On May 14, 2026, just months before we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the USA, the Associated Press floated the idea of gun control for the exact type black powder muskets that were used in the American Revolution.
The AP used an X post to say, “A musket from 1776 can fire a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet per second.”
They added, “Imagine what that can do to a human body. Yet under federal and most state laws, it’s exempt from gun regulations. Many antique or replica guns aren’t considered firearms and even convicted felons can own them.”
They embedded a video of firearms historian Ashley Hlebinsky in their post where she explained that muskets from 1776 “are actually, technically, in terms of legal standards in the federal government, not legally a firearm. They are classified as an antique.”
If the viewer allows the video to play through, a man who is an American Revolution enactor blasts the idea of regulating muskets from 1776, saying, “It seems silly to put restriction on something that would be such a terrible weapon if you wanted to kill people. You can kill more people quickly with a car than you can with a musket.”
A musket is rudimentary to say the least. It fires one time with a trigger pull and has to be reloaded before another shot can occur. To reload it has to be placed on its butt-end, gun powder poured into the end of the barrel, wadding pushed in, and a lead ball (the projectile) pushed in on top the wadding. Thereafter, the gun is shouldered and the hammer cocked, the trigger is pulled and the hammer strike causes flint to spark, which ignites the gun powder and blows the projectile out of the barrel.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.