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At this point ... do we want to prevent one?

I served for 32 years 2 months and 20 days. In that time I fought several different enemies in several different regions and all of them never really recovered from hostilities. If we fight a civil war we will not be the US ever again. For some this is a good outcome but as for me I yearn for a rebirth of these United States.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” — Thomas Jefferson

Is one even really possible? If people weren't even willing to go out and vote they'd be willing to go out and fight? All the government needs to do is maintain its decades-long course of making minor changes constantly, and a couple of larger changes intermittently. This is how the Republican party ended up being (far)more liberal than the Democrats were in the 1960s. This is how homosexuality has been more or less accepted (this, by the way, was very effectively done over two decades using the media). It will be the same for guns. Once the social rubric is altered, and there is constant inundation in the media and other fora on a subject, after some time that way of thought gets adopted as acceptable and true.

There will be no civil war. At most, maybe a couple of Waco type incidents, with public reactions similar to those that came up during the Waco incident. People tsk tsking at some 'silly people' getting killed, with some saying that 'maybe' the government overstepped its mandate, but those people were asking for it anyways. It is much easier to vote than it is to fight, and most people do not vote due to apathy and nonchalance. For the most part not because they think the process doesn't work, but rather because they simply have 'better things' to do. Yet the same people are willing to rise up and fight the government in civil war, when they cannot engage in less dangerous activities?

Finally, a civil war would be the end of the USA. I think there are some people who have certain fantasies about conflict, and as someone who has invested in emerging markets (I was in Liberia and Sierra Leone August last year) I can tell you conflicts and conflagrations are never clear cut. It is somewhat similar to those people who cannot wait for TEOTWAWKI, because they have enough bricks of ammo to build a small house and sufficient weaponry to start a small-scale war in Latin America. They have some sort of Omega Man fantasy, where they come out on top and keep winning. The truth is that in an actual TEOTWAWKI most of them would be killed in the first two waves (especially all who remain in suburbia), and the survivors would face anything from disease to other less-sexy threats that don't care if you are trying to do a remake of Heston's Omega Man. Same thing with civil war ...just on a bigger scale. It would not be like that silly 1980s TV series called V about reptilian aliens trying to dominate the world, and where the heroes would fight the aliens during the day and in the evening go home for some peaceful sleep before doing it again the next day.

All of that is moot anyways. There will be no civil war. All one needs to do is look at the shift in political thought in the US, where, as I mentioned, the current GOP would be too liberal for JFK, significantly. In another 2 decades that GOP (or whatever party will be the second half of the US two-party system) will make the current GOP seem extreme right.

The world will not end with a bang but with a whimper.

I was born and raised in the South. Well over half a million men were killed in the Civil War; so think about it hard. “Reconstruction” was a bitch as well; so think about it real hard and see if ya’ll are still keen on it. - My great great grandfather was a Confederate soldier, fought at Shiloh among other places. I grew up with my parents taking me to the Shiloh memorial battleground back at a time when the Bloody Pond there was still actually bloody in color. - I’m old enough, and had enough family that was affected by that war to think it through before committing. Oh, and, needless to say, Lincoln wasn’t too highly revered in my family.