Now a question to kick about is how many military rifles got in to civilian hands?
How did the US army handle guns post war, before the WTBS? I’m thinking there were a few 1803 issued in 1812.
A photo from Gettysburg showed an elderly man who turned out to fight with his 1812 musket that had been cut back to a half stock.
Lisa had a ‘sporterized’ Brown Bess during the late Spanish /French early western fur trade. Was this a modified service musket, or an officers private fusil?
Henry would produce an ‘English’ style rifle for the western trade. It looked like a cross between English Baker and typical Lancaster rifle. And the Texas rangers seized a number of guns from a freebooter group, and amount then was a British service musket( 3ed model?).
tenngun, I assume these two posts are related.
I don't think there is any doubt that military arms made their way into civilian hands. How many? Some militia were provided with State owned arms. Some militia provided their own arms. Even with State owned arms, some militia were allowed to keep their arms in their homes. Easy for these to eventually become unaccounted for.
At the Federal level, the government established arsenals where arms were checked back in at the end of engagements. Probably fewer Federal arms made their way into civilian hands than State militia arms.
In one question, you seem to be asking about military rifles and the other, military arms in general.
As far as military rifles are concerned, they were primarily the 1792 Contract Rifle, the 1803 Harper's Ferry Rifle, the 1807 Contract Rifle, the 1814 Contract Rifle, the 1817 Contract Rifle, and Hall's patent breechloading rifle. Small numbers of these may have found their way into civilian hands. Some of the 1792 Contract rifles were given to Indians as trade and treaty rifles. Some 1792 and possibly 1807 Contract rifles were issued to some of Andrew Jackson's men and used in the Battle of New Orleans. Lewis and Clark expedition arms were auctioned off in St. Louis after their return. There were some HF 1803 sold when some garrisons were closed. But again, the numbers of these rifles to find their way into civilian hands were probably small in comparison to the trade guns and Kentucky rifles that were readily available.
As far as military muskets, there were probably a fair number of militia muskets in civilian hands at any one time. I doubt that very many of these made their way west before 1840, though. They were of large caliber, .69" to .75" bores. They were intended for volley fire and not very accurate with military issue ammo. I could see settlers and farmers using them for hunting with shot or buck-and-ball as well as defense against marauding Indians, but not the arm of choice for a hide hunter or fur trader/trapper.
From what I can find in George Moller's books, the Ordnance Department conducted a number of inventories of muskets and rifles in the early 1840s (the Army adopted the percussion system in 1842 and wanted to know how many flintlock guns they had). There were approximately 1 million flintlock muskets in federal repositories, in the hands of the armed forces, and in the possession of the individual states. There were about 73,000 flintlock rifles in possession of the federal and state governments at that time. These numbers show that the federal and state governments still had most of the arms they had procured over the years in their possession.
The first large scale sale of military arms that I could find was authorized by Congress in March 1849 in an act that enabled government-owed small arms to be sold to the civilian emigrants at the government's cost. This followed the end of the Mexican War and reflected the government's desire to populate the newly acquired territories. A popular arm purchased by the emigrants was the percussion Model 1841 rifle, also called the "Mississippi" rifle, at $14 each.
