Also, private gun ownership was the norm at the time.
Heller draws it's decision from historical reality and originalist philosophy
Just ignore all the privateer ships that were loaded with cannons.
The founders, in 1808, appropriated funding for arms to state militias. [1]. Previously the arming of militias was up to the individual states. Some would have chosen to just have private citizens bring their own arms. Others would have actually set aside a fund to bring those arms.
And that's blatantly apparent when you think about the wars fought after the revolution. Cannons had to come from somewhere and you'd not expect a private citizen to have procured one.
That was, in fact, one of the reasons George Washington disliked the idea of militias, because you'd be arming untrained and undisciplined citizens with weapons they'd never used before and expect them to somehow know how to operate them.
> To place any dependence on the Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender Scenes of domestic life; unaccustomed to the din of Arms; totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to Troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge and superior in Arms, makes them timid, and ready to fly from their own shadows ... if I was called upon to declare upon Oath, whether the Militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter. -- George Washington
The author is absolutely hated the idea of a standing army, and I think the Bill of Rights reflects this ideal over more practical concerns.
You should look up letters of marque and reprisal, where private citizens effectively owned entire warships.
Private gun ownership != the right to a private gun.
Having read Heller, the various drafts of the Bill of Rights, and some of the correspondence, I don't think anyone that has done the same can make an honest originalist argument against the private right.
In particular, I think the linguistic argument about militias relies on a neologistic definition that is particularly misleading.
People can make valid living constitution arguments against the second amendment all day and all night, but these seem particularly out of favor. I think this, more than anything else explains the Heller decision in 2008
The "reality" in this sentence here is pretty solidly not accurate. The majority opinion in Heller asserted truths about the past that aren't born out by the historical record. Probably lifted straight from interest-group amicus briefs that agreed with what the majority was inclined to decide to begin with.
[EDIT] Whoops. I mean, that the above is often true in cases that cite history, even legal history, means it might still be true, but I was actually thinking of Bruen, where this happened to a degree that'd be comical if it weren't, you know, the Supreme Court.
