Man polishing musket-era powder horn outside Lexington church triggers lockdown, police response

The police locked down a Lexington church and its surrounding area this Friday, but it wasn’t because of a firearm. It was a powder horn – and if you don’t know what that is, that’s because it belongs to the Revolutionary era.

Lexington police were called to Grace Chapel at 59 Worthen Road shortly after 3 p.m. on August 7, after someone reported a shirtless man holding a gun in the parking lot. (via Boston.com)

Officers sealed off the scene and locked down the building. Several programs were underway and some involved children, but a search of the campus turned up the man a short time later, and the threat turned out to be no threat at all.

Just an innocent man polishing his horn in public

Apparently, the man in question was there to collect his wife, an employee of the chapel. He’d just been passing the time by polishing a powder horn (a musket-era vessel in the shape of a bull’s horn used to carry gunpowder) and stepped out of his car to do it because of the heat. Someone spotted him and panicked, calling the cops.

The officers determined he was a committed historical reenactor whose account of the incident was backed up by security cameras. Once the man’s explanation checked out, the department stressed that “there was no threat to anyone in the building or on the campus.” It also acknowledged the episode was understandably unsettling for the community, particularly parents whose children were inside for programming.

Reports of a weapon in public that turn out to be something else are a recurring story, and it inevitably ends with a large police mobilization. In Springhill, Nova Scotia, RCMP converged on an intersection over a reported gunman who was carrying a plastic replica. (per Global News) The force later noted that officers treat any firearm report as genuine “until they can prove that they are not.”

Then there was that story in Richmond, California, where a man waving a possible gun on a porch triggered a nine-hour response and a shelter-in-place order for the surrounding block before the police identified yet another replica and stood down. (via CBS News) 

As for Lexington, a powder horn is not even a weapon. Sure, it holds gunpowder, but it has no mechanism to fire anything. Even so, the reenactment hobby has run into trouble with the law in recent times. 

When New York tightened its gun laws in 2022 (via The Associated Press) the overhaul reached antique guns and barred firearms from sensitive locations such as parks and museums, before an exception was added for people “lawfully engaged in historical reenactments.”

In Elk Grove, California, park officials canceled a planned Revolutionary War (per Fox News) reenactment after concluding black-powder muskets couldn’t be fired under local rules. Sometimes, though, a powder horn is just a powder horn.