It is Going to Get Bad. It is Going to Get Bloody . The Question is How Bad, and How Bloody.

Over at Hot Air Jazz Shaw points to a new Rasmussen poll that indicates roughly half of Americans expect violence when it comes time to pay the piper.

Nearly one-out-of-two Americans (48%) think that cuts in government spending are at least somewhat likely to lead to violence in the United States, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. But that includes just 13% who feel it’s Very Likely.

A bit less than have thinks that cuts will not lead to violence. These would be you victims.

I stopped by one of my local gun shops Wednesday night to drop off a part I had that belonged to the owner, and the gentleman behind the counter (who knows me as a gun blogger) took just a few minutes to tell me about the significant increase in calls about firearms just this week.

The calls were in response to the S&P downgrade, the rioting in Great Britain, and the mob racial violence in the Midwest and Northeast in recent weeks. It can happen here, and people are starting to say so.

A majority of calls were from young families that had not owned guns before, but who were now concluding that they need firearms to protect themselves.

Interestingly enough, the majority of callers seemed to be requesting information about AR-15 pattern rifles, similar to what our military carries but without the option of automatic fire. Most of these callers were hit by the shock shock of the cost of an AR ($750-$1500 and up) and didn't have the money to purchase them, and so turned their attention to pistols and shotguns.

People are scared, and the clerk lamented that a lot of people now in the market aren't going to get the training they should, and are going to end up shooting people they don't legally have a right to shoot, and a lot of these people are going to end up in jail.

We're going to have to severely cut social programs. As much as liberals are burying their heads in the sand (or other warm, dark places) to avoid dealing with that fact, we simply have to cut spending, and that is going to mean significant entitlement reform. Combine that with an entitlement mindset and a consumer culture with eroding moral guidance, and you have the recipe for the kind of violence you saw in the United Kingdom, and the very distinct probability that it will happen here to some extent.

The big question no one can answer is that we don't know how widespread or deep the rioting and violence with occur.

Will it be mindless, but weapon-free looting and racial attacks like we've seen in recent weeks that just sent a few people to the hospital, or are we going to see cities burn again?

Will the violence be confined to small isolated incidents quickly stomped out by effective policing, or will President Empty Suit dither as America burns?

It is likely to get bad. How bad, we simply don't know.