> Total civilizational collapse is not a pretty sight. <
Yes. Your next-door neighbor might be the nicest guy in the world. But let his children go without any food for a week or two. Then he’ll kill you for that apple in your hand.
The solution is obviously not to let things get that bad in the first place. But for the first time in our history we are being led by a group of arrogant and clueless children. 2024 can’t come soon enough.
There is a much larger pool of sheepdogs in American areas where gardening and prepping are not unusual, than murderous wolves.
The truly bad guys are probably already known and disliked and if things became so post-apocalyptic that killing became functionally semi-legal, then the bad guys would be facing unleashed individual and organized sheepdogs that would love to be able to kill bad guys for being threats to the good people.
Sheepdogs from all walks of life are held in check because of the law, that is why the drug dealers and violent bullies can appear to have regular citizens cowed, but if the law controlling the good guys collapses then countless good guys would love to unleash their suppressed frontier justice on the stupid dorks that bully them in ‘peacetime’.
Remember that gun laws only disarm the law-abiding, but if the system collapses the law-abiding will enthusiastically start enforcing their own traditional law and sense of order, and the riff-raff that appear so brave and dominant now would be in many cases dealt with rather quickly and would largely be in terror to see how quickly veterans and hunters, and self-controlled good guys of all types switch to order imposers with the will to put down rabid dogs.
When the community is against you and there is no outside force to control the community, then you better control your threatening impulses or run for your life.