Oh, yes of course. There were privately owned cannon, and more to the point I don’t think there is anything suggesting an early move by any legislature to outlaw them (which is interesting all by itself).
But it wasn’t common practice for households around the colonies to have their own cannon or other heavy ordnance. What they did all have were personal arms— and that is what the founders were specifically attending to... That freedom depends on the rank and file citizen to have the means to fight. I think they meant it as a starting point, the essential minimum for the formation of a militia, and left silent any discussion of heavier weaponry.
Exactly. Not until the Congressional prohibitions of 1934 and 1968 did we have rifled breech-loading cannons 'outlawed'.
"-- Why, then, did privateering disappear? Many have assumed that the technological developments during the latter half of the nineteenth century---steam power, armored warships, and rifled cannon---made private ships of war obsolete, but that is false.
Privateering disappeared precisely because it worked so well.
It was effectively legislated out of existence in 1856 by means of the Declaration of Paris. The signatory nations wished to eliminate privateering, because it offered a low-cost but effective alternative to those nations who did not want to undertake the massive expenditures required by public navies.
The United States did not sign the declaration, but renounced the practice in the Hague Peace Conference of 1899.
Privateering was not a market that can be shown to have failed.
Clearly, national defense, at least insofar as naval warfare is involved, need not be the exclusive province of the government. --"
The founders certainly did not leave silent the discussion of heavier weaponry. They said “arms”, meaning any military weapon. Even today: ARMS: “1. A weapon, especially a firearm: troops bearing arms; ICBMs, bombs, and other nuclear arms.” Well understood by a human being, power to counter the forces a miscreant tyrannical government could marshal to threaten citizens with. Any other interpretation is simply moronic.