While more of course can always be said, we have had similar questions to this one in the past, and I think that /u/waritter's answer to "What happened with all the medieval weapons and armor?" will be of interest to you!
A minor note in addition to the very comprehensive thread linked. You say that "most families" should have inherited weapons, but even if armour was kept intact that wouldn't be the case due to population growth.
To focus on England for the moment, which has decent historical data, in the 1600s* the population was only (an estimated) 4.27 million people, (for comparison the population was recorded as 7,754,875 at the first modern census in 1801). As compared to the modern day 56 million. So even if all families had weaponry and armor that was kept in good condition less than 10% of the population would have inherited it. And in reality nowhere near 100% of the population would have had them to begin with
Similarly large population growth took place across europe during the industrial revolution, so even without metal being repurposed surviving medieval weapons and armor would be rare, simply due to the small amount that was made to begin with.
*I choose the 1600s as the last time we can expect the average soldier to have recognisably medieval armour and weaponry. (For context this was when the english civil war took place, with the New Model Army using rifles and early artillery, but also large numbers of armoured pikemen. With the modern army being established at the end of the century.)
While there was much greater military mobilisation during the later periods of the british empire, by then they had switched to using primarily muskets as weapons and cloth uniforms which would not be recognizably "medieval" and would not have been preserved very well outside specialised conditions.
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