• Kids welcome at Florida survivalist training

    Brian Blanco / Reuters

    Jim Foster, leader of the North Florida Survival Group, radios group members to check their status as they perform a land navigation drill.

    Brian Blanco / Reuters

    A member of the North Florida Survival Group puts a mask on his son as they gear up to perform enemy contact drills in a wooded area during a field training exercise in Old Town, Florida.

    Reuters -- The North Florida Survival Group group trains children and adults to handle weapons and survive in the wild. The group passionately supports the right of U.S. citizens to bear arms and its website states that it aims to teach "patriots to survive in order to protect and defend our Constitution against all enemy threats." Photographer Brian Blanco writes about his experience:

    Jim Foster is a 57-year-old former police officer and the leader of the North Florida Survival Group. Jim was the man who, after feeling out my intentions in a two-hour meeting at a chain restaurant a few weeks earlier, had granted me permission to photograph his group’s field training exercise. It was an opportunity I snatched up without hesitation. It’s not every day that a photojournalist gets an invitation to shoot a militia gathering. Understandably, they tend to be fairly secretive groups who don’t exactly keep the media on their Christmas card lists.

    Foremost on their minds was gun confiscations. Meeting the group just a few weeks after the re-election of Barack Obama, the prevailing concern among the group was when the next gun ban would be coming and how they should stockpile ammunition and weapons to prepare for it.

    Read more on the Reuters Photographers Blog.

    Editor's note: Pictures taken on Dec. 8, 2012 and made available to NBC News today.

    Brian Blanco / Reuters

    Brianna, 9, of the North Florida Survival Group hands an AK-47 rifle to Jim Foster, 57, the group's leader, before heading out to conduct enemy contact drills.

    Brian Blanco / Reuters

    A young boy sits on a toy, upset because his sister got to carry the rifle that he wanted.

    Brian Blanco / Reuters

    Jim Foster (center) critiques the performance of group members during an enemy contact drill.

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  • 'Teeth of the Constitution:' Light Foot Militia rises in Idaho's backcountry

    Slideshow: Constitutional militia rises in Idaho

    Matt Mills McKnight / Redux

    Cody Hoyt, a corporal in the Idaho regiment of the Light Foot militia, looks west over the Clark Fork River and Lake Pend Oreille near the Idaho and Montana border during an overnight cold weather training exercise.

    Launch slideshow

    By Jon Sweeney, NBC News

    Amid the beautiful trees, mountains and waterways of the Idaho panhandle, a burgeoning group of like-minded individuals banded together to form what they call the Idaho regiment of the Light Foot Militia.

    Based on the principal that it’s their right to form a constitutional militia to protect themselves and their families against any future aggressors, the Light Foot use surrounding public lands to train in military tactics and survivalist methods, preparing for the worst. Firm believers in the Second Amendment, they consider themselves the "teeth of the constitution."

    "But it’s more than just a gun thing," said Matt Mills McKnight, a photojournalist who has been documenting the militia for two years, photographing more than a dozen training sessions, public meetings and private occasions. "Just because they own guns, and some guns that are some really intense weapons, doesn’t mean that they are any different from you or me."

    McKnight pursued the story of the Light Foot after moving to northern Idaho from San Francisco in 2010. He wanted to look beyond the guns, a culture deeply rooted in all militias, and cut to the core of this organization, which started in 2009. What he found were men and women with families dealing with the same issues that all of America deals with.

    "Some militias want you to be afraid of them, but they [Idaho Light Foot Militia] don't," he said. "They are a group of guys that take themselves very seriously, and they believe in this current economic climate, they need to prepare for the worst."

    "Where most people are willing to take the gamble that a worst case scenario isn't going to happen, the members of the Light Foot militia have decided differently," he said.

    Matt Mills-McKnight is a freelance photojournalist and photo editor based in the Pacific Northwest. He can be found on Twitter,  Instagram, or mattmillsphoto.com.