As I have indicated in previous discussions, this is a misconstruction of original understanding, that "militia" mainly refers to an activity, defense activity, and only indirectly as those engaged in such activity, whether alone or in combination, under official direction or not. Look up the term in any Latin dictionary, and realize that the leading Founders were conversant with legal Latin.
What may be designated by statute is not "militia" in the broad sense, but a more restricted concept, "those who may be penalized for failing to respond to a militia call-up, especially an official call-up". Clearly, this defines a proper subset of the larger set of all those engaged in militia, who might be considered to have a moral duty to engage in militia without the penal sanction for failing to do so.
For more on this see http://www.constitution.org/cs_defen.htm, and particularly http://www.constitution.org/col/mil_inim.htm
If this distinction is understood and kept in mind, many of the confusions that infest these discussions can be avoided.
--Jon
J. N. Heath wrote:
On one hand, Congress holds the ultimate power to decide which citizens will be designated by statute as "militia." (See my article)
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