Speaker 1: Meaning a light Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing big down in a forest, man and gonna
Speaker 1: cause the.
Speaker 2: Tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 3: Man, nobody see nobody see you don't need to know. Man,
Speaker 3: like you followed this story and.
Speaker 2: You got back to flect.
Speaker 3: That'll win.
Speaker 2: Man, don't blackly ding on the Panama man.
Speaker 3: Man, you don't don't matter.
Speaker 4: Man anyway, All right, focused trip, Welcome back to the
Speaker 4: jay Birds show. How you doing man, I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me on. Glad to
Speaker 2: be here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, it's it's kind of crazy, uh, because I'm
Speaker 4: sure you're aware of a similar dynamic. Once you start,
Speaker 4: you know, creating more content, your bandwidth to consume goes down.
Speaker 4: It's probably a good thing that keeps it from being
Speaker 4: this kind of aura of boras. And so I've been,
Speaker 4: you know, from a distance, but you know, watching your
Speaker 4: stuff really really catch on. You seem to be doing great,
Speaker 4: and every once in a while I'll catch one of
Speaker 4: your live streams or a clip for one of your
Speaker 4: live streams, and uh, yeah, man, I'm really glad to
Speaker 4: see that you're doing well. And it's it's good to
Speaker 4: have you back on man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, Jared. It's a it's been a fun endeavor
Speaker 2: over the last really year and a half or so
Speaker 2: to kind of transition from a full time video producer
Speaker 2: on this channel to a streamer, which is kind of
Speaker 2: cringe because I always viewed streamers as like subhuman, and
Speaker 2: now I kind of am one, you know, cause it's
Speaker 2: kind of catching on. Everybody needs that, that live entertainment,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what people really want because there's there's
Speaker 2: certain things you can't recreate outside of a live environment,
Speaker 2: like when you have you know, feisty guests on or
Speaker 2: certain topics. It's just it's irreplaceable. And it's kind of like,
Speaker 2: you know, more more circuses for the masses, but here
Speaker 2: I am the top circus performer in the gun space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's it's at a there's a similar uhaly
Speaker 4: a stigma around the podcaster, right, you know the joke
Speaker 4: click oh every you know, every young white man has
Speaker 4: a podcast, which is true, but also, uh, you checked
Speaker 4: the economy, you tried getting a real job. You know,
Speaker 4: it's it's somehow worse than being a monkey dancing on screen. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mad the uh like I said, I'm unable just
Speaker 4: you know, for a number of reasons to catch all
Speaker 4: of them. But every once in a while I catch
Speaker 4: a clip obviously you have, which is now what a
Speaker 4: year and a half old, you know, the the infamous
Speaker 4: uh like Nova group pedigree thing. Oh yes, I.
Speaker 2: Prank a fantastic, top top clip of all time for sure.
Speaker 4: It was really funny, and especially funny because I'm so
Speaker 4: out of the loop. I just kept seeing references to it.
Speaker 4: I'm like, what does this mean? Pedigree? Is this like
Speaker 4: some like in depth like dog food joke that I'm
Speaker 4: too stupid to realize, And so finally I saw it.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, oh, okay, all of this Suddenly
Speaker 4: I have more context. So yeah, man, you're you're you're
Speaker 4: doing good work on that front. The uh, the other
Speaker 4: thing we were talking about this earlier, right, is you know,
Speaker 4: the I think what and forgive me for speaking to
Speaker 4: your own work. I realized that's sort of you know, presumptive.
Speaker 4: But I think the variety really helps as well because,
Speaker 4: and I say this as a massive gun artist, there's
Speaker 4: only so much to say about guns, right, And after
Speaker 4: a while you're like, all right, do we really need
Speaker 4: another you know, autismo niche micro caliber debate, or a
Speaker 4: conversation about you know, fractions of an inch on a
Speaker 4: barrel length, and the answer is no, we're good, We've
Speaker 4: had that conversation.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Well, it's it's like anything. Struggling to find
Speaker 2: an hour's worth of content on guns three times a
Speaker 2: week is kind of exhausting because there's things you could
Speaker 2: talk about. It's like, wow, gun Company four sixteen brought
Speaker 2: out another small micro compact nine. Isn't that really exciting?
Speaker 2: Like Nope, that that happens every week of the year
Speaker 2: for the last ten years. It's not particularly interesting to
Speaker 2: talk about. So yeah, you gotta you gotta find ways
Speaker 2: to mix it up because if you're if you're not
Speaker 2: doing that, you're literally just a corporate shill. Is like,
Speaker 2: you know, the whole meme about hey, look at this product,
Speaker 2: consume this product, get excited for next product. That's literally
Speaker 2: it well.
Speaker 4: And like, I see the same thing obviously with uh,
Speaker 4: you know, pure politics streamers or podcasters or whatever. And
Speaker 4: I always think about Tim Poole, who like ten years ago,
Speaker 4: back when he had like thirty thousand YouTube subscriber, he
Speaker 4: was just a guy that used to work at weis
Speaker 4: I would, you know, catch in just because it was
Speaker 4: like daily news stuff and watch this man ruin his
Speaker 4: life and like you see clips of him now and
Speaker 4: he's just this like poor little like like husk of
Speaker 4: a man. And it's like, I get it. He's making,
Speaker 4: you know, an ungodly amount of money. He seems to have,
Speaker 4: you know, a company, all that kind of great stuff.
Speaker 4: You're like, Tim, budd is this worth it? It seem
Speaker 4: to just be deranged from like reacting to like daily
Speaker 4: slot politics.
Speaker 2: Well, that is another grind that will absolutely kill you.
Speaker 2: Like daily politics, Like, I think it just makes you
Speaker 2: stupid in the long run, trying to follow because you
Speaker 2: have to by proxy, be around so many stupid people
Speaker 2: and listen to so many stupid takes about this because
Speaker 2: essentially it's like me reacting to stupid take over here
Speaker 2: when clearly it's this is the right take until that
Speaker 2: changes at some point in the near future. But Tim
Speaker 2: is a guy who's like obviously he went through a
Speaker 2: lot through that. I think there's a great lesson to
Speaker 2: be learned that if you can maneuver yourself through hard times,
Speaker 2: you can use that to build a massive audience. Right
Speaker 2: as long as you go through the persecution and you
Speaker 2: don't like end it all. You know, there's a light
Speaker 2: at the end of the tunnel. But the seeds of
Speaker 2: destruction are often sown in success, and so now he's
Speaker 2: a victim of his own success, which is why he
Speaker 2: threatens to fire all his people every day or every week.
Speaker 2: And he's like, I'm gonna leave it all. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go back to my trailer park. I'm gonna go back
Speaker 2: to my skate rink. And that's it. You know, I
Speaker 2: don't want to do this anymore. The ride's been fun.
Speaker 2: I have the money, I have the influence. I don't
Speaker 2: like my life, and half the country hates me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a weird place to be in.
Speaker 4: Well, And like I said, I use Timpoole as an example,
Speaker 4: not that I have anything against him. I don't know
Speaker 4: him from Adam, right, but like you're you're one hundred
Speaker 4: percent right. And I think the other part of it,
Speaker 4: and it's similar to the corporate show thing, is forcing
Speaker 4: yourself to care about something because obviously, like part of
Speaker 4: what sells in that when you're a personality quote unquote
Speaker 4: is the like the sincerity what makes it seem genuine.
Speaker 4: That's the advantage of you and I have towards you know,
Speaker 4: nra ATV in Fox News. But there's sort of a
Speaker 4: like a spiritual cost to faking that, to putting that on.
Speaker 4: And either you get the like you can you can
Speaker 4: clearly tell someone's just phoning it in. They don't care,
Speaker 4: and that's a garbage product. Why would anyone watch it?
Speaker 4: Or it's the like in you you see this definitely
Speaker 4: in the gun space, but in any kind of special
Speaker 4: interest where any sort of you know, microscopic advantage, new
Speaker 4: product or whatever is either like that. You can just
Speaker 4: see this guy, you know, putting on this performance and
Speaker 4: it's not only like from the outside perspective embarrassing. You're like,
Speaker 4: all right, man, come on, some respect for yourself. You
Speaker 4: don't need to pretend. And also it's like you could
Speaker 4: see those guys over time just turning something that you
Speaker 4: know is on one level, you know, a hobby into
Speaker 4: the most kind of soul crushing like office space style
Speaker 4: career job where you're like, you know, putting the I
Speaker 4: can't remember what they called it in the movie movie
Speaker 4: It came out before I was born, but like the
Speaker 4: like whatever, the little like Chochki's on their uniform to
Speaker 4: like you know, get all of the team spirit or whatever.
Speaker 4: And Okay, is this maybe player hating because I'm not
Speaker 4: getting you know, millions of dollars allegedly from the Russians
Speaker 4: like Timpoole did. Maybe a little bit. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I've named my price before. H But all the same,
Speaker 4: it is kind of interesting to watch, Like again, right,
Speaker 4: someone turned this like dream job into like the most
Speaker 4: miserable grind possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like people on the outside look in and
Speaker 2: they're like, you have the dream job, you have that
Speaker 2: thing that I want, And it's kind of like the
Speaker 2: Fostian bargain, right. You get the dream, you get the girl,
Speaker 2: you get the money, and then you have it all
Speaker 2: and you realize, oh wait, that's that's not enough. Right.
Speaker 2: So I mean for me, like with what I do,
Speaker 2: I think that authenticity has to be there. You know,
Speaker 2: people look for that, people want that, which is why
Speaker 2: you've seen kind of this shift in the younger generations
Speaker 2: away from the formerly mainstream media of any context, whether
Speaker 2: it's you know, mainstream news, mainstream entertainment, mainstream you know, podcast,
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be. People are looking for more
Speaker 2: authentic information, and in some way maybe it's like a
Speaker 2: cultural revitalization, right where people are looking for something that's truer.
Speaker 2: They know that on some level what's being pushed in
Speaker 2: the mainstream is all nonsense. Which taking it to the
Speaker 2: gun context is like somebody like Brandley Mariam It was
Speaker 2: one of the best shooters in the world and shoots
Speaker 2: a generic stock glock seventeen for the most part, or
Speaker 2: maybe he's upgraded to a glock forty seven at this point,
Speaker 2: but it's literally nothing special. And so for me, like
Speaker 2: the transition away from like chasing the next product is
Speaker 2: you realize that that's not that important. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like slop daily politics. It's not really that important. It's like,
Speaker 2: look at the overarching things. The overarching things if you
Speaker 2: want to actually get good with guns is to just
Speaker 2: go out and shoot them practice train, which isn't as exciting.
Speaker 2: You know, sitting in my room for thirty minutes a
Speaker 2: day pointing at the same targets and dry firing every
Speaker 2: day is not particularly exciting, but that's what actually builds
Speaker 2: foundations for skills and actual performance. Right, So it's it's
Speaker 2: chasing the flashy new product nonsense or do you actually
Speaker 2: want to be good at what you do? And I
Speaker 2: think people are looking for that authenticity more and more.
Speaker 4: Well. And I think a big, a big part of it,
Speaker 4: right is that for a lot of these specific hobbies,
Speaker 4: because of the Internet and social media, there's been a huge,
Speaker 4: a huge explosion and also a democratization. Right. I think
Speaker 4: back to like when I was growing up, a gun
Speaker 4: media was like a few magazines, right, And I have
Speaker 4: some nostalgia for that because it was fun and I
Speaker 4: was seven years old and got to look at like
Speaker 4: some quadrail abomination. But at the same time, like one
Speaker 4: with the benefit of hindsight, those were just product placement, right.
Speaker 4: They're sponsored by every one of these, But also that's centralized,
Speaker 4: so everyone's getting their information from the same source. And
Speaker 4: so yeah, sure is there still a competitive shooting world,
Speaker 4: one hundred percent, but it's way way smaller, tiny, compared
Speaker 4: to what it is now. You see the same thing
Speaker 4: with like you know, fitness or you know, martial arts
Speaker 4: or whatever. And there are pros and cons to that growth.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the pros is on the like
Speaker 4: product side, is that you have a lot more options,
Speaker 4: a lot more companies doing things a lot more of
Speaker 4: an aftermarket support base. Like that's great, but with that
Speaker 4: comes that like your gun, your special interest, whatever it
Speaker 4: can substitute for a personality, and especially on social media,
Speaker 4: you can become like the kind of tired example from
Speaker 4: like three or four years ago is like goon culture
Speaker 4: right before that term developed on.
Speaker 2: What version of goon are we using here? When it
Speaker 2: comes to.
Speaker 1: Either or Actually funny enough, the thing is you could
Speaker 1: make this exact same point about both, but we'll stay
Speaker 1: with the like, uh, you know Toyota, Toyota, Tacoma, you know.
Speaker 4: Binocularly squad nods, yes, yeah, one hundred percent. And that's
Speaker 4: like a very tired example that hasn't been as much
Speaker 4: of a thing since I was on Instagram, which was
Speaker 4: before the regrettable death of a you know, one George Floyd.
Speaker 4: But point is right, like even then you saw that like, oh,
Speaker 4: these collection of consumer products, these things can be part
Speaker 4: of my kind of like personal brand, and once that
Speaker 4: reaches saturation, once it becomes so artificial, I think people
Speaker 4: are like, well, I mean I actually do care about guns.
Speaker 4: Can someone just tell me like what is this? What
Speaker 4: do I need to do? And obviously like there's always
Speaker 4: a market for the big slop stuff. The mass market
Speaker 4: appeal like that will never go away, but I do
Speaker 4: think there is sort of a pendulum swing back to
Speaker 4: that kind of like conscious consumerism is a really douchey
Speaker 4: term and it's not exactly what I mean, but without
Speaker 4: having something better to hand, will say that where it's like,
Speaker 4: you know, I actually want to get better, I actually
Speaker 4: want to understand, And look, you're talking to the guy
Speaker 4: who you know has basically returned to the position that
Speaker 4: the only gun I actually need is a glockpor three X,
Speaker 4: Like I'm that large collection of stupid items, and it's
Speaker 4: like for what I actually do as someone who's only
Speaker 4: used a gun and anger once and that was an
Speaker 4: even more janky I gro uh nine eighteen abomination. It's like,
Speaker 4: all right, the other stuff is cool, but like, what
Speaker 4: do you actually do versus what is something that someone
Speaker 4: on the internet told you would be cool? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, like you say, the slopification of any industry
Speaker 2: that gets mainline integration or just gets a large enough audience,
Speaker 2: you're always going to get the people. Where the other
Speaker 2: day I was seeing this image floating around on XIT
Speaker 2: went kind of viral, and it's this tattooed Brovett looking
Speaker 2: dude with a hat backwards shooting an ar while like
Speaker 2: having his perfectly manicured beard, and he's like just doing
Speaker 2: the nod cool, not even looking where he's shooting. And
Speaker 2: it's like that is the perfect encapsulation of like the ratification,
Speaker 2: the rettification or the reditards finding the gun space right
Speaker 2: where it is. It's it's looking for trinkets, it's looking
Speaker 2: for I had a gentleman that coined the term guncopop right,
Speaker 2: And like you mentioned earlier magazines that had these old
Speaker 2: builds in them. You know, there's now entire videos by
Speaker 2: content creators that I actually like where they just go
Speaker 2: and recreate what people are nostalgic for in some of these,
Speaker 2: you know, like Magpool, Dynamics DVDs or you know retro ars,
Speaker 2: which retro ars unfortunately are twenty years old, which was
Speaker 2: you know ars that are were built in my lifetime,
Speaker 2: which is not super cool that that's now considered retro
Speaker 2: but whatever. Besides the point of my approaching demise, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, anytime the industry gets big enough, like you'll
Speaker 2: see it in like Warhammer forty K. Unfortunately, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's cool in base. Well, the liberals come in or
Speaker 2: just you know, progressive left, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 2: and it's like it's it's things become like on a
Speaker 2: timer for how cool they are going to be. So
Speaker 2: I do think there is some appropriate ways to gatekeep
Speaker 2: your your industry, your sector of interest. And so for me,
Speaker 2: when it comes to like not being a mindless consumer,
Speaker 2: that's what I try and push on my channel, on
Speaker 2: my videos, on my shows, whatever it might be, you
Speaker 2: don't need to buy the thing. Ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: percent of the time, right, what you actually need for
Speaker 2: yourself to be, you know, whether it's prepared or just
Speaker 2: to be competent, is very minuscule, very very meniscal even
Speaker 2: at a high level, that you need is very simple.
Speaker 2: So for me, I always try and push now, like
Speaker 2: skills over specific items. You know, being an item nerd
Speaker 2: is cool and it's totally fine to be, you know,
Speaker 2: to be that guy who's down that rabbit hole, but
Speaker 2: I think skills are a lot harder, they're a lot
Speaker 2: less flashy, So they're they're the thing that you should chase.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is something that is very difficult to market, right,
Speaker 4: like there's and you see the same thing. You notice
Speaker 4: this in fitness as well, that like, as much as
Speaker 4: I hate to say this, fitness is kind of a
Speaker 4: solved science, Like, Okay, just do something hard regularly. Like
Speaker 4: I realize I'm massively oversimplifying that, but for the sake
Speaker 4: of this discussion, we'll go with that. Like, Okay, yes,
Speaker 4: if you are training to be an Olympic cyclist, your
Speaker 4: workout program and your diet will be different. However, the
Speaker 4: fact that you were on an internet forum asking how
Speaker 4: to lose forty pounds in six months has given me
Speaker 4: a pretty strong suspicion you were not that guy. Right,
Speaker 4: you were not that potential Olympic athlete. But again, right,
Speaker 4: when there's money flowing around, when there's that democratization which
Speaker 4: you and I have both benefited from, Right, I'm not
Speaker 4: trying to you know, completely and totally you know, talk
Speaker 4: down about it, but there is that like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: what's my niche? You know, what's the thing that I
Speaker 4: can do to get views, to get eyes, to get
Speaker 4: to get money. And a lot of it's relative harmless, right, Like, look,
Speaker 4: like you know, I've a collection of weird, not entirely
Speaker 4: practical guns, like it's fine, you know, there's there's nothing
Speaker 4: wrong with that. Like, you know, my people in our
Speaker 4: grandparents generation did model trains, and I mean as far
Speaker 4: as special interest, that's probably slightly more embarrassing. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, right, there is that distinction between like
Speaker 4: is this just something that you enjoy or is this
Speaker 4: some sort of like internal like are you justifying this
Speaker 4: to yourself as like, oh, this is for the end
Speaker 4: of the world, it's for the no knock grade, it's
Speaker 4: for whatever. And that's maybe more specific to the two
Speaker 4: A stuff. But like I think on balance, you could
Speaker 4: look at you know, the kind of like social mediazation.
Speaker 4: That's a horrible term for it. But again we're on
Speaker 4: a role of creating bad terms for things that people
Speaker 4: have already named. But it's like, I think that you're
Speaker 4: right to identify that pattern because really, like if we're
Speaker 4: thinking about it, the first two places I saw this
Speaker 4: where cards were that very quickly came a large hobby
Speaker 4: and a very Instagram focused hobby. Like I don't know
Speaker 4: if I mentioned this, I might have I have like
Speaker 4: three stories that I just tell on every show. But
Speaker 4: I was super into miatas when I was a kid,
Speaker 4: just because they were super cheap. Right, it was like
Speaker 4: a fun reworld drive car you could buy for two grand.
Speaker 4: If the engine blew up, you could get another one
Speaker 4: for three hundred bucks and you'd beat you know out
Speaker 4: the next day. And I sort of watched that hit
Speaker 4: the like social media hive mind in the same way
Speaker 4: that for someone slightly older, it did, like it happened
Speaker 4: to civics where all of a sudden, this was like
Speaker 4: part of like it was sort of part of like
Speaker 4: a I don't know, an identity in a weird way,
Speaker 4: and the value shot up. A bunch of the cars
Speaker 4: got junked, you know, doing stupid things with them, and
Speaker 4: that's not the end of the world, right, Like they
Speaker 4: made a million of them. You know, now you just
Speaker 4: have to pay six or eight grand instead of two whatever.
Speaker 4: But it was an interesting object lesson in like, oh okay,
Speaker 4: when that sort of hits the zeitgeist, like maybe you'll
Speaker 4: be the guy that that makes it through the filter, right,
Speaker 4: maybe this is something you were interested in, and once
Speaker 4: the kind of eye moves on, you'll still be there.
Speaker 4: But there is this sort of weird rush of this
Speaker 4: is the cool thing, or this is a cool thing,
Speaker 4: and I'm curious. This is a very broad question focused
Speaker 4: so like, you know, if your answer to this is
Speaker 4: stop stroking your chin so much. But do you think
Speaker 4: that the like the sort of gun culture, the gun
Speaker 4: social media culture is like, is this something that's going
Speaker 4: to last or do you think that this is something
Speaker 4: that is unsustainable just due to the kind of consumerism.
Speaker 4: I don't have an answer. I'm kind of curious to
Speaker 4: get your take.
Speaker 2: So on YouTube, I would say there's there's so many
Speaker 2: different angles to this because there's like the political social
Speaker 2: angle where I think that video based content on YouTube
Speaker 2: for guns will be more regulated in the future. So
Speaker 2: I think that just the supply will go down because
Speaker 2: YouTube will put out limitations. Now, of course that'll go
Speaker 2: to other video platforms, but it's never going to have
Speaker 2: the same reach. Instagram already is tenuous, has a tenuous
Speaker 2: relationship with firearms, and some of the other platforms do
Speaker 2: like it's going to be like x and rombol are
Speaker 2: going to be the only places that you're gonna be
Speaker 2: able to post a lot of this style of content.
Speaker 2: So I think that the industry saw a huge bump
Speaker 2: between like late twenty nineteen to now basically right, because
Speaker 2: we got a huge influx of record numbers of actual
Speaker 2: gun owners, of a whole generation of kids growing up
Speaker 2: in that environment, and we've seen you know, kind of
Speaker 2: a political swing to more traditional roles, let's say, among
Speaker 2: the youngest generation, which I do like to see, which
Speaker 2: it's going to put them towards things like weapons in general.
Speaker 2: So I do think that the industry has seen a
Speaker 2: large influx of people. I think it has in some
Speaker 2: ways peaked. And if you look at like view numbers
Speaker 2: between all of the top YouTubers, and again it's hard
Speaker 2: to tell whether this is completely organic or some you know,
Speaker 2: suppression mitigation factors going on in there, but most of
Speaker 2: the biggest YouTubers are down somewhere between thirty and fifty
Speaker 2: percent viewership versus like one year or even two years ago.
Speaker 2: So I think that the industry is it expanded, it
Speaker 2: blew up. Of course, now it's into contraction phase, and
Speaker 2: depending on how later this year goes, it could see
Speaker 2: another blow up, it could continue to constrict a little bit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and there's there's a lot of different levels
Speaker 2: to it. So even on like the micro level, So
Speaker 2: like earlier this year, we got the removal of suppressors
Speaker 2: from the NFA tax system, so it's a zero dollar
Speaker 2: tax stamp, which is still somehow a tax stamp even
Speaker 2: though it's zero dollars. So we have this huge influx
Speaker 2: of people buying suppressors like at Shop through this year
Speaker 2: literally two hundred and ten new suppressor companies that are
Speaker 2: all using the same three or four printers, because again,
Speaker 2: the joke is in the industry is like who's making
Speaker 2: this suppressor again? Because there's really only three big print
Speaker 2: houses in the US four three D printed suppressors, So
Speaker 2: it's like it's literally somebody who came up with the
Speaker 2: CAD file shipped it off to one of the print
Speaker 2: houses and is like, hey, can you make X number
Speaker 2: one hundred of these for me? And they're like, oh, sure,
Speaker 2: we can do that. So that's kind of a new
Speaker 2: industry or a new market segment that's been blowing up,
Speaker 2: so that aspect of the industry has been blowing up
Speaker 2: on top of that, well literally and metaphorically. And then
Speaker 2: we also have the FRT side of things, which is
Speaker 2: forced reset triggers, which gives you that simulated maximum semi
Speaker 2: auto if you will. I think that's kosher for YouTube.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so there's like little elements of the industry
Speaker 2: that are expanding rapidly, but overall, unless something crazy happened,
Speaker 2: I would predict in the future that it's going to
Speaker 2: continue to contract a little bit. And we kind of
Speaker 2: saw this under previous administrations. Let's say that the restrictions
Speaker 2: on firearms content and the way that they're marketed will
Speaker 2: be more strict in the future. So I think it
Speaker 2: is going to see a constriction would which will be
Speaker 2: bad for the big players that require that money, that
Speaker 2: require that cash flow. But I think again in that
Speaker 2: it leaves a lot of opportunities for other people to
Speaker 2: fill smaller niches, to create like really interesting products, whether
Speaker 2: it's physical products or content type packages, whatever it might be,
Speaker 2: within that decline of the bigger industry, because again, we
Speaker 2: had such a serious influx over the last three years
Speaker 2: that a correction is normal. You know, it's like the
Speaker 2: forest grows too wild to perging fire is inevitable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think too. And I can't remember if
Speaker 4: this was hap who said it, which, by the way,
Speaker 4: if you're looking for another episode or I talked to
Speaker 4: a gun tuber and don't say a thing about guns
Speaker 4: hop and I talked about like Japanese kimonos for forty
Speaker 4: five minutes. I have an impressive ability to bring someone
Speaker 4: on and in no way mention their area of expertise,
Speaker 4: which I take pride in.
Speaker 2: But bold assume I have an area of expertise.
Speaker 4: By the way, Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. It's the internet, right,
Speaker 4: I've seen a photo of you with a gun, so
Speaker 4: I think that means you're a Navy.
Speaker 2: C Yes, exactly. It's just like any Republican talking about
Speaker 2: firearms or Democrat talking about firearms. They're very don't they
Speaker 2: know what they're talking about? All right?
Speaker 4: Look, man, I knew I was cooked when I saw
Speaker 4: win some earl searies with the world's most cursed PSA
Speaker 4: build And now I love it. I'm gonna sound like
Speaker 4: my grandpa right, a communist republic anyway, not that I'm
Speaker 4: salty about it, but anyway, the uh I can't remember
Speaker 4: if he said it or someone else that we're sort
Speaker 4: of an interesting moment in the industry where it's kind
Speaker 4: of like everyone has what they need, right, Like everyone
Speaker 4: has the AR, everyone has the service nine. And so
Speaker 4: you're seeing this explosion. And I say this from the
Speaker 4: outside looking in, but I feel pretty confident in it
Speaker 4: of like weird niche stuff. So you're seeing, you know,
Speaker 4: a bunch of these companies and they're like small, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe a couple guys, and you know, maybe they're you know,
Speaker 4: they've got some way to use a I don't know,
Speaker 4: for instance, of you know, a blowback nine millimeter AK
Speaker 4: and they make it look kind of like the weird
Speaker 4: bullpup abomination from one of the Black Ops games. And
Speaker 4: it's like, okay, we are firmly moving out of any
Speaker 4: realm of pretending this is a practical purchase. This is
Speaker 4: just niche you know, interest for basically modern collectors, which
Speaker 4: fair enough, right, I'm not trying to but I think
Speaker 4: that that's an interesting shift because it feels as if
Speaker 4: there's sort of a move away from seriousness and kind
Speaker 4: of toward like a little bit more of a lighthearted
Speaker 4: attitude with stuff like that, and one a lot of
Speaker 4: that is more niche, right, It's guys who have all
Speaker 4: of the big stuff and they're looking for something, you know,
Speaker 4: to take out and show to their friends because it's
Speaker 4: interesting where it was in X y Z video game.
Speaker 4: Not that I've ever purchased a gun because it was
Speaker 4: in a video game. But uh, point is I think
Speaker 4: that that's an interesting transition because to your point about volume, right,
Speaker 4: those shops are always going to be lower volume because
Speaker 4: not everyone wants you know, for instance, like the prototype
Speaker 4: grip for an MP five, right, the kind of stapler
Speaker 4: looking one but XYZ company, I can't remember, but I
Speaker 4: was just looking at this. Well they'll make you one, right.
Speaker 4: There's a whole ecosystem of things like that, And I
Speaker 4: think that that's an interesting transition as well, because it
Speaker 4: seems as if it is kind of pivoting to a
Speaker 4: more niche interest, more niche direction. And even on the
Speaker 4: social media side, you've seen that right where there's been
Speaker 4: this you know, increasing focus on both kind of like uh,
Speaker 4: you know, competition shooting and then long range stuff right
Speaker 4: where it's like okay, well we've kind of done our
Speaker 4: bill drills at seven yards, uh, just to keep the
Speaker 4: content fresh but also to keep people engaged. I think
Speaker 4: that there is sort of a pivot to you know,
Speaker 4: a more kind of niche or specific focus. And then
Speaker 4: to your point more broadly about the industry contracting, I
Speaker 4: think that for a lot of people, the the whole
Speaker 4: COVID situation was a major motivation to get in to
Speaker 4: you know, firearms and two A stuff. There's naturally going
Speaker 4: to be a fall off with that, but I honestly
Speaker 4: this may be and again as someone who doesn't work
Speaker 4: in this industry, so my opinions on ited are worth
Speaker 4: absolutely nothing. I think a little bit of a lean
Speaker 4: time could probably do the industry some good. Just put
Speaker 4: it mildly like there is a lot of just crazy overproduction.
Speaker 4: But I'm curious to get your thoughts.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you do you have a full market saturation
Speaker 2: where not only does everybody have the basics for the
Speaker 2: most parts, they probably have more basics than they're ever
Speaker 2: going to use. You know, you know the one guy
Speaker 2: who has fourteen ars and twelve pistols that all do
Speaker 2: basically the same thing, and he just kind of buys
Speaker 2: because it's what he's always done. But in terms of
Speaker 2: market saturation, I think you also have content saturation, which
Speaker 2: is why it's difficult to determine whether people's views are
Speaker 2: down because people aren't consuming the level of content anymore
Speaker 2: or just because it's all been done before. So I've
Speaker 2: heard this coin before, but we were in the novelty
Speaker 2: era where to be interesting, to be cool, you have
Speaker 2: to be novel. You have to do something different. You
Speaker 2: have to entice us. Okay, so the money is not
Speaker 2: coming as easier. The economy is a little tighter. People
Speaker 2: are tightening their wallets, and so to get my money,
Speaker 2: to get my cash, you got to do something a
Speaker 2: little bit different. So you're either being really niche, you know,
Speaker 2: like weird anime Wifu rifles, or you're doing something that
Speaker 2: hasn't been done before. Like I was seeing this product
Speaker 2: marketing on Instagram, and it was a revolver seal, which
Speaker 2: is like this horrifying contraption of metal plates that clamp
Speaker 2: around the revolver so that it suppresses better. For those
Speaker 2: of you who don't know, like, revolvers are horrible to
Speaker 2: suppress because they have cylinder gap and there's all this
Speaker 2: extra area for the air to remove from. So you
Speaker 2: plant these steel plates on either side of it, which
Speaker 2: means you to unload and reload, you have to like
Speaker 2: finagle these two plates off of the revolver to then
Speaker 2: reload it, to then clamp it back together.
Speaker 4: And I've got idea.
Speaker 2: More than the price of the revolver for the system,
Speaker 2: but people are somehow buying it and talking and this
Speaker 2: is taking up drop time somewhere, but people are using it.
Speaker 2: So it's like, okay, I guess.
Speaker 4: Well, focus, I've got an idea. How about we make
Speaker 4: a handgun sort of like a sealed revolver, but it's
Speaker 4: all of mechanisms are internal, and then instead of a revolver,
Speaker 4: maybe there could be some sort of box that holds
Speaker 4: the cartridges feet you know, feed into the mechanism. So thereby, yeah,
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: Maybe you should make the books removable to sell the
Speaker 2: box for fla bucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can have a meeting out of our hand
Speaker 4: forever you buy one revolver, but you gotta buy you
Speaker 4: gotta buy a thousand.
Speaker 2: Boxes exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another interest, sorry, another interesting area where that the market
Speaker 2: is moving, which I think is again because competition shooting
Speaker 2: or performance based shooting as opposed to you know, bringe shooting,
Speaker 2: it is novel. It is more interesting now because people
Speaker 2: have the things right and then they see you know,
Speaker 2: Matt Prank, a Delta CAG operator yelling at hop and
Speaker 2: brass facts, you know, because they don't have enough pedigree
Speaker 2: or something like that. It's like, well, maybe maybe he
Speaker 2: has something to say there. Maybe even if we don't
Speaker 2: like the way that he says something, maybe performance is
Speaker 2: really cool. Maybe that actually matters more than whether I
Speaker 2: have the new like Mark one contract rifle. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe having that thing isn't as exciting as actually being
Speaker 2: able to use it. And this is an interesting area
Speaker 2: because I don't see the same level of interest in
Speaker 2: competition performance shooting as you do in other industries. So
Speaker 2: for instance, like with cars, people use them as items,
Speaker 2: as lucky items, but they don't aren't necessarily interested in
Speaker 2: actually getting the performance out of them most of the time.
Speaker 2: Like I don't see that same crossover, Whereas I do
Speaker 2: see the competition scene in the firearms market growing like
Speaker 2: very rapidly, even since I've been into it really only
Speaker 2: the last year and a half. Like there's an maybe
Speaker 2: not a doubling, but thirty forty fifty percent increase in
Speaker 2: the people that just in my general vicinity and people
Speaker 2: my friend groups that have gotten into this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And certainly the interest is peaked on like my YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a bit of self selection there, but I'm
Speaker 2: seeing that really start to grow, Whereas you know, most
Speaker 2: car videos you watch, it's like they're maybe doing something
Speaker 2: stupid on a road, but they're not actually interested in
Speaker 2: like becoming a competent, like performance oriented driver that can
Speaker 2: actually get the most out of whatever tool it is
Speaker 2: that they're using.
Speaker 4: Well as someone who's done a decent amount of performance driving.
Speaker 4: I think there's a couple of reasons, which is one,
Speaker 4: it is really hard to make especially the low level
Speaker 4: of that in any way interesting on the internet. Like
Speaker 4: can you imagine trying to cut together a ten minute
Speaker 4: video of like checking tire pressure and then you know,
Speaker 4: spending you know, three track sessions, right, It's like, and
Speaker 4: then I went around the left hand again, you know,
Speaker 4: It's like, I think that's part of it. But to
Speaker 4: your broader point, I think another element of that is
Speaker 4: that firearms are proportionally a much smaller and more fungible purchase.
Speaker 4: Like you know, you anyone who has enough money to drop,
Speaker 4: you know, two grand on one gun can very likely
Speaker 4: you know, take a hit at you know, sixteen hundred bucks,
Speaker 4: sell it and buy the new next thing. Whereas like
Speaker 4: if you bought a Corvette and you decide, well, I'm
Speaker 4: not a Corvette guy anymore, you know, I want the
Speaker 4: new you know, m for competition or whatever. That's a
Speaker 4: big decision, right, Like, there's a lot of things going
Speaker 4: into it. But also I think part of it is,
Speaker 4: well is that car like this is gonna sound stupid,
Speaker 4: but it's like cars are something that you okay, you
Speaker 4: can't not say, can't You shouldn't pull up to, you know,
Speaker 4: a country club waving around your new super cool gun,
Speaker 4: right you can. It's perhaps you know, medically and legally inadvisable.
Speaker 4: And also the difference for like someone else, like if
Speaker 4: you pull up to a random parking lot in a
Speaker 4: Ferrari people who don't know anything about cars, like that
Speaker 4: thing's cool. But even in a public range, if you
Speaker 4: show up with, especially something weirder and more expensive, you
Speaker 4: think of the like open class guns, it's like, who's
Speaker 4: gonna care like the other slightly neurodivergent guy there.
Speaker 2: You know, And so I think that's it's gonna be
Speaker 2: a seventy year old guy who's gonna waddle over to
Speaker 2: you and be like what you got there, Sonny?
Speaker 4: Yeah. And so the reason I bring that up is
Speaker 4: not because like obviously there's a similar kind of like performance,
Speaker 4: you know, I guess you could say industry around both.
Speaker 4: But I think that like the that gulf is so
Speaker 4: big for most people, and the benefit of the like
Speaker 4: the flash basically is so much easier to achieve, and
Speaker 4: there is very much And this was in my mind,
Speaker 4: this is very like mid two thousand's car forum culture,
Speaker 4: which was like the obsession with numbers, right, which is
Speaker 4: like why the Bugatti Varon ruined every interesting conversation about cars.
Speaker 4: Ever that was like, well this is you know, faster
Speaker 4: to sixty, but it's slur to one hundred and it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: well we just have again it becomes solved. It's like, well,
Speaker 4: this is just the fastest thing forever or at least
Speaker 4: for ten years. But yeah, I think that that's an
Speaker 4: interesting dynamic you've identified there, And honestly, maybe the other
Speaker 4: advantages that with performance shooting relative to driving the gear,
Speaker 4: especially with and I haven't have a ton of experience,
Speaker 4: but I've shot you know, handful of matches that the
Speaker 4: gear is cheaper and also relatively speaking less important, not literally,
Speaker 4: but like, okay, so here's here's my point. Sorry, this
Speaker 4: is this is a poorly formula.
Speaker 2: Now I get you. I I realize halfway through this
Speaker 2: that I probably should have selected a different analogy than
Speaker 2: to cars.
Speaker 4: Fair fairly, but so point is like my only objection,
Speaker 4: But I do think that you're you're right with this
Speaker 4: and maybe not objection my perhaps my explanation on this
Speaker 4: is that the difference around track between a one hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty thousand dollars car and you know, a four
Speaker 4: thousand dollars two hundred and sixty thousand mile Mariner Blew
Speaker 4: one point six Miata with racing flicks you bought off Craigslist,
Speaker 4: which is a very specific example. Because this is a
Speaker 4: very specific example is so great right that you're sort
Speaker 4: of like, what have I even doing here? You know,
Speaker 4: I'm having a good time, but like I can't get
Speaker 4: this thing above one hundred and eighteen miles an hour,
Speaker 4: which you hit in like third gear, you know, versus
Speaker 4: like I think that part of the drive for that
Speaker 4: like end to performances. You're like, well, shoot, I'm only
Speaker 4: two seconds off that guy, and well maybe with a
Speaker 4: better barrel, i'd be you know, some marginal percent more accurate,
Speaker 4: or maybe if they made my gun better, all of
Speaker 4: those sort of things, and each one of those changes
Speaker 4: is like one hundred bucks two hundred bucks here or there,
Speaker 4: which is real money and it adds up. But I
Speaker 4: think it.
Speaker 2: It's a lot more accessible.
Speaker 4: It's accessible and it leans into that like tinkering instinct
Speaker 4: of like I'll figure out the problem, or as like, dude,
Speaker 4: even if you just want tires, that's like, you know,
Speaker 4: four hundred bucks a corner, you're gonna think about that
Speaker 4: decision anyway. Sorry, just a rant from me. Dude.
Speaker 2: Well, now you're in the cars. No, I did the
Speaker 2: same thing in a twenty thirteen Ford Focus, and yes,
Speaker 2: it was quite funny to have everything power car. Yes,
Speaker 2: everybody else on the on the track doing considerably more,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's like I'm having a good time.
Speaker 2: I'm having fun. Though.
Speaker 4: Look, look, this is the saltiest thing you'll ever hear
Speaker 4: me say about car. A Ford Focus is slow until
Speaker 4: you've driven something with ninety horse power.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well man, that's the thing that with miatas specifically,
Speaker 2: is the people who were having the most fun were
Speaker 2: the guys in the miatas though, you know, and uh,
Speaker 2: like you said, you know, if I crash or total miata,
Speaker 2: it's like I'm sad, but I'm not crying that I
Speaker 2: just ruined a mortgage, you know, basically in terms of value.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and I mean that was always the funniest
Speaker 4: thing too, is driving a slow car aggressively will get
Speaker 4: you the funniest reactions like I'll never forget again, clapped
Speaker 4: out piece of junk, Like yeah, just an it was
Speaker 4: a miracle. It still worked, but you know it still worked,
Speaker 4: so I kept going to tracks with it, and I'll
Speaker 4: never forget it was right when the first nine to
Speaker 4: eleven engined came in, came out, the GT four, beautiful car,
Speaker 4: super cool. They're shot up in value, but it was
Speaker 4: the classic example of like a dentist who bought it
Speaker 4: and was like, I'm going to take this thing to
Speaker 4: the track and a very capable machine. Obviously, if he's
Speaker 4: even a halfway decent drivery'd be completely demolishing me. But
Speaker 4: my card's worth four thousand dollars conservatively. I had a
Speaker 4: lot less than that in it. I've got, you know again,
Speaker 4: cheap cupped racing slicks like I'm going ten tenths because like,
Speaker 4: what have I got to lose? Right, Like, I roll
Speaker 4: this thing, I get another shell out of a junk
Speaker 4: yard and I'm back next weekend. This guy's so parandoid
Speaker 4: because of course he's driving around, you know, a house basically,
Speaker 4: and we got back to the paddock and he's like,
Speaker 4: what have you done to that thing? As I opened
Speaker 4: it looks like, you know, there's like animals crawling out
Speaker 4: of it. And again it's like that advantage of you
Speaker 4: can push so hard because the consequences are so low,
Speaker 4: you know, like, how are you going to get the
Speaker 4: rear end to step out with ninety horse power?
Speaker 2: Like try?
Speaker 4: It needs work anyway, Sorry, no.
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's almost more applicable if you want
Speaker 2: to try and draw a line between performance shooting and
Speaker 2: driving a Miata, because obviously there's the stakes are a
Speaker 2: lot harder with the GT four, But then like performance shooting,
Speaker 2: like if you go as fast as possible and like
Speaker 2: what do you do, what are the consequences for losing
Speaker 2: in a match? It's like, oh, well, you missed a
Speaker 2: bunch of targets because you were going too fast, or
Speaker 2: you weren't looking where you're going, or you know, the
Speaker 2: consequences of that are very low. So like for me,
Speaker 2: I want I'm I'm always curious if the reason why
Speaker 2: the performance shooting aspect has increased over the last few years.
Speaker 2: Is because that there's a lot of influencers who have
Speaker 2: actually like professional level influencers, like you know, whether it's
Speaker 2: uh Ben Steger or like Hunter Constantine or some of
Speaker 2: these other like GM or super GM level guys that
Speaker 2: are just making content directly focused on performance shooting. And
Speaker 2: that's what's kind of driving the market now is you
Speaker 2: have a lot of the top level guys actually actively
Speaker 2: pushing the content, right whereas I don't know if you
Speaker 2: necessarily see that in other areas, and that certainly hasn't
Speaker 2: been the case in the past.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and honestly, I think too there is the element
Speaker 4: of like, okay, you know, you put yourself out here,
Speaker 4: well x y Z other influencer, he's a uspsa grand master, right,
Speaker 4: so like what are you gonna do? You know? Like
Speaker 4: there it does add a again from the outside looking in,
Speaker 4: it adds an element of credibility. And let's also be honest, Uh,
Speaker 4: it's kind of fun, you know, like not always you know,
Speaker 4: doing the like supporting stuff isn't fun, but like rocking
Speaker 4: up to a match every like, you know, four months,
Speaker 4: doing no specific training in between, and then just kind
Speaker 4: of blasting at someone who's done that. It's pretty fun
Speaker 4: and for like twenty five bucks, you know, like I
Speaker 4: understand why it's becoming more popular because like, sure, if
Speaker 4: you want to be super competitive, if you want to
Speaker 4: climb the ranks, if you want to do all that
Speaker 4: you can, and like there's a path that's laid out,
Speaker 4: but like as an intermediate step from like oh, I'm
Speaker 4: basically shooting trash with extra steps to like, okay, well
Speaker 4: here's the like here's a game I can do. You know,
Speaker 4: it's the same thing as like training for anything else where.
Speaker 4: It's like okay, you know, like what's more fun sparring
Speaker 4: or jumping rope? Well, it's like you if you want
Speaker 4: to be good, you have to jump rope. But like,
Speaker 4: let's be honest, everyone goes to the gym. They want
Speaker 4: they want to throw hands right the uh. It is
Speaker 4: just I think an interesting development, And honestly, I wonder
Speaker 4: if another part of it is like ten years of
Speaker 4: guys saying get training, get training, get training, and finally
Speaker 4: everyone being like, oh, maybe maybe I should, but who knows,
Speaker 4: Maybe that's too too kind of wishy washy. I'm a
Speaker 4: I'm curious, And I mentioned this earlier and I'm not
Speaker 4: trying to get too into like your personal stuff at all,
Speaker 4: but uh, as someone who is about to be living
Speaker 4: in a band state and it's really upset about it,
Speaker 4: you had a similar issue, didn't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so no, I lived in Washington for twenty seven years.
Speaker 2: I just turned thirty. So when Washington in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: I want to say, passed their assault weapons ban, it
Speaker 2: literally shut my business down, like hard stop. I can't
Speaker 2: get parts in. What you can and can't buy is
Speaker 2: extremely limited, and so I had to completely move out
Speaker 2: of there. So if you're on the West Coast or
Speaker 2: in some of these other places where they have horrifying
Speaker 2: gun laws, it's it's different, I suppose if you're just
Speaker 2: a gun owner who wants to be prepared versus like
Speaker 2: a business owner, or if you're really concerned about like
Speaker 2: your family in the future. So like for the Washington
Speaker 2: state one, I was one of the guys who signed
Speaker 2: up to talk there or to you know, like cause
Speaker 2: you're you're able to before a bill gets passed, like
Speaker 2: have a say in it, essentially, And one of my
Speaker 2: arguments was that sure, you're allowing me to keep what
Speaker 2: I have, but you're taking the same rights that I
Speaker 2: had from my children. So it's it depends on your
Speaker 2: long term strategy.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: For me, because I had a business, I couldn't be there,
Speaker 2: so I had to leave. I just left instantaneously. If
Speaker 2: you're just a single dude and you already have the
Speaker 2: things you need, yeah, it sucks, it's obnoxious. It makes
Speaker 2: life a little bit more miserable. But maybe you're willing
Speaker 2: to wait it out. Maybe you're willing to you know,
Speaker 2: stay and fight or just to kind of deal with
Speaker 2: it as it is. So it really depends on your
Speaker 2: specific situation like what to do. And yes, I mean
Speaker 2: without knowing your specific situation or the specific situation of
Speaker 2: anyone who's dealing with this, it's difficult to give like
Speaker 2: an accurate prognosis like, oh, here's exactly what you have
Speaker 2: to do to get through this, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now, fair point. I mean, in my situation, it's
Speaker 4: like this is a hobby for me. And look, I'm
Speaker 4: not trying to get too much into you know, political
Speaker 4: analysis here, but if you watched even a single speech
Speaker 4: add I really you just looked at whin some earl
Speaker 4: sears You're like, hey, guys, this probably isn't going so well, right,
Speaker 4: she seemed like a very nice church lady, but not
Speaker 4: one cut out for her assigned role, and so like
Speaker 4: I would kind of expecting this, I mean for a
Speaker 4: number of reasons, right, just the kind of you know
Speaker 4: demos of the state. As you know, nova, you know,
Speaker 4: grows bigger and bigger. But uh, look, I don't have
Speaker 4: a business in this. I'm staying. Ancestors have been here
Speaker 4: for four hundred years. I'm not leaving. But on that point,
Speaker 4: it is and I know this is overstated, but it
Speaker 4: is just really annoying, like there's something deep in my body.
Speaker 4: It's like, why why am I not allowed to do
Speaker 4: this because some guy from Bangladesh showed up five years ago?
Speaker 4: You're like, what, you have your own Like it might
Speaker 4: be rude to tell to tell an elected official in
Speaker 4: my own state to go back home, but yeah, pretty much,
Speaker 4: it's like you could go to Bangladesh and experience whatever
Speaker 4: you want, but you get to come here and tell
Speaker 4: me that I'm not allowed to, you know, own a
Speaker 4: tool because some others have used it irresponsibly. We'll leave
Speaker 4: it at that. It's incredibly galling and as I'm sure
Speaker 4: you know, right, the business regulations are perhaps the the
Speaker 4: most devastating thing. Like, you know, I have a buddy
Speaker 4: U's in FFL SOT who's completely shutting up shop because
Speaker 4: of you know, in our state, they have this insane
Speaker 4: liability law now where FFLs are legally liable for what
Speaker 4: people do with the guns they buy, which is kind
Speaker 4: of insane. It's like of anything. I don't know, man,
Speaker 4: the state police did the background check. Blame them, but
Speaker 4: I mean obviously that will never happen for a number
Speaker 4: of reasons.
Speaker 2: That yeah, I mean, depending on how political you want
Speaker 2: to get. That's always the most frustrating aspect to me
Speaker 2: is not only will they not hold the actual perpetrators accountable,
Speaker 2: but they will go out of their way to effectively
Speaker 2: punish every everyone else except the perpetrators. It's this really
Speaker 2: odd dichotomy where they use the evil actions of others
Speaker 2: to punish the just. It's some sort of like inversion.
Speaker 2: You know, it's crazy that this thing just keeps happening
Speaker 2: over and over again. It's really weird. I just I
Speaker 2: just don't get it. It's almost like these people are
Speaker 2: a tool. You know, they use mash casualty events or
Speaker 2: shootings or you know, teens doing teen activities during takeover
Speaker 2: events is what they're calling them now, take over events.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the sequels of the Knockout game. It's just
Speaker 4: a series of euphemisms, yes, or exactly. Grandpa has a
Speaker 4: word too, but you know, and I let's say that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not welcome at Thanksgiving for some reason. He's
Speaker 2: always making my sister upset. It's crazy funny little words.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's the thing that's that's so galling about
Speaker 4: this because you know, like and I've had this conversation
Speaker 4: with my wife because she's you know, not into guns
Speaker 4: and not particularly political, and you know, it sort of
Speaker 4: came up where it was like, well, why are they
Speaker 4: doing this? Because so many of these law the scene,
Speaker 4: even to someone who's fully out of it, like kind
Speaker 4: of irrational, you know, the sort of things where it's like, okay, man,
Speaker 4: like we all know what we'd have to do if
Speaker 4: we actually wanted to solve gun crime, which is like
Speaker 4: if you decided that the tool you were going to
Speaker 4: do is just banning a thing, it's like okay, you know,
Speaker 4: you'd go after you know arps, you know, beams and switches. Right,
Speaker 4: Like we understand we're not you know, it's not rocket science.
Speaker 4: It turns out most of those things are already illegal. But
Speaker 4: what did they actually go after? And it's basically things
Speaker 4: that like you and I like, right, like guys with
Speaker 4: jobs and wives and kids. Because look, man, like I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: there's not a lot of like hood dudes, you know,
Speaker 4: shelling out three and four grand for like some you know,
Speaker 4: absurdly well tuned you know, semi auto three to eight rifle, right,
Speaker 4: But there's obviously the like, you know, how do you
Speaker 4: get you know, certain segments of the population show up
Speaker 4: to vote, But I think the you're one hundred percent
Speaker 4: right that a lot of it is basically just spite.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like, what do the chuds like now
Speaker 4: they can't do that anymore? Now that thing is a
Speaker 4: pretense for us to you know, ruin their life over
Speaker 4: and like, okay, maybe that sounds a little conspiratorial, but
Speaker 4: like if you look into the laws, you're like, Okay,
Speaker 4: after decades of you trying this, I don't believe this
Speaker 4: is a good faith effort anymore. Like I don't believe
Speaker 4: that you're really just waiting on the data because it's
Speaker 4: an experiment that's been run dozens of times.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's like I don't I don't believe that
Speaker 2: these people have my best interests at heart. So there's
Speaker 2: so many different things happening at the same time. So like,
Speaker 2: at the same time, like obviously evil people are doing
Speaker 2: bad things, and they're like, okay, well, instead of you know,
Speaker 2: putting those people in jail, we're going to remove your
Speaker 2: family's ability to defend themselves from these people. And at
Speaker 2: the same time, we're going to target long guns. And
Speaker 2: it's like there are more people killed every year with
Speaker 2: fists and feet than long guns. Like the amount of
Speaker 2: long gun shootings are like less than one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty a year in a country of three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty million, roughly quite literally, who should or should not
Speaker 2: be here?
Speaker 4: Quite literally? You could do more to save lives by
Speaker 4: euthanizing every pit bull in America Like that, that's a
Speaker 4: discussion for another day.
Speaker 2: Dog eugenics, yes, let's go.
Speaker 4: Dog eugenics is just owning a dog.
Speaker 2: Dog dog genocide. We're genociding the pit bulls.
Speaker 4: Now, Well, that's an extreme example. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: want to I don't want to paint myself a sub
Speaker 4: sort of extremist on the the PQ is some have said, uh,
Speaker 4: but seriously, like and the reason that I, you know,
Speaker 4: I interjected with that is like, there's any number of
Speaker 4: of things that people don't view in the same light
Speaker 4: that are not even on the table, right, No one
Speaker 4: seriously is debating, you know, an assault dog band, although
Speaker 4: because dogs.
Speaker 2: Are cute, they're fluffy, and you would never punish the
Speaker 2: dogs' actions, would you. But y, the the banning of firearms,
Speaker 2: seems to appeal to a maternal instinct, right, there's something
Speaker 2: that appeals to the female mind about removing dangerous items,
Speaker 2: right that it seems fundamentally female. So it attracts like
Speaker 2: just that part of the population because like, outside of
Speaker 2: deranged people that I've talked to on the internet only,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I've ever met a man that
Speaker 2: was afraid of a firearm, like instinctively, but many women
Speaker 2: instinctively are adverse to firearms or weapons in general.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there is something to that, and it's
Speaker 4: in my mind, it's actually funny we bring up the
Speaker 4: the dog situation because it's sort of an interesting where
Speaker 4: it's like, look like, in the same way that there
Speaker 4: is nothing you know, inherently wrong with masculinity. It's sort
Speaker 4: of a vital part to the human species and continuing
Speaker 4: to exist, you know, which is fairly important. There's a
Speaker 4: similar dynamic with femininity, but in each case those instincts
Speaker 4: can be dislocated and sort of turned towards something sinister.
Speaker 4: And I think that that sort of like obsessive safety ism,
Speaker 4: which you see in a whole bunch of other places
Speaker 4: right as well. Right, Like, you know, if you've ever
Speaker 4: been to a public school, you've seen the exact same
Speaker 4: thing where it's this like overbearing culture mother of the state. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: like the long house matrix or whatever. And Okay, sure
Speaker 4: that makes a ton of sense in your second grade class,
Speaker 4: But to your point, like, we've got a country with
Speaker 4: like three hundred and some odd million people here, like
Speaker 4: that does it scale? And I think that that sort
Speaker 4: of like instinct towards banning. And you see this with like, honestly,
Speaker 4: every time the kind of conversation comes up to like
Speaker 4: you know, big pickup trucks or whatever, something that's like
Speaker 4: scary and masculine. I think that that is just in
Speaker 4: itself threatening to a certain segment of the population, you know,
Speaker 4: And it's like I just make a go away. I
Speaker 4: don't care make a go away. And it's like, well,
Speaker 4: is it a problem? It's like, I know, I don't
Speaker 4: make it go away. And also it's a especially true
Speaker 4: because both items or whatever are they are markers of
Speaker 4: being a bad person. So we've talked a lot about
Speaker 4: like identity in heavy scare quotes of course, right, like
Speaker 4: the whole like identity thing that kind of like bringing
Speaker 4: together different kind of consumer products, and like this is
Speaker 4: kind of run rampant with you know, gen z due to,
Speaker 4: like to be honest, more and more sophisticated algorithms, right,
Speaker 4: Like you know, talking to my grandparents, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: what music do young people listen to? And I'm like,
Speaker 4: I can't tell you because it's so individuated. But because
Speaker 4: of that, you know, there's this incredible explosion of subculture
Speaker 4: and with that particularly you know, people of a certain
Speaker 4: age or hyper attune to Oh what does that mean?
Speaker 4: You have that thing, you consume that product, you listen
Speaker 4: to that person. Oh that must mean you're part of
Speaker 4: X y Z group. Like you see this. It's funny
Speaker 4: you brought up forty K where it's like for a
Speaker 4: certain segment of the internet. Forty K means you are
Speaker 4: a fascist. You know, that's a silly example. It's not
Speaker 4: the most you know, it's not the most contra or
Speaker 4: like consequential. I would say, if you're wearing like a
Speaker 4: forty K hoodie in public, you probably have worse things
Speaker 4: to worry about. Uh, you know, I guess you know,
Speaker 4: eternal chastity isn't the worst thing in the world. But similarly,
Speaker 4: it's like.
Speaker 2: They're just like the heroes.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, they are a little close to all
Speaker 4: but the uh uh but to that point, right, it's
Speaker 4: like guns and people who own them. It's like a
Speaker 4: sim of evil, like, oh, why would you ever want
Speaker 4: to hurt someone? Why do you want that tool of violence?
Speaker 4: And it's additionally funny we keep talking about pit bulls
Speaker 4: because it's like pit bulls work, like how that person
Speaker 4: thinks guns work, where it has like a mind of
Speaker 4: its own and it will like break down your back
Speaker 4: fence and go maul a toddler. You know, the air
Speaker 4: fiftied is possessed by the spirit of you know, evil
Speaker 4: to go out and shoot up a school. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's crazy because it's really not and I think
Speaker 4: that's been I'm sorry, I'm monologuing you and what's supposed
Speaker 4: to be an interview show. But one of the things
Speaker 4: that I've really realized is that a lot of these
Speaker 4: aren't really discussions per se, Like they're not really people
Speaker 4: considering the values. It's simply gut level and so like,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't know what Washington's crime data looks like,
Speaker 4: but I would I'd put a lot of money on
Speaker 4: the fact that banning all of those horrible items didn't
Speaker 4: magically turn it into like, I don't know, Switzerland or like,
Speaker 4: you know, Victorian England. It's just simply the like an
Speaker 4: emotional kind of lashing out against a people or like
Speaker 4: a group of people rather any type of person that's
Speaker 4: designated bad.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's very superficial, right, because all they look
Speaker 2: at is the item, the thing, you know. It's like
Speaker 2: the other day I read a headline that somebody was
Speaker 2: killed by a stolen vehicle, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's quite interesting. Perhaps we should ban stolen vehicles, right,
Speaker 2: But they look towards I suppose the most obvious, simple
Speaker 2: solution without abag you know, perhaps some would say if
Speaker 2: you strip a man of all logic and reasoning, you
Speaker 2: just end up with a woman.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Some might say that, but if you just if you
Speaker 2: have that and you just see like a dangerous item
Speaker 2: that gives me the bad feelings in my stomach, if
Speaker 2: I just get rid of that, that feeling goes away.
Speaker 2: It is such a superficial like nothingness. You know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean anything. There's no real law, like because you
Speaker 2: and I could probably explain it to a group of
Speaker 2: people right who are against guns and be like, listen,
Speaker 2: like this is like the data, this is what it shows.
Speaker 2: You know, we could maybe postulate some root causes about
Speaker 2: the actual violence, not necessarily just about the items in
Speaker 2: and of themselves. We could even counterexample with areas where
Speaker 2: it's very difficult to acquire such items. However, they seem
Speaker 2: to have a similar level of violence, which seems quite
Speaker 2: strange if it's just the lack of firearms, and you know,
Speaker 2: we could like logically reasoned through this and make a
Speaker 2: well reasoned argument, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: it's still superficial black rifle bad just like that. You know,
Speaker 2: It's it's like talking to a brick wall a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, which is why having the debate in and
Speaker 2: of itself is kind of meaningless because it's like, imagine
Speaker 2: any other point in history, like go back to Rome
Speaker 2: or go back to the Middle Ages and being like
Speaker 2: the anti sword lobby. It's like, I don't really know
Speaker 2: if this is a thing. I don't know if this
Speaker 2: is really something that we need to talk about. And
Speaker 2: I feel like there's something about modernity. There's something about
Speaker 2: like maybe the nineteenth Amendment that has just changed the
Speaker 2: way that society functions in a way that's a historical
Speaker 2: and it seems out of place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and you see that this is a story
Speaker 4: that for some reason stuck in my head. Uh do
Speaker 4: you remember right when the first shoot I forget what
Speaker 4: they're calling it, the when the first XM seven spears
Speaker 4: got offered on the civilian market and there's this massive
Speaker 4: moral panic of like, oh, they're selling this gun that
Speaker 4: can you know, defeat a ballistic vest you know, four
Speaker 4: hundred yards the general public. And it's interesting because you're like, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, like Papa is twenty two to fifty. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, if we're really worried about that, you could
Speaker 4: make an argument, but it isn't really about that. It
Speaker 4: isn't about the actual physics. It is simply to that point.
Speaker 4: It's like, this is, oh, it's the military version of
Speaker 4: setting aside. What was that claim about the sigsper true?
Speaker 4: Should you buy one steparate discussion? The answer is no
Speaker 4: and no. However, right, it's to your point. Right, It's
Speaker 4: like imagine taking that conversation back, you know, two thousand
Speaker 4: years ago. It's like, oh, well, you know that peelum
Speaker 4: that's that stick is pretty close to the one the
Speaker 4: legionariyas use. What are you doing with that? And of
Speaker 4: course it falls apart. It's completely and totally absurd. But
Speaker 4: I think that one of the the things that people
Speaker 4: genuinely don't realize, and you see this a lot in
Speaker 4: kind of American conservative circles is and I get it right,
Speaker 4: because like, we rebelled against the king, but they have
Speaker 4: this vision of like, you know, the monarchies, the you know,
Speaker 4: the Roman Empire, you know, the medieval world as the
Speaker 4: most kind of insanely grinding totalitarian state possible. And from
Speaker 4: a certain perspective, it's like, yeah, well, if you got
Speaker 4: caught stealing a horse, they might try your thumbs off
Speaker 4: or you know, burn you to death or something horrible.
Speaker 4: So fair enough, although an argument could be made as
Speaker 4: someone who's had one too many of packages stolen off
Speaker 4: my front porch, if we could maybe cut someone's thumbs off,
Speaker 4: that would stop. But in all seriousness, right, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: there just wasn't the ability to do that, Like how
Speaker 4: would the Roman emperor go around and say you can't
Speaker 4: have a point you stick? It's absurd, It couldn't be done.
Speaker 4: But because you know, unfortunately, like society is more and
Speaker 4: more urbanized, more and more centralized, and everything is like
Speaker 4: look like I, you know, I last time I picked
Speaker 4: up a gun, like went to my credit card company
Speaker 4: and went to the government, it went to everything. It's
Speaker 4: like that level of centralization, well that allows you to
Speaker 4: do it. And even then it's not perfect. Of course,
Speaker 4: we understand there's still you know, aspiring astrophysicist with clock
Speaker 4: switches in you know, Cook County where it's fully illegal
Speaker 4: to do so. But it is one of those things
Speaker 4: where it's like, yeah, okay, sure you know you have
Speaker 4: your freedoms now, but not really in the same way
Speaker 4: that your ancestors would have understood it. Completely separate discussion,
Speaker 4: but just I don't know something that I think about
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always funny when somebody appeals to some ancient
Speaker 2: culture as authoritarian or evil and we would rebel against it.
Speaker 2: But then it's like, did you know that taxes and
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire were like one percent? And then a
Speaker 2: libertarian is like, what.
Speaker 4: If they could find you? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: It's very different level of authoritarianism where now everything is
Speaker 2: so like interlocked, right that if tomorrow likes you know,
Speaker 2: let's just say hypothetically, they could you can't use your
Speaker 2: credit cards anymore for firearms, and now you're going to
Speaker 2: like some sort of barter system or whatnot. Whereas fortunately
Speaker 2: I live in a state currently where you have private sales,
Speaker 2: so I just I walk up to somebody else and
Speaker 2: I hand them cash and we're done. That's the entire interaction,
Speaker 2: totally legal, totally coature, right. So yeah, I mean the
Speaker 2: modern landscape, there is the potentiality for you know, lists, confiscation,
Speaker 2: so on and so forth that people have always been
Speaker 2: beating the drum about. But in some ways that is
Speaker 2: a very real threat that you have now that you
Speaker 2: do not have in the past. And it's funny that, yes,
Speaker 2: they will go after law abiding citizens while at the
Speaker 2: same time utilizing Tyrone's switch as a justification for banning
Speaker 2: you from having something that again has been you know,
Speaker 2: maybe even in your family's possession for hundreds of years
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, although it's not to be labor the comparison between
Speaker 4: you know, guns and cards, but you see the exact
Speaker 4: same thing with emission stuff right where it's like, oh, you,
Speaker 4: you know, put a chip in your diesel truck that
Speaker 4: you use to contribute to the economy, right to put
Speaker 4: pull cows to market or whatever. We're going to find
Speaker 4: you tens of thousands of dollars in ruin your life.
Speaker 4: Oh you stole a Kia. Eh, you know, we'll make
Speaker 4: Kia pay you. Like, By the way, this is one
Speaker 4: of my favorite automotive stories. Is so sidebar issue. Chicago
Speaker 4: politics is quite possibly the most entertaining politics in the
Speaker 4: world because it's so insanely corrupt. I can't remember. I
Speaker 4: think it was daily Maybe it's before that. No, no Ah, shit,
Speaker 4: I can't remember who it was. But he had a
Speaker 4: gift room where you weren't allowed to take bribes, but
Speaker 4: you could leave items in the gift room that the
Speaker 4: mayor couldn't take until he was done with office, and
Speaker 4: then he could take everything all at once as a
Speaker 4: private citizen. That kind of institutionalized corruption. That's kind of funny.
Speaker 4: You have Lori Lightfoot the mixing of human evolution. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was one of my favorites. But Mayor Johnson and sorry,
Speaker 4: I'll bring this up just because this is exactly the
Speaker 4: dynamic we're talking about. And then we can get out
Speaker 4: of here. I can go eat dinner, I can stop
Speaker 4: talking to your ear off. But during the whole Kia
Speaker 4: boys situation, right, people were stealing kias you know, going
Speaker 4: on high speed chases crashing them. Well, how do we
Speaker 4: solve this problem? Do we throw people in jail for
Speaker 4: krth theft? No, that's a problem. Uh do we do
Speaker 4: really anything other than what he actually did, which is
Speaker 4: sue Kia for like forty million dollars and make them
Speaker 4: pay the city government of Chicago. And you're like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: fair Kia designed a bad product. But like you just
Speaker 4: this is just a shakedown.
Speaker 2: Straight, like the young gentleman taking the cars for a
Speaker 2: drawey ride. They're they're not worth any money. In fact,
Speaker 2: they cost you money to put them in jail, right,
Speaker 2: there's no possible benefit. Yeah, however, well listen, if you
Speaker 2: want to sell cars here, you gotta play ball, you know,
Speaker 2: you gotta. It's literally a shakedown. It's an extortion racket.
Speaker 2: You still want to sell your cars here, don't you?
Speaker 2: Don't you? You know, pay a little fine and a
Speaker 2: little ties to the Emperor and then you're good to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's It's why I love Chicago because it is
Speaker 4: the same politics we get everywhere, but stripped of any
Speaker 4: form of free dance whatsoever.
Speaker 2: It's like the third one, you know, it's just it's
Speaker 2: just open air.
Speaker 4: You know, it's just crazy, and it has been, you know,
Speaker 4: for a while. I'll leave it at that. I've been
Speaker 4: chastised for my anti Italian racism or as I like
Speaker 4: to say.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: To say that even as a joke, telling might give
Speaker 4: you bad anyway, Focus this has been a ton of fun.
Speaker 3: Bed.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you coming on. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Well, my YouTube channel is focus Trip. I also run
Speaker 2: the gun Dot Deal's channel. If you want actual gun content,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of gun content there. I have a
Speaker 2: clips channel, and I think I'm on x and Instagram.
Speaker 2: Also is Focus Trip. Or some derivative there on. So yeah,
Speaker 2: just focus trip with two piece, that's what it is.
Speaker 4: We'll definitely be sure to check that out everyone. I
Speaker 4: might include a particularly amusing clip in the comments provided
Speaker 4: I meant I remember, which is you know, not really
Speaker 4: great odds, So check that out if you're interested. As
Speaker 4: far as my stuff, Jay Burden Show, Apple Spotify YouTube,
Speaker 4: if you want the episodes early in ed free, have
Speaker 4: to throw me a few bucks five dollars a month.
Speaker 4: They're like twenty cents an hour for no ads and
Speaker 4: forty eight hours early access, which is not a bad
Speaker 4: deal if you're interested. Axio is remote fitness coaching. My
Speaker 4: sponsor Jdi's great. He is very patient with me and
Speaker 4: constantly answers my questions. Also, oh yeah, if you join up,
Speaker 4: you also get to call me gay in the group chat,
Speaker 4: which you know doesn't stop you people you do that
Speaker 4: in the comments anyway, But I don't know it's a
Speaker 4: value add I guess again, Focus, I appreciate it. Never
Speaker 4: wont at home, keep your head up. I can't last forever.
Speaker 3: Good night
Speaker 1: Me