"People need to have their battle rifles and everything ready at their bedsides" is not a figure of speech I've ever heard. Is Milo Yiannopoulos's quote "I can't wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight" a similar figure of speech?

Excusing extreme calls-to-action after the fact as "figures of speech" gives license to say anything: when you've found you've gone too far, you can simply walk it back and say it was metaphor. Should any of Milo's or Jones's followers act on this, would you still say their comments were just figures of speech?