I really don't have any answers but I do have a rifle and a basic load. I have them just because I am a law abiding US citizen and I can......right now. I want my government to know that I am an armed citizen and there are many, many of us. I believe that just that knowledge makes for a little more honest government.
I think that its not that armed citizens could actually make any credible, long term threat to a fully committed and cooperating government force. It is that such a confrontation would be so unpredictable and so, so messy politically that it actively repels even committed politicians from ever considering such a course in pursuit of radical extreme ideas. Its just the thought of the stuff hitting the fan that helps keep the ship of state on an even keel. It is as the founders intended it to be.
For you literary types, I believe that the questions and scenarios posed above in this thread would make for the plot of a major fiction best seller right now. Write it, sell bunches and buy a double rifle or a pair of McKay Browns......or even your own custom battery of AR's!
