If the US government/military needs to put down an uprising in the United States, your ‘small arms’ aren’t going to stop them. Ask any vet.

Vet here, and I disagree with you. Can small arms outgun tanks and bombers and all the hardware the military has? No. Can they prevent a military force from acting with impunity? Absolutely they can.

Look at our failed counter-insurgency efforts in Vietnam and the Middle East. The problem with dropping bombs on people shooting small arms at you is that it causes lots of collateral damage, and turns ever more of the population against you. The more bombs you drop, the more bombs you need to drop. The military can't do that in the US because it needs the US' civilian infrastructure in order to function.

Small arms can't kill enough soldiers to force capitulation, that's self-evident. But they can turn occupying a hostile territory into an impossible quagmire where telling friend from foe is all but impossible, and that's all they have to do.