Why might officers like Bateman have a problem with citizens with rifles?

Especially autoloaders?  History:
From http://www.revolutionarywararchives.org/longrifle.html

These marksmen were organized into small, independent units and ordered to pick off British officers during the inactivity around Boston after the Bunker Hill fight. Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet said on August 14, 1775: “The express, who was sent by the Congress, is returned here from the Eastward, and says he left the Camp last Saturday; that the riflemen picked off ten men in one day, three of whom were Field-officers, that were reconnoitering ; one of them was killed at a distance of 250 yards, when only half his head was seen.” Such reports caused great indignation when republished in London. The backwoodsmen were called “. .. shirt-tail men, with their cursed twisted (rifled) guns, the most fatal widow- and-orphan-makers in the world”.

Yeah, that might make officers like Bateman nervous about a bunch of commoners with accurate repeating arms.  Kind of like those redcoat officers.  If you've announced 'We will take your guns from your cold dead hands', you wouldn't like to consider doing it to armed, pissed-off citizens.  It might get dangerous.