The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Birthdays and Boomsticks

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/http://www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.cypresssurvivalist.org/Support the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*This week marked Matter of Facts Podcast's 9th birthday, so the boys reminisce and tackle a topic that's been oft-talked about but continues to crop up again and again. The boys keep finding themselves sought after by various people for firearms knowledge, revealing one of Phil's big blindspots of constantly assuming everyone already knows.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble at 7:30 PM Central on Thursdays . See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfax podcast on the Prepar Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MOFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Ravillay, Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. And welcome back to Matterfax podcast. I managed to get the thing done right before we went live that I was trying to get done. Going live, caught me looking at the phone, at the link.

That's all right. I'm going to order three. Nick reminded me with like 17 seconds on the clock like, a dummy, you need to quit fooling around with what you're doing and like hit the go live button. I just happened to look up in time. This is a professional organization. Yes, yes. We strive for professionalism.

We fall woefully short 99% of the time. That's fine. But anyway, this is a matter of facts podcast. I'm Phil. This is Nick. Andrew's not here, but Andrew has been with the matter of fact since the show was eight months old. And there's probably a segment of y'all out there that are not aware because of, I'm sorry, I'm getting distracted by our faithful listeners, namely late and gay good yeah okay enjoy it but yeah a lot of the listeners out there nick are

really not aware of like how old this show is which we'll get into because that's our first mini topic after we do the admin work the patrons keep the show funded and keep me from getting my head stoved in by my angry wife whenever i have to spend money on the podcast so i'm very appreciative of that so's my forehead uh if you would like to buy merch there's shirts there's coosies and we're trying to bulldog our provider into doing hats. That'd be sweet. I don't know if it's going to fly, but we're going to bully them. But anyway, yeah, it is new school year,

and I believe their wee ones are in school for the first time. So very busy time for that family, for sure. They're in the same boat we are in this house where little one just started. I mean, my little one just started high school. Their little one just started school school. Nice. And mom is a teacher. So like that whole, that whole household is a DEF CON too right now.

That first week back. I know my wife right now is just getting into the whole, well, she does the before and after school program. So she's just getting into all the spazzy kids just coming out of seeing their friends all together for the first time since summer. I'm telling you that all school teachers have a special place and have been reserved for them with wine. Mm-hmm. So much wine. but yeah and cypress survivalist that's the uh the little nonprofit that me and my little school teacher started last year with um my sister my brother-in-law we're priming up for our uh our camping

trip in november so if you're interested there's a link in the show description it goes to the website and you can find information about that uh specifically if you want to come out and camp with us we're not making it publicly known exactly where we're going to be at the campground because I don't want just any random weirdos showing up without me knowing you're coming. Just our random weirdos. Yes, our random weirdos are okay. Randomly random weirdos or not. So if you are interested in coming, like the information's there,

and you reach out to us, and I'll clue you'll in it where we're going to be. Let's see here. Ragwell's been listening since around mid-2019, the show's, quite a bit older than that actually is a bit older than that and uh shout out to joe his son who i who i actually got to meet in person when they swung through town last year i think just complete the crucible graduates hates in two weeks so joe congratulate him for me damn straight it's a hell of a thing yeah i the marines was not my vocation the army was but it it's a lot it's a lot the same yeah marines everywhere are like gritting their teeth right now that i would

allege that but to be fair you got the better gear they got the better reputation yeah i was army aviation so i mean we got treated like the redhead stepchild of the entire military right up to the point where you really wanted helicopters to bring you someplace then all of a sudden we were your best friends turns out if you're waiting under fire the helicopter crews are your favorite people yeah before we get into this i will say that uh buddy of mine was first marine division he was uh on one of the initials one of the initial jumps that um pushed through bagdad during operation iraqi freedom he told me after the fact that uh one of his happiest moments was a moment where they were him and his squad were pinned down you know not like in crazy danger but

definitely in a bad situation and they got on the radio and start calling in for air support it, you know, wide open channel, hey, we need help, before the freaking Marines could get there. It just so happened that there was a couple of Apaches that were pulling through the area, and they literally diverted in and just mowed down the entire block. I bet that made those pilots weak. Oh, let me tell you something. When I can, I can say that, like, there is a lot of intra-service rivalry, you know, it's good. It's like cops and firefighters, which are makes to a degree.

But I will be the first to say that, like, when another service. member is up to their eyeballs in trouble all that nonsense goes out the window and it is like okay who do we have to tear out the frame to make this problem go away absolutely from what i hear jocc refuse to shit on the force air cover is nice that is probably accurate yep i'm tell you that the guy that can vector in air support on your position is always your best friend right behind doc like it's so in order of precedence it's doc it's your supply guy and it's the guy that can call an air sport those are the three those are the three dudes you're going to take very very good care of yeah right so six minutes in almost seven happy birthday to matter

of fact so the matter of facts podcast actually started in 2016 so this is our back yeah literally a couple of days ago was the nine year anniversary of the show and the reason why a lot of people don't realize the show is that old and i i kick myself sometimes for this decision but at this point like i threw the diet it's going to be what it is is i made the decision years ago that in an effort to control the cost of the show and also to kind of like hold a little back for the patrons once the podcast got so many episodes out there in the wild i was going to take down the oldest ones So that way, what was out there publicly accessible was always going to be like the most recent 12 to 18, maybe 24 months worth of episodes.

And I've expanded that as time has gone on, but it's always been this is recent episodes. The older stuff is kept behind the paywall for the patrons, which I need to make a note that I need to dole out some more. I'm not really good about updating that. but when I do remember, I use drop like five or six. Oh, it's easily five or six. It blows my email up. I mean, sorry, not sorry? No, I always listen to them because usually it's good stuff back then.

Sometimes the audio quality is shockingly good. I'm wondering if it was just the day of the electrons went well for you. So it is worth pointing out that like over the history of this show, like to get to the point we're at today where we're actually like streaming live with video. Right. This is this is very high brow, high minded, really technical stuff compared to the early days. Like the very first episodes of this podcast were recorded on an iPhone using the little earbuds that, you know, like you, the old three and a half millimeter headphone jack that isn't even on phones anymore. But it was a set of Apple headphones with the little microphone that had the buttons built into it.

Yeah, surprisingly good microphone for what it was. Surprisingly very good microphone for what it was. I recorded, I couldn't even tell you. I mean, probably several dozen episodes I did just like that. And it was just me. I hadn't met Andrew yet. Hadn't met, you hadn't even thought about meeting you yet. No.

And the first handful of episodes, like to me, for the patrons, I really want to go back and listen to episodes like one through, I don't know, 15 or 20, I don't care to listen to them anymore. Like, I hear all of my imperfections. I hear myself stumbling. I hear some of the things I professed at the time that I've since changed or evolved my thinking on. And I'm very critical of myself in those moments. But to be fair, I literally like woke up one day and said,

today's the day I'm going to learn how to podcast and Googled it. Worked out well so far. Yeah. Well, I mean, there was no, there was no stream yard. There was no, like most of the things we used today for podcasting hadn't even been thought of yet. I mean, people, it was, it was the Wild West. It was the Wild West. Even YouTube was the Wild West back then.

We're talking about 10 years before, you know, like, we're talking about eight to 10 years before big money came in and sponsors and advertisers. Like the earliest guntubers, even though I don't consider us to be a gun tube show, we're kind of like next. store to them in some ways, but like, we like guns. Yeah, but the earliest gun tubers shows, they were in their infancy. They were, yeah, it was the Wild West. And there was no formula for how to do this. And there was certainly no money to be made in it. Oh, God, no.

I mean, look at, go back and look at Hickok 45's first videos. He had three targets on like a 25-yard pistol range and then two, two or three rifle targets further out. Yeah, even though I haven't watched his content forever, because he had no, me now but iraq veteran 8888 some of his really old stuff yeah his early stuff was really educational especially when he got into like the esoterica weapons that would come through the shop fantastic i really i really enjoyed when he had barry on the show and like some of his uh burn down videos where he would just torture test a weapon to destruction the fantastic the whole the whole series

on can you blow up a high point yeah that is still worth watching just the the high points surprisingly more reliable than sick i mean look i might never own one but i constantly feel the urge to buy one because of the stupid the absolutely stupid amount of abuse that freaking gun put up with high point has some interesting designs that i have considered i'll put that out there they have some interesting designs i've considered just for the sheer novelty of them And the fact that they're one of the only American gun companies that's really trying, trying to innovate, they might not always hit, but at least are attempting it. Yeah. But like I said, in those early days, as a matter of facts, nine years ago, you know, I was recording by myself, which is tricky as shit.

You don't have anybody to bounce stuff off of. There is no organic conversation. You can't, you can't sit down and just spitball something out with a co-host. Like, I had to literally, I had to be super professional and write the stuff down and make outlines. And like the prep work for a 30 to 40 minute show was 30 to 40 minutes. Oh, yeah. You have to have almost a script. And then the editing afterwards was another 30 to 40 to 50 minutes.

So my time investment was through the roof. And all I ever heard was how bad it was. And over time, it got better. and easier. And then when Andrew came on the show, I feel like, like once I finally had that host, co-host energy going, I feel like that's where the show really, really came into its own. Because that's when, even though we were fighting with every bit of technological nonsense as far as like, you know, two co-hosts at opposite ends of the country trying to talk to each other and record. One living out on the boonies. Yeah. Because at the time, yeah, Andrew didn't live like, Andrew lives right on the, I mean, he's. I don't know if he's in city limits right on the edge. He's in city limits now, yeah. Yeah.

And he's got pretty good respectful high speed internet nowadays. Better than mine. Yeah, but back in the day, oh my God, it was abominable. Like, it was a, you were, you were throwing dice to see if you were going to talk, if he was going to talk to me or talk to aliens, you never knew. But it was, you know, like we struggled through it and we pushed through it and we tried so many different ways of trying to do this remote podcasting, because I remember, Andrew and I met, by the way, through the wasted ammo podcast. Nice. And, you know, like, the, the biggest benefit

those guys have is that they were co-located. And that's all so, and that's, that's the way most podcasts were, like, you think about, like, most of your podcasts are really popular today. They co-locate. If they have guests, the guests come into the studio. Right. Obviously, I don't have the travel budget to bring guests into my studio. So everything gets done electronically, remotely, but that wasn't a thing back then. No, no. It really wasn't. The latency was a serious problem.

Yeah. So literally, the way Andrew and I settled on this for the longest time was that we were using, each one of us was using a, actually before the hardware podcast quarters, we were using software. So we were using, oh, you know what, I've got it. sitting here on my desktop still I bet if not it might be buried someplace nope I think I might have hit it someplace but anyway I have a

so I had a piece of software that would basically capture my capture my mic audio and then it would allow me to port it into audacity so I would record hot record into audacity Andrew do the same thing he would upload his file to

Google Drive and then I would download it on my end and then magic the two back together and time align them. And we went like that for quite a while until eventually we got hardware recorders. Mostly because, you know, once or twice, one of our computers would lock up, the internet would die, the power would go out, and the whole show would just be fracked.

Yeah, that's hard to recover from. Yeah. And then we moved over to a service kind of like this, but audio only called Zencaster. And that was okay. It was better, but the cloud-based recording was not super reliable. So, like, there was one time in particular where the cloud-based recording failed, which happened maybe like one time out of ten. So we were still running our hardware recorders.

And the same time that happened, he had forgotten to turn on his hardware recorder. So the primary audio died. His backup audio didn't record, and we lost a whole episode. that's frustrating we literally like we both had another hour to kill so we went ahead and just sat down and fired it back up record another episode I don't think it came out near as good as the first one did because just the vibe was gone and we were just so frustrated but yeah you know that's that's that's that's hard to work through especially because all right now you're trying to remember what you went through with the conversation you're trying to recreate it and then it feels kind of forced

I've been really fortunate that you and I have been quite fortunate with the technical difficulties other than my internet occasionally shitting the bed you know, not bad yeah, well and moving from Zincaster, we came to Streamyard

and Streamyard I feel like has been the thing that really made this show because we're live streaming we've got people that are commenting to us through YouTube live the cloud-based recording is very, very reliable. still run my hardware recorder and I'm catching my audio and yours just as a backup.

Yeah. But it has not really proven necessary. I mean, this is much, much better in a lot of ways. I mean, the interface is extremely user-friendly. I mean, I walked on to the show with no experience of how it would work. And I can probably make the show work. I've not tried to create a broadcast, but one of these days, I'll mess around with it. I could walk you through it and you pick it up in 30 seconds.

easy. And I imagine YouTube University could sort me out if I couldn't. Stream Yard does have a very substantial user base. The whole reason that we went over to this mostly was because of like Sean Heron and the Farmers Radio Network, all those shows

used this. So I was already familiar with it as a guest. Sure, yeah. That would make it very easy to get into. But that's kind of like the abridged history of the Matter of fact's podcast. Nine years, 440-something episodes down the pipe.

I don't remember how many patron-only episodes we've recorded. I know that you and I need to record one or two here. We do. Let me know when, man. I'll make time.

Yeah. But, you know, to me, the joy of podcasting always was, and I always joke with, I don't joke with people. I've had people over the years asked me like, hey, how do I get into podcasting?

And I'll walk them through the broad strokes of like, these are different ways you could do it on a budget, you know, to get your feet wet. You could do it almost purely software. Yeah. And then they asked me, okay, well, how do I make it pay for itself? And I'm like, aha, there's your problem right there. That's the tricky.

Yeah. So the thing I point out to people is that like when I started podcasting, I paid all the bills out of my own pocket for two and a half years. And in about two and a half years, there was enough money flowing in semi regularly enough from the Amazon affiliate links. there was enough patron money coming in. The show started paying its own bills finally. And since then, the show has been patron funded with the exception of once or twice we've had sponsors, which I don't know. I've had companies reach out to us since our last sponsor just try to get into a sponsorship deal with us. And I'm very gun-shy about taking on a sponsor.

I would happily, but it would have to be like the right. company the right vibe it has to be something that i put my name on it would have to be a quality product yeah i would say it would have to be something that i would spend my own money on if it wasn't being given to me or i wasn't being paid to purchase it you know what i'm absolutely yeah you know i know there there was a sponsor that came on here i'm not going to name names because that's inappropriate but that you that you shared with me when i was first coming on to here that was approaching us and when we looked into it it was a subpar quality drop shipper was basically what it was yeah and that that sponsor went on to me and that sponsor went on to sponsor

i can't even count how many other small podcast small youtube channels quite a few quite a sure they made a bunch of money doing it you know based on the fact that like none of those deals stuck around for very long i don't think they did make a lot of of money on it but well maybe they made a couple of bucks i hope it did something good for them like the last time we had a sponsor um the show actually had a pretty substantial surplus of the end of the year and i blew that out like you know did a lot of giveaways for for listeners for the patrons because my point of view always was like i didn't i didn't start the show to make money there is no dollars of this that enriches my life or like pays bills this is if we have a

surplus. We spend it on a project or we spend it on something that makes the two of us, the three of us, when Andrew's round happy. And if there's not a surplus, then we just pay the bills and keep doing it for fun. Like, that is, that's the way you win at podcasting to me. I think so. I, you know, personally, I just really enjoy coming on here and having a conversation every week, having a conversation with the people in the chat, getting to talk about interesting things, gives me something to do on my Thursday night other than sit on the couch and just sort of edge out or play video games, which I think is good for you intellectually to do different things throughout the week. So it's been an enjoyable pastime. I mean, I've definitely got more

expensive hobbies. This one doesn't cost me anything. You say that until a PBS 14 follows you home and then you will realize just how expensive this hobby really can get out. To be fair, Those were always potentially following me home long before I found this podcast. I grew up playing Cod with Night Vision. Back when that was just a green filter over the video. 100%. I have to admit, it's still the weirdest experience on Earth when you turn on Night Vision and you don't hear the noise. Uh-huh.

It's supposed to make a noise. That's disappointing. I hear the noise in my head. I do too. I know the exact sound effect you're thinking of. We need to find it and throw it on the soundboard. We should. But anyway, that's happy birthday to Matter of Fax podcast.

The show has lasted like eight and three quarter years longer than I ever thought it would. And I keep telling everybody, like, it's fun. And when it stops being fun, then I'll probably stop doing it. Or we'll talk about something else. That's probably fair. Yeah. There's always something to talk about. Jeff Jag, you don't do the sound effect, not out loud.

He should do the sound effect. I don't do it out loud, but I hear it in my head. Good, definitely. Raggle, you are 100% right. It's Codd Morton Warfare 1. That's exactly the sound I was thinking of. All right. So, we talked about what we were going to talk about this show,

and I didn't feel like it was going to be. a whole hour. So the fact that the podcast birthday just happened to drop this week, and I didn't even realize it until I saw it on my calendar. I was like, oh, I totally forgot about that happening in August. We should mention that. We should mention that. But I also had this little experience last week. So you and I, and I'm sure most of the people listening right now, have been, quote, unquote, the gun guy in their group of like friends, co-workers, whatever, a time or two. And like I was recounting to you like in certain settings this does not catch me off guard at all like at work I have a couple of people who know me better than most do because most people I prefer to just be

a fly in the wall and not be known but the ones that know me a little better than that know that like I know about firearms so I have people that have asked me over the years like for advice on first firearm where to find training like different things and I'm happy to give that information out but I'm not surprised in that setting in certain aspects of like social groups I'm really not surprised when I'm like the crazy gun guy

and then there's moments in time where I am truly shocked that I'm the guy people looked and be like you know you look like you know what you're doing and I'm like me yeah but I had this experience last weekend so in the name of full disclosure like my younger brother

is he got gifted his first AR-15 for his wedding and he knew nothing about it. I knew my dad and I knew nothing. Wait, did you say for his wedding? Yes. All right, if my wife is watching this,

I totally could have put a USB 45 on our wedding registry. Clearly people get guns for their wedding. That's all I'm saying. But this is a missis, this is in Mississippi. That might influence things slightly. Nonsense.

And it was. literally is the thing people do and it wasn't on his registry um he literally like he bumped into somebody he knew while out around the town and the guy was like hey didn't just get married then follow me out to the parking lot it brought him out to the parking lot opened the trunk of his car and just reached in and hand him in ar-fif 15th i love free trunk guns that is the best feeling ever well none of us knew anything about this firearm or than the fact that it was a um it was that weird time period where ars were being built with um like the m16 the front side towers but flat top receivers sure yeah okay yep yep

i remember exactly the builds so you and and that's all i knew about it well he hit my brother gave it to my dad and say hey can you like put a rear side on this check it out like i know nothing i don't even know if it's built right or not and i didn't know anything about it so i went over to my dad's house and started looking into it it was it's a it's a palmetto state armory best i can tell It's a whole PSA gun, which is not a good thing or a bad thing. It's a mid-tier AR at best. Yeah, they're a very acceptable rifle, in my opinion. So it's, you know, like 16-inch barrel.

The front handguard is literally like an M-4. It's like the M-4, the clamshell plastic. I still have one of those sitting on my shelf because I can't find anybody that wants it, even to pay to ship it to them. I mean, if it was M-4, so. So in the Mful disclosure, like, I am getting nostalgic as I get on the other side of 40, and I kind of want to build like an M16A2, like one end to the other. Not an M4 because I wasn't issued an M4.

I want an M16. But anyway. But it's that and then flat top receiver and then it has a carbine buffer tube. And I don't know what buttstock is on it, but it's God awful. It's like the little B almost like the Car 15 style collapsible stock. Yeah. I don't not not not a fan well I mean it's a perfectly serviceable stock and it was probably a very cheap stock at the time because they made a million of the damn things but there are better stocks for not like larger than pocket change money now I mean the magpole stocks are just phenomenally good for the price of the things yeah but that's that's kind of the highs and lows of the gun I mean we took it apart I inspected at one end of the other. I stripped down the bulk carrier group. Everything looks

fine. Like, fine. Nothing's great. Nothing's high speed. Nothing's cute. It's all fine. It looked like it was going to work just fine. So I function checked it. Everything was going fine. We took it out to the range last weekend and the literal first freaking round out of the first mother effing magazine the bullet does not tilt up coming out of the magazine it stays pointed straightforward it rams into the feed ramp it shoves the bullet so hard that it actually pushed it past the rim and then the bullet promptly spat powder all into the friggin action oh that's a mess so yeah the star chamber the chamber there's powder inside the barrel and the rifling there's powder in the fire control group the the gun has puked and then the and then the other

a hell of a malfunction yeah well then the other shoe drops in my exuberance to have everything I needed to um you know prepare this firearm for firing I brought hammers and I brought punches and I brought screwdrivers thankfully because I'm not name of names but someone who had the gun in their custody before me mounted the rear site back and I had to switch it around to point the correct direction, but yeah, neither here nor there. But anyway, so all that, but I didn't bring a cleaning kit. Whoops. Whoops.

So, yeah, there I am with the smallest punch I have, trying to use, like, a pick to, like, try to, like, juge as much of the powder as possible, cannot get around a chamber. like that the the round is sticking an inch and a half out of the chamber because it's just bound up on all that freaking powder all the junk that's in there and um yes ragglefrag was having a good laugh at this i know it it's it's funny because it's not you it's hilarious in hindsight but at the moment i could have thrown that son of a bitching rifle over the berm i was so mad and um so finally i asked my dad i'm like do you have like paper how a receipt anything made of paper in your car and he went and got a wendy's napkin and i like twist twisted it as hard as i could like into almost like a straw and then shoved it up in there and twirled it around as much as i could just try to get as much of the powder out as possible yeah yeah get the finds out yeah and then put a little put a couple of sprits of um ballastall on in the bolt in the chamber just looop it all up yeah and then i

literally like just shoot it clean well i before i got there i dropped the bolt as hard as i like as many times like drop the bowl pull the round out drop the bowl mortar the round out did that over and over and over till finally i got the bolt to shut pulled the trigger and i got to click no bang mortar the mortar the gun open again there's not even a mark on the primer so i open the gun up again look at the fire control group make sure that i have the

the legs of the spring up on top of the pin instead of down underneath. Those of you built AORs, y'all know what I'm talking about. We've all done it at least once. Yes, I did. We've all done it at least once. Any one of you lying bastards out there that says you haven't screwed up a friggin' AR trigger spring once is lying. Or they used Timney drop-ins. Or they used Timney drop-ins.

I will allow that. You might have used a Timney drop-in. Otherwise, you're a liar. And not just a liar, but a damned liar. And by the way, if any of you ever found the, the take down spring detent after you assembled your first one and sproying that thing out the out let me know because mine is still hiding in the garage i never found it mine is in the carpet of our first house

somewhere i don't know man everybody that's ever built an a r has had all these experiences that's how you know you're part of a community when i when i bought all the parts from my local gun dealer to build the first air i was going to build he handed me a bag of extra springs and detents he said this is for you it costs you nothing you will need at least two of these was he right back which you don't use oh yeah i lost two of them i i shot two of them who knows where in my house i've built so i've assembled four strip lowers i've only lost one that's fortunate yeah the very first one and then after that i learned also built a tool to install those which is not anything like like high tech or cool, but damn it works really well.

But anyway, so, you know, I realize I'm like, okay, well, apparently the bolt was close enough in a battery to like let the fire, you know, let the, let the hammer swing, but I'm not getting a good swing. It's not hitting the firing pin yet. So go right back to where I was for. Mortar the round out, drop it in, mortar it around, drop it in. Finally, I get this thing to go bang. From the first time I went bang, it did not skip a beat after that.

Good. Probably got everything cleaned up. Yeah, finally got everything cleaned out. I mean, like, the first round that actually went bang, blew all the rest of the powder and everything out of the chamber, and it was fine after that. But after that, I want to say we had the thing zeroed, I mean, inside of half a magazine.

Good. Anyway, so after all, now, now bear in mind, I must look like a monkey screw in a football. I've got this, this AR, like, gutted, shotgun in half. bulk carrier group out. I'm, I'm,

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm got tools and everything on the bench. I've had two range officers stop by. Because like, I'm being cognizant of like, keep the ammo away from the gun.

Oh, yeah. Open barrel always down, you know, down range. There were no safety violations. They were happy. They understood I was having a problem.

I was trying to be safe and I was trying to rectify. But I had two range officers stopped by to be like, whoa, what's the problem? Like, what, you're, you're having a hell at the time of this stupid rifle.

In the process of all this. this. I finally get the stupid thing working. The gentleman next to me on the range gets my attention when I put the gun down and step back from and I'm taking a break from shooting. Motions me over and says, I hate to trouble you, but you look like you know what you're doing. Did you give me a hand? And that was one of those moments where I truly was surprised. And I probably shouldn't be because I understand how many people own firearms that don't know like the finer points of them, but I was surprised in that moment because I have this huge intellectual blind spot where I'm like, well, if you own guns, you should know a lot about them, you know, like

not all of us get deep dive down to rabbit holes like you, Phil. I know that intellect, I know that rationally, right? But it doesn't hit you in the moment when you're standing there, does it? No, no, it really doesn't. I was quite surprised. I mean, this gentleman is like in his probably late 50s, maybe pushing early 60s on the high in um had had an a r built very similar to the one that my brother had um had a bureaus prism scope on it oh okay and um did not really i mean like you know he he understood that

like there's knobs on the silly thing but he really didn't he didn't understand zeroing an optic yeah it didn't really understand like the procedure and everything now in his defense i had to get a flashlight out so that i could see the markings on the knob to know which way went which that does not help and then once i explained it to him he was like oh that's really simple and i was like yeah i'm like you know i don't know how many clicks equates to what distance on the target you have set up but like you know i would say if you're really far away from the target throw four clicks into it in whichever direction you need to go yeah then adjust from there and when you get closer drop it down to two clicks yeah and then closer still drop it down to one within a magazine

he was zeroed good good but i had that experience of being the gun guy at a gun range hang on one second i have to go for it yes love well that's important can you get in trouble i'm recording like that okay love you love you as always on this podcast family does come first she's going to be so god-awful embarrassed and that's all right these things happen man i mean for the for those of you who have you know spouses and children like when my wife calls in the middle of a show i just naturally assume something must be wrong but in this case it was no i i just wanted you to know i was on my way home oh that's good but that's fine yeah i'm better that than the alternative man and the first time i got pegged as the knowing stuff gun guys

co-worker of mine showed up with a, and I mean duffel bag of antique rifles to work. My heart hurts a little bit that you said a duffel bag, because that means just all thrown in a duffel bag. That is the correct image. It was a very large duffel bag, and there was some stuff padding them a little bit, but not nearly enough. but the guy's father grandfather had passed away and he had had quite a considerable antique firearm collection

and the guy was like the guy said I don't have a void card I don't know what to do with these what do we need to do to transfer them into your name because I don't want them and it's that or I turn them into a police drop off and I said well

we can I said if you want paperwork we can go down to an FFL dealer and you're going to have to pay $40 dollars apiece for him. But at the time, in my state, you could do a online transfer where you just put in my FOID card number and you get a quick check. And then I could take possession of them with a quick bill of sale. We typed up on the work computer. He said, you're the only guy I know that shoots or does anything with guns. Are these even real guns? And the first one I picked up was a martini Henry. Oh, Jesus Christ. And I'm like,

fuck the hell yes this is a real gun first off second off are you sure you don't want these because some of these are like they're not really money valuable but you're a few hundred to a thousand dollar gun you know you know eddie is going to be irrationally angry at you now right oh i don't have these my uh my younger brother is a big fan of antique firearms uh so far i have acquired for him a 18 I think it's 1810 7 line Tula arms muzzle loading flintlock

pistol imported for the war of 1812 papered I found him that Martini Henry Springfield and 4570 government I can't remember what a couple of the other ones were but man there was a one of them and I filled his same

instead of mine because they were too tall to go in my safe the couple of the damn things even came with the two-foot bayonets on them it was it was pretty it was pretty cool um but since then a lot of my other co-workers and a few people that i only know tangentially that are like customers of the shop have shown up every now and then with like rock ragel i do need to get out of illinois you are correct ragel i literally i beat him up at least once a month about how he needs to move like north or south either way

Louisiana might be a little but Arkansas Arkansas is nice we'd have to convince the way because we all have a ton of family here and man I my grandparents are getting up in age her grandparents are getting up in age

you know it's it's not always that simple unfortunately we do want to be by family then what you need is like five acres in a friendly state with an off grid cabin. Yes. I've been looking at properties and they are phenomenally expensive. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, they are. But, you know, every once in a while at being known as the gun guy, Phil, I'm sure you've experienced this. Somebody shows up with a cardboard box full of gunpowder, primers, bullets. So this has had unknown condition.

This has happened to me twice. Once was when the neighbor, um, the neighbor's parents, were cleaning out like, you know, the old family home. And in one of the closets, they just found an old chipmunk 22 long rifle. Just like, cool. Yeah. So like if anybody is not aware, it's like a cricket, but with a woodstock and it's, you know, it's a little bit of a nicer gun. But. Oh, yeah.

They're fantastic youth 22s. Yeah. Well, they found this thing. The bolt was frozen shut just from corrosion. And it was, it had been sitting in a closet. I mean, no one can even remember shooting the thing for at least few. 15 years. So it's just been, it's just been sitting in a closet, collecting dust and, you know, slowly corroding itself shut. So he brought it over to me, not even like, hey, do you want to buy this or anything? But he was just like, hey, how do we legally destroy a farm? Because it has a serial number. And I look and he handed to me and I was like, what do you mean to destroy it? Like, I can probably get this thing working again. He was like, if you can get it working, you can have it. And I was like, sold.

Challenge accepted. So he sat in the front yard and BS with my wife for about 10 minutes. I walked back outside. I've got the whole thing. I took it out the stock, cleaned it up, bounced all the hell out of it, got the bolt freed up. That took a hammer blow, by the way. And put a bunch of patches through the board to clean out, like all the rust and the corrosion and the crap out of the friggin, the rifling, put a couple of brass jags through it. I got the thing cleaned up pretty nice.

It didn't have any real deep pitting. It was just a lot of surface. rust and the bolt was froze shut from it and I got the thing running and walk back out front 10 minutes later I got this whole gun cleaned up working it doesn't look like brand new but it looks like a functionally better care for old gun and I'm like you sure you don't want something for it and he's like what did you do and I'm like I cleaned it yes I cleaned and oil with them yeah but that ended up being the rifle that I taught my daughter to shoot with And it's still sitting in the safe.

Still, it's actually shockingly reliable and accurate. And the other time was when I had a guy that I know who worked as a locksmith, he had to drill open a gun safe for a widow. And in the process of doing that came upon like all the guy was a reloader. So he had a press, he had dyes, he had tons of brass and primers and bullets and tons of powder. And she couldn't give the stuff away. Like, the local, the local junkyards wouldn't take it because it's all, it's all combustibles. And the parish only, only accepts like combustibles and stuff like that, like hazmat like once or twice a year.

And she wanted the stuff out of the house. She was worried that it would blow up. Well, so. For the uninitiated, yeah, you could be concerned about that. So my friend, while he was over there, she was talking to him, she said, if you know somebody that wants this stuff, they can have it. So he called me because I was the only guy that reloaded that he knew. And I still have that picture somewhere. I'll have to hunt it down for you.

But literally, I filled the entire back of my hatchback with gunpowder. That's a lot of gunpowder. I filled my back seat of this hatchback with boxes of bullets. And then I had a 40 millimeter grenade ammo can filled to the top with primers, belted into the past. seat next to me. And I carefully drove home. I'd be a heavy load for that little car, too. Yeah. And then I call my dad as I was leaving the neighborhood. And I was like, hey, if you hear a really loud boom coming from, coming from east of where you are, that's me.

So I, a friend of mine passed away many years ago. Very much older gentleman. I met him through my grandparents. And when he passed away, big time reloader as well. He'd been reloading, for many, many years. And when he passed away, his wife knew I was a gun guy. I had gone shooting with her husband a lot. She asked me to help go through his gun collection and go through his ammo collection and all that.

When I showed up to help her, she had a 12-person dining room table stacked three feet deep with ammunition that she had found in the house. I'm like, what are we doing with all this? And she said, well, these are all the calibers that I don't have guns for that were Bob's guns that I don't want do you want it if anyone's wondering that's why I still have 35,000 rounds of 22 ammunition that I'm trying to shoot through

I think I think in that purchase I ended up with like 80,000 rounds of 22 LR and 5,000 rounds of 22 shorts for some reason don't even don't even announce what you paid for it because it's going to make people hate you. Oh, it will make people very angry. I tried to give her more money and she just said, no, this is what I want for it. This is what you're paying. Like, okay, that's fine. But, you know, I spent, I spent a few months, while most of a year, helping her go through and cataloging her full gun collection, finding blue book values on these things, calling up auction houses for some of it. Because, I mean, hell, one of the, one of the pairs of pistols that we had to find a buyer for was a pair of original in the original boxes cult peacemakers consecutive serial numbers like she said well

do you want them make me an offer and I said I said I said I cannot make you an offer that's not insulting my net worth is less than the value of these two pistols so no I will not be making you an offer and I had to pass up on a match pair of cult peacemakers acres all original you oh god i had a i had a similar experience with my with the widow that i got all the reloading supplies from because like i offered to pay for it like yeah i i told her i'm like i'm like what it's worth yeah i mean i told her i'm like i mean i i would like a slight discount because i'm buying a lot of this stuff all at once but like are you sure you don't want something for it right and she literally looked me and she said are you going to resell this

stuff or you're going to use it. And I was like, I told her, like, no, ma'am. I'm like, I will shoot all of this ammunition. Well, I told her, I'm like, the powders that are like these powders in this pile, I already know I have low data for. I can shoot that stuff tomorrow. These powders, I can't fool with, but my dad does. Like, she sent me away with like two and a half, eight pound jugs of, uh, Winchester, uh, was it 110? that's like the the quintessential 44 magnum powder my dad has all that because at the time at the time i didn't have it i didn't have my throat seven and dad loaded a lot of 44 magnum so like i was like that's all for my dad like i think i still have 10 pounds of winchester 231 i got

21 it's h 110 win 231 yeah but chester 231 great powder yeah but i told her i'm like i'm not selling any of this stuff. I'm like, I'm going to give away what I can't use and I'm going to use most of it. And she said, my husband would be tickled pink if somebody was going to use this. So no, you can't pay me for it. But like, that's just, I don't know, like, that's, that's the weird part about being like the quote unquote gun guy is like you just, you find that stuff shows up. Yeah. And I find that you find yourself, I don't want to oversell it like it's a fraternity or something, but like, you find yourself in these positions where, like, other people are like, oh, you're into guns too. And you have that natural common ground for again,

traips upon. You can, you can find something to talk about about, about gun stuff with everybody. You know, it, well, at least the people that are in the shooting sports, because there's always some matter of esoterica about their specific niche gun thing that you're going to find fascinating. And, and, you know, as much as I would love to say, like, I know that. So I know that within the gun community, like, I know there's gatekeeping. I know there's elitism. I know that there's assholery. Like, I get that. All that's there and all that's very fair. But I will say that my experience has been that I've met more people, more willing to share information than I've found the opposite. The only places I have run into gatekeeping and snobbery have been typically,

a, I'm going to say poor quality instructor. A very poor quality type of fuddish instructor that's carrying a 1911 in a leather holster outside the waistband during class. That's amazingly specific, Nick. I'm thinking of two instructors in particular at one of my local ranges that they are the only two people I have met in person that were a problem for snobbing. robbery and and gatekeeping can we also throw under nines they hate plastic they hate ARs can we also throw in the person with the the drop leg holster that the the pistol rides like down by their knee

yeah it's probably a problem too but the only other place i found with that is online honestly where everyone's anonymous no it's not and that's one of the reason that's why i dismiss it out of hand like that it's it's not real life these people are not going to act like that in person they're just frankly not they have the room to act like an asshole so they get their little jollies off on that fine well enough whatever but anytime i've been to a gun range shooting class um anything like that uh gun swap meets stuff like that meeting up with a guy to buy a gun or buy some ammo off them they're all pretty cool people that just want to show off their cool toys and try to see yours and maybe shoot yours i mean Hell, I've shot more guns for swapping mag for mag with a guy than I have guns I've bought or sold or rented. So this is the part that I'm going to struggle at mightily because like I've just done someone this. Okay, but hear me out. We start off by saying I have this enormous intellectual blind spot, right?

Mm-hmm. in 2025 on the spectrum Phil just naturally assumes that if a person wanted information they would go to like you know YouTube Google food read the manual do

do all those things that Phil would do feel wanted information about firearms like when I got my first night inhibition device the literal first thing I did was look up the army fucking field manual for the PBS 14 because why wouldn't i the army the department of defense paid money to have this book written that tells you

all about the stupid thing probably a wildly exorbitant about the money the uh the the fm yeah i'm sure i'm sure it costs millions oh no no i'm sure the federal government it cost millions cost the dod millions cost me a trip through internet land exactly highly recommend but like i that's the way my mind works is like i i there's it's not like i know like oh there's just one website you go to for all the internet knowledge about this thing. It's like, no, I just go find it. And I just, my intellectual blind spot is that I

have that personality where I'm, I will spend hours researching something until I feel like I know it well enough. Yeah. Totally dismissing the fact that the average person has neither the attention span, the patients or the unrestrained autism to go through that exercise.

True. So, resources for newbies in 2025 when the internet is freaking filled to the brim with information and sometimes wrong information unfortunately like I think that is

almost a bigger problem than a lack of information at this point. It's how do you tell the new guy how to discern good information from bullcrap because in the era of Google AI you can get

some phenomenally bad answers to Google searches now. Yes, you can. And I feel like that is almost a bigger problem to date. Like if we, if we've had this conversation before over the last nine years, probably three or four times. But in years past, it was where do you find good information? Now it's where do you find not stupid sky net information? So my, my first thing that I always tell a new shooter to do, before you do anything with the gun, read the manual.

Read the fuck mothering manual. Because seriously, no, seriously, a lot of your questions will be answered by the manual. I get it. It's boring. It's dry. It's technical reading. I understand. The manual of arms will be in the manual.

I will say that you can skip basically the entire warning section because if you need to be told to take the bullets out of the gun while cleaning it or don't point the barrel at yourself. Okay. But for a new shooter. You cannot be told that enough times. I think I just firearm safety rules. You're right. Firearm safety rules. And they're all in that manual.

Every gun you buy goes with the five rules. Once though to get it out of my system. Okay. Go for it. It's out of my system. But I do, I do believe you should. You should read any equipment you buy. You should at the very least read through the operating instructions first.

I don't care if it's a gun. I don't care if it's a lawnmower. care if it's a cordless power drill. You should probably read through the manual first. And by the way, the thing you and I were talking about right before we went on. So these are 12-gauge snap caps. I have dummy rounds for every single firearm in this home.

And they are for a couple of reasons. First of all, for training. Second of all, so that I can practice the manual of arms with something that approximates real ammunition in the firearm before I take it out to the range. And in the case of 12 gauge, because one of the things I've had to make peace with with a 12 gauge is like,

you know, the old adage of if you're not shooting, you should be moving or you should be reloading or you should be moving while reloading, well, that's triply so when your magazine capacity is seven, eight or nine rounds. Yeah. With a shotgun, if you're not, if you're not doing anything else, you should be reloading. Yes. So I literally, before I went to the range with this thing with that Brett up for the first time, I got six of these things. And I literally like 15 minutes a day for a couple of weeks. I just practice loading, unloading, violent loading, over the top loading, from under the bottom reloading over and over and over so that my hands started figuring out where to index, where to, how does this feel to come from this direction versus this direction? And like, it sounds. It sounds dumb, but like teaching my body, the mechanics have had a reload shotgun when I'd never own one before.

It's wildly different than a rifle or pistol, especially magazine fed. And it is miles different from a revolver, reloading style. And that is one of the very first things. Hey, babe. This is Rabelais watching now. But that is like one of the first things I recommend to new guys is I'm like, hey, whatever cartridge your firearm shoots, go find some snapcabs. they are stupid cheap you can get them on freaking amazon yep you can get them in six to ten box usually yeah most gun stores in fact typically they'll have your 45 your nine and your 12 gauge

snap caps in in the store they'll probably be the aluminum ones the little silicone tips in place of the primer they're fine they're perfectly acceptable to use they don't mimic the weight of a loaded magazine in firearm which is what the little bit more expensive ones do so if you can't afford it jump up to that that's that's the second thing i recommend to phil is is well the second thing i recommend is if you have a long gun buy a sling if you have a pistol by a holster yeah then snap caps i almost because if you i recommend the snap caps first and i'll tell you why because to me like part and parcel to being able to operate a firearms being able to operate it safely yeah and it is really with depending on the manual of arms depending on the firearm itself it's very difficult to

practice in a realistic way, loading and unloading a firearm without dummy rounds. Like, if you have a magazine, if you have a magazine fed weapon and you pull the slider, you pull the bolt back, it's most of them we're going to lock open. So that right there, you can't, it becomes, I like to pray, I like to teach a person to like at the basics, load, unload, make ready, prepare to fire, do all those things in as most realistic as setting as human possible with dummy rounds. So that when you get out, when you get out to the range, like, even before we get to the argument of like, you need a holster for a handgun, which you do, or you need a sling for a rifle, which you do, or you need field gear, which you do. But just to go out to a flat ranging, dick off with your buddies, you at least need to know how to safely load and unload the firearm.

And that's easier to teach a person with dummy rounds than without. That's true. That's true. And I think I think the reason why I go to holster and sling first is because if I'm helping a new person out, I'm. I'm probably bringing dummy rounds with me, potentially, but I also tell, but I also tell a person, get the dummy rounds immediately for another reason. I have a really, really OCD habit, and I've always maintained it and it is never once, I've never once run into this problem, but I want to function check a firearm after I'm done cleaning it and reassembling it. I want to make sure everything works the way it's supposed. to i want to make sure it's drop safe i understand that like the likelihood that you could assemble a

firearm wrong enough to make it not function properly but it still goes together like that's a really narrow window it is but it's doable it is doable i've done it but i use i use dummy rounds to function check firearms that's fair that's fair so maybe i should move that up on my priority list for them i mean there are no wrong answers here to it's to me not really but i mean if you have if you have a if you have a sports shooter or a flat range guy or somebody is just shooting for fun you need a holster you need a sling is going to be a more difficult sell then you really should get some snap caps so that you can practice like loading and unloading and this and the other and you know they become an item on your workbench for after you do some work to the gun or you clean it so you can

make sure it still functions correctly and by the way when someone else gets a new firearm you can be like hey i've got some dummy rounds i can pass them along to you so it becomes the thing that like you know you can use to bring somebody else into it sure i've actually not found it hard to get people uh that are just getting into guns to buy a holster and buy a sling i've actually found that the sling for the rifle is an easier sell than snap caps because once they because if they've shot a rifle without it and then tried shooting a rifle with it the the difference in handling is actually very noticeable um don't know. I've had mixed experiences and I find that it tends to be a lot with, I can't even

really say it's like down to like the people that are like primarily shooting on a flat range because like I know people who in their head, they're like, oh yeah, this is a home defense gun, but I don't need a sling or I don't need a holster because it's going to go out of the safe or out of the nightstand or out of the whatever. And I'm going to do stuff with it and I'm not going to like, you know, put in a holster because I'm not going to need a holster. And like I understand that. But I don't. I think it's a flawed argument. Because there's any time you're going to be doing administrative,

if it's going to be a home defense gun, number one, it should be loaded. And number two, it should be secured away from prying hands of young children or, or incompetent adults. Which means you're probably going to have to do some administrative handling of a loaded gun,

which is safer for handguns in a holster. Yeah, Raggle is correct. Shotguns are. notorious for having issues due to improper assembly and i will say that i said some things that will probably i will probably have to answer for to my creator the first time i tried to reassemble my a 300 oh yeah me too everybody seems to have that same issue where they get they get that bolt locked up and it won't go to the rear yeah i mean i i did i did figure out what i was doing wrong and stopped aping it together like an idiot but before that i said some very unkind things

yeah there was definitely some sweating happening there yeah i'm pretty sure i'd said some very ugly things about bretta and the entire country of italy and all italians and whoever vetted the shotgun i i had a moment i had a moment it'll be fine you'll get better even in alpha charlie concepts so and you know the other thing i tell people to do is go to your the range and When you go to the range to rent a range spot, tell the range safety officer, hey, I'm new. I've not shot this gun before. Can you walk me through it if you don't have a friend to take with you?

They will drop whatever they're doing unless they're currently enforcing safety violations, which they shouldn't have to. And they will help you show you how to safely manipulate the gun if they know how to. Or they'll find somebody in the gun shop that does know how to. Because they're there for your safety. and to help everyone have a good time. And I'll be the first to admit that, like, I've been on the firing line several times.

And, like, you don't usually have to walk up and down that firing line too many times before you find somebody that has the firearm that in question or one very similar. Right. Or at the very least have shot one almost identical to it. I mean, the battery of arms and modern firearms are very common. The control locations may be slightly different. but a semi-automatic pistols battery of arms is a semi-automatic pistol for the most part.

I'm laughing in C-Z. The manual of arms is almost identical to a C-Z. Double-action, single-actions. Well, yeah, you can do double-action single-action. In the world of striker-fired guns, dude, my C-Zs always get people looking cross-eyed. Well, yeah, but it's still a D-A-S-A action, which has been used for many. decades. Nick, are you aware that there's like a whole generation and a half full of driving adults that don't know how to operate manual transmissions? Oh, I am. And how long has it been

since manuals were like the de facto you must know how to drive one to operate a vehicle? 20 years. So how long do you think it's going to be before striker fired handguns have so completely and totally overwhelmed the market that people look at these funny little things poking out the back of guns called hammers are like what's that i don't think they'll go away entirely i don't i think they will be more common on firearms than manual drive manual transmissions will be on cars as a percentage of use i hope so so the true cost of gun ownership i will say that i've had this i've had a version of this discussion multiple times where i've told somebody like there there was for the longest time in the minute i bring this up

somebody's going to make somebody's going to spurn this back in action but for the longest time there's this running joke about hey phil have you gotten that 338 lapua yet because i i have wanted a big boy rifle for a long time a 338 or 50 bmg and i have absolutely no need for one i have phil have you heard of the glorious 460 weatherby magnum yes i have but i know where there is one for sale hold up a second just just just just contain yourself So I have no need for a big boy rifle. I do not need to shoot more than a couple hundred yards in my wildest fantasies. I really just want one so I can convert, you know, I can convert money into noise.

And just for the pure like, you know, erection creating effect of shooting a big freaking rifle. Because I like big freaking rifles and I like recoil. They just make me happy. They do. And every time somebody's like, dude or 338 only cost this much or you know like if you want to get on a waiting list Serbu friggin sells a um the rn 50 for like i think it was like 1800 bucks last i checked don't those have a habit of occasionally grenading so that's that that's in our discussion

i don't put that on cheap and 50 cal don't just i don't put that at the feet of the gun so much as i do the ammo because when that ammo got tested afterwards the ammo was wildly overpressured. Was it? Okay. I did not hear that. I retract what I said then. Bearing a mind that the way that gun is basically a breach, it's basically a, a, a threading

breach block. Yeah. And you know how strong threading can be. Extremely if it's done correctly. Okay. So what, um, what the manufacturer had stated was that he built this thing to, um, yes, Jeff Jags come to the rescue only with improperly loaded slap rounds. So the ammunition that blew up that R&50 was wildly over pressure.

And that is now- That'll be a problem in any gun. Yeah. But that being said, I want one. And I have people tell me like, oh, well, you could get this or you could get this. I noticed my had sell one for this much. And I'm like, yes, comma, however, comma. Then I have to buy the freaking ammunition for it or I have to buy the reloading components

for it. and 338 bullets are not cheap and 50 DMG. You need a bigger reloading press too. Well, for 338 I can do with what I have. Do you have a rock trucker? Yes. Okay, then you can do it with what you have.

But for 50 BMG, I would have to get a different press because RCbS makes a press for the 50 BMG. Or I would have to go buy surplus 50 BMG for like three bucks around. You know, like I would have to buy ammo, quite a bit of ammo. and there's absolutely nothing about owning a weapon that large that is practical or cheap.

And the scopes get really pricey with that kind of recoil. Yeah. So buying the firearm is just like the first little drop in the bucket of what you're going to be in for. And that's been my, that's what's helped me back from buying those firearms for years. But that's all firearms because the minutes you get, the minute I got, I mean, like my CZPO-09, the minute I got that thing I think it was 600 bucks give or take then it was okay the holster which had to be custom manufacturer because nobody made one exactly the way I wanted it with level two retention that wound to be in 140 bucks the magazines for the stupid thing are like 35 bucks a whack the plus two base pads are like eight bucks a piece I mean like the weapon light the this the that you know and things just add up like you wind up spending 50 to a 100% the value of the firearm. Even before we started talking about

a lot of ammo. Yep. Like just a small complement of defensive ammunition, a handful of extra magazines, a holster, a couple of accoutrements, you are 50 to 100% at the value of the firearm in support equipment.

And then you want to talk about... I bought the A300. It was over the cost of the firearm. Ammunition, sling, the shotgun cards that I keep some of on my desk here the class that I immediately signed up for let's see

yeah yeah I think it ended up like think out the door I got a hell of a deal on that barretta it was just about 700 and I think I spent 850 between ammo class sling and a few other accoutrements for it so I spent closer to a grand on mine But then again, I didn't like, I didn't wait for a sale or do anything. I literally walked into my, my friend's gun store and said, I'm here to contribute to your kid's college fund. I want one of those.

And he had to order it for me. And when you have to order a gun, you don't get it. You don't get a discount. Not even a friend, not even a we deploy together discount. Oh, see, I get, I get, I occasionally do slide engraving for my FFL dealer prices. Well, but that doesn't apply when you have to order a firearm. then it's whatever it could well it doesn't apply for me he only does orders he's a kitchen table ffl i got so but like you said in this case like i bought that a 300 and i've spent well more than

the cost of a firearm between you the sling uh the i cheated on the on the light i had the light left over for another build but um the sling the optic mount the optic three cases of buckshot eight or nine or ten boxes of slugs um breaching slugs yeah the breaches slugs if you're going to have a 12 gauge get some breaching slugs those are fun the uh the two cases of bird shot yep for training yeah and chokes i think you were getting chokes i did wind of getting just one extra choke but yeah i mean i've i have easily spent the value of the gun and some more yeah i mean i'm looking at spending the value you have the gun again probably next year due to the joys of homeownership in a in an optic a light

and a mount system for both because i just i keep looking at the at the cheaper optics and i'm just like but is it really going to last i don't know i mean i'm rolling the i'm rolling the dice on my hollow sun and we'll see i don't consider hollow sun a cheap optic I think it's, to me, it's a mid-range optic as far as price goes, especially for the reliability that Hall of Sunn has seemed to generate. I mean, it's now a battlefield tested optic in multiple theaters seems to do okay. And that's probably more aggressive than I'm going to treat it. I will say that 507 comp is like the perfect shotgun red dot, in my humble opinion. Yeah, Raggle, I have heard of Swamp Fox and I have.

considered them. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not sold. I mean, I have, I, go ahead. I mean, I have a swamp fox on an eye mill. I would be a little leery about putting one or a 12 gauge. I, I, I have called them, and I have talked to them about it. And they said, why do you want to put it on a semi out of 12 gauge? And I said, because I want a red dot on my semi out of 12 gauge. And the guy laughed and said, well, if you break it, your warranty covers it. So, that's a vote of confidence. They told me do it. And if I break it, they'll give me another one.

And I'm like, well, if it breaks from shotgun recoil, I'm not going to want another one. But no, you could always get it. Stick it on something else. Yeah, on something else. Yeah, I could always mill some of my slides on my, on my striker fired pistols and start getting into the real boy game again. I'm still shooting irons on pistols. I love red dots on rifles, but I just, I've never. bothered to put a red dot on a pistol.

I got to make that jump sooner or later. I know from having shot other people's red dotted pistols that it works. And I'm sure with the right training, I would be just as quick. But I'm just as accurate and just as fast with my iron sights as the guys are who are running dots. Now, these are not like top tier competition guys, but the guys that I shoot, against my shooting classes. I'm keeping up with them and I don't have a problem with it. And my battery never goes dead because there's no fucking batteries in a True Glow site.

The only real reason I want to put a red dot on any handgun more than anything else is just to try it. I mean, I am very happy with, I'm very happy with shooting iron sights. I haven't, I don't think I would make that jump anytime soon with like a carry gun. but for something like my CZPO9, which is more like a battle belt kind of gun, I mean, I'd like to try it. You know,

I, in my opinion for an everyday carry gun, I think the red dot sites are durable enough now that you can count on them to survive. I think you can. I don't think there's an argument anymore about them being too fragile for everyday carry, assuming that you look at the gun

you know like throughout the week make sure that your your battery's not dead make sure you haven't shattered the glass make sure you haven't busted the emitter or whatever you're going to have to do a little additional maintenance with that point of order if it's a carry gun and you have a dot on it i would say go and buy the gratuitously expensive energizer ultimate lithiums not because they'll last longer which they will but because they will never ever develop battery cancer and leak. And as much as those optics cost. Well, I mean, I'm not so like in my matter of fact, this thing runs off of like whatever

streamlight branded batteries I buy, I buy in bulk. I got like three cases of the stupid things on this equipment shelf back here. They're equivalent to the Energizer, yeah, I think. But if I kill one of these things, like if it gets, if it gets jacked up, Corotam, you can tell from all the Anodized and worn off this thing, this light has not been treated nicely. I've beat the crap out of this thing for years. And I've got another

one sitting in the wall safe, just waiting for this one to die. Best of luck. Yes. But the only thing I will run in like my PBS 14 is Entertizer Ultimate Lithiums. It's a

$4,000 piece of equipment. It will cost me $4,000 to replace it. It would probably cost about 12 to 1,500 to have it serviced if something went wrong with it. I'm going to put the expensive batteries in it. Yeah, there's a cost-benefit analysis to be made there. And cutting corners on your on your batteries, especially when you're into like a $4,000 piece of equipment. It just, it doesn't make sense to me.

Well, and that's why I apply that same rationale to like your carry, if you have an optic on your carry gun, because like when that gun comes out of the holster and anger, it is the worst day of your life. Yeah. If you have to draw your gun on a living, breathing human being, it is officially the worst day of your life. I don't want the worst day of my life to be compounded when the dot doesn't come on because the stupid thing has exploded and puked battery acid all into the guts. And there is no fixing this stupid thing. That is not worth trying to save half the money on a $4 battery. Yeah. you know it's twice the cost but it's it's it's four dollars like yeah cost benefit okay cost

benefit analysis at a certain point you know dig in your digging your couch cushions a little bit deeper and find the pennies in the quarters that buy the better battery quit being and heard about it absolutely but yeah that's that's that's that's one of the things you got to remember is just you're going to have additional cost when you get into a new gun yeah raggle-fraggle saying, according to the inter-rebs, Burris fast fire is good for shotguns, also the vortex crossfire.

I mean, I have looked at both. I do like vortex optics. I had a vortex on my AR for a very long time. I have vortexes on my 300 wind mag and my lot six, and I have always been happy with their optics.

I haven't been disappointed and I've had a lot of different brands of optics. I have, I know of a person who did shoot their vortex scope and vortex replaced it. I actually talk about blast from the past. I still have an old

Bushnell TRS 25 sitting on an ultimac on my AK. That's fantastic. Yeah. If you want to talk about like the granddad of optics on AKs, that's a very very old setup. But it still works.

Raggle, if I already have one, throw it on and try it. What I have is a vortex, I think it's the spitfire prismatic. It's very large and much higher mounting than we'll work on a shotgun.

Because at the time, I wasn't wearing glasses, but I had a stick in a stigmatism. So every red dot except for the prismatics would star flare like just absolute dog shit. I could not shoot with them. I could not use them, but I

came upon the vortex with the prismatic optic and that that was clutch because on or off I could use that optic with the etched glass reticle, which is great for me. Now that I've got glasses that fix my stigmatism better. I don't get the starburst quite so much so I could go to a traditional dot. I just, I haven't bought one yet. Or you do like me and you just use the center of the starbursts as your aiming point. It works okay.

It works okay. Okay. I was 40 years old. before I learned that that's not supposed to do that yes it's the only set of eyes I've ever had and I agree ever since I've been looking through red dots I saw like you know the little starbursts I just assumed that's what they're supposed to look like and I learned over the years how to work with it and then somebody finally told me like yeah man you can tell if you get a distinctitism when you look at a red dot it looks like that I'm like you mean it's not

supposed to I figured it out when I was learning to drive that I I had screwed up pies because I asked my parents like, how the hell does everybody drive with all the fucking bright light stars goddamn everywhere at night? And my dad said, they're not supposed to look like that. They just look like round dots. Like, oh, that's not good. Yeah. That I just assumed was the way it was supposed to be.

Right. I was smart enough to ask. Well, thanks, Nick. I was stubborn enough to try to persevere. through it, I guess. Exactly. I was just irritable. All right.

So rounding this out, next steps to advance your skills. This is, I guess to me, is a simple enough question. Like, you know, training class,

lots of practice, lots and lots and lots and lots of ammunition fired into berms. Lots and lots of reps dry firing. Alpha Charlie Concept says, gets multiple overlapping oval stars and he has to try to figure out which one's the real dot buddy that sucks that's that's red dot rough that's red dot peekaboo right there yeah man i i i understand why you only go prismatics i have not found a prismatic that will fit on my shotgun yet that's the right

mounting height yeah that's like the one thing i came to realize about putting a red dot on my shotgun is that i cannot imagine shooting that thing with a chin weld like you you got to You got to have your optic really smashed down on top of that receiver. You definitely do. You know, one thing that I that I don't see advocated for hugely for shooters that you're not quite a new shooter. You've done one of your training classes, maybe two. Novice. Yeah, novice shooter.

Get into a competition. Get into a few competitions. And when you show up, well, first of all, I'll find out what you're going to need to show up because it's going to be a little more gear. It's going to be a mandatory sling. It's going to be a mandatory holster. It's going to be extra mags, mag pouches, snacks, because snacks are always a good call and a lot of water. So the last thing you need is somebody getting heat stroke on the firing line.

But tell the organizer, hey, I'm new. I've never been to a competition before. How does this work? How do I do this safely? They will be more than happy. They'll be over the moon to walk you through the whole process. And if the organizer isn't, maybe walk out of the competition. because they're probably not the best place to be.

I've not once had a competition organizer at the very least not say, okay, here's an experienced guy. We're going to pair you with him. He's going to walk you through everything. And honestly, I have gotten more good out of getting into competitions a little bit, not to try to win,

but just to push myself and to push my speed and to push my capability. Then I got out of my initial couple classes. You know, because I had figured out the mechanics of shooting a gun on my own, pretty much. It wasn't that complicated. But getting into a competition, watching the people in how they move and how they reload and how they manipulate their gun helped me tremendously. And it introduced me to a better level of quality of instructors that you don't just find at your local gun store necessarily running the Saturday afternoon class kind of deal. no i mean that that's all fair advice i would also say um and honestly that this is not even just a novice or a beginner this is an across-the-board thing like i will be the first to say that

when i was younger in shooting i had absolutely no in no baked incentive for dry fire draining didn't didn't see the utility in it thought it was dumb thought it was a waste of time go to the range turn ammunition into noise like that's how you you get better that was my thought process it's one way i will i will and i feel like most people probably fall into that boat that's that's that's i don't feel like that's a i don't feel like that's an uncommon thing but what i will say is that covid completely and totally changed my mind about dry fire because very suddenly because my favorite gun range was on public land and my state was run by an asshole at the time,

I couldn't go shooting anymore for about a year and a half. Yeah. And I started dry fire training a lot. I did it for stress. I did it for the same reasons I went to the range. I did it for stress relief. I did it to keep my skills up. I did it to keep myself from, you know, getting stale.

And I just kept on pushing. And what I came to realize was that when I got being, on my initial preconception of like what dry fire training was and I started practicing from the holster. I started doing it on timer. I started doing different things. I put the money out there and invested in getting the, um, the black beard and then the black beard X. So I could run my ARs and run, you know, like have, have a trigger reset and really be able to run some pretty, pretty intense drills in a dry fire setting with my AR I got to the point where I was really and truly like pushing and building a skill set and it wasn't costing me time to drive to the

range and it wasn't costing me ammo it was in my it was in my it was right here in this office it was these targets right here I would pay stupid amounts of money for one of those for my my EDC gun my MMP2.0 I know you can get I can get an air soft analog that's very close that's CO2 powered or green gas powered and I've considered it or in the house training but I've got a buddy that has a range that's not too far from here that I can go to to shoot or I can go to one of my local ranges was actually a couple around me but so remind me I'm going to look and I'll send it to you if I find it um I know recently Mantis was making some noise about making some kind of a version of

like the Blackbeard for clocks. I know that's been a discussion point for them for years. I think I remember seeing something about it starting to come to market. I can't imagine M&Ps are going to be far behind. Oh, man, I would, I would absolutely throw down the cash for that. But I also know, I also know that I had a discussion with, I don't know if you ever met him, Brian. And we used for him as Sasquatch because a big old, huge guy. I don't want to put his last name out on the show.

It's been years, been years since he's been, you know, in the public eye doing podcasts and everything, but I've met him in person. But he had, this was when the mantis first kind of came out. He was running a mantis on his clock. He had a, oh, what was it? What brand was it? It was the magazine that would reset the striker on a clock. Oh, I'm not familiar. but that's that's cool.

So I don't know if they make something like that similar to the M&P. It would at least let him reset the trigger. Sure. Manis having adjustable sensitivity, he was able to get it to read that striker read, that hammer drop. Huh. Every now and then it would also read the striker reset,

but it still gave me it. Now, it didn't do anything for like, you know, the slide moving. Sure, but that's more negligible than a proper trigger pull and proper biomechanical stance. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, to me, there are ways. Like, I'm not going to lie.

I spent a lot of time in here with my CZs, and I would literally do whole training sessions, double action every single shot. That makes sense. Is it a pain in the behind? Absolutely it is. But guess what? I can shoot my CZ single action pretty respectably.

Double action is a little trickier. It is. But if you're going to carry a double single gun, or if you're going to rely on a double single gun, you need to practice on that double. I mean, I had a Beretta 92 for a while. Well, actually, it was an ATI clone of a Breta 92. I think my dad has that now.

I should see if he wants to sell that back to me. Since I've gotten this Brett of shotgun, I've suddenly developed a want for a Barreta 92. They're kind of go to the M16A2 I want to build. I don't know. I'm just getting nostalgic. I kind of want to mod the Beretta 92 frame to throw a modern rail system on the bottom

and then throw a red dot some kind of red dot integral system in the top just because I have to I have to I just want it just like just like you know pre GY late late desert storm yeah I mean they're great guns they really are yeah but yes ragel dry fire was my stress ball and um I mean it's one of those things where like it's a good way to build your skills. I don't know that I'm going to ever argue it's like better or worse than a training class

or better or worse than a competition or better or worse to go into the gun range. But I will happily argue that it works. They accomplish the same things in different ways. And the more different ways you can train your muscle memory, the better you're going to be long term. All of the best shooters that I know of all advocate for dry fire training as well as live range training. with the only caveat I will ever give about dry fire is like my personal method for dry fire is wherever the guns come from the ammunition stays in that room you go into a different room that is sterile that has no amy no live ammunition in it and that is where you load your dummy rounds

and you do all your training and then the dummy rounds come out of the firearm you go back into the room with the live ammo and you're reloaded in there and then put it away and that's two reasons. First of all, is to make sure that live ammo never comes into the training area, because I don't want to have to fix drywall. True. Or neighbors. Or neighbors. The neighbors fog them. Anyway. And the other thing

is because I don't ever want dummy rounds to get into the damn home defense guns and then get put away in the safe with dummy rounds in it. That is not the proper way to use dummy rounds is in a live fire exercise. True. Although, I will advocate for using dummy

rounds on a training range. For forced malfunction training. Yes, but at 3 o'clock in the morning when you hear glass breaking, that is not a training. That is not the time for forced malfunction training. No. No, that is the time for things to work as expected and predicted with no interruptions. So that's my personal method. It makes sure that there's dummy rounds in the training area.

There's live ammunition where the guns get stored. Those two realms never cross over. You don't mix and mingle, take things back and forth. It is extremely OCD. It is overkill. I admit it. I have never punched a hole in this drive while by accident. So it's working.

Drive fire training only becomes live training when you fuck up. Yes. So if you have no ammunition in the room, it's a lot harder to screw up. So set yourself up for success. And listen, you don't want to wind up on Brandon Herrera's YouTube channel because you popped around off while you were dry fire training in front of a camera. for your idiot friends you don't want to do that you don't want to be that guy you do not want to be that guy i mean if you become that guy i will laugh at you mercilessly i i will i will i will

ridicule you a fair bit yeah because it's it's entirely avoidable if you take basic precautions it is entirely avoidable raggle fraggle no cameras allowed you can you can avoid the camera if you want but bring a timer like in the more stress you can introduce into your training regimen the the better, I mean, push yourself until things fall apart. And then you know how far you can push them. You can actually get a pretty okay shot timer app on your phone for that sort of thing. They're not as good as the actual shot timers, but they're all right. And it only costs a couple bucks for the app.

I don't think there's a free one that's any good, but there might be. All right. Well, I guess we beat this one to death like I kind of figured we'd would. Good. It's been an hour and a half. It was entertaining. Hmm. So, yeah, Matter of F, is nine years old.

God willing, it will probably become 10 years old. Oh, yeah. KD5 PCK, bring my wife. She will increase your stress level. I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole. Nope. Nope. Because she lives close enough to me to come over here and deal with me individually and personally.

Absolutely. all right anything else to chuck in here nothing out top of mind no i would just say that you know if if you are new to firearms then maybe take some of this to heart because we're trying to point to the right direction and if you find yourself being someone else's gun guy um you know just collect yourself get yourself going to the right direction and realize that we were all there and we all had to ask lots of stupid questions at one point before we figured out what we were doing. And when you hit the limit of your knowledge, be honest with them. When you hit the limit of your knowledge, please find them a resource to get them the rest of the way. And if you don't

know, you should figure it out with them so you can both become educated. All right. And I'll pitch this right before we head out the door, Ragglefraggle, I'll message you with a couple of show topics I want to toss out. By all means, to the list, to the patrons, you'll have the easiest way to get a hold of us humanly possible because you freaking nerds aggravate us constantly anyway. And for the rest of the listeners, there are ways to get in touch with us. There's

there's, um, I was about to say signal, but that's for the patrons. You can message Facebook group, although that's a horrible way to get a hold of us because I don't check that very often. There's Instagram. I check marketplace. There's the notification. There's the contact

section on the website. There's a contact section on the website. Instagram message is usually about the best way to get a hold of me these days. Yeah. All right. Matter of fact is going to go out the door.

God knows what we're going to talk about next week. I didn't think we were talking about our birthday until I realized what day today was. So happy birthday and Matter of facts and see all next week. Yep. Bye, everybody. Night.

We're going to do. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to do. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. Thank you.