This is a particularly stupid comment to make in the context of Switzerland, where everyone(+) keeps their national service rifle in their house.

(+) well, a lot of people, even if it's no longer every man of relevant age

What is an example of a genuine, well-trained militia, and how does it fare against a government's military?

This question falsely presumes that the government's military is not also fractured by whatever is causing the militia to revolt. The military is made up of citizens.

But then why do you need the militia?

To protect yourself from and fight against weakened fractions of the government.

The military cannot occupy the entire space of the US so maintaining order of a tyrannical government would require a low ratio of military guards to citizens. With even 50% of the citizens potentially armed and willing to fight back, it's an untenable position for the government.

A militia could fight just as effectively as the Taliban against the government and be several orders of magnitude larger. The US military is good at eliminating identified enemies, but it's pretty terrible at nation building and that's even in its strongest state.

Because I want to a reason to own lots of guns.

Afghan militia has fared well both against US/NATO and Soviet militaries in the past 50 years.

If you are referring to the Taliban and their precursors, they have had, and continue to have significant financial and logistical backing from nation states.

Does that make them a bad example of a successful militia?

Perhaps a successful militia requires significant financial and logistical backing from nation states, in addition to being well trained.

In that case they are paramilitaries, not just militias.

In a democracy it is the role of the free press, the courts and elections to defend against government overreach.

Do you really believe that the 20,000 to 60,000 estimated [1] militia members in the US is what is defending you agains government overreach? There are more than 1.2 million people in the US army (with a $600 billion budget) and 120,000 federal police officers [2].

Another point to consider: democracies outside the US, that don't have 'well-trained militia of free people', seem to be doing just fine. In a number of metrics that you can consider as a proxy for government overreach the US is actually doing much worse than average: number of people shot by the police, number of people imprisoned, number of (innocent) people executed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_organizations_in_the_U... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_...

Does the genuine well trained militia also have genuine well-tested nuclear weapons, predator drones, recon and comm satellites, redundant infrastructure and easily access to manufacturing capabilities?

Every colonised and now forgotten group of people had what they thought was a genuine well trained militia, for all the good it did them.

Americans have fought world's most powerful army and won, this is why they wrote it in their constitution. At the same time they have managed become world's most powerful army and still not managed to win against a ragtag group of militants.

If citizens of any country get to make a claim about the effectiveness of an armed citizenry, then it is the Americans.

> not managed to win against a ragtag group of militants.

Those militants are not ragtag. They all receive state sponsorship in the form of finances, hardware, training and logistics.

Your analysis also ignores the reality of asymmetric warfare, in particular the asymmetry of the value placed on the lives of the combatants on the different sides.

Terrorist organizations are far more willing to sacrifice their combatants than the US is, and they have a pool of people who share this outlook to recruit from, which is why they persist.

In the event of an internal armed conflict within a developed country, all sides are likely to value the lives of their fighters similarly.