I have to respectfully disagree. One way to tell is to read the Federalist Papers as well as the Anti-Federalist Papers and the personal documents of the Founding Fathers. Since I teach AP Government, I make it a habit to make my students read all of those and do a written analysis. In a great many of the papers and letters written by the Founders in those times they mention the rifle and sidearm. George Washington himself owned over 50 high quality rifles. Nowhere are the other implements mentioned. Also, I think the term arms would be limited to what an individual infantryman would carry and that one man only. Thus crew served weapons are probably again covered under the letters of marque.
So if it requires more than one person to operate I don't think it falls under the infantryman's TO&E. However an M60 or a SAW can be handled by one man. I know, I've done it. I can set up and fire a Ma Deuce by myself but I can't hump it on my back alone.
Every terrible weapon of war? It is assertions like this that are going to cost us the right totally! Things like that happen when you open your mouth and shoot yourself in the foot .. on full automatic. I'm not trying to be rude here and I apologize in advance if it seems that way, but we have all heard a fellow conservative utter a damning phrase that we just KNOW is going to be misquoted or stretched out of shape by the liberals and that is going to be our undoing. I'm probably guilty of the exact same thing earlier in this thread when I told somebody I favored mounting fore and aft machineguns on cars in NYC. So I'm not immune.
Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
-—Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
I would imagine he meant “every other terrible implement” to be very broad.
Why would the Founding Fathers, who just finished a war* of independence against the reigning superpower, write a recognition of a right of the people (individual & collective) to be armed for the purpose of creating a militia for the defence of self, state & nation against enemies both foreign AND domestic (fed. gov't included if appropriate), yet do so with the intent that only small/individual arms be available to those defending the essence of this country - the people and the Constitution??? You're basically contending that Jefferson et al said "Yeah, now that THAT conflict is over with at great cost to ourselves as citizens, let's make sure that if it has to be done again, the oppressive tyrranical gov't of the future will be able to prevent our grandchildren from having all the tools necessary to do so." Riiiiight.
(* - Tools of that war included cannon, mortars, battleships, and even submarines.)