little-d
Personally I think there will always be a niche for traditional guns. I have several and i really enjoy looking at them and shooting them. Thet are certainly special to me.
But, your sporting goods dealer is probably more than correct about inlines. The last figures i saw for the national retail of muzzleloading firearms traditional ML's were about 8% of the gross.
It is awful hard for a retailer to stock on the shelves products that do not have the demand. So we must rely on a few retail otlets that you might find that cater to traditional ML's or use the exspanse of the internet to find the dealers that maintain and carry these products. There really are some good ones on the internet...