If I'm not mistaken, the original intent of the 2nd amendment was to protect the people from their government. However, military technology has advanced to the point where nearly everyone agrees that the public shouldn't have access to certain weapons, thereby nulling the original intent of the amendment. My question is whether the contributors to the 2nd amendment had any forethought regarding the development of weapons technology, and, if so, how they felt regarding the matter of public access?
Hoping to ride the coat tails of this question with my own question.
What was the most advanced "arms" that your average Joe would be equipped with around the time of the ratification of the 2nd amendment?
You're making an incorrect assumption in your question. This is the text of the second amendment, as passed by congress is the following:
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.
The second amendment thus enabled the states to organize a militia system and establish law enforcement. "Militia", in this case, can be interpreted as an early notion of a Military: the delegates that presented the Bill of Rights before Congress stated that the bill was meant to provide for "interstate arbitration processes [...] sufficiently trained and armed intrastate security forces [...] a national militia to repel foreign invaders. Although the right for individuals to bear arms is codified, the "Right To Revolution" was excluded from the US Contestation (and Bill of Rights) from the start because the republican form of government in United States implies consent of the people.^1
Although the benefit of an armed citizenry in the case of tyrannical government was cited during ratification debates no framer of the amendment brought it up.^2 But that is consequence of the amendment, but not it's outright intention.
The "Militia" aspect of the amendment was the most discussed part of the amendment until fairly recently (as late as 1939, the supreme court was ruling that states could limit any weapon not having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia").
In recent years, some scholars have introduced a new interpretation of the amendment. However, the landmark supreme court decision 2008 ruling that the second amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms is not within the scope of this Subreddit, as we are limited to discussing events that happened over than twenty years ago (the famous, "Twenty-Year Rule").