Gun Rights

The Gun That Won the Revolution

The American Long Rifle was accurate at long distances, unlike British smoothbores.

David Kopel | From the July 2026 issue

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In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.

"No bigger than half a piece of soap" was how history remembered the diminutive James Madison, who weighed barely a hundred pounds. At 5 feet, 4 inches tall, he would later become the shortest American president ever. Yet firearms are the great equalizer, and in June 1775, two months after the American Revolution had begun, Madison had no doubt that he and his fellow Virginians could take out the British redcoats.

In a letter to Rhode Island patriot William Bradford, Madison wrote: "The strength of this Colony will lie chiefly in the rifle-men of the Upland Counties, of whom we shall have great numbers. You would be astonished at the perfection this art is brought to." The "most inexpert hands" could usually hit a man's head at 100 yards. Most Virginia riflemen could pick off enemy officers "before they get within 150 or 200 Yards," Madison noted. "Indeed I believe we have men that would very often hit such a mark 250 Yds. Our greatest apprehensions proceed from the scarcity of powder but a little will go a great way with such as use rifles."

Madison was right. Citizen expertise with the iconic American Long Rifle would change the course of the Revolution and secure a new nation stretching all the way to the Mississippi River. Later, when Madison was president, American marksmen with American Long Rifles would win America's smashing victory over the British at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.

God and Guns

It is fitting that the First Amendment and the Second Amendment are adjacent: Both guarantee natural rights, and each amendment safeguards the other. So it is unsurprising that the story of America's greatest gun begins with religious freedom.

Founded in 1681 by the wealthy English Quaker William Penn, Pennsylvania was different from most other colonies: It had no government-established church supported by taxation and compulsory attendance. Instead, religious freedom was guaranteed for "all persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal God." As long as persons would "live peaceably and justly in civil society," they would enjoy complete liberty "in matters of faith and worship," with no compulsion of any sort.

America was attracting skilled immigrant craftsmen, who could set up their own businesses and prosper, free of the extensive controls of guilds and government in their homelands. For Central Europeans—whose religious faiths were neither the established Church of England (most colonies) nor the Congregationalist offshoot of that church (most of New England)—Pennsylvania was especially attractive. When George Louis of Hanover, Germany, became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, many German-speaking gunsmiths decided the time was right to emigrate to America. These riflemakers from Germany and Switzerland usually settled around Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

There, they introduced a new type of firearm to British North America.

Ever since English immigration had begun in the early 17th century, almost all American guns had been smoothbores—that is, the interior of the barrel was smooth. Today, the most common smoothbores are shotguns. Smoothbores are well-suited for bird hunting but not for long-distance accuracy.

The German immigrants, however, were used to making rifles. In a rifle, spiral grooves (rifling) are cut in the bore. The grooves make the bullet spin on its horizontal axis, so the bullet's flight is more aerodynamically stable. Superior for long-range shooting, rifles had been well-established in the mountainous regions of southern Germany and northern Switzerland since the late 15th century. But rifles had not caught on in Great Britain or in the British colonies.

The Pennsylvania gunmakers initially produced the Jaeger model, which they had made in Central Europe. But it was very heavy to carry, the bullets were large and slow, and it required adjusting the rear sight to shoot at different distances.

Americans wanted a firearm suitable for an activity that did not take place in Germany or Switzerland: long hunting. Some of the first long hunters in America were the 17th century Finnish settlers of New Sweden (centered on the Delaware River).........

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