The AP Just Declared War on the Weapon That Won the American Revolution

The Associated Press spent decades lecturing America about responsible journalism.

Now they're targeting the weapon that created this country – weeks before its 250th birthday celebration.

What they said about the Brown Bess that beat the British should make every American's blood boil.

AP Calls America's Founding Weapon a Loophole

The AP posted a video on X Wednesday framing the Revolutionary War musket as a dangerous, unregulated threat to public safety.

Their caption read: "A musket from 1776 can fire a lead ball at a velocity of around 1,000 feet per second. Imagine what that can do to a human body. Yet under federal and most state laws, it's exempt from gun regulations. Many antique or replica guns aren't considered firearms and even convicted felons can own them."

That's right. The wire service that feeds news to thousands of outlets across the country just ran a scare piece on the Brown Bess flintlock – the weapon colonists used to throw the British Empire off American soil in 1776.

The AP even hired firearms historian Ashley Hlebinsky for the video. She confirmed the obvious: muskets are "technically, in terms of legal standards in the federal government, not legally a firearm. They are classified as an antique."

The Revolution enactor in the same video said what every sane American was already thinking: "It seems silly to put restriction on something that would be such a terrible weapon if you wanted to kill people. You can kill more people quickly with a car than you can with a musket."

The AP buried that part.

Congress Settled This in 1968 and the AP Knows It

The musket's exempt status isn't a loophole – it's a deliberate, bipartisan decision that's been federal law for nearly 60 years.

During debate over the Gun Control Act of 1968, Republican Senator John Tower of Texas argued specifically that flintlocks and antique firearms deserved protection. He told Congress the exemption was needed to protect "serious collectors of antique firearms and for historians and museums" – and that treating a Brown Bess like a Glock would unfairly target collector items with "little, if any, practical use as a firearm in the modern connotation."

Congress agreed. The law defines an antique as any weapon with "a matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar type of ignition system" manufactured before 1898. Most states adopted that language verbatim. It has stood unchallenged for nearly six decades.

Firearms historian Ashley Hlebinsky confirmed that Senator Tower "clearly lays out not wanting to burden historians, collectors, gun owners, and museums" and put "a lot of care and effort into identifying that cut-off date."

This isn't an oversight the AP stumbled across. It's settled law – and they wrote a hit piece on it anyway.

The Left Spent 50 Years Saying the Second Amendment Only Covers Muskets

Here's the part that makes this beyond parody.

For half a century, every gun-grabber in America has used the same debate tactic: "The Founders only intended the Second Amendment to cover muskets."

They said it when opposing AR-15 ownership. They said it in oral arguments before the Supreme Court. They said it in every op-ed, every cable hit, every late-night monologue about why modern sporting rifles were never protected.

Now the Associated Press – the same outlet that feeds those narratives to every newsroom in America – is arguing that muskets are too dangerous to go unregulated.

They can't keep both arguments. Either muskets are constitutionally protected symbols of the exact right the Founders were enshrining – or they're deadly weapons requiring federal oversight.

The AP just blew up their own talking point, right before America turns 250.

The timing isn't accidental. With America's 250th birthday celebrations approaching – Revolutionary War reenactors, musket demonstrations, commemorative events across the country – the left needed a way to put a threat label on the most patriotic symbol of the summer.

They chose the most trusted wire service in America to do it.

The Firearms Policy Coalition said it plainly on X: "Muskets are too deadly. Seriously go f— yourselves."

Sources:

• AWR Hawkins, "Associated Press Floats Gun Control for Black Powder Muskets, 250 Years After America's Founding," Breitbart, May 14, 2026.
• "You'll Never Guess The Gun Corporate Media's Worrying About Now," Daily Caller, May 14, 2026.
• "AP Warns That Revolutionary War-Era Muskets Are Mostly Exempt From Gun Laws in the US," Twitchy, May 14, 2026.
• "Associated Press Shocked to Learn Muskets Don't Count As Firearms," Bearing Arms, May 14, 2026.
• "BEYOND PARODY: The Associated Press Floats Idea of Gun Control for… MUSKETS," The Gateway Pundit, May 14, 2026.