As a person who grew up in the age of Selective Service, and who was marched down to register when I turned eighteen, I consider myself slightly above average in understanding of what the state/government can do when it flexes its muscles. Worrying about them coming for you shotgun and can of beans isn't the worse of it.

The state can pull you off your front porch, splinters under the fingernails and all, haul you off to some godforsaken place and order you to charge machine-gun nests with a sharpened stick if they want to. Being a Co, conscientious observer, is an option. In which case they don't give you the stick and they order you to drag wounded people who had sticks back so they can be patched up and given another stick.

Even that isn't the worse of it. Look what we did to people with Japanese ancestry during WW2. The land of the free, the brave ... the land of confiscated property and internment camps. Yes, if things get scary enough, in reality or imagined, we quickly compromise our ideals and scapegoat a handy group of 'people who don't fit in'.

On the bright side, I think Blast has is right that this is a good thing. Better to have standards, policies and procedures thought through, agreed to, and established as sound and rational than trying to make it up on the fly. People get into a panic and next thing they are hauling people who don't look like 'us' off to interment camps before anyone bothers to figure out if it makes sense.