Is this Field Day?” I asked through my car window on a chilly, rainy April morning in central Michigan in 2008. A lone man dressed in head-to-toe camouflage, whose hand was casually resting on an AK-47 rifle strapped across his chest, nodded and stepped aside on the narrow road. I drove ahead to a parking area next to an old, red brick farmhouse and several acres of soybeans. About 50 people were gathering at a spot where the fields met a wooded bog. I was outside the village of Bancroft, at what was indeed the Michigan Militia’s annual Field Day event. The group described it as a family and public outreach opportunity, held on private land that was owned by a World War II veteran.