That’s not its intended use. Its intended use was for the militias which was our defense force after the country was founded. It was definitely used for that purpose and it was obvious how terrible an idea it was pretty early on which is why we switched to a standing federal army.

As for the false idea of keeping the government in check, the Whiskey Rebellion happened shortly after the passage of the Bill of Rights. Washington federalized about 13k mikitiamen and cracked down on it.

Officially pulling out weapons and waving them around? No

The threat of the usage… Depends on how you want to look at it. Look at Montana and Texas in the very early years of those states. I’m pretty sure you can find plenty of cases of small town governments not doing something stupid for fear that the locals would come get them.