For a couple of years, the performance review where I worked included a section on specific tasks the employee was supposed to finish in the coming year, as well as a section on how they had done on the previous year's list. I admit to a certain amount of uneasiness the year my supervisor filled that one out with something like: "Mike accomplished none of the specific assignments made in last year's performance review. In February, we discovered an entirely different research project was critically important. Mike did a magnificent job on that assignment."
As near as I can tell, the HoF rails against performance-enhancing drugs, but doesn't have any problems with an aging ball player using contact lenses or Lasik surgery to enhance their declining vision. What's the difference between using HGH to add 15 pounds of muscle and using Lasik to take your vision from 20/25 to 20/15?
I wonder how much of that 1980 to 2000 drop is a generation of kids growing up with mandatory car seats and parents that made them use seat belts/shoulder straps. My kids were born in 1983 and 1986, and I know that by the time they got drivers licenses, putting on their seat belt was a reflex.
Add air bags, and by 2000 people walked away from what were fatal accidents in 1980.
IANAL, but I was a legislative staffer, so as always, "first we go look at the statutes." 49 U.S. Code § 44901 (a):
The Under Secretary of Transportation for Security shall provide for the screening of all passengers and property, including United States mail, cargo, carry-on and checked baggage, and other articles, that will be carried aboard a passenger aircraft operated by an air carrier or foreign air carrier in air transportation or intrastate air transportation. In the case of flights and flight segments originating in the United States, the screening shall take place before boarding and shall be carried out by a Federal Government employee (as defined in section 2105 of title 5, United States Code), except as otherwise provided in section 44919 or 44920 and except for identifying passengers and baggage for screening under the CAPPS and known shipper programs and conducting positive bag-match programs.
I read that as "Short answer -- no." With a tiny set of exceptions, the US Dept. of Transportation appears to be required to screen passengers and luggage boarding commercial flights in the US. Nothing about airports getting a choice. Nothing about the carriers getting a choice.
The Hammond family's history of conflict with the feds over use of the refuge goes back most of 30 years. The High Country News has its own editorial bias, but isn't shy about admitting it. The 2001 and 2006 cases were not the first time the Hammonds were charged with felonies, but earlier cases all appear to have been plea-bargained down. Given the margins involved in western ranching, the Hammonds (and the Bundies down in Nevada) are no doubt bankrupt if the feds ever collect back fees and fines.
A contributing factor, not the primary cause. It's one of the things that, particularly among the political class, makes Colorado and Oregon seem alike and different from "the East".
Rural western resentment of federal land holdings rises and falls over a roughly 30-year cycle. We're near the peak of the cycle right now. Not coincidentally, there's also been a rise in rural-secession movements within western states. In more incidents, the cry is to turn federal lands over to the counties, not the states. Because Portland and its suburbs are no friendlier towards the idea of opening up Oregon wilderness areas for exploitation than the feds are.
I can't speak to the others' situations, but know about mine. Colorado's population has increased by a bit over two million people since I moved here almost 30 years ago, most of it along the Front Range. Cities from Fort Collins on the north to Colorado Springs on the south have added storage. My suburb is one of several that have built new treatment plants, both for supply and handling sewage. I know of multiple gray-water reuse systems that have been built. At least in my suburb, every project needed to increase capacity is used as an opportunity to replace aging plant. Millions of local dollars have been spent to protect the supply and storage system from the run-off from big burns on federal lands. Millions more have been spent on flood control to protect the supply infrastructure. Water and sewer fees increase pretty much every year. Voters have approved tax increases to pay for building and maintaining the water infrastructure (it's Colorado, so since 1993 new taxes or tax rate increases require approval by the voters). While I've lived here, there have been at least three sizable economic busts: the late-80s oil bust, the telecom bust, and the dot-com bust.
All of that said, Flint's situation was and is much tougher. Geography and history means the Front Range wasn't ever as dependent on a single industry as Flint/Detroit (resource curse in action there). Flint was in the horrible situation of fixed infrastructure costs along with a sharp population decline. Denver had a modest version of the 1970s white-flight population decline, but the flight went into suburbs that were largely customers of Denver Water -- so DW's revenues were much better behaved.
Lack of foresight on their part. For example, one of the things they really needed to do -- from their perspective -- was add one sentence to the Clean Air Act: "For the purposes of this act, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant." Instead, they let the Bush EPA issue a finding that CO2 was harmless. But EPA decisions are subject to court review, and the SCOTUS eventually held that under the language of the CAA, CO2 was indeed a pollutant and must be regulated.
Less kindly, they seemed to assume that either (a) they wouldn't ever lose control of the regulatory agencies again or (b) the Democrats wouldn't jump at the same chance to legislate through the regulatory agencies that the Republicans had.
Is it just my imagination, or are there a lot more personal fouls being committed in the bowl games this year? Not more being called because of rule changes, just flat-out more obvious fouls being committed.
This. What the US buys that the next ten or so don't is a conventionally-armed "Department of Offense". If Iraq starts sinking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and declares it closed, the US could force it open in weeks rather than months/years. Similarly for Egypt and the Suez Canal, or Panama and its canal, or South Africa flying missions to take pot shots at cargo vessels rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
Well, okay then. When I see a million-plus troops staging into Mexico and/or Canada, I'll know who to tell. Seriously, when I spin secession and break-up of the country stories, I try to be a whole lot more connected to reality than that.
This is fascinating. Did they give any reasoning for why they thought the US military could pull this off? Texas today has about the same population as Iraq did in 2003, has three major metro areas instead of one, and is probably as heavily armed. If the military couldn't realistically occupy Iraq, why think they could occupy Texas? And occupying the entire US is 10x the size of the Texas problem.
Not to mention that Texans could inflict a lot more pain on the rest of the US than Iraq could. Blowing up a few pipelines in Iraq -- just enough to keep them from operating reliably -- put a modest dent in global crude oil supply. Blowing up the right pipelines leaving Texas put a much bigger dent in the supply of finished petroleum products and natural gas across the Southeast, up the Atlantic Coast, and to Southern California.
For June 29, in a column titled "Politics", I would have picked Arizona v. Arizona instead of Michigan v. EPA. Coal-fired power plants are going to be cleaned up eventually (or shut down). The Court said the EPA didn't do its work properly, not that it was overreaching its authority. Putting their stamp of approval on extensive governing by citizen initiative is much more a political decision, at least IMO. Also interesting from a cultural perspective, since Kennedy -- the only justice left that was elevated from outside the northeast urban corridor, and from a state with a long initiative history -- was the swing vote.
I feel so old. There have been few times since I was 15 that I didn't need to be out of bed by 6:15 or so. I've always been an eight-and-a-half hours of sleeping guy, which put me to bed by 10:00 or so. When I was younger, I was willing to make the effort to stay up. These days, not so much.
I've been playing with my new SiliconDust set top box this week. Three independent high-def video windows at once on my computer monitor. Lord knows what I would have given for this kind of capability back in the day, when I was more interested in college football and the important games overlapped on different networks more.
...where better to wage a long, grinding defensive campaign than in... the statehouses?
Of course, that's not a particularly sound plan in initiative states. In 2016, Colorado will vote on a state single-payer health insurance plan. I expect it to fail, but it got enough signatures to get on the ballot in a remarkably short time. The important thing is that it's a much more liberal proposal than could be seriously considered in the legislature. Colorado will probably also vote yet again on a personhood-begins-at-conception amendment sometime in the next few years. That's a much more conservative proposal than could be seriously considered in the legislature. In Arizona, the legislature basically has to keep their hands off of initiative-passed statutes. A couple of conservative Arizona legislators are advocating legalization of marijuana by the legislature in order to moot the need for an initiative and retain some control.
Some things seem like a shoo-in. Within a few years, I expect to see marijuana legalization, independent redistricting schemes, and universal vote-by-mail be the rule rather than the exception in western states. Most of it will be done by initiative, or by the legislature acting out of fear of initiatives.
Short-barreled rifles and shotguns are legal in most states (New York and California being among the exceptions). You have to get a special federal permit and pay a federal tax on the weapon. If you live in a state where there are no state laws against them, gun shops will know the whole permitting process and be happy to sell you one. Regulation of such weapons dates to 1934, when they were among the weapons of choice for organized crime.
Arizona. The redistricting commission initiative passed in 2000, 56% to 44%. "Don't trust the legislature" may be a western conservative thing, though.
But she hates the government because it’s large and inefficient and wastes “her” money on stupid projects.
This reminds me of the budget exercise we put new members of the General Assembly through when I worked on the state legislative budget staff. Essentially, we built up the General Fund budget by program: K-12 education, Medicaid, law enforcement (including courts and prisons), higher-ed, and other human services like child welfare that draw very large matching federal grants. At that point, a bit over 95% of all GF spending was accounted for. "Where," we would ask politely, "would you like us to focus our attention on cutting or growing?"
For the federal budget, it's DoD, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP, a handful of safety-net programs, and interest on the debt. That's on-budget spending; there's also the DoD's off-budget spending, which has been in the same ballpark as the entire food stamp (SNAP) program in recent years. If you're going to make a dent in federal spending on a scale that people will notice their taxes going down as a result, you've got to cut the big programs. Letting the national forests burn by wiping out the fire-fighting expenditures -- to choose an example that Paul Ryan came very close to proposing a few years back -- is just noise.
This Cleveland State University study [PDF] has interesting data on sales from 1986-2010. Shotgun sales show a slow but steady increase. Rifles also show a steady increase, with small peaks in 1993 and 2009. Handgun sales vary enormously, with large peaks in 1993 and 2009. The study doesn't break things down any farther by type. I'll just casually note -- and duck while doing so -- that handgun sales went up sharply during that period the year after a Democrat won the White House. Initially won -- there's no bump after Clinton won reelection.
Hedons are also probably subject to the hyperbolic discounting that James mentions. Tell the typical 20-something hormone-charged man who's not getting any "You can have sex once this week, or you can have sex twice during the same week next year." Heck, I've known guys who make seriously bad decisions -- admittedly, under the influence of alcohol -- rather than wait 24 hours.
Not so much what I'm watching as how. Long story short, last week I got a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime set top box, which plays to apps over the local area network instead of directly to a monitor. Yesterday I got the CableCard from Comcast necessary to handle encrypted digital channels. Initial review follows...
Activating things was the usual cable company adventure. Comcast has an 877 number where the people answering the phone only do CableCard activation, which was helpful. By the third call, and after considerable poking around, I had all of the information necessary for the tech to send out the commands. (Imagine a medium where people could write a description of all the info you needed, and where to find it, and it was kept up to date. Nah, that's crazy thinking.) A few minutes later the box could be manually tuned (carrier plus stream). I watched most of the Broncos-Bengals game at my desk, full-screen and high-definition. It looked good.
Somewhat later the box had gotten the local "linear" channel lineup so I could switch to SiliconDust's provided player application. It's pretty basic -- limited channel guide, simple resizing. An almost identical Android app is available at the Play Store for 99 cents. No problems watching the HD stream on my phone as I wondered around the house.
The device also functions as a DLNA-compliant video source on your local area network. VLC, the swiss army knife of media playback applications, supports DLNA. VLC sees the box; it switches the channels; it plays the video. VLC also provides me with all the functions that become necessary when you play video on a monitor that is set up to look good for computer stuff -- brightness, contrast, gamma, scaling, cropping, etc. Or in my case, dynamic range compression for the audio -- not too loud, not too soft, not too much variation.
The SiliconDust box has three independent tuners. I've verified that It can deliver two streams simultaneously. At some point I'll haul out another device and test that it will handle three.
I suspect -- but am willing to be convinced otherwise -- that one of your horses has already left the barn. There are now more handguns than rifles in the US. The number of handguns sold now exceeds the number of all other firearms combined. Maybe this should be unsurprising. The number of hunters has been declining for years, and the urban/suburban population continues to grow relative to the rural population. If we've reached the point where the "basic" use for firearms is urban/suburban self-protection, and the "basic" firearm is a semi-automatic (in some way) handgun, you've set yourself a tough task.
IIRC, the first time the militias were called up was Washington and the Whisky Rebellion, the regular Army being otherwise busy. It was so popular that the states where the call went out had to impose drafts, and people spent money to get out of serving. A handful of states have state guards separate from the National Guard. The Texas State Guard is the only approved militia in that state, has just over 2,000 members, and is an explicitly unarmed organization.
I think you're trying to create something entirely different that comes dangerously close to being a poll-tax-like infringement, as in "Community service is a requirement for handgun ownership."
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Notes on a University Student Questionnaire”
For a couple of years, the performance review where I worked included a section on specific tasks the employee was supposed to finish in the coming year, as well as a section on how they had done on the previous year's list. I admit to a certain amount of uneasiness the year my supervisor filled that one out with something like: "Mike accomplished none of the specific assignments made in last year's performance review. In February, we discovered an entirely different research project was critically important. Mike did a magnificent job on that assignment."
On “The annual Hall of Fame post”
As near as I can tell, the HoF rails against performance-enhancing drugs, but doesn't have any problems with an aging ball player using contact lenses or Lasik surgery to enhance their declining vision. What's the difference between using HGH to add 15 pounds of muscle and using Lasik to take your vision from 20/25 to 20/15?
On “Another Post I Wish I’d Written”
I wonder how much of that 1980 to 2000 drop is a generation of kids growing up with mandatory car seats and parents that made them use seat belts/shoulder straps. My kids were born in 1983 and 1986, and I know that by the time they got drivers licenses, putting on their seat belt was a reflex.
Add air bags, and by 2000 people walked away from what were fatal accidents in 1980.
"
@kazzy
"Shall" means must do. "May" provides authorization but leaves the choice of whether to actually do it up to the agency.
"
IANAL, but I was a legislative staffer, so as always, "first we go look at the statutes." 49 U.S. Code § 44901 (a):
I read that as "Short answer -- no." With a tiny set of exceptions, the US Dept. of Transportation appears to be required to screen passengers and luggage boarding commercial flights in the US. Nothing about airports getting a choice. Nothing about the carriers getting a choice.
On “What If…?”
The Hammond family's history of conflict with the feds over use of the refuge goes back most of 30 years. The High Country News has its own editorial bias, but isn't shy about admitting it. The 2001 and 2006 cases were not the first time the Hammonds were charged with felonies, but earlier cases all appear to have been plea-bargained down. Given the margins involved in western ranching, the Hammonds (and the Bundies down in Nevada) are no doubt bankrupt if the feds ever collect back fees and fines.
"
A contributing factor, not the primary cause. It's one of the things that, particularly among the political class, makes Colorado and Oregon seem alike and different from "the East".
Rural western resentment of federal land holdings rises and falls over a roughly 30-year cycle. We're near the peak of the cycle right now. Not coincidentally, there's also been a rise in rural-secession movements within western states. In more incidents, the cry is to turn federal lands over to the counties, not the states. Because Portland and its suburbs are no friendlier towards the idea of opening up Oregon wilderness areas for exploitation than the feds are.
On “A Tragedy with Many Fathers”
I can't speak to the others' situations, but know about mine. Colorado's population has increased by a bit over two million people since I moved here almost 30 years ago, most of it along the Front Range. Cities from Fort Collins on the north to Colorado Springs on the south have added storage. My suburb is one of several that have built new treatment plants, both for supply and handling sewage. I know of multiple gray-water reuse systems that have been built. At least in my suburb, every project needed to increase capacity is used as an opportunity to replace aging plant. Millions of local dollars have been spent to protect the supply and storage system from the run-off from big burns on federal lands. Millions more have been spent on flood control to protect the supply infrastructure. Water and sewer fees increase pretty much every year. Voters have approved tax increases to pay for building and maintaining the water infrastructure (it's Colorado, so since 1993 new taxes or tax rate increases require approval by the voters). While I've lived here, there have been at least three sizable economic busts: the late-80s oil bust, the telecom bust, and the dot-com bust.
All of that said, Flint's situation was and is much tougher. Geography and history means the Front Range wasn't ever as dependent on a single industry as Flint/Detroit (resource curse in action there). Flint was in the horrible situation of fixed infrastructure costs along with a sharp population decline. Denver had a modest version of the 1970s white-flight population decline, but the flight went into suburbs that were largely customers of Denver Water -- so DW's revenues were much better behaved.
On “William Voegeli: The Reason I’m Anti-Anti-Trump”
Lack of foresight on their part. For example, one of the things they really needed to do -- from their perspective -- was add one sentence to the Clean Air Act: "For the purposes of this act, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant." Instead, they let the Bush EPA issue a finding that CO2 was harmless. But EPA decisions are subject to court review, and the SCOTUS eventually held that under the language of the CAA, CO2 was indeed a pollutant and must be regulated.
Less kindly, they seemed to assume that either (a) they wouldn't ever lose control of the regulatory agencies again or (b) the Democrats wouldn't jump at the same chance to legislate through the regulatory agencies that the Republicans had.
On “Fantasy Football: Week 16 (and Football Season open thread)”
Is it just my imagination, or are there a lot more personal fouls being committed in the bowl games this year? Not more being called because of rule changes, just flat-out more obvious fouls being committed.
On “Broken Elephants, Part I: Donald Trump and the Triumph of the Conservative Media Machine”
This. What the US buys that the next ten or so don't is a conventionally-armed "Department of Offense". If Iraq starts sinking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and declares it closed, the US could force it open in weeks rather than months/years. Similarly for Egypt and the Suez Canal, or Panama and its canal, or South Africa flying missions to take pot shots at cargo vessels rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
On “Linky Friday #147: New Year Edition”
Well, okay then. When I see a million-plus troops staging into Mexico and/or Canada, I'll know who to tell. Seriously, when I spin secession and break-up of the country stories, I try to be a whole lot more connected to reality than that.
"
This is fascinating. Did they give any reasoning for why they thought the US military could pull this off? Texas today has about the same population as Iraq did in 2003, has three major metro areas instead of one, and is probably as heavily armed. If the military couldn't realistically occupy Iraq, why think they could occupy Texas? And occupying the entire US is 10x the size of the Texas problem.
Not to mention that Texans could inflict a lot more pain on the rest of the US than Iraq could. Blowing up a few pipelines in Iraq -- just enough to keep them from operating reliably -- put a modest dent in global crude oil supply. Blowing up the right pipelines leaving Texas put a much bigger dent in the supply of finished petroleum products and natural gas across the Southeast, up the Atlantic Coast, and to Southern California.
On “2015: The Year In Review”
For June 29, in a column titled "Politics", I would have picked Arizona v. Arizona instead of Michigan v. EPA. Coal-fired power plants are going to be cleaned up eventually (or shut down). The Court said the EPA didn't do its work properly, not that it was overreaching its authority. Putting their stamp of approval on extensive governing by citizen initiative is much more a political decision, at least IMO. Also interesting from a cultural perspective, since Kennedy -- the only justice left that was elevated from outside the northeast urban corridor, and from a state with a long initiative history -- was the swing vote.
On “Weekend!”
I feel so old. There have been few times since I was 15 that I didn't need to be out of bed by 6:15 or so. I've always been an eight-and-a-half hours of sleeping guy, which put me to bed by 10:00 or so. When I was younger, I was willing to make the effort to stay up. These days, not so much.
I've been playing with my new SiliconDust set top box this week. Three independent high-def video windows at once on my computer monitor. Lord knows what I would have given for this kind of capability back in the day, when I was more interested in college football and the important games overlapped on different networks more.
On “David Frum: Will the Republican Party Survive the 2016 Election?”
...where better to wage a long, grinding defensive campaign than in... the statehouses?
Of course, that's not a particularly sound plan in initiative states. In 2016, Colorado will vote on a state single-payer health insurance plan. I expect it to fail, but it got enough signatures to get on the ballot in a remarkably short time. The important thing is that it's a much more liberal proposal than could be seriously considered in the legislature. Colorado will probably also vote yet again on a personhood-begins-at-conception amendment sometime in the next few years. That's a much more conservative proposal than could be seriously considered in the legislature. In Arizona, the legislature basically has to keep their hands off of initiative-passed statutes. A couple of conservative Arizona legislators are advocating legalization of marijuana by the legislature in order to moot the need for an initiative and retain some control.
Some things seem like a shoo-in. Within a few years, I expect to see marijuana legalization, independent redistricting schemes, and universal vote-by-mail be the rule rather than the exception in western states. Most of it will be done by initiative, or by the legislature acting out of fear of initiatives.
On “Reflections on Gun Control”
Short-barreled rifles and shotguns are legal in most states (New York and California being among the exceptions). You have to get a special federal permit and pay a federal tax on the weapon. If you live in a state where there are no state laws against them, gun shops will know the whole permitting process and be happy to sell you one. Regulation of such weapons dates to 1934, when they were among the weapons of choice for organized crime.
On “Broken Elephants, Part I: Donald Trump and the Triumph of the Conservative Media Machine”
Arizona. The redistricting commission initiative passed in 2000, 56% to 44%. "Don't trust the legislature" may be a western conservative thing, though.
"
But she hates the government because it’s large and inefficient and wastes “her” money on stupid projects.
This reminds me of the budget exercise we put new members of the General Assembly through when I worked on the state legislative budget staff. Essentially, we built up the General Fund budget by program: K-12 education, Medicaid, law enforcement (including courts and prisons), higher-ed, and other human services like child welfare that draw very large matching federal grants. At that point, a bit over 95% of all GF spending was accounted for. "Where," we would ask politely, "would you like us to focus our attention on cutting or growing?"
For the federal budget, it's DoD, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP, a handful of safety-net programs, and interest on the debt. That's on-budget spending; there's also the DoD's off-budget spending, which has been in the same ballpark as the entire food stamp (SNAP) program in recent years. If you're going to make a dent in federal spending on a scale that people will notice their taxes going down as a result, you've got to cut the big programs. Letting the national forests burn by wiping out the fire-fighting expenditures -- to choose an example that Paul Ryan came very close to proposing a few years back -- is just noise.
On “Reflections on Gun Control”
This Cleveland State University study [PDF] has interesting data on sales from 1986-2010. Shotgun sales show a slow but steady increase. Rifles also show a steady increase, with small peaks in 1993 and 2009. Handgun sales vary enormously, with large peaks in 1993 and 2009. The study doesn't break things down any farther by type. I'll just casually note -- and duck while doing so -- that handgun sales went up sharply during that period the year after a Democrat won the White House. Initially won -- there's no bump after Clinton won reelection.
"
@burt-likko
Do you think Heller and McDonald ultimately put us in strict scrutiny territory?
On “Market Failure 6: Behavioural Economics (A mind is a terrible thing to trust)”
Hedons are also probably subject to the hyperbolic discounting that James mentions. Tell the typical 20-something hormone-charged man who's not getting any "You can have sex once this week, or you can have sex twice during the same week next year." Heck, I've known guys who make seriously bad decisions -- admittedly, under the influence of alcohol -- rather than wait 24 hours.
On “Sunday!”
Not so much what I'm watching as how. Long story short, last week I got a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime set top box, which plays to apps over the local area network instead of directly to a monitor. Yesterday I got the CableCard from Comcast necessary to handle encrypted digital channels. Initial review follows...
Activating things was the usual cable company adventure. Comcast has an 877 number where the people answering the phone only do CableCard activation, which was helpful. By the third call, and after considerable poking around, I had all of the information necessary for the tech to send out the commands. (Imagine a medium where people could write a description of all the info you needed, and where to find it, and it was kept up to date. Nah, that's crazy thinking.) A few minutes later the box could be manually tuned (carrier plus stream). I watched most of the Broncos-Bengals game at my desk, full-screen and high-definition. It looked good.
Somewhat later the box had gotten the local "linear" channel lineup so I could switch to SiliconDust's provided player application. It's pretty basic -- limited channel guide, simple resizing. An almost identical Android app is available at the Play Store for 99 cents. No problems watching the HD stream on my phone as I wondered around the house.
The device also functions as a DLNA-compliant video source on your local area network. VLC, the swiss army knife of media playback applications, supports DLNA. VLC sees the box; it switches the channels; it plays the video. VLC also provides me with all the functions that become necessary when you play video on a monitor that is set up to look good for computer stuff -- brightness, contrast, gamma, scaling, cropping, etc. Or in my case, dynamic range compression for the audio -- not too loud, not too soft, not too much variation.
The SiliconDust box has three independent tuners. I've verified that It can deliver two streams simultaneously. At some point I'll haul out another device and test that it will handle three.
On “Reflections on Gun Control”
I suspect -- but am willing to be convinced otherwise -- that one of your horses has already left the barn. There are now more handguns than rifles in the US. The number of handguns sold now exceeds the number of all other firearms combined. Maybe this should be unsurprising. The number of hunters has been declining for years, and the urban/suburban population continues to grow relative to the rural population. If we've reached the point where the "basic" use for firearms is urban/suburban self-protection, and the "basic" firearm is a semi-automatic (in some way) handgun, you've set yourself a tough task.
"
IIRC, the first time the militias were called up was Washington and the Whisky Rebellion, the regular Army being otherwise busy. It was so popular that the states where the call went out had to impose drafts, and people spent money to get out of serving. A handful of states have state guards separate from the National Guard. The Texas State Guard is the only approved militia in that state, has just over 2,000 members, and is an explicitly unarmed organization.
I think you're trying to create something entirely different that comes dangerously close to being a poll-tax-like infringement, as in "Community service is a requirement for handgun ownership."
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.