I thought the whole idea of the right to bear arms in the US (at least according to Thomas Jefferson) was to maintain a militia specifically to keep the government from getting too big for its britches.

It wasn't so that rednecks could shoot trespassers. It was to shoot soldiers of a corrupt government.

Unfortunately that seems lost now.  It's now illegal to possess the kind of weaponry that will put up any real resistance against modern military arms. Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight. How about bringing a hunting rifle to modern warfare?

I'm a little older than you and was a child of the post-WW2 era, but I'm sure as a Finn you heard stories of bravery against Stalin's Russia. When you live in the shadow of the kind of regime that annihilates dissidence and imprisons its own citizenry wholesale, it gets a tad scary.