It really wasn’t, as shown by the Whiskey Rebellion. That’s the popular talking point, but it was bullshit then and it’s orders of magnitude more bullshit now.

Even the vaunted successes of the Black Panthers arming up ended up in the destruction of the Panthers via intimidation, arrest, and assassination. Then you have the Davidians and Ruby Ridge.

They want you to have guns, because it makes you feel like you don’t have to do anything. If anything, it makes you more anti-government and paranoid against both the government they’re trying to dismantle and the neighbors they want you to not trust.