The Associated Press — the wire service that feeds talking points to every newsroom in America — just published a piece warning the public that muskets, you know the ones that were popular with our founding fathers in 1776, are dangerous, unregulated weapons of war. Muskets. The single-shot, muzzle-loaded firearms that the Founding Fathers were literally holding when they wrote the Second Amendment. The AP has discovered them, and they are very concerned.
You cannot make this up. I've tried. Reality keeps beating me to the punchline.
According to the AP's breathless reporting, a ".50 cal ball of lead fired out of a smooth-barreled rifle can wreak more havoc on the body than an AR-15 chambered in .223." They actually typed that. An editor read it. A second editor approved it. And then the Associated Press — the most syndicated news service on the planet — published it for the world to read.
"Imagine what that can do to a human body," the AP warned. "Yet under federal and most state laws, it's exempt from gun regulations."
Imagine! They want you to imagine it. Close your eyes. Picture a musket ball. Now picture the 30 to 45 seconds it takes to pour the powder, ram the ball, prime the pan, aim, and fire. One shot. Then you start over. The redcoats are shaking.
Not the Bee — which flagged this masterpiece on May 14 — pointed out the obvious: the AP appears to be laying the groundwork for regulating firearms that were already in common use when George Washington was crossing the Delaware. This isn't gun control. This is historical cosplay dressed up as journalism.
Let's be clear about what the AP is doing here. They've spent decades trying to ban AR-15s. They've gone after handguns, semi-automatics, magazines, bump stocks, pistol braces, and ghost guns. They've tried banning guns by name, by feature, by color, and by how scary they look. And now — now — they've reached the musket. The bottom of the barrel. Literally.
The Second Amendment was written by men who owned muskets. The entire constitutional debate over the right to bear arms was conducted by men who fired muskets. If the AP's position is that muskets are unregulated weapons of war that should concern the public, then their position is that the Second Amendment should not protect the exact weapon it was written to protect.
Say it out loud. They want to regulate muskets. The gun your kid built out of a toilet paper roll in third grade. The gun that Civil War reenactors fire into the sky on weekends. The gun that takes so long to reload that the enemy could order lunch, eat it, and still charge your position before you're ready for shot number two.
This is what happens when newsrooms are staffed entirely by people who have never touched a firearm, never visited a gun range, and think "caliber" is a fancy word for quality. They Google "dangerous guns" and land on a weapon from 1776.
Next week: the AP investigates the trebuchet. The week after that, swords. By July, they'll be calling for background checks on slingshots.
The Founders wrote the Second Amendment with muskets in their hands and tyranny fresh in their memory. And 250 years later, the Associated Press looked at that exact weapon and said, "This is the threat." That tells you everything you need to know about where the gun control movement is headed — and how seriously you should take the people driving it.