The fetishization of individualism is the problem here.

The guys who wrote that were fresh off a revolution where they had used privately-held arms to drive off a system of government. They didn't do that alone. They had committees on security and correspondence that would coordinate how arms were used. They were militias, not necessarily state-backed ones, either.

What you see now is a lot of people who are almost as well-armed, personally, as the tyrants, but not as well-organized.