Nor was the long rifle the principal weapon of the Continentals or the American militia, whose local armories were stocked with British milsurp weapons, mainly consisting of the Brown Bess (And of course the French-supplied arms later, mainly the Charleville musket). The long rifle was a hunter's gun, the 'Deadly sniper rifle' of its day, used some by sharpshooters but not by infantry formations. Rifles were too slow to load to use in mass infantry formations, and due to the relative frailness of the stock and the lack of any provision for a bayonet, pretty useless in the line infantry tactics of the day. It's the long rifle thing that is the myth.
