Our founders were keenly aware that armament would continue to improve and become more efficient and thus ... the 2nd Amendment has Shall Not Be Infringed as it's foundation.
It wasn't just the government that possessed sophisticated arms ... the Common Folk of the era owned what today's gun grabbers would call militarized weapons.
By the time the 2nd amendment was adopted, (December 15, 1791) assault weapons already existed.
Contrary to what the liberals and gun grabbers want us to believe ... there were repeater, multi-shot rifles even before the Revolutionary period.
The Girandoni air rifle is a repeating rifle capable of firing 22 shots in under a minute without a reload and was developed before the 19th century.(circa: 1790)
An example carried by explorers Lewis and Clark.
A butt reservoir air rifle, .31" caliber.
The Kalthoff repeater was a musket with two magazines and could hold 7, 12 and some say 30 rounds ... developed in the 1600's!
The Belton flintlock was a repeating flintlock design using superposed loads, which could fire 20 rounds in 5 seconds with one pull of the finger.
Superposed loads were powder and ball, stacked one on top of the other, and had twelve individual touch holes.
Developed in the 1700's and worked somewhat like a Roman Candle
(Sorry no known examples but you can search under superposed loads and find examples of other makers)
The Puckle gun patented in 1718 and was one of the earliest weapons to be referred to as a machine gun.
True, it could only fire 9 rounds a minute but what I get a kick out of .. There were two versions.
One version could fire round bullets whereas another version could fire shot or even square bullets!
Then there was the 24-barrel pepper-box revolver using percussion cap technology.
(Ugly Cuss)
The first pepper-box revolvers originated in the 1500s and used matchlock mechanisms.
This particular specimen was made in the 1850s by a Belgian gun maker and used percussion cap technology.
These are just a few examples of the known hundreds of Military Type Assault Weapons (lib speak) from eras before or soon after the 2nd amendment was adopted.
So anytime a leftist gun grabber tells you that the second amendment is meant for the type of weapons from that era, tell them fine .. I'll have a Machine Gun please!