Before a people are enslaved, before any nation is taken over, they are first disarmed. That's just history and common sense. From the inside or out, a nation is always first compromised by the removal of its ability to defend itself. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, et al., they all declawed whatever organism that stood in their way - most especially the people they intended to govern.
When Japan was planning to attack our mainland, their Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto purportedly said that attacking America would be like attacking a sleeping giant - and it is commonly claimed that he warned there would be a gun waiting for them 'behind every blade of grass' - indeed, a very reasonable statement. I find it fascinating that online liberal 'fact checking' sites adamantly insist that the quote is "bogus". Further, they go on to say that gun rights activists often haul up that quote in order to drive home an argument for gun ownership - as though simply expressing that concept in such a context were evil.