Back in the day citizens could own warships which would be the equivalent to a frigate or destroyer now and all the historical equal weapons of the day. It would be equal in today’s world of having the private ownership of an frigate with 5” guns, and VLS launchers loaded with missiles. The idea was to have the citizens on equal or BETTER footing than the government our founders had with good reasons a deep distrust of a strong central government we are living the reasons why they were right about that.
Yes you could but in practice one had to have a letter of marque to put them in use.
Unless you were a rich nut and liked sailing around armed to the teeth.
Use them without and you’d get hung for piracy.
Agreed.