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The National Guard are the remnants of the militias that the US used to depend on and that the second amendment was actually about. The idea of civilians with military training who can be raised in times of great need and... what many (most?) Global North countries have as their default.
Many of them are former active duty military (e.g. The Army) who wanted to keep pulling an extra paycheck and benefits after becoming civilians. Others are just dumbasses who got tricked by the "Just spend two weekends out of the year training and you too can have an ice sword that kills dragons" nonsense.
Their actual role is... questionable. Sometimes they get pulled in to help with natural disasters but they have no meaningful training outside of holding guns to scare people and maybe building sandbag walls. According to a climbing buddy who had to interface with them back during Hurricane Katrina... they actively made everything worse and got in the way constantly and she had to unofficially allocate resources to protect the Guard that could have otherwise been spent helping rescue those in need. But, Support The Troops(TM) and all that. Back in uni, they were the jackboots who were called out any time people "rioted" (theoretically because a sports team lost or it was Spring Break. Mostly because kids started protesting) and their job was to look intimidating and bully/beat on anyone who was out past curfew.
A not insignificant number were also sent to Iraq/Afghanistan when the US Military realized they couldn't keep stop-lossing everyone who was dumb enough to sign up for the Military proper.
In their day to day civilian life? They are basically just normal people. Some work in tech, others food service, and MANY are small town cops because that also lets them carry a gun. The key unifying factor is they all will act like they are heroic veterans who killed fiddy men and make damned sure to flaunt their military credentials to board planes faster or to get a discount at the hardware store.
Like a lot of things modern military, it is worth looking at the Invasion of Ukraine. The professional soldiers (former standing military and PMCs from around the world) make up the forces that actually take ground or are deployed for operations where skill and discipline are needed. The civilian population that were conscripted and given a gun man the trenches because all that is really needed there are bodies to send bullets down range and soak up the ones coming back at them.
The National Guard are very much the latter.
That's not correct at all in regards to your last paragraph. NG is on average older and much more experienced than an average infantry 18 year old with no deployments.