25 Years Ago, Gun Control Advocates Wanted to Ban Everything But Flintlocks – Now They Want to Ban Those Too
Mark Chesnut -
May 26, 2026
In 2001, a Los Angeles Times op-ed laid out what the author believed was the definitive limit of Second Amendment protection. American citizens, the author wrote, had the constitutional right to own flintlock muskets and pistols — and nothing more.
“I believe that the framers of the Bill of Rights intended that the right of every American citizen to bear flintlock muskets and pistols should not be infringed,” the author wrote. “I believe that American citizens today — without fingerprinting, without a license, without a background check — ought to be able to own as many flintlock muskets and pistols as they want. If they want to fill up their garages with them, that should be nobody’s business but their own.”
The piece was satirical in framing but earnest in substance. The argument — that the Second Amendment’s “arms” should be limited to 18th-century weapons technology — was a serious gun-control position in 2001 and remained so for the next two decades. Variations on it appeared regularly in mainstream commentary, in academic legal arguments, and occasionally in judicial opinions.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/flintlock-second-amendment-shift/
