"Where did you get THAT idea anyway?"Some my aquaintances own the originals. They were never state property. They've been in private hands since then. Some were used in the civil war. They saw service on both sides. You seem to think the govm't ran cannon factories.
" Cannons, artillery, powder were all kept within a magazine NOT in private homes.
Nonsense. What was the 1st task Franklin was given by the First Continental Congress?
"Cannons were so immobile that small groups had no use for them in any case AND they were confined to specialized units."
Nonsense. The barrel was mounted on a wheeled carriage and horse drawn. The guns were operated by a team of ~3-4 and a sarg, or equivalent was in charge of aiming it. You don't think they sat down and calculated each shot do you. Also back in those days the sarg in charge could do the math.
Arsenals were definitely run by the government and are even referenced within the Constitution. One of the first projects of the new nation was to set up manufacturing capabilities for armaments and military equipment. During the Civil War even the Confederacy established government run factories to produce artillery. The Springfield Arsenal is world famous for the guns it produced.
No matter what Franklin was to do, artillery not stored in private homes nor owned by private individuals or groups.
Artillery was extremely unwieldy and hard to move especially if the weather had any wetness or the ground was wet. It was not of use in pursuing Indians, in fact, it was worse than useless in those cases because it slowed down any unit to a crawl.
Alexander Hamilton first came to Washington's attention when he was an teenage officer in a New York artillery company. The state required mathematical knowledge to receive his commission. That was standard at the time of the Revolution which is the period I am speaking of. Mathematics was a necessity for any aiming other than just pointing in a general direction and firing.