In the era of muzzle-loading flintlocks, a firearm's use in warfare was fundamentally different than it is today, you needed lots of them fired en masse. In personal, one-on-one combat, as you would expect in crime or home defense, their use was problematic: they were single shot, highly inaccurate, and prone to failure. Gentlemen preferred swords. There is no way the founders could have anticipated the use and misuse of repeating firearms and cartridge ammunition.

We can guess that the founders favored a local militia that could be available to counter the centralized military power of a higher level of government. This is what the 2nd amendment probably refers to. I don't think they meant by this the right to arm the inhabitants specifically, or they would have passed out muskets to the slaves. As for defense against the Indians, they SOLD muskets to the Indians.

But what I, or anyone else, thinks men 200 years meant should not be the kind of philosophical puzzle our courts should be wrangling with. We should interpret the law as it applies to us today, not rely on the deliberately vague and obscure writing of a document written by a committee.