An equivalence drawn between the US and other governments would seem to suggest that civilian gun ownership doesn't deter the violence and corruption of the state, nor does its absence elsewhere appear to have led to the inevitable slaughter of those populations for whom gun control is much more strict than in the US.

Rather, it seems that when one enshrines into the culture the precept that the only free state is one cultivated by popular violence, it gives both the state and the people an excuse to justify violence as being an unavoidable cost of civilization. Political and social alternatives can't be seriously considered when, for many people, all other roads lead to slavery and death.

Instead, mass shootings in the US lead to a spike in gun sales, because they're effective advertising and recruitment tools for the NRA, even as the police and the government are becoming more militarized and surveillance more aggressive, in no small part because after 9/11 the American people wanted them to be. And if it's the case that the US is a more tyrannical state now, then I believe that's due to American democracy having worked as intended, rather than that tyranny having emerged from a vacuum, or some implicit tendency of states to creep towards totalitarianism.

... did you just blame the ukrainian genocide under stalin on a lack of guns?

For some inexplicable reason, dictators first seize the guns of targeted populations before trying such things.

Muzzle loaded smooth-bore (short range, relatively fast to load).

Muzzle loaded rifle (long range, slow to load)

Then the muzzle loaded rifled musket, which used the Minié ball to achieve both, and great carnage in the Crimean War and our Civil War.

Now the developments are rapid:

Breach loaded single shot rifles.

Repeaters with relatively slow loading, with a move to smokeless powder.

Clip fed repeaters, a critical Mauser innovation. With the 1898 model, the battle rifle is fully "modern". With of course effective semi-auto models to follow, plus the lower powered/lower range assault rifle (and I can't help but notice that the short ranged AK-47 is something a dictator would prefer to be issued, vs. something more able to reach out and touch him).

But ammo, going back to the rifled musket, we're using corrosive primers, and black power residue attracts moisture. That is, it takes a fair amount of diligent effort to keep a rifle from rusting out.

In 1911 the Swiss switched to non-corrosive primers, appropriate for their militia system. Our first weapon with 100% non-corrosive primers was the WWII M1 Carbine, a weapon for officers and rear echelon troops.

So the likelihood of a less organized having a lot of functioning weapons increases with their using non-corrosive primers. Or, in the case of the Soviets, using chromed barrels.

Now you have to factor in wealth. Poor people who can't afford much in the way of weapons aren't going to have a chance here. See e.g. Rwanda, where rifles didn't play a big part on either side.

So ... what examples might we have? The successful resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is suggestive. You might count Hitler deciding it wasn't worth breaking 80 divisions to take (most of) Switzerland.

More than a few liberals had an epiphany about gun control in the dark days of Watergate ... how many dictators/oligarchs/tyrannical whatever didn't try, or try very hard, because the cost would have been too great?

I'll start looking for examples; today, all I know is case after case, USSR, PRC, Cuba, Nazi Germany, those are just the most prominent off the top of my head, where gun confiscations preceded slaughter.

Also, gun confiscation was not at all the defining characteristic of these other places that experienced mass slaughter. There are many more things that accompany that type of political landscape, and are more common.

And without an example of where citizen gun ownership prevented a dictator from coming to power, the whole argument is extremely weak, though it definitely gets repeated quite a bit.