“As long as our Government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending; and so long as it is worth defending a patriotic militia will cover it with an impenetrable aegis. Partial injuries and occasional mortifications we may be subjected to, but a million of armed freemen, possessed of the means of war, can never be conquered by a foreign foe.” Andrew Jackson, 1829
And James Monroe:
“But it ought always to be held prominently in view that the safety of these States and of everything dear to a free people must depend in an eminent degree on the militia. Invasions may be made too formidable to be resisted by any land and naval force which it would comport either with the principles of our Government or the circumstances of the United States to maintain. In such cases recourse must be had to the great body of the people….” James Monroe, 1817
Both of these are from their respective inaugural speeches, so they thought it to be pretty important.
The militia is not a federal army even when employed in federal service. The Army of the United States is exclusively a federal institution, raised, maintained, and governed directly and exclusively by the federal power...
The militia is not a part of the "land forces" of the United States which Congress may govern and regulate under clause 14, section 8, Article 1, of the Constitution, for special provision is made for the government of such part of it as may be employed in the service of the United States in clause 16 of the same section. Neither is the militia a part of the "land forces" of the United States as the term is used in the Fifth Amendment, which excepts cases arising in such forces from the requirement of grand jury proceedings; for, in addition, the exception is expressly made applicable to the militia, when in actual service, in time of war or public danger. It is not a part of the Army of the United States of which the Constitution makes the President Commander-in-Chief;[30] for the same clause expressly makes him Commander-in-Chief also of "the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States." It is primarily a state and citizen soldiery rather than a national and professional soldiery. It is primarily a state institution. The United States has only a limited control over it for the limited purposes expressed by the Constitution. It cannot be used, therefore, as a national soldiery for the general military purposes. Its federal use as such is limited to home service.[31] The course of legislation and judicial decision has always marked the distinction.[32](p.479)
The National Guard, then, is organized militia placed in a special federal status....Is the National Guard still but the militia of the several states subject only to the limited constitutional use of the federal government, or is it indeed an army of the United States over which the power of Congress is unlimited? The question is fundamental, and though it received scant consideration in Congress, it may be expected to persist, if not to plague. I do no more than suggest the query with its train of constitutional difficulties, whichever way it be looked at....The act is prickly with doubt, and it is not over-cautious to say that it will be a long time before judicial authority will have shown the way of handling it with assurance.
The militia, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, is all of the citizens (or at least men) of this country who are able to pick up a weapon and fight with it. I would include women in this category, as society's understanding of the role of women has changed a great deal in the last 200 years. The National Guard, which the liberal gun-grabbers would like to be the Constitutional militia (so as to deny non-members the RKBA), is a creature of the federal government and therefore cannot be the militia. The case of Perpich v. Dept. of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990), clearly ruled that this was the case, since Congress may authorize members of the National Guard of the United States to be ordered to active federal duty for purposes of training outside the United States without either the consent of a State Governor or the declaration of a national emergency.
The collective reading of the 2nd Amendment is as dead as someone who has ingested a fatal dose of poison. It only remains for the fact to be revealed, just as the victim of a poisoning needs only to die to prove the fact of murder.