Was Orwell's point one of ethics? Or just powerful government versus weak, with the idea that a powerful government will be tyranical rather than benevolent.

Is it not a common theme that a more powerful government offers greater stability with fewer freedoms while a weak government offers more freedom but also more chaos?

Stability is a form of freedom. Disruption of everyday life by individuals or groups, as often happens in countries with weak governments, is itself a form of oppression.

I lived for the first part of my life in Bangladesh. A relative was killed in a workers' strike, by an explosive device. Our house was the target of armed thugs who tried to break down our gate and rob us. Once, on a visit from the U.S., my family had to return from our hotel to the airport under armed guard because the streets were not safe during a strike.

That's not freedom! The fact that we could overthrow the government with small arms is not freedom. Especially in a democracy, because it represents political minorities imposing their will to overthrow a government that represents the majority. That's oppression! Any day of the week, I'd prefer a democratic government that can blow me away with a drone strike to one that can't keep criminals and radicals at bay.

Why couldn't the general population keep criminals and radicals at bay? Why does it fall on a large government? You were escorted by armed guards, but if everyone had the option of owning a firearm how far would the criminals and radicals have gotten?

I'm not saying guns are some sort of quick and easy solution, since there is clearly a problem of lack of many types of abundance that pushed people into radical positions, although you are making the case for one centralization of power over another. Given those two options I would agree with you, but the third option is to try to prevent centralization of power and the incentives to abuse it in the first place.

A small group of organized criminals can terrorize a pretty large number of ordinary, unorganized people. You can see this in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, everyone having guns just makes criminality risky, and there are a lot of people willing to take calculated risks. To get the kind of peace we enjoy in the first world, you need to make engaging in violence irrational, not just risky.

All very good points. I think there are a lot of shades of grey. Citizens having guns and making criminality risky I think tips the scales further in the right direction, because less people would take those calculated risks since the risk would be much higher. If people are further shifted on the scale from desperation to abundance, then I think that risk does become irrational. Pragmatically both are difficult problems to solve. Guns are a difficult political issue, and they can be expensive, and people need to know how to use them responsibly if they choose to have them at all.