Well the truly "unhinged" are at the ready.
James Yeager, the CEO of a Tennessee company that specializes in weapons and tactical training in reaction to possible gun control measures by the Obama administration posted the following on Youtube and Facebook on Wednesday:
"I'm telling you if that happens, it's going to spark a civil war and I'll be glad to fire the first shot. I'm not putting up with it. You shouldn't put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you're going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifles clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight. I'm not f*cking putting up with this. I'm not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I'm going to start killing people."
So there you have it.
Twenty innocent 6 and 7 year old children and six adults are mercilessly mowed down by a deranged 20 year old man with an assault rifle at a Connecticut elementary school which truly stuns most people in the nation and rightly refocuses attention on regulating assault weapons and one "representative" of the gun crowd in America goes ballistic at that possibility.
It's hard to tell whether it's blatant racism at the core of these individuals mindset or just an opportunity to take their love of killing for sport to the next level and threaten to kill those who propose regulating assault type weapons whose only purpose is to kill people.
Nobody is advocating or proposing to ban hunting rifles or taking away weapons currently owned by gun owners such as Yeager and his brethren.
Gun regulation isn't confiscation but apparently the truly paranoid in the gun crowd aren't convinced and believe any regulation is tantamount to taking away their guns so prepare for civil war.
In what way could one begin to reason with such people?
The truly worrisome possibility is I don't think Yeager is alone in his "thinking", not with some 300 million guns in the country and militia's of one sort or the other purportedly all over the country "waiting" for the call to take action. Yeager's rant could resonate with other such "patriots".
Then of course there's the NRA which has been rabidly effective in its lobbying efforts to oppose and water down all gun control regulations which many law makers consider taking them on as being a 3 rd rail proposition.
But if sanity has any meaning at all in America, the Connecticut massacre of little children will bring a ban on the sale of assault weapons and 30 round magazines.
This won't suit the James Yeager's in America but he and his ilk shouldn't deter responsible regulation from being enacted.