Much of the response on social media for They’re Coming for You Guns, Part 2 was a dismissal of the prediction as a tin foil hat theory. Obviously, very few people actually read the article. They are also in denial that things could spin out of control when Trump is taken into custody after a conviction. They claimed that the article made too many logical jumps to get to the prediction that things would get very bad. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Btw, the moderators on Reddit deleted that post, but you can still read the comments from the link. If you’re reading this blog you have all of the information in the post. I assume the moderators thought the post was not about gun rights. If you think that, you’re not paying attention. We are right on course for an attempt at mass civilian disarmament. The people in denial as well as the people saying “bring it on” are both feeding into this. This is complete madness.

Trump just won a clear victory in New Hampshire. DeSantis is out of the race and has endorsed Trump. Trump getting the nomination is inevitable. Since Super Tuesday is March 5, Trump will have this wrapped up before the start of the trial in Manhattan (read the above-referenced posts for the timeline). The predictions made last August are falling into place.

And now the situation is getting worse. Consider the events of this past week around the actions of the State of Texas at Eagle Pass. The Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could do whatever they wanted. There have been calls for defiance from prominent politicians. Consider the words of Chip Roy:

“It’s like, if someone’s breaking into your house, and the court says, ‘Oh, sorry. You can’t defend yourself.’ What do you tell the court? You tell the court to go to hell, you defend yourself and then figure it out later.”

The feds are threatening to take appropriate action:

“Texas’s actions are clearly unconstitutional and are actively disrupting the federal government’s operations,” DHS General Counsel Jonathan Meyer wrote to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “We demand that Texas cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around the Shelby Park area and remove all barriers to access in the Shelby Park area.”

For now, Customs and Border Patrol is not taking any action and the Texas National Guard is continuing to put up more razor wire:

The head of Customs and Border Protection says there’s no set timeline to remove razor wire put in place at the southern border by Texas, after the Supreme Court sided with the Biden Administration, allowing federal officials to remove the wire.

….

Those comments came alongside news that Texas was continuing to “hold the line” at the border, particularly in Eagle Pass, as CBS News reported the Texas National Guard was continuing to put razor wire in place.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Texas State Guard is the governor. They have an armored cavalry regiment. They aren’t just “meals on wheels.”

Border Patrol is no match for the State Guard. If the guard says Border Patrol is not coming in, they’re not coming in. What would it take for the feds to force the issue? The federal government would have to deploy military forces inside of Texas in order to force the guard out of the way. How likely is that? Both sides believe this is an existential threat. Texas cannot allow the invasion of illegal aliens to continue and the state is well within their constitutional mandate. Governor Abbott issued this letter yesterday, making that point:

It doesn’t sound like Texas plans on backing down. For the Biden Administration, defiance by Texas would be an existential threat as well. They can’t handle the appearance of weakness during an election year. We are likely to see a standoff, with neither side wanting to kick things off or back down. People who think nothing will happen should remember another standoff:

Departing Boston late in the evening of April 18, the King’s troops marched into the small town of Lexington around 5:00 am to find, facing them, a militia company of more (sic) 70 men led by Captain John Parker. When the vanguard of the British force rushed forward upon the town green, Captain Parker immediately ordered his company to disperse. At some point a shot rang out — historians still debate who fired the shot. The nervous British soldiers fired a volley, killing seven and mortally wounding one of the retreating militiamen. The British column moved on towards Concord, leaving the dead, wounded, and dying in their wake. Parker and his men would have revenge later that afternoon.

So what might happen here? Are we looking at another Ruby Ridge or Waco? Those tragedies pitted the government against civilian citizens who couldn’t do much to fight back. In contrast, the militaries of a state and the federal government clashing would be an entirely different event. The Battle of Fort Sumter was originally a standoff. No one realized the amount of death and destruction they were starting when the fighting began.

It’s getting worse. “Civil War” is now trending on Twitter with 78K posts. Other states are now supporting Texas, including Montana:

Representative Matt Rosendale has chimed in:

There have been calls to federalize the Texas Guard and the Biden administration has been completely non-committal in its response, as  Karine Jean-Pierre said:

“Look, if the governor is not interested in that—Governor Abbott is not interested in that, he wants to politicize an issue, and he’s not helping communities, he actually isn’t, and he’s actually putting border patrol agents in harm’s way by doing what he’s doing. I’m not going to speak to any actions that the president might take, might not take, but we have been very clear about it.”

If we get a standoff at the Texas border, how long will it go on? Could we have the scenario that the standoff becomes kinetic in March, right before Trump is convicted in the Manhattan trial and taken into custody? If the crazies out there aren’t motivated enough to start something over Trump being in custody, will an attack on a state by the federal government push them over the edge? The next step to complicate things will be when private groups get involved at the Texas border. What if some idiots do a mag dump into a line of illegals? What if an agent provocateur is the one to start things off? Don’t dismiss how precarious this situation is.

The only chance we have to avert this particular catastrophe is for Congress to agree to a border deal that stops the invasion of illegals, but that seems unlikely. Even if the current situation is defused, we’re only back to where we were a few weeks ago.

The situation at the border feeds into the gun debate. If military-aged men are streaming into the country, gun owners will not be inclined to give up their guns. Just about every move we see right now feeds into starting the kind of violence that the Biden Administration can use as an excuse to take away guns, while making the other side even more adamant about the need for keeping them.

Normalcy bias is a real thing. Any rational analysis will tell you that 2024 is going to make 2020 look like a walk in the park.