This just in: Florida Militia is a [gasp] militia

[Hawkmoon]

https://dnyuz.com/2023/07/15/turmoil-in-floridas-new-state-guard-as-some-recruits-quit/

Governor DeSantis decided to reactivate the Florida State Guard, and now people are upset that it's a military-style organization. What's astonishing (and profoundly disappointing) to me is that former military officers apparently don't understand that state guards are military organizations. They are essentially the junior varsity to the National Guard. In my state, the State Guard units train with the National Guard at the same training base, and they train to either work with the NG if the NG is here, or to operate in lieu of the NG if the NG has been called up for federal deployment.

And that's one of the features of state guards. They aren't the National Guard, so they can't be federalized and deployed overseas.

For former military to complain about a state guard being too military is distressing.

[RocketMan]

For former military to complain about a state guard being too military is distressing just stupid.

FIFY

Note that I didn't say "ignorant".

[dogmush]

I don't hang with the FL Nasty Girls very much, but a bunch of the Reserve units that I work with were up at Camp Blanding while the State Guard was running one of their classes.

I was told from witnesses that the Guardsman doing it were running it like a bad take on Full Metal Jacket's boot camp.  Lots of screaming and cussing, little substantive training.  One data point from a couple guys watching them run a confidence course.  Take that for what it's worth.

[WLJ]

For former military to complain about a state guard being too military is distressing.

Nowadays that could merely mean they have a low CEI score

[Pb]

The article said 20% quit or were kicked out.  That seems pretty low for a volunteer organization. 

[HankB]

The article said 20% quit or were kicked out.  That seems pretty low for a volunteer organization.

. . . some recruits complaining that what was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to participate in marching drills . . .

A friend of mine was a CAP - Civil Air Patrol - cadet during his youth. He originally joined up to learn about aviation (he eventually became a commercial pilot) but during his CAP "training" he said they did nothing - NOTHING! - related to aviation, all they did was learn how to march. So he - and most of the others in his group - eventually quit in disgust. The last straw was when the leader of the group answered the question "When are we going to learn something related to aviation" by making that day's "training" session calisthenics.