An armed populace is always, at minimum, a persistent annoyance to an authoritarian State and at most, a potential existential threat.
And not just in the sense of citizens shooting government officials...
Guns in civilian hands represent a threat to Statists in another way too. Firearms ownership is one of the hallmarks of self-sufficiency. A self sufficient population robs the nanny-state of relevance and revenue and inhibits its expansion. Statism depends upon the existence of a population of peasants who are both beholden to, and utterly reliant upon government.
Bookmarks