SCOTUS ruled on the “is the Second Amendment an individual or collective right” issue in Heller. Prior to that point, there’d been a lot of ink spilled over the phrasing prior to that point – and found that it was an individual right, that the Second Amendment didn’t restrict it to use in the context of a militia.
Also, aside from that, even had it been a collective right, it’s worth pointing out that “militia” in the language of the time was more expansive than, say, the modern-day National Guard.
The militia of the United States, as defined by the U.S. Congress, has changed over time. During colonial America, all able-bodied men of a certain age range were members of the militia, depending on each colony’s rule. Individual towns formed local independent militias for their own defense. The year before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, The Federalist Papers detailed the Founding Fathers’ paramount vision of the militia in 1787. The new Constitution empowered Congress to “organize, arm, and discipline” this national military force, leaving significant control in the hands of each state government.
If you look at the time, there were originally higher hopes for using the militia as a military unit. In the War of 1812, militia units performed pretty badly in an expeditionary force, like when invading Canada.
On the other hand, they did pretty well in some other contexts, like the Battle of New Orleans, when defending against a British attempt to cut off the Mississippi.
In practice, there’s been extremely limited situations where the militia has had to be used in a military context since then; the US has almost without exception been able to fight its wars abroad, using the regular military.
In World War I, Germany attempted to convince Mexico to invade the US. Mexico’s military considered it, and decided against it; one cited factor was that the civilian population was heavily armed.
Mexican President Venustiano Carranza assigned a military commission to assess the feasibility of the Mexican takeover of their former territories contemplated by Germany. The generals concluded that such a war was unwinnable for the following reasons:
Mexico was in the midst of a civil war, and Carranza’s position was far from secure. (Carranza himself was later assassinated in 1920.) Picking a fight with the United States would have prompted the U.S. to support one of his rivals.
The United States was far stronger militarily than Mexico was. Even if Mexico’s military forces had been completely united and loyal to a single government, no serious scenario existed under which it could have invaded and won a war against the United States. Indeed, much of Mexico’s military hardware of 1917 reflected only modest upgrades since the Mexican-American War 70 years before, which the U.S. had won.
The German government’s promises of “generous financial support” were very unreliable. It had already informed Carranza in June 1916 that it could not provide the necessary gold needed to stock a completely independent Mexican national bank. Even if Mexico received financial support, it would still need to purchase arms, ammunition, and other needed war supplies from the ABC nations (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), which would strain relations with them, as explained below.
Even if by some chance Mexico had the military means to win a conflict against the United States and to reclaim the territories in question, it would have had severe difficulty conquering and pacifying a large English-speaking population which had long enjoyed self-government and was better supplied with arms than were most other civilian populations.
Other foreign relations were at stake. The ABC nations had organized the Niagara Falls peace conference in 1914 to avoid a full-scale war between the United States and Mexico over the United States occupation of Veracruz. Mexico entering a war against the United States would strain relations with those nations.
So you could maybe make some argument for a deterrent effect, but in general, the US hasn’t really had to actively use the militia against external forces in a long time.
SCOTUS ruled on the “is the Second Amendment an individual or collective right” issue in Heller. Prior to that point, there’d been a lot of ink spilled over the phrasing prior to that point – and found that it was an individual right, that the Second Amendment didn’t restrict it to use in the context of a militia.
Also, aside from that, even had it been a collective right, it’s worth pointing out that “militia” in the language of the time was more expansive than, say, the modern-day National Guard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_(United_States)
If you look at the time, there were originally higher hopes for using the militia as a military unit. In the War of 1812, militia units performed pretty badly in an expeditionary force, like when invading Canada.
On the other hand, they did pretty well in some other contexts, like the Battle of New Orleans, when defending against a British attempt to cut off the Mississippi.
In practice, there’s been extremely limited situations where the militia has had to be used in a military context since then; the US has almost without exception been able to fight its wars abroad, using the regular military.
In World War I, Germany attempted to convince Mexico to invade the US. Mexico’s military considered it, and decided against it; one cited factor was that the civilian population was heavily armed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
So you could maybe make some argument for a deterrent effect, but in general, the US hasn’t really had to actively use the militia against external forces in a long time.