According to the Bill of Rights transcript at archives.gov, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Ignoring for now the 17th-century commas (which to this 21st-century reader make no sense at all), the important question is: Who decided that ‘Arms’ should refer exclusively to hand-held devices that propel pieces of metal out the end of a tube?

Surely the 2nd Amendment confers upon me the right to ‘keep and bear’ an F-22, or a hydrogen bomb. If not, why not?