Could you explain to this Norwegian why most Americans don't seem to look at it this way? From my reading about the American constitution and American history this story seems pretty clear to me. Yet America at large has ended up interpreting it entirely differently and the average American I interact with seem to think the 2nd amendment is for individuals to oppose the government.

The US seems to me to have attempted to follow the Swiss model, but that never worked out.

This medium article did give me a lot of context which I had been missing though. In particular I liked how it was put in context of the Roman republic.

America has always seemed to be very heavily inspired by Roman ideals. Washington DC itself looks more like how I imagined Rome downtown than Rome itself today.