Pennsylvania State Firearm: Pennsylvania Long Rifle

The story of the Pennsylvania Long Rifle begins not in Kentucky, but in the dense German-speaking communities of Lancaster and Northampton counties in the early 1700s. German and Swiss immigrants — many of them Moravian craftsmen — brought with them a tradition of precision metalworking that would transform American warfare, frontier survival, and ultimately the outcome of the American Revolution, with regional context in States That Border Pennsylvania.

The most significant name in this story is Martin Meylin, a German-born gunsmith who settled in Lancaster County and is widely credited as one of the earliest creators of the American long rifle. By approximately 1740, Meylin and his contemporaries had developed a distinctive design that would change the continent: an elongated barrel of 40 or more inches, paired with a rifled bore that imparted stabilizing spin to the lead ball — delivering accuracy that soldiers and frontiersmen had never experienced.

Lancaster County became the undisputed center of this emerging industry. Dozens of skilled gunsmiths established shops across the county, each refining the long rifle's design through generations of craftsmanship. Unlike the mass-produced muskets of European armies, every Pennsylvania Long Rifle was handcrafted to the specific needs of its owner — making each weapon a unique work of functional art.

The rifle Pennsylvania invented would eventually carry a different state's name. By the mid-18th century, Kentucky and Virginia frontiersmen had adopted the Pennsylvania Long Rifle as their weapon of choice — and through decades of frontier legend, popular ballads, and military glory, the name 'Kentucky Rifle' gradually eclipsed the rifle's true Pennsylvania origin.

The naming shift was cultural, not geographic. Samuel Woodworth's 1821 ballad 'The Hunters of Kentucky' celebrated the marksmen who helped Andrew Jackson defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans, cementing a poetic association between Kentucky frontiersmen and the long rifle. But the rifles those Kentucky hunters carried were built almost universally in Pennsylvania, by craftsmen who had never crossed the Appalachians.

Pennsylvania's 2014 state firearm designation reclaims that history with authority. By formally designating the Pennsylvania Long Rifle, the Commonwealth acknowledges what historians have documented for generations: the rifle that built America was born in Lancaster County.

The story of how the Pennsylvania Long Rifle became an official state symbol is, fittingly, as unconventional as the rifle itself. House Bill 1989 did not begin as a firearms bill. It was introduced in 2014 by Representative Dick Hess with a single purpose: designating the Piper J-3 Cub — a beloved, Pennsylvania-manufactured light aircraft — as the Commonwealth's official state aircraft symbol.

In June 2014, an amendment was attached to HB 1989 that had nothing to do with airplanes. The provision designated the Pennsylvania Long Rifle as the official state firearm — a rider on a bill about Piper Cubs. The combined legislation moved through both chambers of the General Assembly and landed on Governor Tom Corbett's desk, where it was signed into law.

The result was a uniquely Pennsylvania piece of legislation: a single bill that simultaneously honored the birthplace of American precision gunsmithing and the hometown of an iconic American aircraft manufacturer. Both the Piper J-3 Cub and the Pennsylvania Long Rifle became official state symbols on the same day, under the same bill number.

The designation was not without opposition. Legislators representing Philadelphia and other urban centers pushed back against adding a firearms designation to state law — framing the symbolism in terms of contemporary gun violence rather than 18th-century history.

The debate exposed a persistent cultural divide between rural and urban Pennsylvania. To Lancaster County, the long rifle represented two centuries of German immigrant craftsmanship and the foundation of American frontier independence. To Philadelphia, any official elevation of a firearm carried uncomfortable political weight in a city dealing with ongoing gun violence.

The Pennsylvania Long Rifle was engineered for a specific environment: the dense forests and unpredictable distances of the American frontier, where game could vanish at 80 yards and a missed shot meant an empty stomach for days. Lancaster County gunsmiths designed a weapon that could consistently hit a target at 100 yards — a capability that the British Army's standard-issue Brown Bess smoothbore musket could not reliably match beyond 50–75 yards.

The rifle became the primary tool of the American fur trade. Trappers and hunters working the vast wilderness between the Appalachians and the Mississippi required a weapon capable of clean, precise kills at range using minimal powder — a resource the frontier never guaranteed in surplus. The Pennsylvania Long Rifle's accuracy and efficiency made it the definitive frontier survival tool, and the craftsmen of Lancaster County its irreplaceable suppliers. This demand for precision eventually drove Mountain Men further west, where the Hawken Rifle of Missouri replaced the long rifle as the weapon of choice beyond the Mississippi.

Lancaster County — the birthplace of the Pennsylvania Long Rifle — remains the best place in America to encounter authentic original examples, with institutions dedicated specifically to preserving the region's gunsmithing legacy.