This question was inspired by a post on lemmy.zip about lowering the minimum age to purchase firearms in the US, and a lot of commeters brought up military service and training as a benchmark to normal civilians, and how if guns would be prevalent, then firearm training should be more common.
For reference, I live in the USA, where the minimum age to join the military is 18, but joining is, for the most part, optional. I also know some friends that have gone through the military, mostly for college benefits, and it has really messed them up. However, I have also met some friends from south korea, where I understand military service is mandatory before starting a more normal career. From what I’ve heard, military service was treated more as a trade school, because they were never deployed, in comparison to American troops.
I just wanted to know what the broader Lemmy community thought about mandatory military service is, especially from viewpoints outside the US.
I served in the military from '99 through '05.
In California, the only military members I knew of who had California drivers licenses were people who had grown up in California. Nobody else in considered themselves a “resident” of California.
We were briefed on how to obtain absentee ballots from our home states, because most of us didn’t qualify as residents at our post.
We were advised to file taxes in our home states, not the states where we were living and working.
The parking lots on base had more out-of-state license plates than in-state.
Military members and their dependents are guests of the local community. Visitors. Tourists. Not locals. We aren’t in their communities long enough to become locals.
I was in the military from 2010 to 2022. If all you’ve known is living on post then you weren’t trying to be a member of the community and that’s at least part of the problem here. When you live “on post” you’re isolated and that’s at least partially about control (and damage control).
I’ve served both active duty and as a reservist and I gotta tell ya, the shortest I ever lived in one place was about 6 months during C-school. You don’t make a whole lot of connections in 6 months, but you absolutely can in 4 years and my first duty station was literally a 4 year stint. It is what you make of it, but it’s also down to what kind of person you are, where you’re from, hundreds of other things besides.
The people I gave known (deployed and from my home town) who were Guard rather than military seem to have had similar experiences to me. Not all of them are even stationed in their home towns. Plenty of the ones I’ve known have been deployed.
I was also stationed in CA. I hate the state, but the community where I lived and worked wasn’t the worst. I had neighbors and friends, people who gave a damn. That’s perhaps rare in the military, but for the purposes of the conversation about the differences between the Guard and the Military branches, I can’t say that I would consider the National Guard to be a Civil Service, even if on paper it might technically qualify. The National Guard has more in common with military than it does with just about any other civil service and bonds to the community don’t do much to protect you from living in a hut in Djibouti or a tent in the sandbox.
I wouldn’t be so quiet to discredit sacrifices those people have made just to make a random claim online.
What the fuck are you talking about? I haven’t discredited anybody. I’m about to start, though: That was fucking uncalled for. Pull your fucking head out of your ass.
With the exception of that last sentence, I haven’t insulted or degraded anyone in the slightest, and I only used that degrading tone to get your attention. I don’t intend to continue that disrespectful tone past this point.
I never said the National Guard was a civil service. I never described it as a civil service. It is not at all a civil service. The National Guard is an armed service. It is Militia, not Military, and I tried to describe the difference. I hold both in high esteem. If it seems disrespectful or degrading for me to distinguish between the military and the militia, I suggest you examine your own prejudices on the subject.
When an 18-year-old Texan joins the military, they can expect to be assigned to a post somewhere on the planet, per the needs of the service. He will be garrisoned wherever the military needs him, for as long as they need him there. He might remain on the same base his entire career; he might be bounced around the planet every 12-24 months.
When an 18-year-old Texan joins the militia, they can expect to be assigned to a post somewhere in Texas, and remain assigned to that post for the duration of his career.
Yes, they can both be deployed. Yes, they will both be sent for training which may not be in state. But the guardsman will always be sent back home, while the active duty serviceman will be sent anywhere.