Gun Rights Lesson #378 – Muskets

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope.

“The Second Amendment only protects muskets!”

Yes, indeedy. The right to keep and bear muskets shall not be infringed.

Aside from the fact that rifles did exist at the time of the drafting of the Bill of Rights (ever read Last of the Mohicans? Remember Hawkeye’s rifle Killdeer?) this argument presumes that the Founding Fathers would deliberately exclude technological advancements from the protections written into the Constitution.

By that logic, “the press” would be limited to manual printing presses with moveable type. “Speech” would be limited to standing on soapboxes (without amplification more sophisticated than a rolled up piece of cardboard) and handing out manually printed pamphlets. Typewriters, word processors, radio, television, the Internet… anything (excepting possibly telegraphs) that uses electricity, for that matter, would not be protected. The Fourth Amendment would not protect our telephone conversations, nor would it preclude the government from putting cameras and microphones in our homes.

The drafters of the Bill of Rights lived their lives before the Industrial Revolution, but they were indeed witnesses to invention and technological advancement. The steam engine, the flush toilet, the telegraph, the submarine, and the spinning jenny were all invented in the years preceding the ratification of Bill of Rights. There is not a shred of logic, nor a shred of history, that suggests the Second Amendment was intended to preclude innovations in firearm technology.

There is a parallel argument – that the Founders never envisioned guns as powerful or lethal as those of today – that’s just as banal. I address it in Gun Rights Lesson #909.

The musket argument, like so many others, is the product of shallow and infantile thinking, the grasping at straws and straw men that exemplifies so much of the anti-gun hyperbole we hear these days.

So,

Gun rights lesson #378: If you think the Second Amendment only protects the right to keep and bear muskets, you should also believe that the First Amendment only protects soap boxes and moveable type.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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