Look at that list you wrote. In a very real sense the only thing on that list most civilian Americans would exercise deadly force over is self-defense.
In concept, most Americans acknowledge there are ideals worthy killing and dying for, but if you asked them for a practical example of such a case they would be dumbfounded without some authority figure to tell them it's legitimate.
That's not how people jealous for their liberty think.
All the guns in the world won't protect a nation full of people that won't use those guns until their enemy tells them it's okay.
I don’t take such a negative view. In a polite society, a gunslinger stands out because most people just never have a reason to be armed—a gun is just something else to carry around and get lost or stolen. The exception is and has always been in “the bad part of town.”
Even in the old West, most cowboys were more inclined to use their handgun like a hammer than as a weapon. The few who did use them, used them more to signal or to scare off wildlife they didn’t want hanging around. Few lawmen or townspeople have ever been happy with somebody running around town shooting their gun in the air as celebration—because it was a good way for somebody to get hurt.
So again, in polite society, most people who carry guns either have a good reason or are involved in mischief. Those without guns just never find cause to worry.
In my life I have never met up with anyone in government who menaced me enough to want to be armed—far more often those individuals who have mischief in mind. This is because any efforts to reduce my liberties have always been petty, or have had a halfway good reason. Again, a reflection of a polite society.
Those who are not willing to give an inch of their liberty have no place in a place where there are other people; because just to be in a place like that, everybody has to give a little.
All of the above is typical in America. Most people take a reasoned view of things. It doesn’t mean that they are blades of grass twisting in the wind, nor that they won’t strongly react if somebody really does them an injustice.
*low whistle* Major profundity.