The Militias We Stopped Talking About

Wishing you and yours a very pleasant Memorial Day!

I hope we're approaching a time when we can celebrate it without the disdain, frustration, embarrassment, and outright abuse our own government has been inflicting on its citizens. We've earned more than this. We've also let our greatness lull us into a false sense of safety, and some are more than happy to fill that void.

It will get better. We will come out of this stronger. And wiser.

A few years ago, illegal paramilitary militias were widely described by federal law enforcement as one of the most serious domestic security threats in the United States. The FBI repeatedly warned about anti-government extremist groups, armed militias, and politically motivated violence. News stories were common. Congressional hearings were held. Arrests made headlines.

Then something curious happened.

We stopped hearing about them.

That silence does not mean the militias disappeared. It means the story changed.

Today I saw a news piece: "War widens as Israeli and US planes pound Iran and Tehran and its proxies hit back"

Iran is attacked by a foreign enemy. Militias respond in defense of their homeland. That is how militias are supposed to function historically.

In the United States, too many private militias have turned inward, seeing their own government as the enemy. Instead of national defense, they reflect a toxic subculture of anti-government extremism.

A militia that prepares to fight its own country is not a defense force. It is something else entirely.

The Quiet Threat

By 2024 and 2025, federal assessments still categorized militia-style extremists under the broader heading of domestic violent extremism, a category that includes anti-government groups and individuals who believe violence against the state is justified.

Security experts continued to warn that domestic extremism posed a greater day-to-day risk than foreign terrorism.

But public attention faded.

Large groups stopped marching as openly. Fewer armed demonstrations made national headlines. The big militia names that dominated the news after January 6 became less visible.

It looked like the problem had gone away.

It hadn't.

From Organizations to Individuals

One major change is structural.

Earlier militia movements often organized in visible groups with leadership hierarchies, training events, and public messaging. Today, the movement is more fragmented.

Instead of large organizations, analysts increasingly describe:

• Small independent cells

• Loosely affiliated networks

• Individuals radicalized online

• Informal local groups

This makes the threat harder to track and easier to overlook.

When there is no central organization, there is nothing obvious for the public to notice.

But decentralized movements can be more unpredictable than organized ones.

Less Attention Does Not Mean Less Risk

Another reason militias faded from the headlines is that government priorities appear to have shifted.

Some federal programs that monitored domestic extremism have been reduced or reorganized. Staffing and resources directed at domestic terrorism investigations have reportedly declined.

This does not necessarily mean the threat is gone.

It means fewer public briefings, fewer press releases, and fewer visible investigations.

In other words, less noise does not equal less danger.

Anti-Government Extremism Remains

The core ideology that drives militia movements has not disappeared.

Militia movements historically form around a belief that the federal government is illegitimate or tyrannical. That worldview still exists and in some cases has spread more widely than before.

Ironically, the less visible militias become, the more their ideas may blend into broader political culture.

Formal organizations may shrink while the mindset survives.

History suggests this pattern is common. Extremist movements often become less visible before they reappear in new forms.

Private militias made sense in the 18th century, when the United States had no real standing army.

They became obsolete once America developed a professional military and especially after the National Guard was created as the official organized militia.

Today the United States already has what the Constitution envisioned: a trained militia under civilian control.

Private militias are not a necessity. They are a leftover idea from a country that no longer exists.

To make it painfully clear to these groups and to Americans at large:

Once the National Guard became the constitutional militia, private militias became unconstitutional. Illegal.

The Constitution authorizes militias under government authority, not private armies acting on their own. This is reflected in the Second Amendment itself:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

For most of American history, the Second Amendment was understood as supporting a well regulated militia under public authority, not independent armed groups. Courts, historians, and legal scholars generally treated it as a civic responsibility tied to national defense.

That interpretation began to change in the late twentieth century. Beginning in the 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s and 1990s, political movements and gun-rights organizations promoted a new interpretation that emphasized an individual right to bear arms independent of militia service. This shift was partly a reaction to social unrest, distrust of government after Vietnam and Watergate, and fears of federal overreach.

Advocacy groups funded research, legal arguments, and public campaigns to promote this view. Over time, the new interpretation moved from political activism into legal theory and eventually into court decisions.

The result was a major historical shift: the Second Amendment increasingly came to be understood as an individual right rather than primarily a framework for a regulated militia.

But the Constitution still provides for militias under government authority. It does not authorize private armies acting on their own initiative.

Then the NRA under Wayne LaPierre lost its damned mind. What happened to him and the NRA? 

When people say “the NRA under Wayne LaPierre lost its damned mind,” they’re usually talking about two different things that happened at the same time:

1. A political and ideological shift

2. A leadership and corruption collapse

Both are real — and together they explain what happened.

A New York jury found LaPierre liable for financial mismanagement and misuse of millions of dollars, ordering him to repay large sums. For wealth and power, he weaponized the NRA using and abusing the 2nd Amendment. 

He resigned in 2024 shortly before the trial began.

A court later banned him from NRA leadership for ten years.

This is going on in our government today with toxic conservatism running amuck. 

It is the same pattern that can be seen again today under POTUS 47, Donald Trump...a convicted felon, long associated with criminal investigations, and an increasingly autocratic political figure. He has also been found liable in court for sexual abuse, and further revelations may yet emerge regarding his associations and the Epstein investigations.

We are seeing the presidency used in ways that test constitutional limits, while a Republican-controlled Congress largely falls in line with his agenda rather than acting as an independent check on executive power.

The result is a level of corruption and concentration of power unprecedented in modern American history.

The Real Question

The real question is not whether militias exist.

They do.

The real question is whether we are paying attention.

Only a few years ago, illegal paramilitary groups were described as one of the leading domestic threats facing the United States.

Today, they receive far less attention.

But quiet movements do not necessarily mean peaceful ones.

Sometimes it just means they are preparing.

Something Worth Watching

Illegal militias occupy a strange space in American law and culture. Many states prohibit private paramilitary activity, yet armed groups continue to organize in gray areas of legality.

They do not disappear simply because the news cycle moves on.

If anything, history suggests that movements ignored too long tend to return in unexpected ways.

The militias we stopped talking about may still be there.

And that may be exactly the point.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of  Claude AI 

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JZ Murdock is a retired Senior Technical Writer/IT administrator, and an active award-winning author/ filmmaker, documentarian, and writer based in Bremerton, Washington. 

He publishes commentary on the state of things at murdockinations.com and on his creative works over at Substack. He also posts on Slasher.com on the horror genre.

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