G'day Rapaire,

There are some good points in what you say ... but some other considerations:

... quite a few military guns "in the white ...

There are quite a few museum collections where dull finished military items are now gleaming bright (including, in the Tower, sets of originally black armour ... and, BTW, vice versa!) Curators (particularly of the Victorian era) were rather prone to degrees of "restoration" that would not be accepted today.

The other point is the rarity of rifles ... the term itself is rare in the period of the song, although there is some record of gamekeepers, fighting on Cromwell's side in the English Civil War, doing a bit of early 'sniping' with "screwed guns". The long time to load a tightly fitting ball into a rifled barrel was impractical in open battle - although a skirmishing rebel might make selective use of a rifle ... if he was backed up by a few muskets, pistols and pikes!

Regards,

Bob Bolton