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A musket from 1776 can fire a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet per second.
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.
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8:15 PM · May 14, 2026
It also takes 60 to 90 seconds to reload after every single shot.....by an EXPERT. This seems like fishing for a story.
No it doesn't. A well disciplined soldier was expected to be able to fire three rounds in under a minute.
The sort of person who would try to be a mass shooter is not going to be a disciplined soldier by any measure, let alone one that knows centuries antiquated loading techniques.
If a guy can pull off a mass murder with a smoothbore muzzle-loader, that is a level of determination that at least deserves respect
I’ve got a cap and ball navy revolver replica. Yeah, I’ve got 6 shots I can do (though it’s also not super reliable) but also it’s a long process to reload.
The most powerful handgun the US military ever issued fits under this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_Wa... huge, heavy, slow to fire, and slower to reload.
The pistol of Mattie Ross and the Saint of Killers!
Counterpoint: this should be the only kind of gun that any Americans should be allowed to own or buy.
The fact that this got 20 likes is yet more evidence that the far left is also an enemy of liberty and reason.
And...how often, exactly, do people use these to commit crimes?
Well, most crime done involving muskets is theft. Theft of antique muskets, to be specific.
"Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot."
You need to wait till they line up and get 4 with one shot
Yeah this is one of those gun control loopholes I'm entirely fine with
Seriously, who the fuck cares? Wanna rob me with a musket? I'll just run behind you over and over.
They'll fire the musket, huge cloud of smoke, and the round went off in some random direction and you didn't even get scratched.
An AP journalist discovers that black powder firearms exists and is astonished.
Train children to volley fire in line formation and I think we might just lick this school shooter problem.
Chances I get drive-by'd with or sniped by a fucking smooth bore round ball musket are zero on a good day. Motherfuckers cannot aim their modern grooved-barrel guns, you really think jimbob is gonna get me while he spends two minutes packing powder, putting a ball in there, aiming and firing?
Yeah, and for some 150 years, nobody was shot with a musket in anger.
Reloading the one ball (and powder) takes 20 seconds, effective range is 50 metres, and if it's not a percussion cap one, you can barely shoot in the rain. Plus you need to learn to handle it, it's unlike any modern gun.
I’m pretty sure some muskets got used by the Taliban at some point, US soldiers were bringing back all kinds of crazy antique guns from Afghanistan
If they’re well trained they can get a shot off in a minute - if they’re not they just buy a bump stock and get 60 shots off a minute. I see the concern and focus.
For a musket? Tell me you've never seen a reenactment without telling me you've never seen a reenactment. You have to reload a musket after each single shot, and the reloading takes more time because you're loading the projectile and the powder seperately and tamping them.
As pointed out elsewhere in the responses, well-trained soldiers were expected to get 3 shots a minute with their muskets.
Now am I worried about a mass-shooting with a musket today? I am not.
Apparently this story is real and a real person got paid to produce it. Bizarre.
what's the actual over/under on felons using historic firearms for crimes, versus just getting a modern one illegally (straw purchase, theft, etc)
and if it's a smoothbore you can maybe get off three whole shots of dubious accuracy in a minute
if it's rifled your victims are gonna have to wait patiently for you to stuff another cartridge down the muzzle after the first shot
Dear AP,
You have lost the thread on what is actually important about the American debate surrounding gun control. No one cares about this.
Signed,
Everyone with an opinion on gun ownership on either side of the debate.
If you manage to get off a shot with that thing, you’re lucky. If you can come near your target, you’re even luckier. If you’re close enough to hit your target with a musket, your odds are better if you just try to bludgeon him with it. Not recommending any of it. Also, those things explode.😬
The "assault weapon" of its day and what the Framers were referring to when they wrote the Second Amendment. It takes 30 seconds and 10 movements to reload.
hmm sounds like someone who wears tricorner hats recreationally has an opportunity to do something hilarious if they've got the nerve
I absolutely refuse to spend any time imagining what a late-1700s musket can do to a human body, Associated Press.
And these were the weapons the founders had in mind when they wrote the second amendment, which isn’t about personal gun rights anyway.
Yeh I’m way more concerned about assault rifles and extended magazines, if someone wants to try and commit a school shooting with a flintlock let them have at it..
youtu.be/LORVfnFtcH0?...
Gotta be honest, I think if people want to carry a weapon that forces them to reload ammo and powder between each shot it’s the least of our worries.
The Associated Press, 2026.
“Advancing the power of facts”
GIF
Whoever is shooting this at you is going to miss and then you have like 3 full minutes to beat the piss out of them with a baseball bat while they reload if you're gun-averse.
Trying to conceal carry my Kentucky rifle and I’m stuck at the door like a dog trying to bring in a big stick.
Neat.
Anyway, the rifle you can buy from any wal mart has over triple the muzzle velocity.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArmaLit...
Favorite part is the implication that the US has meaningful gun regulations. lol. lmao.
I don't think felons are using flintlock muskets because it's so hard to get a firearm
That’s pretty nuts, considering that these are the guns that the laws were written for, and we haven’t updated the laws since then.
They take forever to reload. They are not that big of a threat these days.
Also, neat fact: in the US, the average car kills more people than the average gun.
If you're going to try to reduce the number of idiots with a firearm, logically you should reduce the number of idiots with a car 1st as you will save more lives that way. Please, the parking I see at work is atrocious.
Now that I think about it, it may also be due to the metal rusting and thus expanding, and thus applying pressure to crack it open.
Eh for once I’m not going to go after people with the 2a. Let’s go after the pdfs instead yeah?
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss (/1)
him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last (/2)
terrified rapscallion.He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up, Just as the founding fathers intended. (/3)
you can build a potato cannon with plumbing parts
You know the main beef is with like, semi-automatic weapons right? A person who practices a buttload can load one round every 15 to 20 seconds. Muskets don't aim super well and they're fairly unwieldy.
Nobody’s bothered to enact laws about them, because they’re not needed. It’s easier to get a 9mm handgun than one of these, and you could do more reliable damage with a knife. They aren’t practical weapons for anything but reenactment and sport shooting.
Yeah, weirdly enough, that is what guns are supposed to do.
Idk man, people aren't shooting up schools with muskets.
I feel like there are maybe more pressing concerns for society at the moment than the fact that maybe somebody can dig up a flintlock from a pirate treasure chest and possibly fire one very inaccurate shot every 6 minutes
Inagine some guy rolling up to you with a fucking musket and then firing and missing and then he has to re-pack, load, tamp, ready the firing hammer, light it, aim-- oh look i am already fucking gone.
I carry a musket for self defense like the founding fathers intended
Just for funsies, how far can a modern bullet travel when fired from a modern gun?
Let's compare the two.
How frequently does a musket ball fired from a musket hit its target? How frequently does a modern bullet fired from a modern gun hit its target?
I could probably buy 5 AR-15s just about anywhere in the US in the time it takes a person to reload a musket from 1776.
The number of deaths from musket balls in 2025 was what?
Good. Nobody is at risk from these. If someone wanted to do harm, a car is a much more dangerous weapon. These reenactments should be encouraged.
Assault weapons are responsible for 3% of the murders in the US each year. How many are muskets responsible for?
AP- you’re messing with our kids lives here and we are pissed.
The classic "you can kill people with a car, so guns shouldn't be regulated" argument
Cars were built for transportation, with lethal potential IF misused. Cars ARE regulated: you need a license, registration, and insurance to own and operate.
Guns–even muskets–were built with sole intent to kill.
this is literally such a nonissue that gun control advocates have made ads mocking the idea of 18th century guns being useful to the average gun-toting malcontent of today youtu.be/LORVfnFtcH0?...
Go full-on "Whiskey in the Jar!"
"I first produced my pistol and I then produced my rapier" - both are open-carry legal in most states without a license.
Make 'em stand & deliver! ☠️
Im in a bank and a man robs it with a musket the most danger Im in is of dying laughing.
The muskets don’t worry me. Colorado was just sued by ‘rump admin for limit on mags Let’s follow the Constitution and allow state militias to be armed, but not just anyone who is so insecure that they have to carry a weapon in public. Join a sanctioned militia and train if you want to play soldier
what are the statistics on crimes committed with single shot, black-powder, muzzle loading muskets? I bet there Isn't even tracked a category for it with the FBI
Oh wow, A THOUSAND FEET PER SECOND?!?!
That's what's called "subsonic" AKA "slow as fuck".
If i could find a 250 year old musket, i would be unstoppable
"It seems silly to put restrictions on something that would be such a terrible weapon if you wanted to, you know, kill people,"
Hear me out…
They can have muskets if we can take away assault rifles / everything in the AR class or designed for use in war.
Does anyone else remember that gun control add of the office worker that tried to shoot up his work with a musket?
And rocks! Even a young kid can throw a rock with sufficient velocity to crack a human skull. When are we going to finally begin regulating them?
Can fire a lead ball out of velocity of around a thousand feet per second? Wow! A gun that does what a gun does.
because it's almost impossible to do a mass shooting with one.
On the list of gun related issues in the US, this ranks pretty low.
But I need my blunderbuss to defend my fief from the Papists!
How many people are shot with muskets from 1776 every year?
We need to address the copper ingot problem before we tackle the brand new issues like muskets.
Homie's muzzle control in the interview makes me think he needs a gun safety class at the very least, even if regulation isn't the answer.
It gets lodged in your chest cavity and you die of sepsis in a chirurgeon’s tent, is what.
Maybe these should be the ONLY firearms that American civilians are allowed to own because that's what they had when the second amendment was written.
Given the easy availability of modern weaponry, this is a deeply unserious argument.
I just want to know what those dudes in their little costumes are feeding themselves that they're missing in life. That's just a weird thing to do.
Neat fact. Also, not really priority #1 when it comes to gun control...
And? Are gangsters going to be running around with muskets?
I’m all for common sense gun laws. I can feel you, there are not a huge threat unless you have a large group wielding them (why the video showed a large group). One person can’t do much damage. There are way better things to focus energy and resources on.
Silly article. But out of curiosity I do wonder where the line is on musket size. How big can one go before it's not legal anymore?
Yes, this is what we should be spending our limited time and political capital on.