A bunch of armed citizens does not make an effective army. Untrained and uncoordinated citizens are no match against well trained soldiers.
Very few armed resistance fights have succeeded in bringing democracy or freedom anywhere. More often than not it has been non-violent resistance which has succeeded.
In most cases when violence gets involved it is the wrong kind of people who end up on the top of the pecking order and you end up with an equally bad or worse regime in the end. We've seen this in the french revolutions, south american revolutions, various revolutions and independent fights across Asia and Africa, and more lately the Arab spring.
Freedom of speech, privacy etc is more important for keeping a country free than gun laws. If you have no free press, society will have advanced too far in the wrong direction before you can make a difference with your gun.
Ironically the same right wing people supporting gun rights, seem to not care a lick about privacy, surveillance, excessive police mandates or draconian laws.
A lot of other gun nuts think like me. Don't assume the Republican party represents us.
Also isn't Iraq an counter example to your point (as mentioned in a parent post [1])? Since it did have a fairly high gun ownership rate and yet it had an oppressive government. Or did it simply not yet reach the necessary worst abuses level yet? Or was the gun ownership rate not high enough?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11289520 [2] heard some funny stories from bomb squad people, about such encounters.. really have to wonder what these people are thinking
If they didn't see you with a gun they might not have acted with a dozen cops rushing the door but now you've escalated yourself into a threat in their eye, legit or not.
You are already being oppressed by the NSA sharing domestic data with the FBI, your gun will do zero to stop that.