You know, we do have a militia, and we don't do anything with it [View all]

[Recursion]

All able-bodied males between 17 and 45 are in the militia (I'd expand that to include women). Why don't we have, say, quarterly "mandatory" drills ("mandatory" but there's no penalty if you don't show up, other than not getting paid) organized at the neighborhood level where you do things like disaster preparedness ("here's where people should go when the hurricane hits" or "let's set up a neighborhood call tree for emergencies" or whatever) or safety briefs or (God forbid) just actually meeting your neighbors. Or for that matter they could clean up litter some weekends.

The neighborhoods should elect their own officers, and there could be city-wide military, Red Cross, and law enforcement liaisons who could get in touch with those officers the next time there's a hurricane or earthquake or emergency or something. People who show up get paid like a Private in the reserves (I think it's about $180 for the weekend -- maybe the officers get paid more since they presumably would have to do a lot of organization). Nothing crazy or hardcore, and obviously it would mostly be a big joke, but it would at least do something to start the mindset that we can take responsibility for our safety and security and each other. Rather than what we saw in Katrina and Sandy where nobody knew what to do or where to go, at least some of the people would say "My job when the hurricane comes is to go check on this list of elderly people and get them to XYZ, where my other neighbor's job is to set up a first aid station".

And, as others suggested, participation could be (for the able-bodied, at least) a requirement for buying a firearm, or a concealed-carry license, or buying certain classes of firearms, or whatever Congress and the states are willing to make it. But I don't really think this needs to be about guns at all, but about getting people involved in their own safety.