The Founders' "Assault Rifle"

The 1780 Girandoni Air Gun was the Founders' version of the so-called "assault rifle."  Gun-grabbers always want to argue that the Founders could never have envisioned 30 round magazines, repeating rifles, or anything other than a muzzleloading, single shot rifle or flint-lock pistol.  Well, from the pages of history, invented in 1789, and used by the Austrian army from 1780 to 1815, here is the Founder's assault rifle.  The tubular magazine held 20 rounds of .46 caliber ball ammunition, quickly reloaded from 20 round tubes carried in a satchel.  The stock used compressed air (800 psi or so) to fire the round, which had an effective range of 150 yards.  Being air powered, the rifles were also suppressed by the standards of the day.


The rifle predated the Bill of Rights by 10 years, and Thomas Jefferson gave two rifles to the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804, who used the repeating nature of the rifle in demonstrations to the Native Americans, who naturally assumed that the whole party was outfitted with them and wisely chose to be neighborly.





It could also be argued that the Founders could not have known about radio, television, the Internet, blogs, communications satellites and fiber optics, so the First Amendment must not mean what it says either.  Why, someone might prove to everyone that progressive arguments against the Second Amendment are historically inaccurate and without merit, and then publish it for the world to see instantly and without censorship.