To add to this: escalating to violence can indeed end with armed conflict. But that concept has a radically different meaning here than anywhere else.

The USA is also the home of the biggest, most well-armed, most battle-trained, most nuclear-asymmetric-warfare equipped military, with large numbers of retired veterans all over the place. Then there's all the federal agencies that also have guns, armored cars, bodyarmor, riot gear, prisons, etc. And lastly, the police that have been buying/gifted military surplus equipment since about 9/11. Oh, and a bunch of those retired vets are also cops and federal agents. Meanwhile, normal people have hunting rifles and home defense weapons, if they have any at all. Plus, our houses are increasingly made of plastic, wood, glass, and paper; not exactly great cover if things get real ugly.

This isn't Japan, where the cops would have to figure out how/where to get guns, and the military is mostly a civil defense force. This scenario is much more like if Russia's military turned on its own people to crush mass dissent, instead of picking on their neighbors. Escalation brought to the scale of civil war that, say, Myanmar recently faced could easily be a one-sided bloodbath.