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Over the last decade, coal jobs in West Virginia have dropped dramatically, from something like 25,000 to less than 15,000. That’s happened largely because of competition from cheap natural gas, increasingly competitive renewable energy sources, changes in the market for steel-making coal, and the mining out of the best coal seams in the southern part of our state.We see the results of this every day, in stories like this one from my colleague Amelia Ferrell Knisley:Boone County has slashed multiple government jobs in an effort to make up for a multimillion budget shortfall because of coal’s decline and the county’s subsequent population drop.The personnel cuts will save the struggling Southern West Virginia county somewhere around $1 million, according to Boone Prosecutor Keith Randolph, but it’s not enough to make up for the entire projected shortfall.These coal jobs are the best, and sometimes the only, jobs available in some of these communities. As they decline, other jobs have also disappeared, jobs in businesses and now governments that existed largely because of the coal economy.There’s a larger story that’s also important though, and that’s how so much of the wealth in West Virginia has for generations really been controlled by and benefited large, wealth out-of-state interests. The late Tom Miller, then a reporter in Huntington, wrote a series of articles called “Who Owns West Virginia?” which examined the control by companies based in faraway cities over the coal, natural gas, and timber resources in our state.

Having read the other answers to this question, I will answer with more questions. Because it is clear that very few people know the truth about how Red states stack up to Blue states. I will freely admit that I do not either, in total. But at least I am willing to admit that.A Blue state defender will always start with the argument that GDP is higher in Blue states. That is true, but what does that mean to the average citizen? They will point out that Red states, especially in the south, have higher poverty levels. And lower education attainment. They also say that the Blue states contribute more to the Federal government, and as a result are “net givers” without which the Red states would collapse into anarchy.So here are some questions to help get a Thanksgiving Day conversation going:If GDP is higher, isn’t is possible that that just means more wealth inequality? Blue states cost more to live in for nearly everything, not just the taxes. Houses cost more, gasoline costs more, college costs more, food costs more. Look at this Cost of Living Comparison Between Dallas and Chicago, just as an example.Poverty is lower in Red states after adjusting for the cost of living. List of U.S. states and territories by poverty rate. Based on this list, California has the highest adjusted poverty rate. California is the gold standard for left leaning policy. And don’t forget that the Blue states have 1.5x as much state level debt per capita as the Red states do.Educational attainment is all over the board. Many Red states far outperform California and New York. Many Blue states outperform Mississippi and Alabama. National Data Explorer - ETS. Is it possible there is some other driving factor besides state budgets and political philosophy? Our cost per student is as high as anywhere in the world, but our test scores don’t improve over time. Why is that? Could it be the government sponsored monopoly at work?The tax and revenue give and take is a very tangled web indeed. If a state has a military base that benefits all, should that cost be considered a gain for the state versus taxes paid in? What about grants that are awarded that benefit all in society? Here is a table that breaks out where the money goes. As you can see, the biggest reason Red states take more from the Federal government is for retirement payments. And a reminder, for “nonretirement benefits”, it is hard to see who receives those at the state level. It needs to be looked at by the county level. It could be Democrats within the Red states that are receiving those benefits. Just as it could be Republicans in the Blue states. Who knows? Someone does. 21.3% of US Participates in Government Assistance Programs Each MonthSo as you can see, the metrics are easily manipulated and to answer your question, I believe left leaning people really believe that their way is better. They tend to believe also that they are smarter and know what is best for all of us. The only thing to do until they can be educated is to resist."The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." Ronald Reagan.

Since I am a gun owner, in Texas, and an LTC, I may or may not fit someone’s particular definition of an “average American”. As a gun owner, I’m in a minority threatening to become a superminority, and as a carry permit holder I represent just 5% of the U.S. population. But other than that I own guns, I consider myself toward the middle of that bell curve, so here we go.What do I think about the gun laws in the USA?Kind of a toughie, honestly.First and foremost, “the USA” is a pretty broad scope and a wide gradient of gun laws. Unlike most other advanced-economy countries of the world, where the national government is sufficient to oversee the legal framework of the country, State governments in the United States get a lot of lawmaking and law-enforcement power, due to the structure of the country under the Constitution. Talking about “U.S. Law” is like talking about “EU Law”; the EU members, much like U.S. States, have their own law on most of the topics of interest to the EU as a whole, and the EU’s power to enforce laws is limited by a number of jurisdictional boundaries, beyond which the countries themselves maintain sovereign control. So it is with the U.S. Federal government and the governments of the States; the Constitution splits power between the Feds and the States, by defining specific things the Feds can do and that the States cannot do, and when neither is explicitly specified regarding a power or function of government, it is a State power.While the Feds got some significant expansion of powers in Reconstruction, and again during the Depression and WWII, generally speaking the “dual sovereignty” of the States and the U.S. Federal government means that for a lot of very basic things in “American” society, which State you’re in matters as much as being in the U.S. itself. For a few things, the county and city matter as well.One of those things is guns.One estimate of the individual gun laws in the United States put the number at about 20,000. While that number is subject to intense debate and criticism, I generally think it’s pretty close, specifically because of this multi-layered system of laws and ordinances and the myriad jurisdictions in which they apply. For instance, there are over 16,000 incorporated cities and towns in the U.S.. If even half of them have an ordinance regulating the discharge of a firearm (most do, along the lines of it being a safety hazard and a noise nuisance), you’re nearly halfway there if you consider each version of the ordinance and the jurisdiction in which it applies to be one “law”. Then there are 3000 counties in 50 states (not including DC and other Federal territories like PR, USVI, Guam, AS and other island possessions), plus the State laws, plus the Federal.Anyway, this illustrates the problem with trying to talk about “U.S. gun laws” in a general sense. The laws under which I currently live in the City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas, USA could be different even from the laws applying to someone in a neighboring bedroom community that is independently incorporated (there’s a reason they call it the Metroplex; besides Dallas and Fort Worth themselves, there are no fewer than 202 independently-incorporated civic entities within the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA), not to mention those in a neighboring county and definitely a neighboring state. I will say that I know I have it pretty good being a gun owner in Fort Worth, Texas, and not in the Eastern Seaboard such as Maryland, where you’re required to obtain a “permit to purchase” from the police before buying any gun, and the permits to carry are granted on a discretionary basis requiring you to have “more reason than most” to want to carry a gun. But, I could also be a gun owner in Phoenix, where you don’t need a permit to carry at all.In other States, those laws vary even more; California, for instance, leaves a lot of it up to county control. So in Shasta County, in north central California, if you asked a gun owner what he thought of the gun laws, he might say they’re a pain and getting more painful, but he could probably live with them, because this fairly rural county is among the more permissive regarding issue of the necessary permits; the Sheriff will sign the papers almost as a matter of course. I was going to compare that assessment to what the average gun owner in San Francisco County would say, but that might be assuming too much about how many gun owners there are in San Fran County; 880,000 residents in a county of just a few square miles on the northern tip of the southern peninsula sheltering San Francisco Bay, and there are only 2 concealed carry permits. A similar situation exists down in the LA metro; virtually impossible to get a carry permit unless you’re famous enough for the Sheriff to know you personally, but in neighboring Orange County, “self-defense” is a “good reason” to get the permit.Would I change anything?Yes. Hopefully, my position on the number of gun laws in the country is clear by now; I think we could do with a little more standardization. This is very likely a “stick with the devil you know" argument, but I honestly think Texas is a good place to start in terms of laws. The state is no stranger to big-city problems, as we have three of the top 20 most populous metro areas in the country. However, despite Texas being the second most populous state, its murder rate is right at the national average statewide, with many other cities both larger and smaller ranking well above our most violent city (Houston). Cities and states with much tougher laws have much bigger problems despite those laws.So, as a quick primer, Texas has no purchase restrictions other than those imposed by Federal law; you can’t possess a gun without parental supervision under 18, you have to be 21 to buy handguns or handgun ammunition, NFA firearms have to be appropriately registered, purchase is subject to Federal NICS background check. There is a safe storage law; it is a misdemeanor to leave a loaded firearm “accessible to a minor” (not behind lock and key of some sort), and the severity is boosted significantly if that access results in injury or death. This could be stronger, but D.C. v. Heller dealt specifically with a tougher safe storage law (in combination with a handgun ban) so SCOTUS precedent is not kind to laws saying you can’t have a gun ready to use and easily accessible.Public carry is by permit only, whether openly or concealed, and the permit cost recently dropped significantly from $140 to $40 for a first-time applicant (Texas previously had the third-highest such application cost for a “shall issue” permit after Illinois and Arkansas, which was one of the major problems I had with the laws at the time). Without a permit, you can carry a handgun however you like on your own property, while lawfully hunting or while participating in some gun-related event (gun show, at the range, competition etc). Permits allowing more general carry are “shall-issue” with no discretion of the State DPS or local police, good for 5 years, and for a first application (or if it lapses without renewing it) it requires 4 hours classroom education (costs about $60-$80), a 50-round proficiency test at distances out to 15 yards (the toughest such test I’m aware of, modeled after State law enforcement qualification standards), fingerprinting (extra $10) and a clean criminal background check. The permit has a notable perk in that it allows the holder to bypass the NICS check for a firearm purchase, as any situation that would be a prohibiting criteria is also grounds for immediate suspension of the license. If you carry openly you have to use a holster, concealed carry can be in a pocket but some cover for the trigger is always recommended. Carry is prohibited in most government buildings, schools (unless you’re a teacher with district approval), sporting venues, bars/nightclubs and a few other places by statute, with additional prohibitions by private landowners allowed by posting a very specific sign.Not so bad, right? Like I said, there are more permissive states; Arizona and 10 others don’t require a permit to carry at all, openly or concealed, and the proficiency test in Texas is the highest skills-related bar set in any state I’m aware of. But overall, these laws make sense, and they work.There are also much more restrictive states, the most commonly abused policy being “good cause”, requiring the applicant to convince local police or the permitting board they have a good reason to need to carry a handgun. This policy needs to go away; most states that still have it use it as a cover to simply deny all applications that don’t come from someone wealthy or powerful enough to make police and politicians’ lives difficult.National reciprocity (the recognition by one State of another State’s carry permit as being equivalent to its own, subject to the laws of the state the permit holder is currently in, like driver’s licenses) is another thing I think is overdue, as refusal to recognize out of state permits is another common political tactic to make it difficult or impossible for various people to legally carry in the state. About 36 states generally have full reciprocity with each other, with 6 more imposing some requirements that disqualify certain states or permit types, and the remaining 8 do not recognize any permit but their own; they’re the same 8, generally, that make their carry permits as difficult as possible to obtain.At the Federal level, let’s start at the beginning; the NFA is 84 years old, and it shows. There are numerous workarounds to its various restrictions, some of which we need to update the law to include (i.e. bump stocks; I have no personal love for the device, and while you can do the same thing with a belt loop there’s little reason to make it any easier), and others that people who know guns look at and say, “WTF” (i.e. short-barreled rifles; you can get ARs that have an “arm brace” instead of a shoulder stock and therefore qualify as pistols, but this brace is just as easy to use as a stock). Suppressors are an NFA-regulated item, though over in the gun-control haven of the UK, hunters are encouraged to get one, to the point that you can buy them off the shelf from any hunting store for pennies on the dollar compared to their cost Stateside. I’m in favor of trading a ban or Title II restriction of bump stocks for deregulation of SBRs, SBSes and suppressors.The Fix NICS Act, passed in March, was a good move; it requires all State and Federal agencies to ensure their NICS reporting is complete, accurate and up-to-date, with Federal assistance in getting there, additional oversight to ensure it happens and penalties for not doing so. I’m generally in favor of the program as implemented; the biggest remaining problem is the ability of the ATF to manage a threefold increase in the volume of paperwork they have to audit. By law, the ATF is required to audit every FFL annually; in 2015, they managed just 7% of them. NFA paperwork for Title II devices is backlogged 8 months; hunters wishing to bring their suppressor across state lines have to file their application this deer season in order to be ready for next deer season (more realistically, they either bring it along or they don’t, and the ATF is none the wiser either way). This obviously isn’t working. Either have the ATF and fund it adequately for enough manpower to get the job done, or get rid of it and save the taxpayer $1.2 billion annually (the NICS budget for background checks is an FBI line item; $1.2 bn is what it costs to police gun manufacturers, importers and retailers to make sure all their paperwork is in order).