Texas State Rep. Briscoe Cain’s inflammatory Thursday night tweet at Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke lit a social media firestorm. Responding to O’Rourke’s oft-repeated “Hell yes, we're gonna take your AR-15” line, a phrase many would consider a threat in and of itself, Cain tweeted his own version of ‘come and take it’ right back at the former Texas congressman: “My AR is ready for you.” While gun grabbers were apoplectic about a perceived “threat” and Twitter obediently deleted the tweet for what it called a violation of its “rules for threats of violence,” Second Amendment supporters came to Briscoe’s defense, calling the phrase well within the bounds of First Amendment protected speech.

Inflammatory rhetoric on both sides notwithstanding, the incident does speak to the dire apocalyptic imaginings of both sides of the gun control issue. On the one hand, you’ve got leftists fantasizing about the prospect of unleashing hordes of gun-wielding jackboots into the homes of millions of ordinary, law-abiding Americans to search for and confiscate any weaponry that has since been deemed illegal. And if the occasional person who feels his rights have been unjustly violated and force is warranted fires back in the process and is killed, good riddance. They were just ‘Deplorables’ anyway. On the other hand, many people on the right believe that such a show of force from a gun-grabbing government would result in enough literal blowback from gun-wielding citizens that tyranny would be stopped cold in its tracks. Either that, or they are prying the guns from our “cold, dead hands.”

Both scenarios, of course, depend on a Democrat being elected president, Democrats taking over the Senate, and draconian gun ban laws being passed. All of which could happen, easily. What isn’t as likely to happen, however, minus some sort of Netflix-series-worthy cataclysmic event, is a scenario that involves gun-wielding government agents forcibly canvassing American homes in search of illegal weapons.

Even O’Rourke himself admitted as much, telling MSNBC host Joy Reid on Saturday that he has “confidence” in “the people of this country” to follow the law.

“Much like we don’t go door-to-door to enforce almost any law in the United States – in fact, I don’t think we do that for any law in the United States – this is not something that we would do,” O’Rourke said, responding at least in part to Briscoe’s assumed chain of events. “Others have said, you know, this is something we would fear if there were a mandatory buyback program. No, we expect people to follow the law. That’s certainly what I believe will happen.”

Many readers here won’t agree with what I’m about to write, but in this rare case I believe that Beto is most likely telling the truth. The imagined apocalyptic door-to-door weapons seizures that either lead to a totalitarian state or a hot revolution/civil war is unlikely to ever happen. That’s not, however, because leftists are good people and would never want gun owners to be harmed. Quite the contrary on all counts - Leftists are NOT good people and they DO want responsible gun owners to come to harm. They just know that, Eric Swalwell’s nukes notwithstanding, such an overreach too soon has a significant chance of going bad for them, and they’re more than willing to settle for the long game.

Make no mistake, the totalitarian state WILL happen, if Robert Frances and his ilk get their way, but it won’t happen with jackboots kicking in doors, at least not at first and not in significant enough numbers to overly alarm the rest of a sleeping populace. No, it will happen with the so-called “rule of law,” as law after law is passed to “stop” a media manufactured problem (statistics-wise) that can never entirely be stopped, yet will be emphasized nonstop every time it happens anywhere in America until they get what they want.

And even assuming you “defy” a law they’ve passed – which, granted, many currently do in heavy gun-controlled blue states – what long-term purpose will that serve? They may not physically have possession of your AR-15, or your handgun, or your scoped 30-06 semi-auto deer rifle, but what good are weapons when you’ll be prosecuted as a criminal for using them? People like Beto O’Rourke and their leftist cohorts may be evil, but they aren’t stupid. They know this, and so they can say they won’t go “door-to-door” with a straight face and a smarmy “I’m a reasonable person” grin, knowing full well the long-term ramifications.

Like the frog in boiling water, the totalitarian state will happen when leftists are able to use the law to make de-facto criminals out of everyone they hate. Then, whether the proverbial jackboots come to your home and beat down your door now or later, whether they arrest you in a grocery store parking lot or sleeping in your bed, whether they prosecute you for using an “illegal” weapon to defend yourself against a home invader or hunting for food, whether they take your guns via “voluntary” buyback because you’ve got a family and can’t afford to risk going to prison, or from your cold, dead hands, they’ll know they’ve won. Because they’re eventually going to get your guns, one way or another.

In other words, when it comes to gun legislation or really anything else, don’t ever cede one lousy inch to evil, godless leftists.