The colonial musket and rifle are the two most confused firearms at the fort, even though they are very different. They are usually confused because of two things. One; their outsides resemble each other, and two; they are both muzzle loading flintlocks. However, that is where the similarities end.
                The most prominent difference between the two is rifling. Rifling is the curved grooves inside the barrel of all rifles. Having rifling helps guns aim, because it gives the ball a spin. The spinning of the ball helps it maintain its path through the air. Because the musket doesn’t have rifling it is only accurate to about fifty feet, while the rifle stays accurate to about three hundred feet.
                The problem with rifling is that for it to be effective, you have to ram a ball that is bigger than the barrel down through the rifling. Doing this can sometimes take up to two minutes, while a good soldier with a musket can load and fire in under fifteen seconds. That is the main reason that most of the early military was made up almost entirely of muskets.
                The two less significant differences are that: first, in the event that you run out of ammunition in the middle of a battle, a musketeer has a very important tool that a soldier with a rifle doesn’t. A bayonet. A bayonet is a little spearhead that you can attach to the muzzle of a musket, so instead of a big club that is worth more than your life, you have a spear. This can mean the difference between life and death in the middle of a battle. Secondly, the two weapons were used in battle very differently. The musket was the army’s go to weapon of the day. It was fast and easy to reload, even though the chances of hitting anything are very slim. The rifle, however, was the “assassins’ tool”. It was used in hit and run attacks designed to eliminate enemy leaders and spread discord throughout the enemy before the musketeers came.
All in all these weapons are very different, yet are treated as though they are the same.
 
Noah Shortlidge,
12/18/2010