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"Not quite fully automatic ones. It would take the introduction of percussion cap ignition for that to come about. But there were near antecedents.
In 1718 in London"

Several points, all germane:
(1) 1718 is two decades after the Founders wrote the 2nd Amendment. There was no "Puckle Gun" equivalent in their frame of reference.
(2) The Puckle Gun was unique.
(3) London is not America.

Let me ask you this:
Suppose 50 years in the future, scientists working for the government devise a helmet. You place it on your head and, just by thinking about another person anywhere in the world, he pops into your head. If you then furrow your eyebrows and squeeze your forehead, it causes the person you are viewing to instantly experience a massive coronary throbosis and cerebral hemorrhaging, killing him dead. No trace of the remote viewing intervention is made, and it isn't possible to trace the remote killing once the helmet is removed. It's science fiction fantasy, but then, so were airplanes and atomic bombs and machine guns and Stinger missiles in 1789.

So, we're back to the "right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" business. Here, my theoretical helmet, which we can't envision today because we don't know anything about any of the principles that would make it work (much as the founders couldn't conceive of nuclear physics or airplanes), would clearly be a weapon, an "arm", and a deadly and untraceable one at that. It couldn't even be proven, definitively, that this deadly remote-killing weapon had been used to kill somebody: people DO have heart attacks and strokes quite naturally, after all.

So, could this be restricted, by law, from private hands, or would "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" mean that this, too, would be something that every individual would have the right to own, if he wanted to?

The answer to that has to be that it would be SEVERELY restricted, and individuals could not be permitted to own it. If we could kill people by mere thoughts, there would be a lot of dead people in all of our lives. In fact, each of US would be dead long ago, killed by someone pissed off at us.

But what's YOUR answer? Protected by the 2nd Amendment, or not?

It seems like a silly question, but it's no sillier than considering modern high-technology weapons with their vast killing power and retrojecting these "arms" back into the words "the right to keep and bear arms" in the minds of 18th Century men whose only experience with arms was with black-powder single-firing muskets, pistols, cannons and light naval rockets.

If we're going to be strict originalists, then everybody has the right to own and to carry single-shot black powder muskets, and if they want a smoothbore iron cannon that fires solid shot, they can have one.

Even semi-automatic handguns would be high-tech and outside of the protection of the Amendment.

Now, I myself don't go that far. I think that the intent of the Amendment is clear enough: people had guns back then for protection. People still need protection, so they can have guns today too, it's a right. But it's a limited right. It's not "infringing" the right to say "No nukes. No machine guns", because the effect of letting everyone have those things would be awful, and the Founders never envisioned those things when they wrote the word "arms".

Several points, all germane:
(1) 1718 is two decades after the Founders wrote the 2nd Amendment.

Germaine, maybe; factual, no. The U.S. Constitution was not adopted in its original form until September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, six decades after the public patent of the Puckle Gun [interesting tongue-twister, that!]

There was no "Puckle Gun" equivalent in their frame of reference.

There was indeed the earlier Puckle which Boston artillerist Henry Knox would certainly have been familiar with by or after the beginning of the American Revolution, as would have George Washington while he was in the service of the British Army during the French and Indian War, circa 1753-54, being involved in the equipment and establishment of fortifications in the then-wild Ohio country and Virginia. And by the late 1770s there was the more recent Fergeson breechloading rifle, designed circa 1770 and used in the Colonies at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania, 09/11/1777, a victory for the British that enabled them to capture the city of Philadelphia.

(2) The Puckle Gun was unique.

Hardly. There were also *harmonica* multi-chamber weapons and multi-barrel designs, including *duckfoot* flintlock pistols. In addition to Ferguson's breech-loading *assault* rifle, there was also a predecessor breechloader design by gunsmith John Warsop, and at least three contemporary Swiss experimental designs. Ferguson's screw-breech patent #1139 was granted in the seminal year of 1776, a decade before the first copy of the Constitution was drafted.

The Annual Register,recorded for June 1, 1776 reads: "Some experiments were tried at Woolwich...with a rifle gun upon a new construction by Captain Ferguson of the 70th Regiment, when that gentleman, under the disadvantages of a heavy rain and a high wind, performed … things, none of which have ever before been accomplished with any other small arms..."

(3) London is not America.

Far from it, though I'm more fond of Blackpool. But though at least some of the Tories who had supported the British cause during the American Revolution may have relocated to the London regions, it does not seem to have influenced their outlook sufficiently for them to remain a great nation. Maybe we should send them some more.

It seems like a silly question, but it's no sillier than considering modern high-technology weapons with their vast killing power and retrojecting these "arms" back into the words "the right to keep and bear arms" in the minds of 18th Century men whose only experience with arms was with black-powder single-firing muskets, pistols, cannons and light naval rockets.

And, uh, Smallpox and other biological agents used to infect blankets provided to the Indians, poisons [and bodies] used to intentionally polute waterholes, and noxious gasses used during sieges: writings of the Mohist sect in China dating from the 4th century BC, describe the use of bellows to pump smoke from burning balls of mustard and other toxic vegetables into tunnels being dug by a besieging army; older Chinese writings dating back to about 1000 BC contain hundreds of recipes for the production of poisonous or irritating smokes for use in war along with numerous accounts of their use. From these accounts we know of the arsenic-containing "soul-hunting fog", and the use of finely divided lime dispersed into the air to suppress a peasant revolt in AD 178.

The earliest recorded use of gas warfare in the West dates back to the 5th century BC, during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta when Spartan forces besieging an Athenian city placed a lighted mixture of wood, pitch, and sulfur under the walls hoping that the noxious smoke would incapacitate the Athenians, so that they would not be able to resist the assault that followed. Sparta wasn't alone in its use of unconventional tactics during these wars: Solon of Athens is said to have used hellebore roots to poison the water in an aqueduct leading from the Pleistrus River around 590 BC during the siege of Cirrha.

Chemical weapons were known and used in ancient and medieval China. Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentions usage of posionous gas by Mongol army in 1241 in Battle of Legnica.

So, you figure that since such weapons of mass destruction weren't forbidden under the Constitution and being in uses far predating that document, you've got no problem with my fixing up a couple of thousand kilograms of Nitrogen Mustard? It's easy to do, and Thiodiglycol is easily available and inexpensive.

If we're going to be strict originalists, then everybody has the right to own and to carry single-shot black powder muskets, and if they want a smoothbore iron cannon that fires solid shot, they can have one.

Even semi-automatic handguns would be high-tech and outside of the protection of the Amendment.

Well, then that sort of interpretation has to apply equally throughout the constitution to include the First Amendment not applying to broadcast media or the Internet, which would make you either a hypocrite or a Luddite. [And I bet you draw a LOT of criticism when Dred Scott comes back around for your re-review]

But if so interpreted, than the forces of the government must also be similarly limited, since ours is reportedly a governmental system based on equality of law, and any cop who uses a modern Glock pistol or M16 against a fellow citizen is thereby committing an act of war against the United States itself. And that would constitute an act of Treason for which hanging is the punishment prescribed by both Constitution and law.

Now, I myself don't go that far. I think that the intent of the Amendment is clear enough: people had guns back then for protection. People still need protection, so they can have guns today too, it's a right. But it's a limited right. It's not "infringing" the right to say "No nukes. No machine guns", because the effect of letting everyone have those things would be awful, and the Founders never envisioned those things when they wrote the word "arms".

Of course they did, and they expected individuals would have such terrible things. They were needed for the vessels equipped as privateers under Constitutional letters of marque for attacks on hostile shipping during hostilities. I'm not aware of any attempt by Andy Jackson to refuse the assistance of Jean Lafitte's 3000 cannoneers at the 1812 Battle of New Orleans on grounds that that privately-owned artillery was illicit, though Lafitte was probably far beyond the line between *privateer* and *pirate* and certainly was in his later post-Louisiana periiod.