I grew up with guns. In the Boy Scouts, we were the only troop in Southern California to all have and wear our NRA marksmanship medals on our Boy Scout uniforms - would give certain folks hissy fits today.
My family moved to Ohio when I was partway thru high school, and Golden Age Arms had a shop in the little town where I lived. Dad was a member of OGCA, and one day brought home a replica 1861 Colt Navy, which I still have today.
There was an old gentleman at the range where I would shoot who always had several rifles to shoot, almost all were flintlocks, and every one was a beautiful work of art. I thought he was building them and test firing them before selling to customers, but once in a while one would appear that had some obvious wear. Ends up they were all originals, passed down to him from a previous generation. A great great someone or other was a town official or judge, or mayor or someone in the upper reaches of the local society who would organize holiday rifle shoots for townsmen. The rich folks had the rifles that got fired once a year & looked brand new; the real folk, working people who depended on their guns for food, had guns that were more used & worn.
The ancestor bought the fancy guns from estates of the rich who passed on, and the accumulated legacy was intended to pass intact thru generations without selling or breaking up the collection.
I watched the gent load & fire these rifles, and when he asked me if I wanted to fire them, I jumped at the chance. I'm lefthanded, but learned to shoot the righthanded flintlocks without any trouble. Over a couple of years, I must have fired several dozen rifles, never the same one, I was told. I don't know where the old man lived, and was never invited to come to see the collection, but surmised that it was kept at the family estate, where he, and his father lived, and where his sons were born. I'm guessing the entire collection was over 100 rifles, and whenever he was at the range, I was always welcome to shoot whatever he brought with him for the day.
Years passed and I had opportunity to fire flintlocks at a couple of ranges where I'd shoot. Meanwhile, Dad built a rifle. Unfortunately it was a caplock, beautiful in its' own right and I have it today.
I'd fired a couple of lefthaded flintlocks along the way & it doesn't much matter to me which way they are, I shoot both equally.
My first flintlock of my own was a .50 cal. GPR and I have a couple of others, both left and righthanded. I'm relatively new to smoothbores, and have one to shoot, one to build, and another ordered and soon on the way to me all righthanded flint.
