Bloomberg Leaves Republican Party

[Darth Wong]

The point here is that they were not just a bunch of guys who grabbed their rifles off the gun rack and decided to fight the power.

[Patrick Degan]

Militias will never defeat armies

This is why some backwoods guys with rifles were able to found the USA and fight off one of, if not the most powerful country in the world at that time. Most of those that did the fighting in the American Revolution were state militias. Even the Continental Army regulars were mostly just farmers that had armed themselves and fought back. And they succeeded.

The militias were far more than just "backwoods guys with guns". It's also fact that without professional leadership (Washington, Layfayette, Kosciosko, Greene), training (VonSteuben), and foreign backing (France and Holland), the Continentials would have lost the war. Even as it was they almost lost the war.

So much for mythology.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Militias will never defeat armies

This is why some backwoods guys with rifles were able to found the USA and fight off one of, if not the most powerful country in the world at that time. Most of those that did the fighting in the American Revolution were state militias. Even the Continental Army regulars were mostly just farmers that had armed themselves and fought back. And they succeeded.

The militias were far more than just "backwoods guys with guns". It's also fact that without professional leadership (Washington, Layfayette, Kosciosko, Greene), training (VonSteuben), and foreign backing (France and Holland), the Continentials would have lost the war. Even as it was they almost lost the war.

So much for mythology.

France, the Dutch Republic, and the Spanish Empire.

[CmdrWilkens]

Do people ever actually beleive the Continental Army was a militia? Christ, what stupidity. It was led by a war hero and officer of the French-Indian War.

Aside of whether the Continental Army counted a regular or militia army, it was certainly raised from militiamen, your logic here is flawed. A militia being lead by an officer of the regular military is still a militia.

Yet the "Militia" was not simply a collection of all the guys over 18 who could stand straight with a rifle in hands. With varrying degrees across the colonies (and later within the states) they were trained in drill and weapons handling, able to move in formaiton and accept commands just as with any profesional military organization. The difference was that outside of New England (and Massachucetes in paticular) this training tended to be half hearted compared with the kind of training the Continental Army would undergo. The exception to the rule was the "Minutemen" of Mass. who were trained to a precision edge near enough on par with British Regulars to the point that they held their firing line in Lexington and then assembled an actual manuever force at Concord. Simply put the minutemen were about as far from average joes as you can get without being a permanently uniformed soldier. Sam Adams tried to export the idea that they were all jsut average guys and it was part of the reason why the Continental Congress failed to authorize a larger regular Army expecting that EVERY band of militia would perform as well as the rather extensively trained Mass militias had.