I’m going to try to answer this, as best I can, with minimal reference to historical movements, but I think this is only possible in context.
Full disclosure, but as I’ve said in many other threads, I’m a liberal in my voting (because the evil is so obvious) but I do own guns, and have a valid CCW for another few years.
But first, I don’t generally approve of “it is said by many”, but I’ll acknowledge that in this case, it’s a common refrain on some of the gun boards I ghost, so I’ve had ample anecdotal evidence of it to be so.
Moving on though, we get to some of the nitty gritty that I think needs historical review (not originality though)
I do not think that any gun rights groups have seriously entertained this position, except as @Horatius points out, as a resistance to “leftist” political efforts to restrain some gun owner’s rights to a firearm. Period. Oh sure, there is also a huge correlation in their desires to prevent the left from enforcing laws against bigotry, racism, and the like, so they want to keep the guns to somehow enforce (American Individualism again!) their rights to be petty jerks with violence.
And of course, as has come up in so many of these threads, they’re totally against rising up against tyranny if it’s the wrong people rising up. For a easy-read on the subject:
But we can dig deeper if needed. Now, IMHO, there’s a lot of modern efforts to defend against this POV, much like in saying “blue lives matter” that it was in favor of some “greater good” and NOT targeted, but I very much disagree.
So, ignoring originalist POV, there wasn’t evidence of a universal desire to resist government tyranny at least in the 60s.
I’d also say that most modern guns rights groups exist primarily as political shills - especially given the multiple investigations, lawsuits, and scandals of the last decade or so, the NRA at a bare minimum existed to raise money on this wedge issue, ideology aside, and funnel to themselves. Others do exist, but they’ve had their own conflicts with the administration, and historically it’s the NRA that matters most.
So, again, IMHO, the most major (or at least well known, and certainly major in the modern era) guns rights advocates are more echoing their constituents than anything else. They have a flow of money, influence, and soft power that is fed by individual gun owner’s fear of losing their guns or being held accountable (see my many rants about gun ownership having both rights and responsibilities and that many gun owners forget about the second part!) for their behavior.
Now, will there be a point where gun rights groups advocate against the current administrations tyranny? Well, there are some rumblings, but, cynically, it’s only because their sacred calf is getting gouged.
A recent (NOV2025) alert by Gun Owners of America (which I think would qualify as a gun’s rights group) included this:
Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ have a trick up their sleeve: they want Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation’s membership lists, all under the guise of “protecting” their members in a recent lawsuit. Thankfully, FPC and SAF refused to comply.
But this is alarming.
When the government has a list of people who belong to gun rights organizations, they effectively have a list of gun owners, which is the very start of a national registry. And we all know a registry can – and will – lead to confiscation.
It’s only a matter of time before the DOJ tries to exert its influence on GOA and attempts to obtain our membership list (which they’ll NEVER receive).
So it’s possible but IMHO very unlikely that the groups involve will actually take up arms against the tyranny. For many, especially self-organized militias, agree with the specific tyranny being enacted, and figure it’ll never happen to them. Note that this alert shifts blame to Pam Bondi and the faceless “DOJ” rather than Trump. Good Czar, bad boyars and the like.
And as it doesn’t seem to be the point of the thread, I’ll leave out the excluded middle of liberal gun owners who don’t get much news, or the upswing in POC and women buying guns against the backlash of police shootings of people in their own homes and rampant racism, etc. but it’s a real thing.
So TL;DR - Some do hold it true, but the majority probably only want to protect their “rights” to grift, threaten, or kill those who would hold them accountable. Some are talking about concerns with the current administration, but even then in the most deferential way possible to Trump, AND while using it to grift (see the link).
