[r9etb]

You are correct......the Founders viewed a standing army as a threat to liberty. The memory of the British soldiers in their midst was fresh....and the second amendment was written as it was "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." to recognize the fact that the common defense was to be provided by the whole of the people.

And the hard, hard lesson of the First World War was that lack of a standing army made timely mobilization impossible when large bodies of troops were required. We were lucky, in that war, that we had 9+ months to assemble our troops (who were dismally short of armaments, it must be remembered).

The idea of not having a standing army is fine, so long as one is never seriously threatened by another nation which does have a standing army. To fail to establish a standing army in such cases is to commit suicide.

[Shalom Israel]

And the hard, hard lesson of the First World War was that lack of a standing army made timely mobilization impossible when large bodies of troops were required.

Just an observation: if every capable citizen, male and female, is armed, then there's no "mobilization" required. It's true that it would be impossible to go around invading other countries without assembling an army, though...