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Speaker 3: The car is beautiful.
Speaker 4: Where did you to going for it?
Speaker 3: This exclusive place of Dallas connections with They have more
cars for more dealerships and like anywhere.
Speaker 2: Else you have to put me in touch.
Speaker 3: What's it called. It's dune ADL where don adl. There's
an accent on the e. Do you mean yes, I
got undone deal cars? Lift please you're going to pass kimage?
Oh kimmage, No done deal cars. You couldn't possibly go
anywhere else.
Speaker 4: You know, Carl, this is a historic episode, I think
because for the first time in months, I actually let
you know when we were going to start recording.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that was That was a good Uh, that
was a good move, especially since I turned my camera off.
Speaker 4: You're saying that you are, in fact a real person
and not a two D image of a gas mask
in a hat.
Speaker 6: That's true, allegedly. Allegedly.
Speaker 5: Some have said, you know, it's funny speaking of.
Speaker 6: That, like.
Speaker 5: Dee and I did it, did the inquisition with Stormy recently,
and it's funny because he and I have been communicating
in one form or another for like ten years.
Speaker 6: It's absolutely hilarious.
Speaker 5: You know, I would just comment on podcasts he would
do and then like he read my book and my
first book and I didn't know about it. Then he
read the second one, like with no prompting or anything
like that, and then we met in person, and it's
so funny because just you know how it is you
see someone you go, oh, I had this totally different
picture in my head, you know, compared to you know,
who who you are and what you do and everything
like that.
Speaker 6: He seems normal the uh times.
Speaker 4: Honestly, there was a funny instance of that. As you
have heard, and you know the audience likely has as well.
I've been trapped in the great right wing travel disaster
of the tween twenty six. But point is that was
obviously to go to a sort of behind closed doors event.
And it's funny because one of the guys who I
hadn't met came up to me and without and I
won't say who this was because I don't want to
expose him, but without knowing who he was, no one
had explained to me. I just greeted him by his
username because his profile picture was so close to what
he looked like. It was completely seamless. I didn't even
like think that it would be someone else. That does
happen sometimes, Oh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely yes.
Speaker 5: I have a million air travel hell stories, and none
of them are Can I tell one that is not mine,
but it's the worst one I've ever heard. So to
set the stage, I used to fly. If you talk
to the average person, I used to travel a lot.
I'd be on thirty flights a year minimum in the
old days, and some of them were just day trips,
plenty of overnight and cross continent. But I also my
world bumped up against people that were you know what
they call the road warriors, salespeople who were constantly traveling,
and they would have all their travel hacks. And you know,
people talk about air travel like going down the toilet
around COVID, but it's actually more like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
it started really deteriorating. I mean, everyone would have problems
here and there, but where you would consistently have lots
of problems, like a long time ago, like sixty seventy
years ago, air travel could be tenuous and then it
got pretty smooth for a while. American is still the
worst in my experience, Like if every time I've slept.
Speaker 4: In mind experience too, Yes.
Speaker 5: Every time I've slept on the floor of an airport
because you can't lie down on the benches because they
have the armrests, so that like Hobos don't take over
the place it's been because of American screwing up flights.
So anyway, this is the best story I ever heard
from a salesperson about an innocuous air travel story that
turned out okay. But picture this. You are a road
warrior who flies two weeks a month for years on end,
and you just have a system down that works really well.
And because it just works like clockwork, and this is
the system. You're in Detroit. You go visit a client,
you go to the airport. You know some snow is coming,
but the flight is still on time. You're supposed to
board the flight in an hour and a half. They
say it's on time. You're in the bar, and what
do you do. You're taking a red eye and you
want to wake up refreshed in the morning in Florida.
Let's say, you know, in Miami. And so you get
out the ambient and as soon and you wait for
the boarding to be within like we're boarding in thirty
minutes and the flight is still on time, and you're like, okay,
if there was going to be a problem, I would
have known by now. So you take the ambient and
you down it with a slug of Jack Daniels right
as one does. And uh, five minutes later you get
the your flight is canceled. You're screwed, And this the
way this guy describes it. He started to feel the
tunnel vision of the ambient kicking in as he's like
standing there talking to the you know, harried woman at
the counter who's arranging a hotel for him to stay
at that's like at the airport, and he starts going no, no, no, no,
no no, and then he forgets everything from him saying
the last no, until he wakes up like lying down
in the snow in downtown Detroit in a doorway, like
missing a shoe, fortunately like probably only recently, and it's
like five in the morning, and he's cold but not
that cold, and wet and has no luggage. He does
have his wallet and his cell phone though, and so
for all he knows, he like got in a cab
and probably said something stupid like screw it, take me
to a bar or a restaurant or something like that,
and just but just doesn't remember it.
Speaker 4: Pretty good, honestly, Yeah, yeah, given uh by the earlier
half of this week, I completely understand, like if if,
if they could just give me ambient and Jack Daniels
on every flight, I think I would be in a
much better yeah, much better position. Honestly. The other thing is, uh,
in this might affect you slightly less, Curl. I am
physically too large to fit in most airplane seats.
Speaker 6: Now I believe it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'm barely kind, I'm barely I'm barely you know,
you know me, Like I'm barely comfortable, and.
Speaker 4: You were like a I would say, like an average guy,
you know, and so pretty ever so slightly above average
and simply cannot fit. Like what do we do with
like the Kimbe Matumbo style guys? Like simply what do
they do?
Speaker 6: You stack them on each other?
Speaker 4: They're down in steerage, which, again, given enough Ambien, I'd
be okay with fine, mister American. You clearly want to,
you know, stack people like Cordwood. I'll sign up for that,
but I have some conditions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have to tell you, man, if you want
to know pure hell, fly on an Asian airline in.
Speaker 4: Coach Okay, you got to explain that. Okay, I don't,
but I know that there's a story there.
Speaker 5: Even in the front row where you have the most
leg room, you will still not be able to adjust
your body. So so imagine, imagine an airline that makes
American look like, you know, like a piano concerto of
delivery and comfort, like you're in the lounge. You know,
you're really comfortable. No, it's it's brutal. There's a bunch
of kind of cut rate Asian airlines out of like
Asiana is okay, out of out of Korea, but it's
not great. And then there's another one I can't think
of the name off the top of my head that's
out of type Ay. That is the worst. And I
had to fly it in the old days because it
was affordable. And when you have a job that kind
of exists on paper and you get that you don't
get paid until you show up in you know, a
third world hell hole, you're like, okay, I'm going to
get the cheapest flight that I can And next thing
you know, you're in a sardine can hurling through the sky.
There are tiny people behind you. And even with that,
the seats are so close together that you can recline
about two inches and it's a fifteen hour flight. It's
good times.
Speaker 4: The wildest flight experience I've ever had, And by the way,
I saw it before we went live on it, saying like, oh,
you know, is this another is this another stream about
how you know, old old uh, you know, Donald Trump
has sold us out. I mean, that's true. But the
whole reference of the urge to hoist the black flag
is not in relation to politics at all. It is
in relation to American airlines. Yess what this is about. Yeah,
we're complaining about this, and if we happen to talk
about politics, that's a secondary you know, as you may
have realized, we don't plan these out at Aldi.
Speaker 7: We are a gracious bunch, and it feels only right
to thank the other supermarkets for promoting our prices with
their Aldi price match. So thank you other supermarkets. Yeah,
nice work, guys, Good for you. But if you want
Aldi prices on well everything, well it's the least we
could do. Stop stop your two kinds. We're just a supermarket.
Come on now, seriously, stop it. If you want Aldi prices,
just go to Aldi. It's not complicated.
Speaker 4: Ah, But so I was after I graduated. My dad's
not quite an ex pat anymore, but he's fancy person, homeless,
and so he just kind of you know, goes around.
And so we spent some time in South America and
our flight in was on an International American carrier, right
just like any other flight. The flight we took from
one South American to another South American country was one
of the most frightening experiences of my life. It was
a normal airplane, but the seats were you know, those
like plastic chairs they have with a metal frame and
as like three holes in the back yep, that you
see in like high schools. Yes, that's what the chairs were. So,
you know, I'm not going to delude myself about the
possibility of surviving a crash in the andes just you know,
based off of previous experience, you know, you look at
other people.
Speaker 6: Or lost movie alive.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, And so maybe it's, you know, if anything,
a credit to them that they're like, you're just going
to be turned into human moroccas if this thing goes over.
But that's a little alarming. And then also I realized
that roughly forty percent of the people in this plane
had never flown in an airplane before, and so they
were losing it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh yeah, no, I know that feel Yeah that
I mean the the the seats that you were in
are that way because they lose, They void their bowels regularly,
panic and panic on the regular as well.
Speaker 4: I did even think about that. You're probably entirely right,
but so they can just owe it down, which, honestly,
considering my experience flying in and out of Dallas, given Dallas,
Dallas's demographics, I understand the appeal of to quote a
great thinker. You know, it smell crazy in there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but.
Speaker 4: Uh so, you know, if you've ever been on airplane,
you realize that there's this moment kind of just after
takeoff where you you sort of feel the plane. It
feels as if it's dropping a little bit right, sort
of leveling off. Yes, normal part of every flight I've
ever been on. Dude, it was pandemonium. Oh sure, they
were loud prayers in Spanish. People were crossing themselves, and so,
you know, I'm not going to pretend to be one
of these, you know, road warriors, experienced travelers, but I,
you know, do it a good bit for previous jobs,
whatever semblance of a job I have now, so like
you know, not done it before, and I saw not
particularly nervous, even given the seating, but when everyone else
starts losing it. You start looking around. You're like, yeah,
they've seen something I haven't.
Speaker 5: You know, you're wondering, like is the can I just
not see the like the wing over there?
Speaker 6: Is it on fire? Are there there some? Yeah?
Speaker 5: It's it's funny because I was complaining about flying in
the Third World to a buddy of mine who is
a Marine corpvette and he said, he said, I understand
that's unpleasant. You know, I get it. I'm not going
to discount what you're saying. But let me tell you
my worst flying story. Have you ever been in a
c stallion like uh fifty three h or something like
that the way you described it is, and it's the
old Marine Corps ones.
Speaker 6: He said that they would literally.
Speaker 5: Have when they would bank and do you know kind
of hygiene maneuvering because he was in places where there
were Africans shooting aks up at them and such that
hydraulic fluid was like spraying out of like valves. I
think he said they were like over pressure. I don't
know anything about helicopters. It sounded like a problem to me,
but he said the crew chief said it was normal.
That's when I became very frightened, and I was like,
I believe you have I told.
Speaker 4: You the reason that my grandfather doesn't fly anymore.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 4: So, my grandfather was an aircraft mechanic in the Vietnam War,
and so yeah, you know he worked on a lot
of planes, you know, obviously for the Americans, and had
a fairly normal experience with that. The thing that freaked
him out though was the Koreans. Yes, and obviously you
know the Koreans were savage fighters in that war, but
particularly the Korean Air Force h was shall we say,
not up to standard. No, And so he has dozens
of horrific stories about just pure like lack of maintenance,
lack of understanding, and also the extreme callous disregard for
the chain of command for their own soldiers. Yes, And
basically he has would describe routinely going to his own
chain of command and being like, hey, look that plane's
going to fall out of the sky and then you know,
the door would pop off, the cabin deep pressurized, and
everyone would be sucked out to their death, and the
creat Air Force be like just part and parcel, you know,
like no one could have prevented this. Yeah, freaked him
out so bad, knowing sort of how the sauce had
just made that he's basically never been on a plane
since he got back to America, and I sort of
can't blame him for it.
Speaker 5: Right the way that my my father in law put it,
who had a similar professional career as your grandfather, if
I recall your grandfather great grandfather, who whichever sporty fellow
was running around the world in getting into adventures. The
way he put it is that one of his one
of their best pilots, who was doing fighter bomber duty.
You know that wasn't his department, but he would call
for air support from these guys, and he had dinner
with these guys, you know, plenty of times at certain
secret CIA bases and would be talking to them, and
they like grew up in huts where the roof was
made of banana leaves, and you know, they owned Like
I've explained this, I said, there were there were even
in the early two thousands. You would be in places
where there's an old lady who owns like three things
that are made out of like iron or steel. Everything
else is handmade from local materials, which she would have
a cell phone, right and so imagine people who are
used to you know, they hand turn you know, smooth
bore muskets and make them actually to a very high
standard of fabrication, and make their own black powder and
everything by getting the bat guano and the caves and
drying it out and having all their processes to make
their own black powder and so very crafty. But everything's handmade.
And then they're flying basically an early nineteen fifties prop
plane that you know is a two seater, but it
can perform like a P fifty one while also carrying
let me do the math here, like six tons of
small bombs and stuff like that. So interesting sporty fellows,
and he would get to the point where he didn't
like flying in the country very much at all because
of the let's say that the callous disregard that many
of these people had given, you know, given the circumstances,
it made sense for them and what they needed to do,
but really made you not want to be up in
the air.
Speaker 4: So, Carl, let's return to one of our regular conversation topics,
how cool are Korean guns? Because I think they're really cool,
like modern stuff.
Speaker 5: I worked for a Korean company for a while. I
never told you this, and I I was going camping
with some buddies, so I had my you know, my SUV,
and I was like, hey, guys, because they all out
they're all conscripted into the army, right, I was like, guys,
come down and see my arsenal and I had AR
fifteen and an AK and they were like flipping out
with how rad that was.
Speaker 6: They're like, oh, you have the gun of the enemy
and all that.
Speaker 5: And I was telling them I really want a day
Wu k one, Like that's what I really want, and
they're like, no, it's crap. American guns are better. I
was like, you do know that day Wu also makes
the the you know, the M sixteen, and they're like,
but they're not as good as the American ones. It
was just this mentality that they had and I was like,
you're crazy. And I never had a day Wu K one,
but I did have some of their pistols, like that,
the one that uses the Smith and Wesson Model fifty
nine mags, the double action.
Speaker 6: It's like this, it's like.
Speaker 4: The fifty one something de Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're great, they're great.
Speaker 6: They're really cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean literally it is uh and I think
that's part of the allure, is that they're so rare.
Although I think they've Daywu has made a has spun
up a US based subsidiary. Yes, so maybe that might change,
although it won't matter for me.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: I guess we're for you either, Carl. But uh, I
think part of it is that it's always been the
kind of forbidden fruit, right, very very difficult to get yea.
And of course, like it is an air eighteen drived
design if I'm correct, right, that is correct.
Speaker 6: Yes, But they're.
Speaker 4: Just cool, like especially the one with the collapsing stock
like the K model.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, it's just neat. It's sick as hell. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And and they actually released a subgun version that James
Reeves was showing off for shot Show this year, which
he was saying was the coolest, the coolest gun there.
So there's some nine mil some day Wu nine milimeter
subgun that's going to be that they're trying to release
in the US.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 4: That is a nineties throwback the day wud the lesson version,
the most nineties gun possible in that like classic stainless
and black two tone.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And you know that I was have that was in
the some thing that I made reference to in that
article about you know, buying guns before the bands and
then coping with them afterwards, which is the tendency becomes, Okay,
you're more restricted on what you can get. You're either
going to get very small nine millimeters for Carrie that
are actually you know, still usable. Don't go too small,
or you increase the caliber right and like forty is
one of those compromises that was kind of pointless, you know,
but it was you know, a nine millimeter size gun
holding ten rounds, like get the forty version. That was
a very nineties thing to your point. But now you
can just be like, oh, I'll just get the ten
millimeter version instead if I'm stuck with ten rounds, because
that's that's where you get a real power differential.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've it's interesting and we mentioned this before that
there are you sort of have to make a there's
a decision tree for long term gun autism, and one
of them is do you become obsessed with small or
big calibers, which leads you to very different places. So,
for instance, in like a previous era, you know, predominantly
like the seventies and eighties, this was like the magnum
caliber craze, you know, like how much powder can can
Bubba Graham into his pissing hot reloads? Yeah, to turn
his like you know Ruger Redhawk into a miles scrap.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, do you see a sort of similar
thing with ten millimeter guys where it is very much
the like big bullet you know, I guess you could
say a lore which like I get, I get certainly.
Speaker 5: And and ten milimeter is actually a great cartridge. It's
it performs all beyond like the on paper metrics in
in terms of what it actually does. I mean, there's
there's a fair there's a fair school of thought that
like a hard cast led two hundred and ten grain
ten millimeter bullet screaming out of your pistol is probably
even better for bear than like forty four magnum in
terms of you have several more rounds you know, waiting
in that magazine, and you use the magazine. It isn't
once shot, stop nonsense. So yeah, it's a it's an
interesting it's an interesting perspective.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The uh, it's one of those things where and I
kind of get it that you know, at a certain
point it's just like I it's the it's the sort
of like uh, the bedside table drawer. Uh, you know
of of you know, gun collecting, where you get to
a certain point you get something kind of weird. You
need to motivate yourself to stay interested, which is so like,
you know, I don't want a king chain, but fundamentally
I think that there is a lot of shopping for
a reason to own something. I just kind of like,
you know, as regards to these niche caliber calibers rather
which like, look, you know, fair enough man. The Uh,
it's it's interesting. Have you seen it's been around for
a while, but it's been officially experimentally adopted as the
x M E, the shorter version of the the sick rifle.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yeah. And there was an XMATE before in
the fish Gun, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: Which I think was in one of the ghost recon games.
Speaker 6: I'm sure it was.
Speaker 4: There's a whole bunch. I was actually also in a
really cool History Channel documentary but not documentary, History Channel
propaganda film that came out in the mid two thousands
that was predominantly about like, you know, the new tech.
I can't remember what it was called. It was like
that and then like the the air burst grenade stuff
and like the twenty tens like full face helmet, yeah,
restraint thing.
Speaker 5: Yes, I don't.
Speaker 4: Entirely remember what it was called, but it was incredibly
fascinating as like an eight year old, right, because you're like, awesome,
So we're gonna have like power armor and explosive guns
and the ximate that's pretty neat too, and all we
got was just a four thousand dollars sig rifle and
another war and Iran.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and rounds that are incredibly high pressure that
are apparently wearing guns out pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: Who could have guessed, you know, mixed that making it shorter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm sure that'll that'll help tremendously with the performance.
Speaker 4: And I do think it's it's funny, by the way,
that the US military is like, yeah, we're gonna sue
three m for not making earplugs up to standard in
a soldier's TBI. You know what else we're gonna do.
Give them a and a half inch full power rifle
pushing out like extreme over pressure, just basically a portable
TBI generator exact guy.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh, and let's do CQB with those too, let's see
what happens just the.
Speaker 6: Brain looking out of their ears, good Lord.
Speaker 4: Which so honestly kind of based.
Speaker 5: You know, it's funny. There's this, you know, we really
do live in a cyberpunk dystopia. There's there's a okay,
hear me out. You and I have strong opinions about
the Taurust Judge. However, Thomas's Aging Judge and four fifty
four Castle, that's hella cyberpunk, Like I will, I will
grant that that is that the Judge is very cyberpunk.
If you think about it, it's a it's a five
shot you know, mini shotgun handgun basically, and you know
you can do all the numbers on everything. But like,
to be honest, that's pretty cyberpunk. It's it's it's a
we do live in a cyberpunk dystopia, except like there's
no razor girls other than them like slitting their wrists
and thighs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's it's one of those things where you know,
really like Blade Runner came true, but we got all
the downsides and none of the upsides. Yeah, exactly, Like
like flying cars obviously the example people think of, but
like there there are others as well, and uh yeah,
it's sort of why I've been kind of fascinated with
those films and you know the as well, because you know,
there's obviously a huge parallel between you know, The Replicants
is kind of a slave cast and what we've seen
with with immigration, right, yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know it's it's interesting because
when I think cyberpunk, did you ever read William Gibson?
Speaker 4: No, No, I haven't.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, you have to remedy that. I could.
I could send you a pile of books if you
would like. But William Gibson is an American shit lib
who moved to Canada. Very good writer. I kind of
don't care about anything that he's written since probably two thousand,
but very seminal. His stuff in the eighties and into
the nineties, like the Bridge series was the last good
one I think, although I'm sure it kind of extended
out forever. But the basic premise is that that's the
world that we live in, where uh, you know, the
the government is still around and is annoying, but it
doesn't do anything for anyone, and and corporations run everything,
and the you know, mass immigration has resulted in situations
where like the average person basically lives in a hovel,
like the closet you know, pays like half a month's
salary to live in a closet in a flop.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: That that's owned by an immigrant who constantly talks about
how great America is and stuff like that, and is like,
why are you driving a Japanese car, or like a
Chinese or Korean car, Like as a patriotic American, you
should be driving a German car and stuff like that,
and or and then there's also this thing I mentioned
the bridge is the idea is that homelessness gets so
bad and sent San Francisco that one day, like the
homeless bum rush the Golden gate Bridge, which has very
little traffic because of part of it is automotive controls
and gasoline, and there's an earthquake that makes it unusable
without tons of retrofits that the state of California can't afford.
So the homeless bum rush it and then basically build
a shanty town on the Golden gate Bridge, which is
just a totally lawless place. And the premise is actually
incredibly cool and the stories there are great, and it
reminds you of going to pretty much any West Coast
city in the last ten years. There's a neighborhood that's
an awful lot like that.
Speaker 4: Well, dude, it's coming to a neighborhood near me.
Speaker 6: Uh thanks.
Speaker 4: Oh, you know Abigail Spanberger who's decided to get rid
of any sort of vagrancy laws, which is super cool.
You know, I appreciate that, honestly. You know, maybe we
could break up our run of live shows to do
an actual prerecorded one because I've never read Neuromancer, and
then I make that would make a pretty good review.
Speaker 5: We'll talk about that would make a great review.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, let's take that.
Speaker 4: So I know you, I know you.
Speaker 6: Yes, for twenty dollars.
Speaker 4: And by the way, this comment is at least partially correct.
You'll cry foul, you'll disparage, but you'll read this out
in the end, because twenty dollars is twenty dollars the
Hustiva number one. You're right, I am, that's my price.
I'll read out basically anything for twenty dollars. So I
guess you've made your point, and you know, I mean,
that's cool and all, But why your rifle so heavy?
My last last common on Allen.
Speaker 6: Why your rifle so overgassed?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, why is it constantly beating itself to death despite
being made out of an addition kilogram of steel? For
no reason? Actually, the funny thing is my my anti
Yugo comments have earned me more blowback than almost anything
else I've said on this show. These people are insane.
They're like rabbit, an objectively worse gun.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, yeah, you know it's funny.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You you saw that picture that I sent yesterday of
the of the pointlessly welded Chinese receiver. Yeah, horrifying, horrifying.
It's it's one. It's one of those things where every
not every I I think it breaks out this way
affordable a k gunsmiths in America who do novel things, Uh,
they they stop making money, or they reach a threshold
where the demand becomes so high that they hire other
people to do the work and then they stop caring
and you get abominations like that, Or you do the
other route, which is Rifle Dynamics, which charges two hundred
dollars to inspect a kit so to assemble assemble an
AK kit that you provide. You provide a part skit
for them to assemble it to spec and then refinish it.
Not even necessarily refinishing it, but more like you know,
probably molly coding it or something like that. They charge
thirteen hundred dollars and it's not like doing anything novel
that's not turning down you know, the gas block index
on the barrel or shortening it and rethreading, you know,
with a bore concentric thread so that you can attach
a suppressor that does isn't totally overboard. It's like it's
thirteen hundred dollars and so it's it's almost like one
direction or the other. There's very few that are that
are still doing it, and it's AK for some reason.
It's AK and my theory. There's an interesting point Jim Fuller,
who founded Rifle Dynamics, who's doing something different. I think now,
I think he's spinning up some new business. He pointed
out that the you know, we have this mentality that
ak's are cheap because you could buy them for very little,
but that was because they were surplus. There were government
surplus from these programs that we're building weapons were like
a key strategic element of all these countries was step
one develop an AK forty seven factory, and so like
it's a major component of the national character is we
have our own AK forty seven factory, and you know
we're not doing it for profit. You know, it can
be a loss leader essentially. And also if you do
a very bad job of these, you could get a
bullet in the back of your head. So there are
these guns that were made so that they eventually became
affordable because it was like reduced labor and manufacturing. Eventually,
you know, once you have this whole, once you build
this industrial infrastructure, and when you look at the story
of how the Chinese built their arms industry up, you
really see this is where they start out, not with
like the PPS forty three, you know, industrial based cheap
guns that are good. They start with the PPSh forty one,
which is like a first generation where it's all forgings
and hand fitted this and that way more operations because
they had more people than they had you know, huge
industrial concerns that could do stamping and stuff like that.
So like you would take a truck factory and reorient
it to make the PPS forty three, and all you
would need is like you know, barrel boring and stuff
and rifling and all that, but that's not that big
of a deal. Once you have these massive factories that
are already there, well, it's hard to get to a
massive factory. So that's why they do this first generation
hand fitting stuff. So it's it's a really interesting philosophy.
So that's why Jim Fuller is like, that's why it
costs so much to make one off aks is because
you either need an incredibly expensive factory to just crank
them out, or you need a shitload of manual work.
And in America you have to pay you know, hourly
wages and they're all all the stuff is different too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't just have a whole city devoted to producing.
Speaker 6: That thing exactly exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that we may have mentioned this before, but
it is sort of an interesting difference in you know,
how our Cold War service rifle and theirs were produced
right where it's like the ear is basically designed for
like small machining operations to be able to turn out
endless derivations, you know, versus this like you know, sort
of centralized method of production.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's sort of there's an interesting difference there. I mean,
one of the other interesting trends has been the sort
of you know, death of sort of European produced rifles.
Speaker 6: Right obviously, you.
Speaker 4: Know that the FAMAS is gone, and soon the lad one,
which I realized has been made by HK for a
while now, will be gone as well. And you know,
part of it is because, to be honest, you know,
European powers chances of getting into a shooting war are
pretty low, so it you know, it doesn't matter. In
the same way, there's also the fact that they're you know,
to be honest, they've been colonized right there. They're not
really sovereign in the same way anymore. But I think
that's a very interesting shift where it seems as if
they're sort of taking globalism to its logical conclusion, even
with something as basic as like what gun they give
to you know, their guys.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this actually started at the end of the
Cold War. A little bit before, like during the Cold
War you saw a lot of consolidations, but after the
end of the Cold War, the European national armories were
privatized and sold off to all these different conglomerates and
then they would basically get shut down and then you know,
in in some cases in the run up to the
Ukraine War, or literally after the Ukraine War broke out,
a lot of them said, oh my god, we have
a huge problem. We need to get these manufactories back
up and running. In Spain of all countries, actually did
a fair bit of that, but most of their most
of their arms industry, which used to be a huge
part of their economy. Given the nature of their their
old political characteristics, one could say they they had to
really scramble, and they're probably better off than almost anyone
in Europe other than the Belgians, because again, the Belgians
have FN which has always been a global manufacturer. And
it's interesting there there was a book that I read
that was written in the eighties and I think it
was Paul Bowler's Manual of the Mercenary Soldier, and it
was written by a guy who had been a mercenary
for a long time, and a lot of a lot
of what people don't understand is that is that merks
mostly come in and say, we're going to be like
a serious officer corps reporting to the president of some
third world country to get your mess of a military
up and running. And so they become the guys that
make sure that there's like an actual small arms program
that is training guys and repairing weapons and stuff like that.
And so that's what a huge amount of what they
do is actually about. And so one of the things
that he said is that the FN sales people were
the best in the world where they would whine and dine,
you know, these movers and shakers in all these shitholes,
and that's why you see FN rifles everywhere. It's the
what do they call it, the right arm of the
First world was or of the Free world, is one
of the old descriptions of them. And it's because they
were just great salesmen and they would give people good prices,
uh for like long term support on their stuff. Whereas
like he hated HK the HKG three with a passion
because I have my own theories around that. But and
a lot of it is that they're that they're frankly
pretty cheap guns ultimately, and like they don't repair well,
that they're kind of semi disposable.
Speaker 6: They're they're up to a high.
Speaker 5: Level of quality for until you run into problems. And
if you've ever seen someone diagnose an endemic problem with
an HK weapon or one of their copies like you would.
You would understand it immediately when you look at like
the bolts and everything. You're like, oh, I get why
someone would hate this thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the the domestic HK salesman in the nineties,
we're doing crazy stuff. Yes, have you ever seen at one?
It's on YouTube. It's like a forty minute compilation of
the ads that they would send to law enforcement. You
ever seen that before?
Speaker 6: Yes? Yeah, yeah, the old DHS wild.
Speaker 4: It's obviously super fun. Like there's a bunch of crazy
stuff where it's like they've got guys dressed up in
like like uh like British embassy style like sas pajamas,
like running through wood the woods and like diving in
the water. They've got uh, they've got like fake explosions
going off. There's a really famous one of this, like
super jacked black guy where he's basically got an MP
five and he's holding it and he as it's shooting
in fial auto. He takes it through a full like
one hundred and eighty degrees, you know, just to show
you what works at any angle. And I'll be honest,
if I were like the guy in charge of purchasing
at some like you know, like po Dunk police Department
in the middle of nowhere. That would have worked on me.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, really absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 4: The UH guys of your age, I feel like, are
particularly susceptible to UH to h K propaganda. In fact,
I can think of a few no relatively private podcasts
who definitely have bought it hook Line and Sinker.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's true. I I'm very familiar with those guys.
And the only reason, uh, the only reason I don't
really have that mentality is having I've shot a lot
of stuff, and I HK kind of lost its allure
for me. Although they're they're very high quality weapons. I'm
not gonna poo poo them. Uh they shoot well. But
I am from the era where HK was like, you
suck and we hate you. And the the whole thing
is with HK is you solve your problems by spending money,
whereas with other platforms. And also, gun is fine, right,
that's the HK mentality. Gun is fine, but other platforms,
like you have more of an aftermarket support, you have
other things that you can do with them, et cetera.
You know, gun is not fine. It's okay to mess
with them, but I do. I do, honestly. I really
like the USP in nine millimeter an awful lot, and
I also like USP forty fives. They're really great guns.
But the P seven is the one that I've been
in love with my whole life.
Speaker 6: But is it worth?
Speaker 5: Is it good enough to I mean, like, if you're
gonna buy it to collect it and play with it occasionally?
Is a P seven M eight worth two grand or
whatever they're going for now? I don't really think so.
They are cool, but the problem is, like you can't
shoot it a lot because the parts are just like
like they're they're rarer than gold. I really want a
you're gonna laugh at me. I really want the P
seven K three, which is the uh, the more of this,
the smaller caliber one, because there it does conversion for
four different cartridges. The HK four is the same way.
The HK four is like a stamped piece of shit
PP like Walter PP equivalent. It's just a blowback. So
like Carl, the slight stamping and welding of milled parts.
Speaker 4: Yes, Carl, when you're saying that there are four calibers.
Speaker 5: Twenty two l R twenty five, a CP thirty two
ACP three eighty a CP.
Speaker 4: So viewers, you may remember earlier when I referred to
the decision right where you sick which form of one
of them you have? And we you know, joked about
the big bullet, guys, Carl Man, at this point, I
think it's terminal your your thirty two obsession. I think
it's it's it's in your brain.
Speaker 5: It is it, it's it is one hundred percent. But
you may recall the other the conversation that we were
having with a your enabler, your your dealer, as it
was your pusher, about that the joys of you know,
milling a little like o ring into your into the
chamber of your thirty two ACP to increase the dwell
time when you're firing it with the suppressor, which which
keeps the action closed slightly longer, and thus it improves
the suppression level to where it's pretty much like shooting
a twenty two l R, you know, subsonic with a
suppressor and it's just so quiet, but it has more
than double the terminal ballistic of the twenty two LR round.
And so here's my thing, twenty two you know, in
in you know, ghost recon or you know, whatever specops game,
you have a guy with a suppressed ruger, you know,
Mark two, three four, whatever, and it's like ting ting
and these head shotting guys and they're going down, and
it's like, you know, to be honest, that doesn't really
work that way. Like twenty sub Sonic twenty two LR
is anemic in the extreme, and the idea that you're
definitely going to penetrate you know, something thick don't. I
don't want to sound horrible on YouTube, but is pretty delusional.
And I know people that have survived such events which
have taken which have occurred against them, and one I
don't recommend it. It's not like a good experience, but
you know, it's it's not it's not a video game
where as long as you're within the center third of
it that it definitely penetrates and takes them down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The one thing I will say that HK is done
and this this actually aligns with your small caliber autism
is the Civilian MP seven, which has been teased. Yes,
so here's what I'll say. I am aware and I've
had people with firsthand experience tell me they're not that good.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: However, however, I'll be honest, Gordon Freeman did a number
on me. It's it's really really cool in that game.
Speaker 5: How many yeah, how many hours do you have behind
that weapon in a video game?
Speaker 6: A lot?
Speaker 4: I'm not, you know, I don't really play games much anymore,
and those I do are incomprehensible nonsense, so like, but
it's a lot, man, it's a lot. Same reason why
I like the MP five SD, which you know people
like much more. But it's you saw me go through
this this rationalization, yes, with my with my dealer, uh,
deliberately using an ambiguous term are Uh, it just doesn't
make sense. Similarly, the MP seven doesn't make sense for
a number of reasons, but it's just cool. I get
it's really cool.
Speaker 5: I mean I was I'm the guy who was saying
that the that the Keltech what is it, P fifty
or whatever is cool, you know, I I just have
to admit it. It's it's ridiculous, it's absurd, but they're
super cool.
Speaker 6: They're super cool.
Speaker 5: I I have a soft spot for the MP five
k PDW for the same reason. Video games that I
played at the time it was completely unobtainable. You know,
you were like I'm never going to own one of
these because they were banning all the stuff, you know,
and then HK wouldn't make you know, HK stopped making
them for the civilian market like nineteen ninety so in
like nineteen ninety three, of course, I was like, that
is the sickest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: Well, it's it's incredibly aggravating because and I'm sure you
had this the same experience, or you you realize something
is cool at precisely the moment that either everyone else
has had their attention drawing, yeah, or just after it
became absolute Unobtainedum. And I guess my my generational trauma
as a zoomer is assuming that anything that is cheap
and good will soon cease to exist, right, yes, So
it's why I tend to buy SURP stuff.
Speaker 5: What's that?
Speaker 6: Is that what you tell your wife?
Speaker 4: Tell her Carl guy lived?
Speaker 5: No, I mean I mean like when when she's like,
what's that? I haven't seen that one before? And you're.
Speaker 4: Uh Arabic discourse uh jaquevius Burden the giggle switch enthusiast. Now,
I'll take that on levels. Uh, well, not at all
speaking about that in any legally definable way. But I
have been going through the process of putting together, uh,
you know, an ar trigger set up for my MB five,
which I violated one of the first rules of buying
a gun, which is don't modify it before you see
if it works or well that'st that point.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: But you know, from from talking to uh, you know, Pete,
a few other guys who've gone down that rabbit hole,
it seems, you know, relatively simple and I'm very curious
to see how that system works. I will say I
actually got one of the H three D printed lowers
because advances in that have really improved the quality of
the finishing as well as the doability. But honestly, even
if I wasn't trying to go fast with it. Oh,
by the way, Carl, I ordered some some parts from
your guys and won't say oh cooler than that. I
know you've done some design work for them, and I
think I actually have one of your stickers. But anyway,
point is, h honestly, it's kind of just a flat improvement,
both from an ERGOS level and also a stock h
k MP five trigger.
Speaker 6: Is sucks awful, man, They suck.
Speaker 4: People say like, oh, it's a staple gun. It is
actually remarkably similar to a staple gun.
Speaker 5: And and it costs a fortune to try to tune them.
So no, that's that's the that's such a smart move. Yeah, well.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 4: This is why I bring you on, Carl. But like
even you can get the like the the cheaper guysily triggers,
like the G two S which is like plus or
minus one hundred bucks, which I don't like as much
as the LaRue trigger A discussion for another day. But
the LaRue one is more picky like it it works
great in an AR, but it doesn't work in a
lot of the not ars that take AR triggers, if
that makes sense. But point is really really good and
for like one hundred dollars printed lower some random parts
and a trigger way way better.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And and it's a it's a it's a it's
a product that that sells well and uh for a
good reason. It's it's because they uh, it just takes
care of all these issues that you have to cope about,
like the HK bros in the old days before before
someone made you know, here's how you do this using
AR components which are readily available and affordable at a
very high level of quality, and also fairly consistent in
terms of like the production so that it'll actually work.
You used to have to send in your precious HK components,
which which cost of fortune to gunsmiths and hope that
it wasn't Friday by the time they got around to them,
and spend like four hundred dollars to get a trigger job.
So that's everything about HK is it's it's always been
like super expensive stuff. Now interestingly, like the VP nine
is you know, produced in sufficient quantities and the CC
nine and stuff that they're good guns, they're great guns,
and they're produced fairly and expensively, which is like what
it should be. That's that's hk's model is. You know,
it's it's above an AK in terms of like quality,
but it's still churned out in that same with that
same concept that it's like it's the Volts pistol. It's
like an affordable pistol that everyone can own.
Speaker 4: So I will say, speaking of things that have just
absolutely ruined my brain, I will never get overthinking the
four sixteen is the coolest thing ever really for no reason,
Like I'm not a piston guy. Piston guys, man, you
got to send them to a home.
Speaker 6: He did what cut?
Speaker 4: No, I said, Piston, guys need to be sent to
a home because it's it's.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a car's reference. My son watched cars
so many times when he was little that I hear piston.
I think he did what his cup because it's the
piston cup. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The best joke from that movie, Yes, I have this, which,
by the way, uh somewhat somewhat disturbing. Note the female
car from that movie did a similar thing to a
subpopulation of my generation that Lola Bunny did to yours.
That is not a joke.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 5: No, it's true. It's true.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, there was one more thing about my flight
I forgot to tell you. Uh so you and I
have occasionally mentioned before, you know, uh vamgooner slop right, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: On one of my many many flights to nowhere, I
sat next to this uh lady with you know, dyed
hair and Caine, and she was reading one of the
Fourth Wing books, right, which is basically like uh like
Erotic Dragon Harry Potter.
Speaker 6: Oh nice.
Speaker 4: It's just one of those things where I'm like, I
know we joke about this, but it's weird to sit
next to someone for four hours reading that.
Speaker 6: Yes, like, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: Why are you here?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: Why do you think this is okay in public?
Speaker 6: That's it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's just like I don't want to think about
some stranger doing that, and I like, we're literally cheek
to jowl. It's again, homes.
Speaker 5: I was so traumatized by a versioning issue I had
with my first novel that when I I actually did
what you're supposed to do with the second one, which
is I got my I got my proof copy, and
I actually went through the whole thing, and I did
that on a business trip, and so I'm I'm on
a flight with affection with the Crusaders and going through
and marking it up and being like sometimes you know
how I am as I always tell people that the
very best way to determine your grammar is to read
it out loud, or to like read it in a
way where you're more deliberately kind of verbalizing it in
your mind, which you can do if you can rotate
shapes and things like that. You know, I know many
many supposed humans can't do that, but you can do
that if you're in the sound of my voice and anyway.
So that's to make sure like the grammar flows perfectly,
et cetera. So I'm going through and i'm marking it up,
and there's a woman sitting next to me, and she's
looking over and she asked me what the book is
about or what I'm doing, and I said, oh, I'm
doing some proof reading for a friend for a novel.
And she asked what the book was about, and I
was like, oh, the Spanish Civil War. And she's like, oh,
like hemingway is what she said, which I knew that
it would make you smile, and I was like, yeah,
sort of. And because I was reading the point like
right before, I was reading it right before they execute
a bunch of prisoners and uh and in the in
the tale of the book, it's perfectly normal of course
you would do that. And so I just kind of
left it that. I didn't want to be too chatty
about it. And what was she reading? It was some
it was some fem gooner crap, but at least it
wasn't beast reality themed.
Speaker 4: You're that's the term that we call damning by faint praise. Yes,
you know, yes, it's the romance slop back in. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
the I meant it, kain uh illiteracy has never been higher,
and apparently everyone knows how to read all it at
that the uh yeah, the the process of roof reading,
and I realized is probably not super interesting uh for
you know, my audience, but you know, I imagine any
people occasions might might catch an article that I've I've written.
There another one coming out soon, by the way, in chronicles.
Speaker 6: Uh yeah.
Speaker 4: So you can do it yourself and you spend a
lot of time actually think about it. Or you can
take a poorly composed screed and uh send it to
your unemployed friends make them read it instead.
Speaker 6: Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.
It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: Let me point something out.
Speaker 6: You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great.
Speaker 5: You love the host, You seek it out and download it.
You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even
going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion.
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