Toby, your blog gave me a lot of food for thought.
In your story the collapse is quick and nationwide. I've come to the opinion that it will be sporadic and creeping, and that it has already started. Detroit is an example of a city that has fallen on hard times. One third of the city population has left, leaving huge tracks of empty, deteriorating houses and a city government with insufficient tax revenues to support the local structure. The sheriff has recommend that citizens arm themselves for their own protection and the police union has recommended that visitors to the state stay away from Detroit. As lawlessness increases, and it will because criminals never let an opportunity go to waste, shootings will increase. Sooner or later either the local, state or federal government will declare marshal law in Detroit, and a good part of the surrounding country, and outlaw the possession of guns, with mandates to "turn them in" or be shot on sight. It will be an oxymoron that a government which thinks it is horrible to sentence teenage murderers to life in prison will have no compulsion against shooting someone with 2A Rights for exercising that right.
The Marshal Law will never be rescinded and Federalized troops will be asking for "papers" and doing warrantless searches of persons, cars and homes, just as they have always wanted to do since the DHS was created and have recently claimed that they have such a right, despite the 4th and 5th Amendments. That's how rogue our government has gotten! As the depression deepens, and it can only deepen because contrary to Obama's doctrine we cannot spend our way out of debt, identical troubles will spread to other cities. One could postulate that continued deficit spending is done deliberately to hasten troubles and justify nationwide marshal law. The government won't do that because it would spread their resources too broadly and would spark a nationwide armed revolt. If one man can create so much havoc in L.A. and the surrounding regions one can only imagine how much chaos hundreds of well armed and trained men could do. So, that led me to the conclusion that marshal law will be imposed on areas of the country with the greatest problems and rising levels of violence. If a major metropolitan area collapses the government will have to use the exact weapons and tactics they've been training with for the last five years in places like L.A., Miami and Huston. But, they won't do anything with other parts of the country and folks will think, "oh well, that's justified in those places", never thinking that they are in the same line, just farther down. Another thing they will do is extend the "border" out to 150 or 200 miles, enlarging the "Constitution Free Zone" that already exists. That will increase the number of Americans living under less than full Constitutional protection from 1/3rd to nearly half of the total population.
With many places like Detroit having been put under Marshal Law a some political or financial "emergency" will give an excuse for the government to suspend the Constitution entirely and put the remaining parts of the country under Marshal Law. With a lot of the weaponry having already been confiscated by house to house searches, car stops, personal frisking, etc... those already under Marshal Law will be unable to help in an armed revolt. That will leave the "union creek" kinds of locations as the last remaining vestiges of Constitutional freedom left in the country. Unfortunately, the National Guard armories will still be functional and under control of the "new" government and it will be manned by people who agreed to shoot Americans on this soil when they were given the new litmus test for advancement in the "new" military.
My scenario has even less hope than yours, unfortunately, because it is of the frog warming variety. Just about the time the frog notices the heat it will be too weak to jump out of the pot.
