Way too many people in this country seem to think that while the First Amendment covers internet communication and the Fourth Amendment protects your data in y our cell phone, the Second Amendment only applies to muskets.
Of course, such an approach betrays a profound ignorance of firearms at the time of the nation's founding--rifles were commonly owned by colonists, after all, which is different from a musket. But that's just the common firearms. There was one interesting piece of history that illustrated that the Founding Fathers may well have been familiar with repeating firearms: The Puckle Gun.
Its existence muddies that entire argument for the gun control crowd, though it doesn't really need to. It's a terrible argument in the first place.
However, the gun's history has now become something of a Second Amendment battle in and of itself.
Pucklemania really began firing on all cylinders around 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. vs. Bruen. That decision overturned as unconstitutional New York state’s restrictions on who is allowed to carry a concealed gun. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, declared gun laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Some interpreted that to mean that laws about modern firearms needed to find analogous firearms laws from when the Second Amendment was developed.
...
[Firearm historian Clayton] Cramer has long professionally opined on gun laws and antique guns, but he’s never made more money at it than in recent years. Historians aren’t only riding the Puckle wave, but they are being sought after to weigh in on, say, the pepper-box revolver or the air rifle carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
But “the Puckle gun gets all the attention,” says Cramer. “Puckle. It just sounds funny.”
Not surprisingly, experts are trading verbal shots over the Puckle’s significance.
Cramer hailed Puckle’s gun as “a wonder weapon” in one court document. He believes it highlights a long history of inventors trying to develop rapid-fire weapons.
‘Bizarre showpiece’
But Brian DeLay, a University of California, Berkeley history professor and expert witness for those advocating stricter gun laws, takes a different view. He dismisses Puckle as a con man and his gun as “little more than a bizarre showpiece.” In one legal filing, DeLay called the Puckle gun an “interesting, flawed design” that “sunk into deserved obscurity.”
What we see is that DeLay has an interest in undermining the Puckle Gun because it undermines gun control.
Personally, the way I see it, the existence of the Puckle Gun, among others, proves that the Founding Fathers had reason to be concerned with repeating firearms. If they hadn't intended for them to be owned, they could have prohibited them then and there. Especially since the Giradoni air rifle was also in existence prior to the Second Amendment's drafting.
Those were much more common and were even part of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
But undermining these weapons and pretending they weren't really significant in firearm history is necessary because of Bruen. Even after Rahimi muddied the water, the decision still requires historic analogs for any new gun control measure. The existence of repeating guns during the time of the nation's founding means that if the Founders wanted them banned, they could have banned them. DeLay wants the Puckle Gun to be meaningless because it would suggest that the reason the Founding Fathers didn't ban such weapons was because they weren't viable.
Of course, that presumes that they didn't see the guns, see that they worked, and figured this was where things would eventually go. That seems like quite a leap to make considering how intelligent and forward-thinking many of those men were. Just take a tour of Thomas Jefferson's home of Montecello sometime if you don't believe me.
Yet the truth is that we can't see into their minds, particularly so long after their deaths.
Instead, we get historians arguing about the Puckle Gun as the history of this weapon has now become a battleground for our rights.
What a weird world we live in.
