In 1969, the British Army intervened because the local Northern Irish government was dominated by a radical sect of extremely anti-Catholic British-descended "Orangemen" - Black is the new Orange - and one major problem was that when the Irish tried to secede from the UK, these guys formed a strong system to prevent that.
Later on, as the OIRA started shooting soldiers, the British Army formed alongside the ruling Loyalist/Orangemen side rather than the original purpose of protecting Irish Catholics from violence.
That's just the background, focus on the Loyalist Paramilitaries - whereas the largest republican paramilitary, the Provisional IRA, was considered a de-facto state military by the Republicans in general - their men joined their army. Loyalists alreadyhad an army - the British Army - thus Loyalist Paramilitaries were entirely formed from the scum who couldn't get into the British Army. This lead to a stark contrast - most people killed by the PIRA were police and military. The UVF and UDA, however, killed exclusively civilians as reprisals, and the British Army tolerated UVF members (Red Hand Commando/Glennane Gang, group of Orangemen who joined the Army and killed 100+ random Irish Catholics, including rape and torture, as revenge for the IRA beating them on the ground) within their ranks. This fact alone lead to the strange situation where the British Army had a higher civilian death ratio than the fucking IRA, despite the IRA bombing the fuck out of everything they could see!
If your state is pulling this sort of shit, you cannot let it stand. You need to arm yourselves, now, with everything - not just rifles, but whatever you can scrape together to keep out of the government's pockets. Because guess what - they will confiscate what they can, and somehow, your "official" guns will end up in the hands of the Bloods.