Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Thinks the Second Amendment Only Protects Muskets

Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed claims the Second Amendment protects muskets, not modern firearms. The Supreme Court rejected that argument in 2008. Now, the Senate candidate’s latest remarks are drawing renewed attention to his previous proposal to replace the Second Amendment entirely.

Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apparently believes Americans have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, so long as those arms are muskets from the 18th century.

During a recent campaign appearance, El-Sayed attempted to explain constitutional originalism before suggesting that because muskets were commonly used when the Second Amendment was ratified, Americans today should have the right to those same weapons.

“When they promised the right to bear arms, they had muskets. So, yeah, everyone should have equal rights to a musket.”

There is one glaring problem with El-Sayed’s argument. The Supreme Court already rejected it nearly two decades ago.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), Justice Antonin Scalia specifically addressed the claim that the Second Amendment protects only firearms available during the founding era, describing that reasoning as “bordering on the frivolous.”

Yet here we are in 2026, with a candidate for the United States Senate repeating the same argument while attempting to lecture Americans about the Constitution.

El-Sayed’s remarks, highlighted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and examined by J.D. Tuccille at Reason, are particularly revealing when compared with his previous statements about the Second Amendment.

In 2023, El-Sayed openly proposed replacing the constitutional right to keep and bear arms with a right to healthcare. When confronted about that proposal during his Senate campaign, he declined to directly disavow it.

Taken together, El-Sayed’s statements go beyond the usual Democratic gun-control rhetoric about banning AR-15s and other semiautomatic firearms. He has explicitly proposed replacing the Second Amendment itself. His latest argument would effectively deny constitutional protection to modern firearms, something the Supreme Court has already rejected.

This is not merely a disagreement over firearm regulations. El-Sayed has publicly questioned whether the constitutional protection of gun ownership should continue to exist in its present form.

Justice Scalia Already Destroyed the Muskets-Only Argument

El-Sayed is hardly the first politician to suggest that the Second Amendment should be limited to muskets. Anti-gun activists have recycled versions of this argument for years, often claiming the Founders could never have imagined modern semiautomatic firearms.

Unfortunately for that argument, the Supreme Court settled the underlying constitutional question in District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia rejected the notion that constitutional protection ends with 18th-century technology.

The Court explained that the Second Amendment extends presumptively to bearable arms that did not exist at the founding, just as the First Amendment protects modern communications and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern methods of searching.

That ruling also affirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms independent of militia service, including for lawful self-defense in the home.

El-Sayed’s understanding of the amendment runs directly against those conclusions.

He attempts to use originalism to limit Americans to weapons from the founding era, but originalism does not mean constitutional rights are confined to the technology available in 1791.

It means the Constitution is interpreted according to its original public meaning.

The Second Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It does not specify muskets, flintlocks, or any other particular firearm. It certainly does not establish a technological expiration date for the constitutional rights of American citizens.

The Supreme Court reinforced the historical approach to Second Amendment cases in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), holding that firearm regulations must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Neither decision supports the ridiculous notion that a constitutional right becomes obsolete whenever technology advances.

By El-Sayed’s Logic, the First Amendment Wouldn’t Protect the Internet

The constitutional problem with El-Sayed’s argument becomes even more apparent when the same reasoning is applied to other rights protected by the Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment was ratified in 1791. At the time, Americans relied on printing presses, handwritten correspondence, newspapers, and public speeches to communicate political ideas.

There were no smartphones, televisions, radio broadcasts, or social media platforms.

Does that mean the government can censor speech on Facebook or X because James Madison never owned an iPhone?

Of course not.

The Fourth Amendment was also written long before computers, GPS tracking, thermal imaging devices, and electronic surveillance. Yet Americans retain constitutional protections against unreasonable government searches involving those technologies.

Imagine a politician arguing that police could search private emails without constitutional restraint because the Founders communicated through handwritten letters.

That is essentially the same reasoning El-Sayed is applying to the Second Amendment.

As J.D. Tuccille explained in Reason, accepting this interpretation would leave constitutional protections limited to the technology of the 18th century.

The entire Bill of Rights would become increasingly meaningless as society developed new technologies.

The Constitution’s original meaning remains unchanged. What changes are the tools Americans use to exercise the rights it protects.

Americans do not lose their freedom of speech when they exchange printing presses for computers. They do not lose their Fourth Amendment protections when government agents exchange handwritten warrants for electronic surveillance.

And they do not lose their Second Amendment rights when firearms manufacturers develop better rifles, pistols, and ammunition.

The Founding Fathers Knew About Repeating Firearms

El-Sayed’s argument also demonstrates a poor understanding of American firearms history.

Anti-gun politicians frequently suggest that the Founders could never have imagined repeating firearms, much less the semiautomatic rifles and handguns owned by millions of Americans today.

That claim ignores firearms technology that existed long before the Second Amendment was ratified.

During the Revolutionary War, inventors and gunsmiths were already developing breech-loading rifles, repeating flintlocks, and firearms capable of delivering multiple shots without the conventional process of reloading a single-shot musket.

Some of those designs attracted the attention of the Continental Congress itself.

As firearms historian Logan Metesh documented in AmmoLand’s Fact Check: The Founding Fathers DID Know About Repeating Rifles, Philadelphia inventor Joseph Belton approached Congress in April 1777 with a repeating flintlock design that he claimed could fire multiple rounds in rapid succession.

Congress was sufficiently interested to authorize the construction or modification of 100 firearms using Belton’s improvements.

The project ultimately fell apart over Belton’s compensation demands, but the historical record establishes that America’s Founders were familiar with the concept of repeating firearms more than a decade before the Second Amendment was ratified.

Belton was far from the only firearms innovator of the era.

The Lorenzoni repeating flintlock employed an internal magazine and a rotating breech mechanism capable of delivering successive shots without conventional muzzleloading.

Kalthoff repeating firearms had existed since the 17th century.

The Ferguson rifle, developed before the American Revolution, featured a breech-loading mechanism that allowed a trained shooter to reload considerably faster than with a conventional musket.

The Girardoni repeating air rifle, introduced before the Bill of Rights was ratified, offered another example of firearms technology advancing beyond the ordinary single-shot musket.

These firearms were expensive, mechanically complicated, and generally uncommon, but they demonstrate that the Founders were not ignorant of repeating-firearm technology.

AmmoLand recently explored this tradition in Revolutionary War Gunsmiths & the Second Amendment, examining the craftsmen and inventors who developed, manufactured, and improved firearms during America’s founding.

The Founders understood that weapons technology would advance. They had already witnessed those advancements.

But even without these historical examples, El-Sayed’s argument would still fail. The Second Amendment protects a preexisting right to keep and bear arms, not a particular design of firearm.

El-Sayed Already Proposed Replacing the Second Amendment

El-Sayed’s recent musket comments are especially concerning when compared with his previous statements about the right to keep and bear arms.

In August 2026, The Reload uncovered a previously public YouTube video from April 6, 2023, in which El-Sayed suggested replacing the Second Amendment’s protection of gun ownership with a constitutional right to healthcare.

“What if we tweaked the Constitution? Amended the amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have health care.”

That was not a proposal for another background check, waiting period, or ban on a particular type of firearm. El-Sayed was proposing to replace the constitutional guarantee itself. The video was subsequently removed from public access, although The Reload recovered a transcript of the recording.

During the same discussion, El-Sayed questioned the individual-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment, suggesting that its purpose involved state militias rather than the private possession of firearms. That argument also conflicts with Heller, which recognized the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right independent of militia service.

When the 2023 recording resurfaced during his Senate campaign, El-Sayed’s campaign said he respected the Second Amendment. However, it did not directly answer whether he continued to support replacing it.

During an August interview, El-Sayed was asked directly whether he wanted to replace the Second Amendment. Rather than disavowing the proposal, he shifted the discussion toward healthcare. According to The Reload’s August 27 follow-up, El-Sayed repeatedly avoided giving a direct answer.

Now, during his campaign for the United States Senate, he is again questioning the extent of the Second Amendment’s protections, this time by suggesting the constitutional right to bear arms should be understood in terms of muskets.

The statements form a public record that extends beyond ordinary disagreements over gun-control legislation.

In 2023, El-Sayed proposed replacing the Second Amendment. In August 2026, he declined to directly reject that proposal. Now he is advancing an interpretation that would leave modern firearms outside constitutional protection.

Americans have good reason to examine those statements closely, especially when they come from someone seeking a seat in the United States Senate.

The Second Amendment Protects Modern Arms, Not Just Antique Muskets

The Supreme Court did not hold in Heller that every firearm is constitutionally protected in every circumstance. It did, however, reject excluding weapons from Second Amendment protection simply because they were invented after the founding.

That remains a critical point in today’s legal battles over AR-15s, magazines, semiautomatic firearms, and the government’s authority to restrict commonly owned weapons.

Millions of Americans lawfully own modern firearms for self-defense, sporting purposes, competition, and other lawful activities. Those firearms are not automatically excluded from constitutional protection because they operate differently from the weapons carried during the Revolutionary War.

The right to keep and bear arms belongs to the people, not merely to the government, its military, or its police officers. El-Sayed’s musket argument would turn that principle on its head.

That is why the original meaning of the Second Amendment matters. The Founders did not write the Bill of Rights to grant government officials the power to decide which technological advancements citizens could use to exercise their liberties. They adopted constitutional protections intended to restrain government power.

The Second Amendment was not written to preserve a particular model of firearm. It was adopted to secure the people’s preexisting right to keep and bear arms against government infringement.

The Second Amendment’s original meaning remains unchanged, and its protection does not evaporate when firearms improve.

The right to keep and bear arms is not a government-issued permission slip to own an antique musket. It is a constitutional protection against government infringement, and Americans do not surrender that right simply because they choose a modern firearm.

About Duncan Johnson:

Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.