http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/history/history-kopel070100.shtml

by David Kopel

Shortly after the Constitution was sent to the people for ratification,
anti-federalists warned that the Constitution would make the federal
government too strong in relation to the people. Not so, replied the
Federalists. Tench Coxe-an ally of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who
would later serve in the Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
administrations-explained:

“The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands
of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for THE POWERS OF THE
SWORD ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE YEOMANRY OF AMERICA FROM SIXTEEN TO SIXTY. The
militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms,
when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible.
Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we
shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power
to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of
the soldier, are the birthright of an American. What clause in the state or
[federal] constitution hath given away that important right. . . . [T]he
unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the foederal or
state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the
hands of the people.”

[A Pennsylvanian, To The People of the United States, Philadelphia Gazette,
Feb. 20, 1788.]

What were those weapons, so recently used in the American Revolution, which
Coxe and rest considered “the birthright of an American”?

At the start of the war, the most common musket, in both Patriot and Redcoat
hands, was the Brown Bess, an iron-barreled musket which fired a .75 caliber
ball. The “Brown” part of the name may have come from the walnut stock, or
from the barrel’s color, once it had been rust-proofed. “Bess” was probably
chosen because it sounded good with “Brown,” and because fighting men have
often given their weapons female nicknames. (Note: this is not the same as
calling your mother-in-law “that old battle-axe.”)

When the French intervened on America’s side in 1778, they brought their
Charleville Muskets-named for the town near Belgium which hosted the Royal
Manufactory of Arms. The French model fired a slightly smaller ball: .70. It
was distributed copiously to the Americans, and later became the pattern for
the federal army’s Springfield Musket of 1795.

Muskets took a while to reload, so army formations typically deployed
musket-men in two or three lines. The first line would fire in unison, then
drop to their knees to reload, while the lines behind them fired.

Muskets were not accurate, and musketmen were not even expected to aim at
particular targets. Rather, the objective was to deliver a mass of
musketballs into the enemy line. The muskets were an ideal weapon for the
kind of fighting man that the British used.

Life in any European standing army was brutal. Soldiers were drilled and
disciplined until they could no longer think. They were expected to obey
unquestioningly, and to move in precise lock-step formations. Only people
who had no other choice joined the army, and the army was composed of “the
dregs of society” rounded up from gin mills and gaols. The British troops
were drilled and drilled until they could perform coolly and automatically
in the heat of combat, and did not question whether orders made sense.
Several volleys of disciplined musket fire, followed by a screaming bayonet
charge (the Brown Bess had a 17 inch bayonet), was often sufficient to carry
the day for the British-as at Lexington, Manhattan or Camden.

Muskets (like today’s shotguns) have smooth barrels. In contrast, rifles
have twisting grooves in the barrel, which give the bullet its spin. This
stabilizing spin helps the rifle bullet travel much further, and more
accurately, than does the musket ball. It was the rifle-which utilized the
American virtue of individual initiative, which would become the
quintessentially American weapon of the Revolution.

America’s first great rifle-makers were Germans who settled in Pennsylvania
(the “Pennsylvania Dutch”). Around 1720, the Germans began adapting their
German rifle designs to American conditions, by lengthening the barrel to
40-45 inches (producing longer-range accuracy), and using maplewood stocks.
The typical caliber was .60.

Like the muskets, all these rifles were flintlocks, meaning that the
gunpowder was ignited by a spark from metal striking flint. All of the guns
used loose gunpowder made from salt-peter (“blackpowder”); modern smokeless
powder did not come until the latter part of the nineteenth century.

During the Revolution, there was neither the time nor the inclination to
decorate the rifles with the kind of engraving that was often seen on later
versions, including today’s replicas.

The Pennsylvania Rifle had a shattering effect against British Redcoats.
The British musketeers could fire and reload three times as fast as the
American rifleman, and knew how to march in disciplined linear formations in
open terrain. Although there were plenty of open-terrain battles during the
war, there were also plenty of guerilla actions, in which Patriots hid
behind rocks and trees and sniped at small enemy patrols.

While muskets were easy to use, the Pennsylvania rifle was effective only in
the hands of a skilled marksman, who could hit a target the size of a man’s
head from 200 yards away. A lucky shot could travel 400 yards. Whether in
open combat or in a guerilla context, the American riflemen specialized in
sniping at the British officers, causing them considerable apprehension, and
distracting them from command.

Some of the gunmakers of the Pennsylvania Rifles eventually moved to Ohio,
Tennessee, and other parts. After the rifles figured prominently in the
great American victory at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, at the end of the
War of 1812, the rifles became universally known as “Kentucky Rifles,” since
the popular song celebrating the great battle was “The Hunters of Kentucky.”
(“For Jackson he was wide-awake, and not afraid of trifles. Full well he
knew the aim we’d take with our Kentucky Rifles.”)

The superior range of the Pennsylvania Rifle had allowed the Americans to
engage the Redcoats beyond musket range during the first part of the War.
But at the battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, the British deployed
a special 100 man company firing a new rifle invented by Scotsman Andrew
Ferguson. The innovative breech-loading design (as opposed to
muzzle-loading, in which the gun is loaded by ramming the bullet down the
muzzle, and through the full length of the barrel) allowed the Ferguson
rifles to fire 4-5 shots per minute, and the gun could even be reloaded
while a soldier marched towards the enemy.

Although the British won at Brandywine, and captured Philadelphia as a
result, Ferguson was wounded, and the British Army foolishly lost interest
in rifles for the rest of the war. Not until 1819 would a nation adopt a
breechloader as its standard military weapon, when the United States
selected the Hall Carbine.

While some people believe that handguns did not exist when the Patriots were
fighting for their right to arms, handguns were actually hundreds of years
old by then. Handguns had grown common enough in the early sixteenth century
so that proposed legislation as early as 1518 (by the Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian) addressed them. By the latter part of the 1500s, handguns were
standard cavalry weapons. When the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791,
state militia laws requiring most men to supply their own firearms required
officers to supply their own pistols.

The Revolutionary handguns were mostly very large .50 caliber single-shot
pistols, often built by the same gunsmiths who made the Pennsylvania Rifles.
Colonel Samuel Colt’s multiple-shot revolver lay decades in the
future-although there were predecessors available, such as “pepperbox,”
which used revolving barrels, each containing its own bullet.

Today, only two of Ferguson’s breechloading rifles are still in existence,
and the pepperbox proto-revolvers are found only in museums or the homes of
wealthy collectors. But the kinds of muskets and rifles with which the
American Revolution was fought are still in common use. Many hobbyists build
old-fashioned rifles or muskets from kits, and many others buy manufactured
blackpowder arms, to take advantage of the special blackpowder-only hunting
seasons in many states. Some of these guns incorporate new technology (such
as in-line loading), while others are remarkably faithful to the old
designs.

Whether you’re shooting an old-fashioned replica of a Brown Bess, or
high-tech polymer pistol from Glock, you’re exercising the freedoms that
great Patriots such as “the Swamp Fox” Francis Marion helped win for us two
centuries ago. To celebrate Independence Day, why not exercise the right you
still have (and which the Redcoats’ descendants don’t) by taking a niece or
a neighbor to a target range, or by buying your first gun, or by sending an
extra contribution to one of the groups who are continuing humanity’s
long-running battle against tyranny and disarmament.