It scared you to death to imagine that a super powerful demagogue could potentially seize control of the government and circumvent objective journalism to conspire behind closed doors with his "buddies" and absolutely ruin your life due to the qualities that you can't (and wouldn't want to) change.
Except it's not the government versus the people. It's the government and it's supporters who have guns versus another group of people that may or may not also have guns. Gun owners don't care about the collective just like the average american does not care about the collective. People have guns because they want to protect themselves against the millions of other americans that have guns.
What would prevent an armed, powerful, national government from being able to recruit nationalists to round you up for being <quality> and isolate you into ghettos, kill you, castrate you, etc.?
The nazi government had the support of their people, just as the American government's more severe policies, and practices gets support from the American people. If you are seriously worried about some incredibly unlikely circumstance where you rise up and defend your values against the government, the government will most likely have the support of some non-trivial amount of American people.
It's "Mutually Assured Destruction" at its finest.
It's absolutely not. The american govt has trillions of dollars at it's disposal for warfare, propaganda, recruiting people, allying countries, endless weaponry. It's not the year 1800 anymore. You owning 15 guns does not even the playing field. You are fantasizing.
What do you think, realistically, the odds of the american govt turning on it's people? Do you think it's likely? Do you think it's more likely than some other bad things happening to you? Do you protect as fiercely against getting hit by a car walking down the street? Do you not eat fast food to protect against heart disease? That must be orders of magnitude more likely than a militia of american citizens rising up against the government. So I guess it follows that you, and all gun owners that cite 2a as a primary reason against stricter gun control, must stand exponentially even more strongly against fast food. And drinking. And doing drugs, right? All things that are incredibly more of a realistic threat to you and your loved ones livelihood.
I think you and most people have a gun because:
The 2a argument is incredibly weak and comes off as a fantasy. The result of which is more guns than people in the US, and laughably weak gun control, not to mention all the suicides, accidental deaths, "self defense" shootings, and domestic terrorism.
Just be honest. Hiding behind 2a is not the whole truth, and if you actually believe that it is, then you are actually stupid and probably shouldn't be in charge of anything more dangerous than a thermos.