Oldest US firearm unearthed in Arizona, a bronze cannon linked to Coronado

Definatly not a firearm.

That's up to you.

One of ways the ATF defines a firearm is "any weapon that can be converted to expel a projectile using an explosive."

If you don't WANT it to be considered a firearm maybe it's sufficiently corroded such that it's no longer true that it could expel a projectile using an explosive, and therefore is no longer a firearm. In that case, if you hit someone with it, it goes back to being an armament, but no longer a firearm.

That is of course unless you melt the metal down and turn it into some kind of lower receiver. It would go back to being considered a firearm by the ATF.

Whether or not it's a firearm depends on your context. If you and all your friends disagree it's a firearm, in that context it is not. In other contexts it is.

Words are really just illusions though. It's equally true that there are no firearms, because firearms are just words. It also is true that any and all matter is a few steps away from being a firearm. Where do you end and I begin? If we get quantum mechanics into it, maybe everything already is a firearm.

It is. The US defines a firearm as "Any weapon... which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive" and definitions in other countries are similar. Both a pistol and a ship-mounted cannon are firearms.

Yes, a cannon is a firearm. The "arms" bit has nothing to do with human limbs, it's from the Latin arma.

A firearm is anything that uses an explosive to propel a projectile, so it can be "fired".

Well it goes boom and it’s roughly shaped like a big stick, so it’s big boomstick! Boomlog?

This is my boomstick!

https://youtu.be/881Dr4lMey4?si=sOW7Py_jQejicprM

Yes for all senses of the word. Moreover, first firearms were really hand cannons on a stick. Look at the picture in the article, it was a rifle-sized weapon mounted on a swivel.

> Sometimes referred to as a wall gun, the unearthed cannon was an early type of firearm requiring two people to operate.

The article claims it is a firearm.

> Was this for an individual, or is it a crew served weapon?

FTA: “Sometimes referred to as a wall gun, the unearthed cannon was an early type of firearm requiring two people to operate. Designed primarily for use along fortification walls, the expedition reportedly utilized them as an offensive weapon to breach wooden or light adobe walls of domestic dwellings in the cities they encountered.”

Wall gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_gun

As you’ve illustrated, it depends on the definition you choose for a given term.

That may also depend on who you ask and in what context.

And somewhere nearby there used to be a gold cross, which is in a museum.

Psych ?

Indiana Jones

To continue with the pedantry of the comments, it really depends on how you define the ownership. It may have been the Spanish who owned it once upon a time, however they left it on US soil. Additionally, it was Americans who found it, and if we assume “finders keepers losers weepers” applies then the US is, in fact, the rightful owners, and unless actions are taken to retrieve it then it will go to an Arizona museum, solidifying the ownership as American.

If we wished to be technically correct (which is the best kind), then we would say a “Spanish-used antique firearm, which is not legally a firearm, unearthed in Arizona, now United States’ oldest firearm.”