Millennials don't get into Muzzle-loading cause it's hard but because, it's boring and they have no interest or connection with it.
I build custom cars and hot rods, the number of people that want a traditional 1930s type of hot rod is dying out. The number of people that want a 68 Mustang are dying out. People my age have little to no connection to the model A just like they have little to no connection with Muzzle-loading.
This. When people reach their prime earning years and the empty-nest stage (which is where Gen-X mostly is now, and average millennials will be soon), they often tend to gravitate toward those things that they thought were really cool when they were teenagers but could never afford them back then or even later while raising their children. Boomers liked old hot rods, early muscle cars, and Harleys, but Gen-X gravitates later. And I expect millennials might be in garages restoring hot Civics and Supras these days.
My generation (Gen-X) was the first generation that grew up with AR’s and Title 1 civilian AKs going mainstream in the mid to late 1980s. I
still want a classic stamped-receiver AKM clone (had the perfect one years ago, a Romanian SAR-1 with a Kobra optic, and sadly had to let it go during a financial crunch to come up with a down payment on an apartment). I do have a Rock River AR that I bought in the early 00’s.
I saw a full-size civilian Uzi lookalike in a gun store in my early 20s and have kind of wanted one ever since, even though they are the most impractical 9mm I can think of unless you go the SBR route. I likewise have absolutely no use case for a civilian MP5 lookalike but I think they’re cool too.
I came of age when revolvers for daily carry were fading, and the only revolvers I thought were cool were the Performance Center 686 .357’s with optics and that cool barrel shroud, and I think hunting revolvers are cool from lots of articles about them in G&A in my formative years. I grew up in the ascendancy of double-stack 9mms.
I was
heavily influenced, politically and in terms of purchasing priorities, by the stupid 1994 faux-ban rammed through Congress that September on a raft of sneering falsehoods, and I was among the tens of millions who then had the privilege of tossing those rascals out in subsequent elections, which helped usher in carry licensure reform in ensuing years. I got my first CHL in 1995ish and have been carrying ever since.
I see the interests of my generation continuing to be a blend of traditional and practical/tactical. I’m interested in bolt-actions, but the bolt-action I would most like to have is an Accuracy International AIWS, because I thought that was the coolest bolt-action I had ever seen in my formative years. I think that bolt-action precision rifles, and “precision-lite” rifles for hunting, will continue to displace both the wooden-stocked rifles and the older thutty-thutty’s (though lever actions seem to otherwise be making a resurgence as fun all-purpose carbines with red dots or LVPOs).
I wouldn’t mind taking up hunting but hunter safety classes are as hard or harder than CHL classes to work into a busy schedule; I had a hunting license in Florida back in the day, back when you could just get a license and ease into it, but didn’t go hunting then and it’s a LOT harder to get started as a working adult now. And if I do hunt, it might be with a bolt gun, but it won’t be a wooden stock, and I’ll probably be shooting a Horus-style reticle instead of a duplex because I like them.
(As to cars…you nailed it. I’d chase a 1970 Chevelle SS396 because I wanted so bad to trade my Firebird on one in my late teens, but couldn’t afford it. But the hot car I’d really like to have would be an early 2000’s Bullitt edition Mustang with a 6-speed manual…I grew up admiring the original on film, but I’d rather have the newer version.)