Faustling:

I am getting too old, fat and lazy to take arms against the government . . . not, anyway, because I didn't like the way people voted in an election. There's going to be another one in a few years, right?

In some countries, the winner ensures that there _isn't_ going to be another election in a few years. That's when all the "good citizenship" stuff you learned in civics class becomes irrelevant. Guns are not for use against the federal government in protest of an election outcome; they're for the contingency in which the people in charge cease to submit to the people via elections. Again, we have guns to deter that from happening, and it hasn't happened here much. That's how it was _intended_ to work. In some other countries it _has_ happened.

When I say it hasn't happened here _much_, google the "Battle of Athens, Tennessee" for an example in our lifetime in which it _did_ happen, and _was_ corrected via the guns of private citizens.

But as for me, my main motivation for protecting the right to keep and bear arms is so that the government cannot force us to tolerate letting private criminals do things to us that the Constitution denies the government the power to do to us directly. I don't want the government to get around its obligation to respect my privacy by forcing me to let a burglar invade my privacy. I don't want the government to get around its prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures by forcing me to let muggers and burglars subject me to unwarranted searches and seizures. Etc.