The Associated Press — yes, the same wire service that can't figure out how to cover a border crisis — just released a video complaining that Revolutionary War-era muskets are legal in America. Flintlock muskets. The kind that fire approximately 1,000 feet per second and can be reloaded a blistering 3-4 times per minute. Truly, the weapon of mass destruction keeping AP journalists up at night.

They want to ban muskets. MUSKETS. The guns from 1776. The ones that won the Battle of Lexington and Concord. I genuinely cannot tell if this is journalism or a comedy sketch that nobody greenlit.

The AP's breathless exposé featured firearms historian Ashley Hlebinsky, who explained what anyone with a functioning brain stem already knows: "They're classified as an antique. It is actually not nearly as heavily regulated as a modern firearm." No kidding. Because they're antiques. They belong in the same regulatory category as your grandmother's butter churn.

Here's the part that apparently sent the AP into a full editorial meltdown: black powder firearms are not classified as firearms under federal law. Convicted felons are legally permitted to own antique or replica black powder firearms. And look, I get it — that sounds like a talking point if you've never actually held one of these things. But we're talking about a weapon that requires you to manually pour gunpowder down a barrel, stuff a lead ball in with a ramrod, prime the pan, cock the hammer, and pray it doesn't misfire.

A musket. The thing George Washington's men carried across the Delaware.

This is what passes for investigative journalism at the Associated Press in 2026. Not the $36 trillion national debt. Not the fentanyl pouring across the southern border. Not the federal agencies that can't account for billions in spending. No — the real threat to American safety is a 250-year-old piece of hardware that takes 15 seconds to reload and has an effective range shorter than your driveway.

The anti-gun lobby has officially run out of modern firearms to complain about, so they've gone back in time. What's next — a CNN special report on the dangers of crossbows? An MSNBC panel on the lethality of slingshots? A Washington Post deep dive into the trebuchet loophole?

As LifeZette's David Schultz noted in covering this absurdity, the AP is essentially arguing that the weapons the Founders literally used to secure American independence are too dangerous for Americans to own. Let that marinate for a second. The guns that created the country are, according to the AP, a problem the country needs to solve.

This is what happens when a newsroom is staffed entirely by people who have never left a zip code with a Whole Foods. They see "gun" and "legal" in the same sentence and the editorial alarm bells start ringing, even if the gun in question was manufactured before the invention of the telegraph.

We used muskets to build a free nation. The AP is using bandwidth to argue we shouldn't have them. I know which one history will remember.