Of course, these days, getting the States to fund a substantial militia without a Federal mandate is unlikely; we've been so long without it.  The NGAUS has also lobbied hard against any effort to revive State militias; they are the ones that lobbied Congress to create the NG in the first place.

There are a lot of folks here who think the "constitutional militia" is a bunch of private entities or the people spontaneously organizing while armed, and at least one person who has posted here has made claims that during the colonial and revolutionary era that this was true as well, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Some people are very invested in this idea.  The closest were independently chartered militia units (at least a couple of which still exist today in New England), but these still operated under a charter granted by their respective State (which could be revoked for cause), and were subject to service to the civil authorities.  The reality is that the utility of a bunch of disparate armed rabble is pretty limited.

One 20" bbl with a full wooden stock,  single shot .22 LR rifle with iron sights of any commonly available make and one 50 ct box of .22LR standard velocity shells, again of any commonly available make.

I think you might get more support for reestablishing State militias than getting rid of the biggest, most foundational Federal gun control laws.  I won't assume the NFA is gone in this context, but I think amendments in the spirit of a militia project could pass in conjunction with it.

Issued arms would not present any NFA issues since ownership is by the State, and the persons possessing the arms would be authorized to do so.  But to allow them to be kept after service, or for the public to buy much of anything surplus more modern than a Garand would require some changes.  At least for issued arms, the other option (that might find more appeal) is for the weapons to be semi-auto but have a DIAS issued for actual service.

Crew-served weapons, HE, heavy weapons, and other non-personal equipment would be in armories and caches.  I think you want some of that stuff (man-portable, anyways) in caches in case of internal conflict where the Feds might try to seize armories, or there is some occupying force that needs to be engaged and takes the armories (really only a significant threat in our colonies in Pacific Asia; the colonies should have militias as well).



The National Guard isn't a militia at all, despite the wording in the law.  It lacks the character and composition of a militia, and also may be Federalized for pretty much any purpose and the Feds have the ultimate say in who its officers are.  The National Guard is a dual State-Federal reserve army.  The concept was for it to be the national reserve force to augment the Regular Army when needed, while still being able to perform State duties traditionally performed by militias.  This replaced the Volunteer System used to augment the Army in wartime, which posed issues throughout its existence, through the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection.  The fact that it's a reserve army is how the Feds get around the constitutional limitations on the use of the militia and the protections of State authority in the Constitution.  The militia is a separate entity, and the majority of States have one, but they are all very small (the all-volunteer nature combined with the far great prestige of the Federal military is a huge part of why; State's willingness to fund larger forces is another big reason for this) and most are either mostly or entirely unarmed, and only a handful have components with any type of combat-oriented mission (most notably Alaska, which has its militia complete armed and even issues them machine guns for training and service; I've seen 1919s, M-60s, and M-2s in photos of them training).  Current Federal law prohibits the President from calling the State militia into Federal service for any of the three reasons listed in the Constitution (which requires Congressional authorization by law for the same).

Unless the Constitution is amended to provide a mechanism by which militia units can be Federalized temporarily into the equivalent of the old Volunteer units as part of a wartime/emergency army, something like the National Guard would still need to exist.  A national reserve force is still needed, especially with the size of the Regular Army today.



Yes, the concept was universal obligation, where all able-bodied male citizens (and some other residents) within the specified age ranges (16-18 on the low end, usually, and 45-80 on the high end, depending on the State and period, including more recent periods) without a legitimate exemption were required to serve.  The last State to practice and enforce this was South Carolina, which practiced it through the Civil War and had it ended in the process of rejoining the Union.  It was already the last by the time of the secession crisis.  In earlier periods, enforcement was nearly universal, but the decline of the militia eroded this concept a lot in practice.

Such universal obligation works in smaller populations (and may even be necessary with small enough populations).  The issue that makes it impractical today is our large population, even taking into account the increasing percentage that are no longer able-bodied.  Universal obligation would result in possibly tens of millions of militiamen.  There is no way the money will be there to arm, equip, and train that many people.  No State would be willing or able to fund that, even with the reduced personnel costs associated with militias using certain models (like the Swiss one, which made personnel costs a fraction of what our Federal military incurs), and it's way too much for the Feds, too, for any significant length of time.  It's also not necessary to have that many militiamen for the militia to be effective in its missions.

If true universal obligation is impractical, which it is, then we have to look at other options, and the next best is selection and volunteering, with everything else filled in by the lottery, with universal male obligation still being the case by law in the sense that all are potentially liable to serve, but with only a percentage actually being required to do so in practice, with the rest still subject to conscription in an emergency (the "unorganized militia").

I get the issue with what the Founders called "select militia", but I think a lottery would help preserve the popular character of the militia, since it would be random, and the militia would still represent an array of people from different towns and cities, different region, different classes or walks of life, etc.

In terms of size, I would say the combat arms of the land component of the first two militia tiers as described above should be numerically at least three times the size of the entire State NG and a share of the purely Federal land forces (regular and reserve) proportional to the proportion of the State's population to the national population.  Combat support and service and support units would be numerically whatever is necessary to support the combat arms.  3rd tier's size would be dependent upon the sizes of the other two tiers, since they feed it as members age.  You want a size that can be useful as a deterrent to Federal usurpation or tyranny, as well as to fight it, while still remaining reasonable.

Air component should be sized relative to the other components, but costs might well limit its size and capability to where it's smaller than ideal.  The Rhodesian Air Force, while a regular air force, does provide some example of how a small air force with limited funds and ability to buy things it needs can get by and be effective for at least some purposes.

The majority of States would have a need for, and be required to have, a naval militia.  Emphasis on conscription and recruitment should be mariners, discharged naval personnel, and others with relevant skills and experience, and could have a Marine sub-component.  Mariners and the like not conscripted would be enrolled in a naval unorganized militia, and pilots, aviation mechanics, and the like could probably be put into an air version.  The size of the naval component would be dependent upon the needs of each State due to the variance in coastlines, navigable rivers, etc., but it would need to be enough to be useful.  Authorization to possess warships would need to be granted, and maybe some clarification that any combatant considered a "boat" (like a missile boat or gunboat), or any auxiliary or service vessel, would not be treated as a warship requiring authorization from Congress.

4th and 5th tiers combined, the "unorganized", would constitute the entirety of the rest of the able-bodied male fighting-age citizen population (plus some others).  This is the pool from which more men could be drawn in an emergency.

Israelis don't use a militia system.

The Cold War era Swiss system would be much better to emulate.  George Washington tried to get Congress to emulate an earlier form of it (specific to the Canton of Bern), but Congress balked and only went so far as the militia act from the 1790s of which many of us are aware.

His view was not universal, nor necessarily correct.  Some parts of it are more relevant today, particularly the inability to afford to discipline the entire male populace.  It's just not feasible now.  It would have been, then, but definitely is not today.

However, his view also does not preclude disciplining a portion of the population of sufficient size to be useful, while only requiring the people at large to be properly armed and equipped.

It should be noted that Hamilton was hostile to the notion of militias, especially under State control.  If he had gotten his way, there would have been no more militia and there might not even have been anymore States, with provinces based on new borders created instead.  He was a proponent of a highly centralized government, but preferred what the Constitutional Convention approved considerably over the status quo under the Articles of Confederation.

There is some great conversation here about the militia and national guard.

Some historical articles:

How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution



The American Militia and the Origin of Conscription: A Reassessment

The Swiss militia have long been a model, but the Finnish militia are also interesting to look at.  The initial concept for the IDF was based off the Swiss militia, but altered to cope with the immediate security needs that Israeli faces.  One key component was teaching school kids hand-to-hand fighting (i.e. Krav Maga).  That worked big time to build fighting spirit.  The Singapore army is also worth looking at.  The Israeli's gave Singapore substantial assistance in setting their military up



I'm thinking a key component would be high school education

Australia's militia, which lasted into the Cold War era, also involved instructing boys starting at age 12 as part of the preparatory training for militia service once conscripted into it, that way by the time they were of age, they'd already have a good portion of their training complete.  The Australian units that fought in Europe and the Near East during WWI were products of the Australian militia system.  They essentially came from its ranks.