Could the Founders have anticipated modern firearms?
Most assuredly yes.
Firearms technology was advanced well beyond the musket by the time the Framers drafted the Bill of Rights, and even before many of them were born. Here are a few tweetable facts about the guns that the Framers would have known about and even had access to:
Rifling came into being in 1498.
The Kalthoff Repeater was a rifle designed around 1630. The capacity varied between 5 and 30 rounds. A single forward-and-back motion on the trigger guard deposited a ball and load of powder in the breech and cocked the gun. Within 1-2 seconds, it was ready to fire again.
The Cookson flintlock rifle, or Cookson gun, a lever-action breech-loading repeater, is one of many similar designs to make an appearance on the world stage beginning in the 17th century. The mechanism at the heart of the Cookson repeater dates from 1680.
The Ferguson rifle was one of the first breech-loading rifles to be put into service by theBritish military. It fired a standard British carbine ball of .615" calibre and was used by the British Army in the American Revolutionary War.
The world's first "machine gun," the Puckle gun, was patented in Britain in 1718, 33 years before James Madison was born. Though it resembled an oversized pepperbox revolver more than a modern machine gun, the pursuit of firing more rounds faster was well underway.
In 1780, Thomas Jefferson purchased two Girardoni air rifles, which had a magazine capacity of 22 x .46 caliber round balls that could be propelled at 400-450 feet per second and all be fired within 60 seconds.
The Bill of Rights was written in 1789.
In 1780, Thomas Jefferson purchased 2 Girardoni air rifles, with a capacity of 22 round balls that could all be fired within 60 seconds.
The same year they went into service with the Austrian army. No exemption for weapons of war was considered in drafting the 2nd Amendment.
Given that many Framers were military men who sought help from other militaries of the world, they would have surely known about the latest firearms developments (let alone those of decades or centuries prior) and been aware that firearms would only get better over time.
There was no legal distinction between military and civilian arms until the passage of the first gun control law, the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA)—part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s "New Deal for Crime"—creating categories that never existed prior.
If the Framers had meant to limit the 2nd Amendment to muskets, they would have. Laws in contemporary Britain included exceptions for fowling pieces, hunting rifles, some pistols and the like. These were laws the Framers had in books in their libraries.
This page will be updated with more factoids as I become aware of them.
An alternate argument, collected from the internet.
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended.
Four ruffians break into your house.
Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man. He's dead on the spot.
Musket ball continues to fly wildly, going through the neighbor's wall.
Draw your flintlock pistol and fire on the second man.
Miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and instead kill the neighbor's dog.
Resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot. The grape shot shreds two men in the blast.
The sound and shrapnel set off car alarms.
Fix bayonet to musket and jab the last rapscallion 15 times.
Reload musket in case anymore scoundrels arrive.
Police knock and enter upon hearing the ruckus.
Can't hear or see because of the flintlock report and smoke.
Mistakenly shoot police officer.
The stabbed man bleeds out later at the hospital since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up.
Just as the founding fathers intended.
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