It's one of those things where we shortened a phrase and then it stopped making logical sense.

"The three musketeers" werent just musketeers who carried muskets.

They were "the king's musketeers". They were elite special forces as well as the personal bodyguard for the King. The best of the best. The "musketeer" part was the common bit, it just sounds fancy centuries later.

But the book might as well be called "The Kingsguard"

There's also 4 of them.

i was curious about this also. seems like in the book they did have muskets, but they were rarely used as most of the book involved 'close' fighting in which swords were used while muskets were battlefield, long-range devices.

And don't you fucking forget D'Artagnan!

There's 4 of those fuckers regardless of what the elite Paris guard think!

Privateers didnt use their privates

The french word "mousquet" means first a place of the belt where you hold stuff. Hence the name of the sword that you hold there, and the military unit that would were them even within the capital city as they were charged to protect the king. Later, it meant the firearm you could hold at the same place.

Source: the wiktionnaire I looked once I had about the same thought.

Well yeah, it's hard to fit a musket in to a candy bar.

You rang?