Keep in mind that military is a tool of the last resort for the tyranny when dealing with its own population. One typical scenario in the suppression of the fr

Keep in mind that military is a tool of the last resort for the tyranny when dealing with its own population. One typical scenario in the suppression of the free speech is the (illegally) armed brownshirts breaking down the door of the family house where the wrongthink assembly is taking place and lynching the people inside. The police shows up in the morning and -- wow, another one of the unsolvable crimes by the unknown perpertrators with the unknowable motives. Add guns and suddenly this is impossible. Storming a firearm-defended position is not something a brownshirt mob is able to do. The second scenario is the police overreach. The shocktroopers in blue show up at the ghetto and load up the whole households of 'undesirables' into the black cars to never be seen again. Again, this all falls apart if the population is armed. Once it is clear to the masses that the purge is going to take place, the ghetto becomes a killing field because every window is a gun port and the stopped cars are the perfect targets. The point of the armed populace in 21st century is not to win the war with the tyrant's standing army. It's to make sure that the tyrant cannot disappear the large swathes of population without taking casualties and without making what's going on obvious to the public.