Just ran across this.

There has been a great deal of hopeful speculation about this topic. As you can imagine, Colonists Armed To Win Freedom and the opposing Unarmed Colonists have really devoted modern fanbases. For a very long time, the Colonists Armed pretty much had the field. There was quite a lot of evidence of it: for one thing, there were a surprisingly large number of gunsmiths in most of the colonies, and they had to be making or at least fixing something to make a living. There's also the simple question of utility: colonial American was a very rural place, most people were farmers, and farmers tend to find guns useful, both for supplementing the food supply, keeping varmints from the crops, and recreation.

Then in 2000 Michael A. Bellesile published Arming America. He claimed that, actually, guns were not that common in estate inventories. That, actually, the modern gun culture came about in the 19th c. He pointed out the high cost of a gun, compared to wages, and stated that few could afford one. The book made quite a splash, got plenty of adulation, even won the Bancroft Prize ( a very big deal in American History).

A gun was indeed quite expensive: a journeyman might earn 30 pounds a year, and a basic trade gun would cost him 8 pounds. It seemed reasonable to suppose, as you and your linked article say, that urban dwellers and the poor would find a gun useless, unaffordable. However, eventually even some historians who were not enraged card-carrying NRA members looked at the actual sources in the book and found that, amazingly, many had been fabricated- most memorably perhaps was his citing the wills of a large number of Rhode Island residents who, it turns out, had died intestate- i.e. had no wills. This was , frankly, an unbelievably dumb thing to do: like a scientist falsifying data, it was just bound to be discovered. The Bancroft Prize got rescinded, and many people who had said nice things about it came out and condemned the book.

A good result was that it made people do some due diligence on the topic. A couple of researchers, James Lindgren and Justin Heather, actually looked at of a number of previous studies of real probate records in various colonies and found that guns were listed in 50-73% of male estates, 6-38% of female estates. If a decedent was male, rural, slave-owning or above the lowest class, or in the south, he likely owned a gun. That is a very large number of colonists.

So, the Colonists Armed team has the field again, right? Well, somewhat. Because when you look at what was needed for a revolt, it's quite obvious that the colonists weren't equipped. The New Englanders and folks in the east had fowlers: shotguns. The folks in the western areas had rifles. And some people put together militia units and bought- or had made- military weapons- but only some. These are now known as Committee of Safety muskets, and there were not nearly enough of them. Washington lamented how militias and volunteers were showing up with a motley collection of firearms, none of which had the same caliber or could take a bayonet. The sharp-shooting riflemen were useful, but couldn't put enough lead in the air fast enough to stop a bayonet charge ( notably at the Battle of Long Island). There were, therefore, desperate efforts to find muskets. Attempts were made to set up small armories- but, these were found to be far too limited- they couldn't get supplies, keep workers, and were prime targets. So, the Americans bought or got them from the French, mostly. And gunpowder. And flints. And some clothes.

So, the Colonists Armed team was only kind of right. Americans were armed, but not with the right guns to fight a War of Independence. Those had to be imported, with a lot of other useful stuff.

Jerome Sternstein, "'Pulped' Fiction: Michael Bellesiles and His Yellow Note Pads

Lindgren, J. T., & Heather, J. L. (2001). Counting Guns in Early America. SSRN Electronic Journal. Published. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.268583