Quote Originally Posted by HardToHandle View Post
Respectfully, the term “National Guard” is nowhere in the Constitution. They operate under the militia concepts of the constitution. As we all know, the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act effectively bars federal troops from any law enforcement mission.

And let me assure you, getting the Guard out for an active shooter would be clown show extraordinaire. A few years back, I had a one-star dual hatted Joint Task Force commander tell me “I will never ever authorize my soldiers to carry weapons inside the US”. I paraphrased his response back to him and asked him to repeat it, which he did verbatim.

There are some limited cases, such as a shooter on Guard base, where scenarios could play out differently. Those are scenarios where established ROEs exist, lawyers have sold off on it and likely Governors have provided delegated authorities. That means only in Red States.

Anyone who expects the Guard to provide any meaningful assistance is at best wholly uninformed. It would be faster to ask another country for assistance.
That's only because the guard has been gutted of its original purpose as the militia, and has been reduced to simply being an auxiliary of the active duty army. The intent is that the militia is supposed to be a domestic force for domestic matters, that can in times of war be called up and used as a standing army to repel invasions. They are supposed to have a monopoly on the use of force by the government in all domestic matters.

Don't you think it's curious that we rely on the guard for other, non military domestic affairs, like disaster relief, but not for the very things that the constitution prescribes? It's not a matter of the guard not having a capability, or not being able to develop that capability, it's a matter of the federal government wanting its own door kickers who aren't your neighbors, and who aren't beholden to local and state commanders.

The reason the founders gave the militia a monopoly on the use of government force was so that the federal government couldn't run roughshod over the states. Take for example the states that have neutralized the NFA without effect, because they can't stop federal police from conducting unconstitutional raids on state soil. That is exactly the kind of thing that this system was there to prevent. It was also intended to distribute force, such that the only people authorized to order its use were by definition your local leaders. In effect, your friends and neighbors. The people you sit next to in church, the people your kids play little league with, etc. The governors and local militia commanders had to live and eat in the same locales where they were going to be ordering any triggers pulled, so they had to walk a very straight and narrow path. Now the orders are given from on high, by people in the federal government, who have zero accountability on a local level. And the triggers are pulled by largely anonymous people from all over the country, who can simply go into hiding after the fact, like the notorious Horiuchi. They can come in and do the fed's dirty work, and then just walk away. Vs. the original militia, who would have had to look those people in the eye when they went to church every Sunday.