Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

First, the very term "assault weapon"[1] is a nonsensical phrase intended to cause confusion amongst the members of the public who aren't familiar with firearms, specifically to incite fear of said firearms amongst those same people[2].

With that out of the way, let's talk about the inane notion that "the Founders didn't forsee today's weapons such as the AK-47 or AR-15  thus the Second Amendment only applies to single-shot muskets and flintlocks."[3]

The fact remains that the Founders were familiar with multiple-shot firearms, as such had been developed in Europe over a century before the Revolution:

For starters, there's the Kalthoff repeater.

Kalthoff-type flintlock rifle (1600s) at the Livrustkammaren (Photo from Wikipedia)

The Kalthoff repeater was reportedly used in the Siege of Copenhagen (1659) [4] and the Scanian War (1675-1679) between Denmark and Sweden [5]. That's 132 and 116 years, respectively, before the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791.

The Kalthoff never saw widespread use because it was expensive to manufacture, maintain and repair, thus only the wealthy could afford to obtain them. Still, it was a start. The "standard issue" magazine for the Kalthoff appears to have been six shots, while some models may have gone as high as thirty shots. If today's hoplophobes and victim disarmers had been around then, the Kalthoff would have them soiling their drawers like semi-automatic copies of the AR-15 and AK-47 do today.

Next comes the Cookson Volitional Flintlock Repeater, first made in 1750 in the UK (41 years before the Second Amendment was ratified).

Cookson Volitional Flintlock Repeater at the National Firearms Museum

(Photo from the National Firearms Museum)

The Cookson apparently used the Lorenzoni System (first developed in 1680  111 years before the Second Amendment was ratified) as its internal mechanism. As with the Kalthoff, the Cookson appears to have been expensive to build and operate, hence it was relegated to a historical footnote instead of taking the world by storm.

While the Founders had heard of the concept of multiple-shot firearms, it wasn't until the idea of interchangeable parts came about as a practical form of technology  in the 1820s[6]  that they became a real possibility.

So when practical, portable laser and railgun weapons become a realistic possibility[7], we'll hear and read it all over again from the hoplophbes and victim disarmers  "The Founders never foresaw these!"

I think just as Tench Coxe wanted private civilians to have ready access to and proficiency with the military weapons of the day[8], today he'd be talking about the AR-15 / M-16 / M-4 and AK-47 / AK-74 series of weapons, and in a hundred or so years, he would be talking about lasers and railguns.

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