During WWII we produced guns en masse called "the liberator" which were air dropped behind Nazi lines. The Nazis ran out of ammo and so many of the jews in the concentration camps were guarded by empty rifles. If they had had basic firearms knowledge they would have known this, as the Nazis weren't even putting the magazines in the rifles. They could have over thrown their captors relatively easily, even being unarmed, because they outnumbered them many to one, and their captors were unarmed.

So not even having guns there, a gun culture would have likely saved lives.

(this is based on an account of an elderly man who was in the concentration camps and later came to learn about guns as part of his vow of "never again". There is an organization based on this principle called "Jews for the preservation of firearms ownership.")

> I happen to disagree that owning an handgun (or even a semi-automatic rifle) will actually be very influential in the event of a dictatorial takeover

It can't hurt.

Sure it can, if part of the population actually supports the dictatorship, it becomes even more dangerous for the persecuted minority. We've seen examples of this many times.