Asterix said:
Where do you come up with this?
The National Firearms Association here in Canada has been advocating a similar scheme for years (namely for the licensing and regulatory aspect, not the militia aspect). Parts of their scheme had, in fact, been weakly implemented before the gun laws here were overhauled completely in the late 90s; for example, in Quebec the Federation de Tir du Quebec used to be completely in charge of devising and administering various mandatory firearms safety courses. I for one fail to see how it's any different from any number of industry self-regulation and voluntary standards associations that governments make use of on a routine basis in order to maximize freedom and reduce bureaucratic blubber.
At the core of their beliefs is rejection of registration and what they see as government intrusion, yet you imagine them as a wing of the police, and a "well-regulated militia", by definition subject to the regulation of the government. Might want to check with them first, I don't think they'd be interested.
Life is always full of surprises, but I find it hard to imagine an advocacy group that wouldn't jump at the prospect of becoming a quasi-governmental organization with a legal mandate and privileges. It would be like Greenpeace turning down a chance to replace the EPA. Also, the present hardline stance of the NRA and other related civil-liberties groups has followed as a direct consequence of the failure of courts and the State in general to recognize gun rights and treat the 2nd Amendment as normal constitutional law; I think they would be much more favourable to regulation if there was some legal guarantee that regulation wouldn't lead to prohibition.
Worse perhaps is the suggestion that any political group, especially one so narrowly defined, should be in an official police role in the first place. The integity of any police force can only be maintained if it remains outside of partisan politics.
If that's true, we're already in serious trouble and have been for a long time. Both police chiefs and rank-and-file officers maintain advocacy groups that lobby loud, hard, and in public for policies they favour and/or have a vested interest in. In both the USA and Canada, police chief's associations have vehemently supported strict gun control, opposed the liberalization of drug and morality laws, etc. The NRA, like these groups, is not partisan as such, but lobbies on behalf of specific issues and supports candidates who support their goals, regardless of party affiliation.