[jyl]

The militia of 200 years ago was a group of armed citizens who would come together as an organized military force to defend their state in times of crisis. Back then, the state was the primary political, military, and economic entity, the federal government was small and weak and many wanted it to stay that way. They still remembered the tyranny of the English king.

(Quite different from today's imperial Presidency, with the Administration and its tame lawyers asserting the inherent right to do whatever it likes - torture, imprison, spy, whatver - even if it violates our law, and showing no particular interest in states' rights. I think the founding fathers would view Bush/Cheney as a close cousin to the English monarchs of their day.)

Anyway, I suppose that, looking around at today's USA, each State's National Guard might be the closest thing that we have to the old "militia". So, as judges and scholars and activists try to make the centuries-old words of the Second Amendment mean something in today's reality, some will point to the Nat'l Guard.

It is kind of silly, I think. As the Constitution gets older and older, there will be inevitably be some bit of it that becomes obsolete - without any real application to the USA of 2007, or 2207. We've rewritten or amended away the obsolete bits about slavery and emancipation, but other bits haven't gotten such attention.