First, there's civil disobedience in Connecticut over gun registration. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide if this is a bad thing, because it weakens the government's ability to pass laws which help preserve an ordered freedom, or a good thing because this is a bad law which should be resisted.
Second, guns really do defend freedom (and not only lives and property):
"a widespread insurrection against the government wouldn’t take the form of a massed militia marching against the US military...Politicians would be easy targets, except for a few who could surround themselves with a ring of steel. Roads and railroads would be blocked and destroyed. Water and electrical systems would be constantly disrupted, as would the provision of everything from medicine to food. Loyalist citizens would inform on their rebel neighbors, with the rebels in turn killing those suspected of informing. Criminals would prey on everyone who was too weak to resist.
It would be dreadful, regardless of who won in the end. And in that terrible scenario, the personal firearms protected by the second amendment would be very effective. A drone beats an AR-15 or a Glock, but the drone needs fuel, and an airfield, and an operator who likely has a home and a family. Civil war is an awful thing, but the threat of a desperate populace resorting to it provides a check on the government."
Actually, that "Criminals would prey on everyone who was too weak to resist" is generally true. There is a saying that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. We see it especially in high-crime areas: hello, Chicago and LA; hello, US border towns (and farms, etc) which get drawn into the Mexican Drug Cartels' ongoing wars; and hello, anarchy in New Orleans immediately after Katrina.
It's not that those of us who support Second Amendment rights live in a state of paranoia. Rather, we live in a state of preparation, not necessarily for revolution (wars are ugly things) but for the very real possibility of being victims of a mad gunman or a violent criminal or a drug enforcer; or, indeed, of the increasingly common infringement on our rights brought by the militarized police state (etc.).
The statists' desire to see us disarmed and helpless really is as much about the latter as it is the former. Make us helpless before any threat, and the citizenry will beg for more government to solve its problems. The fight over firearms also has this at its root, because if we give up our ability to self-defense (including potentially lethal self-defense), our only alternative for "safety" is to have a well-funded and well-oiled police-state, which then conveniently can be used to keep the citizens in line.
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