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Spot on. In 1789 the deadliest military firearms were found incivilian hands from Maine to the NatchezTrace. In the 1860s and 1870s wagon trains and cattle drovers had more firepower than cavalry troops. Even artillery found its legal way into civilian hands on keel boats, in trading posts and private forts, and every Yankee and Baltimore trade on the seas.

"Spot on. In 1789 the deadliest military firearms were found incivilian hands from Maine to the NatchezTrace. In the 1860s and 1870s wagon trains and cattle drovers had more firepower than cavalry troops. Even artillery found its legal way into civilian hands on keel boats, in trading posts and private forts, and every Yankee and Baltimore trade on the seas."

Don't forget the "Letter of Marque", it is in the Constitution and still a valid law today. The essence of it is that a private citizen could equip and man the most terrible weapons system of the day, a ship of war, and take that vessel and use it under a Letter of Marque at the behest of Congress.

There was no limit on the technology that a private citizen could own or operate when our country was founded and up until the ban on automatic weapons was accidentally allowed to be put in place by the failure of a lawyer to turn up at a Supreme Court hearing.

That provision of the Constitution did not limit the caliber, range, number of rounds of ammunition, number of weapons that can be owned nor where the owner of them and the weapons delivery system could be used.