I'd say off the top of my head these militia would be led by the people who formed the militia in the first place. You could require the people who start the milita (same way you do with corporations) to have a 'board' in order to be legally recognized. Each member of the board could be further required to pass background checks, etc. same as you are supposed to do in order to own guns now.
To answer your other question:
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia#21st_Century:_Federally-organized_or_not)
I would believe that Militias would either fall under congressional authority or state authority. Militias are meant to respond to a 'threat' but are 'unorganized'. So I would imagine that the main thing would be alerting a militia to the threat and then providing for coordinated response to that threat. So its not like you'd have dudes running around with guns 24/7 because they belong to a militia.
I would say that you'd have to create a 'threat level' assessment in order to regulate what types of equipment can be mobilized at a specific juncture that would depend on the type of threat we are talking about.
The main thing for me is that potentially (and the reason we need militias) is that there may be a time when the 'threat' is our own government and its military. Housing the hardware to wage a revolution if necessary and actually using it are two different issues.
Its hard to answer: Are they considered criminals...when we are talking about normal times. during normal times when responding to an 'external' threat..with external defined as a threat to us as a nation...then id answer...no. But during chaotic revolutionary times when the militia is serving is final purpose of overthrowing an oppressive regime then id say yes...but being a 'criminal' doesn't necessarily make you wrong to fight for your own freedom which is kinda the whole point.
Thus I think we need to be able to organize a means to allow these so-called 'gun nuts' to have access to as much hardware as they can afford because ultimately that is our last line of defense against our own government. In terms of types of hardware they are allowed to have I personally would say yes to planes, tanks, bombs, etc. probably only stopping at WMDs with the caveat that the more destructive the hardware you have access to the more stringent the regulations you fall under during normal times.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2010 06:30AM by Moligant.