Most Americans today have forgotten what the Founders meant by the militia—and that loss of understanding was something they explicitly warned against.

In 1788, George Mason asked a simple but profound question: “Who are the militia?” His answer was equally clear: “They consist of the whole people, except a few public officers.” To the Founding generation, the militia was not a government program, not a uniform, and not a standing army. It was the people themselves.

The Founders deeply distrusted standing armies. History had shown them that professional, centralized military forces inevitably become tools of power rather than servants of the people. As Joseph Warren warned in 1775, standing armies are always dangerous to liberty—not sometimes, not only under tyrants, but always.

Instead, the Founders believed liberty depended on an armed and trained citizenry. James Madison called a well-regulated militia the antidote to standing armies, while Patrick Henry insisted that every man be armed. This was not rhetoric—it was a foundational principle of a free society.

During the ratification debates, Anti-Federalists raised a critical concern: if government controlled who was armed, it could render the militia useless by disarming the people. George Mason’s warning proved prophetic. In 1903, the Militia Act formally divided the militia into an “organized” force—the National Guard—and an “unorganized” one: everyone else.

What was once the whole people became a select force, exactly as the Founders feared.

The militia was never meant to belong to the state. It was meant to be a condition of liberty itself. The Founders trusted the people, not power, and they warned that once that responsibility was surrendered, it would not be easily reclaimed.

The militia was never them.

It was always us.