You're not taking into account the fact that the average person is !@#$ing retarded when it comes to being taught to be a soldier, and only with an extremely skilled instructors over an extended period of time, in a well maintained and stocked environment mind you, could any 'halfway-decent militia for any purpose' be formed, as you said. And even then, you're going to have failures, especially since you'd be drawing from an oddball and tiny pool of volunteers. Its a !@#$ing joke of an idea and you just don't get it. There is no massive pool of young, able-bodied, para-military loving, gun-accepting, socialist people in America who want to move into a facility for months on end in order to train to be some sort of gun-toting idealistic rabble, not taking into account whatever paltry sum you'd come up with as payment for their time and efforts. They'd have garbage for food, since your budget for a socialist paramilitary force within the US would be garbage, just to name one huge logistical problem. Only nutjobs would throw their money away into something so clearly wasteful, since it'd be funded by donations. Its just stupid and you should think harder.