When the AP went on the attack last week about muzzleloading firearms and how they're not regulated like regular guns, I had a lot of thoughts on the subject. Not all of them got written down because, well, I get into a flow and forget some points I might want to make from time to time. Plus, the audacity of the whole thing was funny to me.
I mean, no one is walking around with flintlock pistols tucked in their pants, waiting for the gang-banging rivals to roll up in their carriage with Kentucky Long Rifles at the ready. It's just not a thing, even though this information has been fairly well-known for decades.
It's hysterically funny, even if the hysterics leading to calls for more gun control aren't.
And a columnist in Tennessee brings up a fantastic point about how these particular hysterics are really hypocritical.
The AP’s reporting highlights what it frames as a glaring "loophole" in federal law. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, firearms manufactured in or before 1898 – and their modern replicas – aren’t technically "firearms" at all. They are classified as antiques. This means that a law-abiding citizen can walk into a store, buy a flintlock and walk out without so much as a polite inquiry from the FBI’s background check system.
Contradictions of Democrats' Second Amendment position
The "scary" part, according to the reporting, is that 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," the piece beckons with a straight face.
But the absolute best part of this sudden black-powder panic is the spectacular, gold-medal-worthy mental gymnastics it requires from the political left. For decades, the favorite, most reliable talking point of the gun-control movement has been that the Second Amendment is a dusty relic that only applies to the technology available at the time of its drafting. We’ve all heard the lecture: The Founders could never have envisioned modern semi-automatic rifles, so the Constitution only protects your right to own a single-shot, smoothbore flintlock.
Until now.
You almost have to admire the sheer audacity of the pivot. Modern guns are a crisis, and antique guns are a "loophole." It’s a beautifully cynical strategy: Heads, they win; tails, you’re a threat to public safety.
Honestly, it's hypocritical as hell. For years, we've heard that the Second Amendment only applies to muskets, which is a ridiculous take on its surface, even if you aren't keen to point out that "muskets" and "rifles" are different and both existed at the time. We don't accept these arguments with any other advances in technology, such as free speech and the internet, or Fourth Amendment protections applying to your cell phone or laptop. So why would the idea of the Second Amendment only applying to muskets be plausible?
But now, it's clear that they don't even think it applies to the very weapons that existed at the time the Second Amendment was written. They don't think that we should be able to buy a flintlock rifle or musket exactly like what the Founding Fathers used to shoot Red Coats in the face without jumping through every other kind of gun control hoop they can concoct.
In other words, no matter what they've said in the past, they don't actually believe the Second Amendment applies to literally anything.
I wish this were surprising, but it's not.
And they wonder why we're all so opposed to compromise.
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