That is quite a difference; certainly the shorter throw would have a faster time.

How many times have you heard someone say that a well tuned flinter will have near instantaneous ignition?? I've heard that comment several times in the past few weeks.

To tell you the truth, in my experience I cannot tell the difference in lock time between my side lock guns and my in lines. I've had delay fire with both types due to faulty caps or improper fit of cap on the nipple. Sounds like another lame excuses to me. Even if it were true that there is some significant difference in lock time that alone does not offer any ballistic advantage to the gun. While at the Lewiston F&G open house last week I overheard a guy trying to tell the F&G agent that an inline gun has the same lock time as a center fire gun. So lets look at that, for one the hammer or plunger on an inline set up for percussion capsmust be 10-20 times heavier than the firing pin on a center fire gun, a heavy object is inherently more difficult to put into motion than a lighter object is, simple physics. So unless the spring is extremely powerful there is no way the two guns could be equal in lock time. Now some of the newer closed breech guns set up for 209 primers may have lock times comparable to a center fire because they use a firing pin instead of a plunger. But I need to point out that those guns that use 209 primers are not and have not been legal in Idaho thus making that argument invalid for Idaho.

And what kind of a difference are we talking about anyway, a few nano seconds???