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Kentucky Flintlock Rifle
The Kentucky rifle, sometimes also known as the "Long Rifle" or "Pennsylvania Rifle" is famously known as the first American-made long-arm with a rifled barrel, featuring lands and grooves causing the bullet to spin as it leaves the gun, making it far more accurate than the smoothbore muskets of the time, including the British Brown Bess Flintlock Musket.
The colonists during the Revolutionary War favored Kentucky Rifles since they had used them for hunting and when fighting the British, they definitely knew how to use them. The gun is also well known as being the first true sniper rifle, based on how an experienced marksman could shoot a redcoat off his horse at up to 250 yards. The gun was used all the way up to the War of 1812 before the Scottish Percussion design slowly phased the flintlock design out. Some Percussion models of the rifle were made, but by that time the rifling had become so common, the gun became obsolete as a frontline weapon after the Mexican American War.
Specifications
- Weight: Variable
- Length: over 65 in.
- Barrel length: 35 in. (889 mm), to over 48 in. (1220 mm)
- Cartridge: none
- Caliber: 0.500 in, approximately, .36 cal to .45 cal also were common
- Action: Flintlock
- Rate of fire: User dependent, Usually 1+ rounds a minute
- Muzzle velocity: Variable
- Effective range: Variable, 80 to 100 yards typical, to well over 250 yards by an experienced user
- Feed system: Muzzle loaded
The Kentucky Flintlock Rifle has been used in the following films:
Film
- Gary Cooper in Sergeant York (1941)
- John Wayne as Davy Crockett in The Alamo (1960)
- Jimmy Stewart as Linus Rawlings in How the West Was Won (1962)
- A town member in Pale Rider (1985)
- Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, The (1992)
- Mel Gibson and various in The Patriot (2000)
- Billy Bob Thornton as Davy Crockett in The Alamo (2004)
Television
- Used in an episode of The Unit