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Most of the arguments I'm seeing here favoring traditional ML's seem to revolve around "If you do it just right and master a particular set of skills then you too can enjoy reasonable performance out of this tech within the increasingly out of date limits it has."
All of which are fine for hobby and sport purposes, but they quickly fall by the wayside when anything serious needs done. People have hunted and killed with pointy sticks, blunt rocks, and the odd chasing of animals off a cliff. They've made war with similar tools, but somehow nobody is embracing the pointy stick and blunt rock approach to hunting and SHTF protection. I don't see anyone advocating horse drawn chariots for SHTF protection, or a handgonne for a last ditch self defense role.
Why? Because traditional muzzleloaders exist in a historical limbo that is heavily rose tinted and steeped in several centuries of cultivated and massaged tradition. The flintlock gives you a direct connection to the early American settlers pushing west towards the far blue mountains. The Hawken ties us to the romance of the fur trade. A musket might connect us to the glory of the Civil War, or to the mythos of the wagon trains crossing the prairie.
So we try to find reasons to use them. When the historical appeal of real or replica artifacts kicks in, we want to use those tools, to feel their purpose, and slip back into the sepia toned past. Eventually hunting in specially segregated seasons, and various forms of authentic or semi-authentic shooting matches, combined with mastering the unique skillset needed to make these things work properly, create a need to further justify and promote their use.
That's when we cross over into "10 ways to use your musket when the zombies come. Number 5 will surprise you!"
It gets worse when the odd Fudd who thinks any gun that isn't a blued and wooden stocked hunting rifle is ok to ban decides that a ML is also a grand and noble tool that represents the "true" art of hunting/shooting/whatever. (Note, I don't think any of those Fudds are in this thread).
In SHTF, conceivably any technology is suitable for use in a pinch. When things go south, you keep rolling technology back as your supplies deplete, until you are reduced to the rocks and sticks from earlier. Anything better than that is a step in the right direction. But that too is steeped in romance and cultivated mythology. The noble survivor making do with what he has on hand, fending off the bandits/bear/tyrant soldiers/etc...
One might have mastered a primitive technology, but that does not require justifying it, or trying to find a place for it through convoluted means of extolling alleged virtues for a carefully developed SHTF scenario. That's the stuff of fiction, not planning. And I've met far too many people who think their ML will be all they need when the zombies come. Except the zombies have repeating cartridge rifles, body armor, and vehicles. Grizzly Adams 0, zombies 1. Maybe one of them will enjoy the cool ML though and take it as a trophy.
To me, when people start trotting out ML's as something other than hobby and sport guns, we cross over into the realm of surreal and fiction. When modern ML designs are eschewed, then the surrealism gets stronger as the attempts to force a single acceptable idea of what ML's are grows.
ML's are so heavily steeped in nostalgia and romance as to become a strange subculture of gun owners who are trying to bring forward elements of the past that the very people they emulate abandoned as technology advanced and became available. There are cases where a ML or some sort could be a stand in for self defense use, but it is almost always rooted in legal, rather than technical issues.
In short, I think the only use for traditional muzzleloaders in the 21st century are hunting, sport and hobby uses, and as a way to make money through the vibrant reproduction market. They are wonderful things, fun to play with and own, and put historical items into the hands of people who could never afford the original. But if they were so great for any other use, armies would still field muskets, and cops would still carry 1851 Colts. Instead, the world quickly abandoned the technology, and the only people remaining using it are almost exclusively hobbyists or people in remote places that cannot or do not care to get anything else. In other words, outliers.
Someone found out Santa Claus wasn't real today.....
