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Rifles, even .22 caliber models many young people receive as their first gun, are “among the greatest threats to the reliability of the nation’s power system.."

Actually, tree limbs near the power lines that the electric companies no longer bother to trim because they want to milk out some more profits for their hedge fund owners are the greatest threat to the reliability of the nation's power system. Just look at how many power lines are downed by any good sized storm.

As far as I can tell the kind of guys who own guns are the first guys on the scene with chainsaws, bucket trucks, and everything else you need to put the power lines back up and get them working again when they get knocked down by trees because the electric utility execs are too cheap to trim the trees like they used to.

We've got a lot of fools working for the government.

It costs a lot more money to restore power from downed trees than the tree trimming would cost. Point your blame at the "greenies" who obstruct proper maintenance of power line routes because "....the trimming might harm the trees...". The same parties have also prevented the use of sprayed herbicides (2,4,5-T and similar) to prevent regrowth.

I used to live in Louisiana, and now live in Western Washington.

My podunk rural REA down in Louisiana properly maintained power line trimming...as a result, we rarely lost power, even in hurricanes, and when power went down, it was brought back up quickly.

Now, in Washington, the "I love the trees" crowd has prevailed and you have the ridiculous situation of 70 foot tall fir trees ten feed away from a 35 foot high power line. If someone spits on the sidewalk or farts, we lose power.

The ONLY available option for the utility to improve reliability is to "underground" the power cables.......which is REALLY expensive for the utility.

Ludicrous.