“If it’s time to bury guns, it’s time to use them.”
You (whether as an individual, or a nation or coalition of nations) want to have reserves of unknown size and composition, and let your enemy KNOW that you have such reserves (without any specifics) in order to deter that enemy from acting against you. In the event that you don’t succeed, you will need those reserves, because you have to presume that an attacking enemy has a good plan to seize or destroy everything that he/it knows about.
A perfect example of this is the huge Soviet reserves during WW2. When the Germans invaded, their intelligence thought that there were a certain number of divisions, and that success only required destroying or rendering ineffective a larger percentage of them. Not too many months after the invasion, the generals reported to the political leadership that they had destroyed or captured sufficient men and equipment to account for all previously-known Soviet divisions - and they then asked “Why are we still fighting, they should have nothing left?” Well, the Soviets had loads more in the way of secret reserves than German intelligence knew about. See item #2 here: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/10-things-russians-right-operation-barbarossa-mm.html
The same exact principle applies to gun confiscation. If you have bought any firearms directly from a FFL, you have to presume that the government knows about them. Be prepared to part with them - because they will come to your home with enough men and firepower to kill you and your family. This is the strength of the enemy - don’t fight them on THEIR terms. But if you have acquired numerous guns off paper over the years (for cash, obviously), and hidden them off your property, then they can never know how much or what you have. Store ammo, spare mags, spare parts, cleaning supplies, etc. with the guns.
Now, if the government knows that the American people have been doing a lot of private sales (and we’ve been doing it since the FFLs came into existence in 1968) and hiding guns, etc., they will be deterred. If they know that this is being done purposely to evade confiscation, and on a very large scale (like millions of us), then they will be dealing with a large “known unknown” (to use Donald Rumsfeld’s terminology). We will have introduced MASSIVE uncertainty to them, and one thing that tyrants hate is uncertainty.
Now, add to that the purposeful dissemination of the fact that we are (again, on a MASSIVE scale) compiling information about THEM - who they are, where they live and work, where their kids go to school, where they eat out, what cars they own, etc. - then we will have completely turned the tables on them before the first confiscation order ever goes out...and that, friends, is EXACTLY the point. We don’t really want to have to use our firearms for anything other than target shooting and hunting. We don’t want our houses burned down, our families shot and killed, us hunted for the rest of our lives, us having to live with the guilt of having shot someone (even if we know and believe that we had moral and legal justification) - no, we WANT to live in peace, we WANT them to leave us alone. Follow my prescription, and we have a chance of that.
Wise words.