The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Cash and Carry

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

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*The boys start planning and prepping for their annual Summer Camp. Phil uncorked the wallet for his first hard case since his deployment days, while he and Nic talk about the boring yet necessary endeavor of storing, and transporting their gear, arms, and ammo. Stuart even tossed them a softball over the plate to talk about Grey Man transportation, something we all should seriously consider.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 creatorBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prepper-broadcasting-network--3295097/support.Support PBN and become a MEMBER of the PBN FAMILY! Free courses, Members only videos, reviews, and podcast! The Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyJoin the Prepper Broadcasting Network for expert insights on #Survival, #Prepping, #SelfReliance, #OffGridLiving, #Homesteading, #Homestead building, #SelfSufficiency, #Permaculture, #OffGrid solutions, and #SHTF preparedness. With diverse hosts and shows, get practical tips to thrive independently – subscribe now!Newsletter – Welcome PBN FamilyGet Your Free Copy of 50 MUST READ BOOKS TO SURVIVE DOOMSDAYSupport PBN with a Donation 

Welcome back to Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravilley, Andrew, Nick, are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts podcast. I'm tired. He's energetic, and this is still the least professional podcast on the internet.

I had coffee before dinner. I this this is a glass of um knob creek and dr pepper because it was just that kind of day at work today makers mark and makers mark that that'll work that'll work it will it's delicious all right i see a jeff jagg a kd5 pck proud texan and raggle fraggle in the chat glad y'all can join us tonight guys i have to be better about acknowledging the people there in the chat i'm not great at admin work but i'm trying to be better about it. Nope.

And I will try not to distract you from it today. I mean, there's whiskey in the cup, so it's easier than usual. It is. It's kind of like picking on a special needs kid at this point, you know, trying to get me off track when I'm drinking. Yeah. It's like, I'm pretty much going to do that if you just leave me in my own devices, so I don't require much, much assistance.

No. And it's always amusing either way. True, true. Anyway, if you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron, you should see that link in the show description. There's patrons in the chat and they are partially responsible, maybe mostly responsible for the topic today, even though they didn't ask for it like last time. True. It is started because of the patron camp out. Yes, although someone's going to point out that it was my idea and I'll have to blame it on somebody else. Fair.

Anyway, if you don't want to be a patron, you still buy merch for the vibes from the Southern Gouts. That link is also in the show description and one of these days, actually maybe while we're up in Kentucky. It'd be a good idea to sit around and talk about shirt ideas. Yes. While we're inebriated. Yes. Yes.

Much arm twisting has to happen to get that to happen. I mean, there is a brand new to be released tomorrow, cask strength bourbon that I'm going to go pick up. It's like 152. Oh. Yeah. They call it hazard or hazmat. It looks really good.

They should call it rocket fuel at that rate. We'll see. We'll see if they have any left by the time I'd get there. And if they do, I will bring some to the camp out. Much appreciated. We'll give our honest, enthusiastic opinion of it. And last one at least, if you like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee, code M-O-F at checkout. Or you could not use the promo, pay full fridge to support a small business.

And I will probably harass you about not using the promo code. unless you're using a subscription. Thank you. In which case, I will remind myself that that is not a thing. You cannot have discount plus discount because then you just wind up getting coffee at a loss. And businesses don't stay alive very long to do that. That's true. Yeah.

Slide sidebar. We had a semi-emergency meeting of disaster coffee last weekend to talk about price increases and everything else. And, you know, just cleaning up some stuff in the store. I was a little bit concerned about the price of the bunker beans. So for anybody that's all that's order it, that doesn't order those, that's like, you know,

the bags of green coffee beans on my back shelf back there. And I was a little concerned about the price. My concern is always, are we pricing ourselves out of the market? But after a peruse through our competitors, so I was like, oh, hell, we're still undercutting everybody.

I don't feel bad now. Good. But I mean, it's a fair, it's a fair word. It is. It is, especially when you're dealing with other buyers that can buy in larger volume. Sometimes they can get better pricing that way. Yeah. It also kind of weighs on the scale, though, when you consider the fact that, like, you know, me and James and Andrew, like, this is not just a business we're used to a rich ourselves. Like, this is serving the community that we're a part of. So we're always very cognizant of, like, striking the balance between business must stay solvent.

give the customers the best possible deal that we can't. Yeah, value to the dollar while still making the business functional. Because in reality, you can't serve the community at all as a business without the profitability. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, bills don't pay themselves. No, no, they sure as shit don't. Anyway, two topic. So we are going to have a discussion today about firearms, gear, and ammo, storage,

and transportation. Mostly for two reasons. First of all, the annual MOF summer camp is coming up very shortly. We don't talk about it super often. The patrons are very well aware of it, except possibly for the newest ones. But it's an annual camping trip.

Everybody's encouraged to bring their families. Like, this is the idea spring out of how we all used to meet up at Prepper Camp. And after several years of that, we got to the point where we weren't even really attending in classes that much. We were there mainly to hang out with everybody and see our friends. But because it was prepper camp, the families didn't really want to come, live in a tent, and, you know, like, bum around with us at the camp all day long. So that's when my wife and I

got this idea in our heads, and Andrew and I talked about it back in the day. And, like, the idea came out of, why don't we do the part of that we enjoy? The, hey, the camping together, the seeing the sites together, the spending time together. but we do that someplace else where we don't have to have a schedule, we don't have to have to have classes, we don't have to make it all about preparedness. It can literally just be an extended family camping trip. And we can be more flexible with the location.

Yes, we can be flexible with location. We usually try to put this like somewhere towards the middle of the country where everyone kind of has equal opportunity to make the trip. Like we always wind up getting hosed all the way down here. And I'm not going to. That's fair for the summer because it's God forsaken hot down here. But you know, it's just one of those things where like we can we can put it in a location where people can camp if they want to camp. They can do cabins if they want to do cabins.

There's sites to see nearby. It's something for the whole family to encourage people to bring their spouses and their kids with them. And it's turned into this thing where literally like every summer, we all know we're going to get together and go find some place to invade. Yep. And it does kind of end up as an invasion because, what, last summer we bought out all but one of the cabins at the place we ended up. Yeah, I don't think our neighbors knew quite what to think of us. They were reasonably friendly. They were cool.

I mean, their dogs were cute. I pet their dogs. I mean, I will pet all the dogs. You will pet all the dogs. I will pet all the dogs. You bring a dog around. I'm going to pet your dog. Let's see here.

I'm looking through the chat. Stuart, I've given up on harassing you about not using the promo code. You're incorrigible. But, I mean, I'm overwhelmed. I'm happy that you're a repeat customer. Though, to be fair, I'm a repeat customer too. I mean, I get high in my own supply. It is the thing.

Might as well. It's good coffee. KD5 PCK. I store my ammo in my gun, which is stored and transported on my belt. comma, however, comma. We're going to talk about what you do. when you're carrying more gun and more ammo than you can fit on your belt.

There is only so much ammo that will fit on my belt. Listen, if you can fit a frigate-cow ammo can stuff to the brim with bullets on your belt, you and I need to have discussion. I need to see that. So when we went to the, at the end of the shotgun class that I took with Trek and Andrew, they do the rolling thunder portion, which is for however long they feel like, Um, everyone's just shooting. Shoot until you're bored or empty.

So I took and I put, what was it? I had one, two, three, I had six shotgun cards, not including what was the two on the shotgun. And then I dumped four boxes in my dump pouch. That was fucking heavy. And I was wearing suspenders. It was rough. So wait, five boxes, 10 rounds a box? Uh, yeah, I think so.

No, no. Oh, they're 20 round boxes. So a hundred rounds at what? In my dump house. At a half ounce each? No, they were number seven, three quarter ounce. It was a lot of weight. It was, you're not that big of a guy to have that much weight hanging off a belt either.

I had suspenders on those. It was fine. Thank God. I know, right? Because you don't have enough butt to hold that belt up. I don't with a regular belt most of the time. If there wasn't the, if there wasn't the holster giving me the extra friction, My pants would fall off with a belt on.

It's terrible. That's fair. I got a dime ragel out here. He said, ooh, you can tell them about the time I rolled my stuff in a blanket because it didn't have any rifle cases on hand. So he can't.

We've all done that. Well, but he and I met each other. It was actually one of the Cypress survivalist events. Nice. It was supposed to be like a camping trip. No one else showed up except for me and my wife and my daughter. But Raggle came out to hang out with this for the morning and literally like,

brought me over by the back of his truck. Like what you expect to happen when you get walked out to the windowless van with the free ammo signs on the side of it? And he drops the tailgate unrolls the blanket. And it's just a cornucopia of firepower and horsepower. Nice. That's what you need to have. He does have some toys. I do have to admit.

That's. Anyway. So, yeah. Firearms, gear, and ammo, storage and transportation. So let's start with storage. The goal of storage is from my perspective to prevent mildew, rust, and damage. And in my state, abiding by safe storage laws. Because if you have it in a case and the case is not locked and your car gets broken into

and the case gun gets stolen, you get charged. See, okay, we have to have terms. I call storage like stationary storage. When the minute it goes in your vehicle, I call that transportation because it's moving places. Technically, it counts in your house, too. If you just have it stuck in a unlocked case in your house, you get popped even though your doors were locked. Yeah. Okay.

So prevent theft, even though you and I know I don't include that in the criteria because if I have an angle grinder, don't mind making some noise, I can get your safe open. It's not that hard. Exactly. Raggle, if the case was locked and they broke the case open, I believe you're in the clear. But the case safe or gun cabinet has to be locked in your locked house. Otherwise, you've contributed to the delinquency of a felon, I guess. This is why you should never let morons write your state laws, but I digress. So, okay, complying with idiotic laws, I'll add into that, like keeping them out of the hands of people that don't need to be heading.

Yeah, keeping a lot of the hands of minors. I have a 14 year old run around the house. I don't let her have ready access to guns. Anytime she wants to like see anything or full with anything, it's going to be with parental supervision. But so when I talk about storage, like I know that there's this world of opinions out there about what is like proper or preferable ways to store all this stuff.

There's a lot of opinions. There are. And there are a lot of correct answers to be fair. They really are. And that's, I feel like that's that's kind of the point of view I want to take about that a lot of this topic is like there are many right answers. There might be some more right than others, but there are very few wrong answers. Yeah, but the wrong ones are really wrong.

The wrong one should be pretty obviously and horribly wrong. But like I said, I mean, I know that I know that I have friends that have like full on like Liberty Gunsafs in their house. There are people that depend on like you're more reasonably private. like the little gun cabinets I call them, because that's really what is. It's a metal cabinet. You go get it from Academy. It comes flat packed and you build it. I'll tell you, there's some flat pack safes that are incredibly durable.

I mean, I'd be the first to say that my personal, one of my, one of my storage items for years has been, bear in mind that I used to do car audio work, right? So I had lots of three-quarter MDF just lying around all the time. I built myself a fairly large cabinet with stored racks and everything inside of it, specifically for firearms. And the hinges are on the inside of it. The hasp is largely concealed inside of it. It's got a padlock on the front of it. Like, could you get it open?

Absolutely. Are you going to get it open without a serious fight? Absolutely not. It's going to put up a fight. Yeah, I mean, there's the old school and everybody's seen them. The old school glass and brass cabinets, nice hardwood cabinets. nice hardwood cabinet delaying your side you know your your your coach gun your side by side you're over under very pretty you're very easy to break into they are considering it's a single pain

of untempered glass yep and probably a skeleton key lock that you've definitely lost if my experience with those is is anything to go by yeah and other than those let's see here What if they, oh, we already went through. Yeah, I hit that. KD5 PCK, I like to prevent rust mildew and damage to my wife as well. I'm not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole. I don't know why your wife would be rusting. And I'm not entirely sure I want to ask.

It's a dry spray on rust preventative. See, that's one thing about firearms. Like, I have never felt the need. And part of that could also be like, I have a personal thing where, if my firearms have sat dormant for too long i like to take it take a half a day pop the pop everything open pull everything out clean inspect field strip put a patch through the barrel like you know just kind of like like give them a good once over make sure there's nothing doing anything it shouldn't be doing and then pack it all away but i have always made a habit of leaving kind of a thin sheen of ballastole on everything not

even like wet not beaded no literally like spray a little bit on a rag and then just wipe it down and then put it away just like that. And that thin chain of ballastol has always been enough, at least for me, given that this stuff is all stored inside of a house in the most human place on Earth. Well, as long as you have some kind of protective film on it, it's probably going to be okay. Whatever you choose to use, whether it's ballastall. I mean, mold shield's a tool and dye thing. We get it by the case at work.

So, you know, I can get it. pretty cheap and I also keep machine tools here at home so I keep a spray can of that stuff around. Anything that will put a rest preventative film on it is great or vacuum seal them. Yeah. Now insofar as like when you keep stuff in a safe, tell me the truth because I've never used it. Those those little like the little lights that people, the gold rods. Do those damn things work? Okay.

So basically what it is is it, it generates. rates heat and the heat dries out the air and drives out the moisture. Technically, yes, it can work if your gun safe is reasonably well sealed and you're not in a super humid environment. You know what I do? I run a dehumidifier 24-7365 set to drop my basement down to below 50% ambient humidity. And I've never had a rust issue in my safe, even though I don't put like a heavy coating of anything on most of my guns because most of them are in use.

I do have an old single shot bolt action 22 that I keep around for teaching young people, for teaching children, because number one, it's a long gun. I can very easily see where that muzzle is going when I am training an 8 year old or a 10 year old. And number two, there's only one round in it ever because it's a single shot bolt action. It makes it very convenient for teaching people. That's a very good training aid. That one, that one is coated in mold shield and heavily oiled. And that sits in the back of there because the next people I will probably need to train with firearms are one and not born yet.

That's fair. Yeah. All right. And about the only thing I can think of to Chuck in here. And we talk about like just what's where I look for here? Storage, non-mobile, stationary storage. Stationary. That's the word I was looking for.

That's fair. I've only gotten halfway through this yet. Finish it. Still have the powers of English. but when we talk about stagey storage like the only thing I think about is like hidden storage

you know what I'm saying sure which kind of dovetails in obscurity yeah kind of dovetails into the I guess we'll rearrange these things because this is the thing Stewart asked for which kind of fits between the two

but like whether you subscribe to the idea of like wall safes or I know that make hidden safe said like they you basically you replace like the mantle of your fireplace like there's a for bookcases bookshelves like there's a variety of there's a variety of things out there whether we're talking about pre-built items or furniture or techniques things you can build yourself DIY like i don't i don't personally describe to the idea of like hidden saving every farm you have personally just because when i look at when i look at terms of my own individual one-of-one experience like the amount of money i have invested in the wall safe in the amount of money i have invested in like the whole friggin case that i built i can store three times many firearms in that big old case and it cost me

less than half the money of the thing that hides the guns so i look at it as if i had to have this if i had to have this form factor to store every firearm i own it would take many times more money to hide them with this versus that or versus like the ninety nine dollar special you know, cabinet from, um, from academy. You know, I will say one thing about those, those hidden gun storage things. They're never that hidden. They're never that hidden. My uncle when I was growing up, he had a, he had one of the really early generation ones

that was a, it was like a floating shelf and you slid the magnet across the top to unlatch and it would fold down and in there was a revolver. Guess what we found when we were 12? That revolver. Because I was like, that's a weird thing on the mantle. That's a weird thing on the shelf. It was the little white thing with the magnet in it that's supposed to just look like a decorative chotchky. I was like, that's not something my uncle would keep in his house.

Grabbed it, slid it across the shelf. I heard a click, moved it back, pulled the bottom of the shelf down. There was a 357. Now, I grew up around some guns, not in my parents' house, but my grandparents' house. My uncle's houses. They had guns. So I didn't dick around with it. But 12-year-old me walking past the shelf went,

oh, that's kind of weird. And just happened to me. Right. 35-year-old me, I have walked into a half a dozen homes meeting new people and gone, there's a gun in that flag. There's a gun in that book. Or when I was touring homes with my wife, there was a gun above that ceiling tile. But now here's my question.

And there is no wrong answer to this. Barring the experience you had as a probably hyper inquisitive 12 year old. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely not a normal. I was definitely not a normal 12 year old. Possibly touched with a little bit of the tism. Just a scosh. Just a scosh.

I run into this problem all the time whenever I tell people about like concealed carrying and like everybody thinks first start to console carry. Like, oh God, I'm printing. Everybody can see I have a gun. And I'm like, dude, most people couldn't see if you had a freaking tail growing out of your ass. Yeah. Like they're that far into their phone and into their bull crap or they're yelling at their kids or they're staring at somebody else. Like they are not paying attention to the little, the little thing that's poking out from your shirt, no one notices.

Most people aren't, but young boys like to fuck with shit. True. But I guess to your point about you can see where all those hidden guns are. It's like, yeah, I can too. I can. Yeah. But when you live in this world, you just learn what. to look for because it's like it's like the age old argument about like i literally so a couple

i think it may have been last week or a weekend before i was at all zone i was picking up extra oil and filters and everything because you know straight or four moves and i ran and all that nonsense yeah yeah and the guy that was checking me out didn't ask any questions said nothing just said i'm gonna get you the veterans discount and you can see it oh yeah and i immediately said Thanks, where'd you serve? Because as soon as, like, I had already pegged him and he had already pegged me. Yeah. And it turns out he was a Desert Storm era Navy vet.

But he took one look at me from across storage. It said, that dude was in the Army. Yeah. But it's just one of those things for, like, when you're in this world, when you're one of the quote-unquote gun guys, you could see that. A lot, a lot of you can. And my concern is just that with those hidden and relatively unsecured storage medias, it only takes the unattended inquisitive child seconds to get into it. Now, at the time, my uncle's kids were my same age and they knew what to and not to do.

Jeff, they were not disguised as like a bust. They were disguised as like a bottle opener on this one in particular. Almost. I mean, but like a bottle opener. But if you have like a one and a quarter, one and a half, half inch drill bit, you can disguise this whatever you want. Oh, yeah, you absolutely could. I mean, it's not, it's not that it wouldn't be that difficult to make a new magnet key or

whatever it is, but it just, I don't know, even as a child, those sorts of things stood out to me. And maybe that's because of how my brain's wired. But my, my worry about it is, is kids throw stuff. Yeah. Kids bump into stuff. Kids pull on stuff. Those magnet locks are not that strong.

I just I don't I don't like unsecured unattended guns around children totally understand because I also believe in that vein though of making sure that the children themselves are not unintended oh I agree you probably shouldn't have I mean like 12 year olds unattended probably fine I mean look my kids my kids grown up around firearms she's she's gotten the gun safety speech at least once a year since she was like six. Yeah. And she knows where the firearms are in the house. She knows she's not permitted to have access to them without mom or dad around.

Right. But to me, I mean, I totally understand to see your point, not arguing that. I do think that there is a balance point here. Oh, there is. Like supervise the children and then the fact that they could theoretically get into the hidden safe. So one thing. The other reason that I tend to, I tend to like having at least one in the house. is because that gives me an opportunity to put firearms where they are easier to get to quicker

than having a route around in the safe for immediate home defense use. And that's one reason why I'm looking to put a single lot, a single long gun storage cabinet in the master closet refresh that we're doing. I told you what you could do. Oh, I know. And then some Kevlar. I mean, we talked about it. We had a whole plan.

I can't imagine that your, your lovely lady is. going to sign off on that idea, but it was a good idea. I mean, as long as it was budgetarily fitting into the build, it probably wouldn't matter because as long as it looks good in the end, she's usually fine with whatever I have to do. It is not budgetarily. It's really not. I looked into how much those Kevlar panels are. They're not that inexpensive.

Ooh. They're potently pricey. But, but wait, but wait. What if? Ooh. What would it take if you got like, some second like some chipped porcelain tiles. The weight would become an issue.

Yeah, I'm thinking to myself like porcelain versus steel, you're not really going to save much weight. Well, by the time, so by the time you got enough of those porcelain tiles and a bonding agent and a frame to support it, yeah, you're looking at significantly heavier than like the Kevlar panels that you can just buy because you can buy four by eight sheets of Kevlar panels that will stop rifle rounds. I just don't think I'm going to get my way and build a pillbox in your bedroom. Probably not. It was a good idea.

No, Stuart, we have told you in the past we're not pausing. That's why this is on the internet and you can rewind it yourself later. Besides, all we did was talk about my failed plan to add bedroom furniture to Nick and Rachel's bedroom. That's being vetoed. Well, and now you have to rewind it to see what I'm talking about. Budgetarily vetoed, if nothing else. But look, I get what you're saying. And, and yeah, my everyday carry pistol, if it's not on my hip, it is in my bedroom.

And that's usually when I'm in the shower. Or, you know, if my wife sells home or we're sleeping. Because most of the time I'm wearing pants. And if I'm wearing pants, I'm wearing a gun. So seems realistic. But leading into that next topic, this was Stewart's idea. He wanted us to work in Gray Man. Oh, but we can't talk about that just yet.

Can't talk about just yet. We talked about firearm storage. We haven't talked about ammunition storage, even though we've talked about it in the past, which means we'll probably accomplish it fairly quickly. What's your preference, first of all, for ammunition storage? There's two different ways I tend to store ammo. Okay. 30 or 50-Cal ammo cans or the MTG flip-top boxes, and I've got one of

of the mtg or mtm mtm mtm sorry okay mtm ammo boxes the little fliptops for some of my reloads um and the only reason i'm currently storing those not in ammo cans is i ran out of ammo cans that that's impressive i i cannot find any that i can acquire for free or dirt cheap so i've been neglecting buying them and i don't see any reason to buy those new because of Eventually, eventually. Somebody in my circle will have a family member that will pass away. That'll have six of those in their garage that are empty and been sitting there forever. And I will get them for like $3 or just for getting them out of the garage.

So I'm not paying $22 for them at Farm and Fleet. I mean, if you don't need it to be portable, you could always get, not the sterolite bins from Walmart, but like the rubber made ones that are just a little bit. Yeah, you could. And then start packing up your ammo either in, um, either in Ziploc bags or in vacuum bags with some desk and packs. So the modern, the new Ziploc bags, unless you buy the freezer ones will not support 100 rounds of 9mm.

The bottom seam blows out. Yeah. And I'm not doing them in 50 count bags. If I'm doing them in zip locks. If I'm doing them in MTMs, I'll do them in 50 or 100 count. But I just, I've got, I bought all of the blue and. red MTM cases that were in stock on Amazon a few weeks back when I started

reloading, or a few months back when I started reloading again. Literally, all of them available on Amazon. But, you know, that works pretty well. I don't like the plastic ammo cans. The handles tend to blow off or the bottoms tend to blow out.

I've not had great experience with those. So I just stick with steel GI cans for the most part. I actually have it. It's back there on the shelf behind me, but my secret Santa gift was one of the very large M-TM like kind of an ammo crate. Yeah, they're ammo crate. Yeah, I've got one of those too.

That's what all my nine mills in right now. I like it. It gets a little heavy. Yeah, I could see that. I might, that might be what I pack to go to Kentucky, though. It's a good range box. Just because, yeah, it's, it is definitely not a, you know, towed it for like a mile down the road kind of thing,

but for a, hey, you, friend of mine grab the air side of this handle let's bring all of our ammo together out to the to the shooting bench it seems perfect for that say what you definitely don't do don't buy the 40 mil grenade cans and fill it full at 12 gauge double a lot i've done that that will aggravate a hernia so i have that but that is so in the name of full disclosure everything you said till now i agree with wholeheartedly comma however comma i learned a very long long time ago that the stupidest, most, like,

the least responsible thing I could do, given the fact that I have a blown out hip and a blown out knee and two discs in my back that don't like me very much and a separated shoulder and several other problems that I'm trying not to get worked on before I'm 50. Yeah. The worst thing I could do for myself was to cart a 50-calf can filled to the brim with any kind of ammo, any long distance,

because everything was going to start to hurt after that. So what I've disput myself to do is, is that I use 50 cow cans and my 40-cow, my 40-millimeter grenade can for stationary storage. In other words, like, these things stay on the shelves. Yeah, yeah. And then I have- Pull it off the shelf, open it up, take the ammo, you need to go to the range. Yeah. Now, for my reloads, like, I have just some generic containers that I've salvaged over the years, not quite coffee cans, but like one step above that.

and MTM cases and 30 cow cans I really like if you deal with just bulk ammo because, you know, a 30 cal can by virtue being smaller than 50 cal can, even when you fill it to the absolute top, it's a lot lighter. Yeah, it is. And if you're the kind of person that's going to blow through a 30 cow ammo can of any

freaking reasonable size cartridge in a range day, then I'd have no more advice to give you. You just do a whole lot more shooting than I do. That was my average of what I would, bring of 9 mil when I was doing competition shooting where I'd go for a range day because I would bring a 30 cal ammo can of 9 mil I'd bring a 30 cal ammo can of loaded AR mags and I'd bring a 30 cal ammo can of 12 gauge and I would bring lunch and I would go and I would not be back home until dinner time that's fair it was but you know my range was an hour and 40 minutes away

so if I'm going to go I'm going all day Yeah, and the only thing I'm going to say before we get back to Gray Man is like the everything I store my ammunition in, the thing I encourage all of you to target ammunition in is magazines. Yeah. Empty magazines are useless. I had, look, remember I said, there are no wrong answers. Some answers are more right than others. I'm not going to say this answer is more right than not. I'm not even going to say it's right.

I'm just going to tell you that from my perspective, every single, every single, every, fire them in this house has a loaded magazine in it. Every magazine in this house has ammunition in it. There are no unloaded magazines. There are no magazines that are like, I have a very small,

I have a very small group of AK mags that I hang on to them for science projects because one day I think I'm going to take the time to like cut slots or windows or something in them or do something crazy with them because they were scratching dense specials and I've refurbished them.

enough to where they're usable, but they're ugly and they're not the greatest thing in the world. And I've got a stack of perfectly good Romanian mags that feed perfectly, so I'm not worried about these things. But those are cordoned off away from everything else. But any magazine I have in my safe, any magazine on that shelf, any magazine,

anywhere else in the house, they are all loaded. So I know that if I grab that magazine, it's got party favors in it. And there's no debate about, oh, this is the unloaded one. Oh, this is the one that has the 14 on the bottom of it. This is the one that doesn't like to feed if you load it to 30 rounds. Every magazine is ready for war. They're all loaded. And the first time I have a magazine

feed issue, I confirm that it has an issue. And I 86 have magazine because I don't want it in the house in circulation. I don't have all of my magazines loaded. I have a lot of magazines. I have a couple of ammo cans that just have empty mags in them. And that is the empty mag ammo can for that firearm. If the mag's not in there, they're loaded. I did say there were there were very few wrong answers here. And that's perfectly acceptable as long as you acknowledge that that can is not the breaking case of emergency can.

No, it's absolutely not. That can is largely populated with dry fire training magazines. The mags are taped a specific color. some of them are spray painted a specific color. Live ammunition never goes in those magazines for that reason. Raggle asking if you ever do you not do spring replacement. Sometimes yes, sometimes it's the feedlips and some feed lips you cannot reform. He might be referring to my comment earlier about when a magazine gives me problems I ditch it.

So I will I will acknowledge that that like if I can bring that magazine back to life, very, very quickly with a fresh magazine spring. Or if like, when I said, if I cannot remediate it, I mean, I'm going to try to change the magazine spring. I'm going to take the magazine apart. I'm going to check the follower. I'm going to check for dirt. I'm going to check for some obvious reason why it's misbehaving. If I cannot find the problem and I cannot get this magazine to behave itself with a fresh magazine spring, it is useless to me.

It is not worth having a science experiment masquerading as a defensive weapon. so that's why I'm saying like if I cannot bring it back to life it's going away I'm the same way with firearms if I have a firearm that is just like categorically misbehaving I'm either going to fix it myself I'm a taking somebody that knows more than I do and tell them don't give a shit what a cost fix it make it right or I'm going to move it I'm going to sell it off with the understanding that hey this thing like jams very fourth round it doesn't behave itself because I don't want I don't want a firearm in the house that I have to worry about that's fair I do have a couple of mags for one of my Springfield pistols that they have always

intermittently caused failure to feeds in my XDM, I believe it was. Those two magazines in particular cause failure to feeds. The reason why I keep them is for training, for training failures. And as long as you keep those things far, far away from anything you would ever use. It's like the dummy mags. It's like my dry fire mags. They are explicitly set aside for a sole purpose, and that is training malfunctions. I'm sure it's probably a feed lip geometry issue.

Could I correct it? Maybe. Is it a useful training aid to me or was it a useful training aid to me when I was shooting a lot of IDPA? Yeah, it was because I could train intermittent failures. And see, I go another way when I'm doing dry fire. training and that my magazines are the same magazines I use for defensive work. But what I do, and I've talked about this before on the show, like my thing is I get an

empty coffee can. I download 100% of the ammunition out of that, out of that, out of all those magazines into a coffee can. And I leave that in my bedroom. Sure. I come here in my office where I do not have live ammunition in any of those magazines. There are some live ammo in the room, but like it's on a shelf in magazines that I'm not going to be like, hey, random magazine sticking in the gun on dry fire with like a little bit of common sense as long as you have a system and you follow that system without exception you're probably going to be fine yeah so i don't have dedicated dry fire mags but i have a dedicated very explicit system of make sure that i don't wind up with surprises in the middle of my dry firing sessions yeah

surprise live fire in the middle of dry fire kind of kills the vibe yeah i'm I'd also have a very, very angry Sicilian lady on my hands, and she's, she's a lot less cute when she's mad. I believe that. Okay. So, Stuart one is talking about gray man, and since it perfectly dovetails between storage and transportation, we kind of already hinted at when we were talking about, like, plain sight ways to store a firearm. I'll be honest. And one of our, someone in the chat said earlier, like, their preferred way of store out of firearm is on their hip. That is always the thing I go to whenever I talk about storing a firearm in your home where you wanted to be secure and you don't want to be obvious.

Put it on your friggin' hip, dress around it, always carry. Anybody that can wrestle a firearm away from you off of your hip deserves to have it and you don't. Yep. You should practice weapon retention. Yeah. And it is always at hand if you need it. And back to the thing I said earlier, most people are so self-absorbed, their cell phones, and their nonsense. social media and TikTok and shit, they're not going to notice if you have a bazooka under your

shirt. Yeah, I wear a gun to work every single day. And I've had co-workers that have worked with me for the entire time. I have worked at this job over 15 years. And the only reason several of them have noticed is, number one, one jackass was throwing magnets at me. And one stuck. Whoops. That took some explaining. And number two, it's because they're also going to. gun guys. The other ones that know are also gun guys and most of them are carrying too. Stewart's saying he meant for transportation. I know we're getting to it. We're getting to. We just got to cruise over storage real fast. And then we'll get into specifically gray man storage and then we'll transfer off to non-gray man storage. So my my favorite gray man

transportation firearm method is I have a gym bag. Yep. The only thing I use this gym bag for is carting around guns. I don't use it for clothing. I don't use it for anything else. It is literally specifically purpose made for bringing guns places. I don't want to bring a gun bag. But here's the trick. There's no Molly.

There's no patches. There's no friggin Velcro on it. It's not tactical. It's not OD green. It's actually like forest green and black. But like it literally looks like I bought it from Walmart. And that's the freaking appeal. It is a, it's just a regular non-script gin bag that happens to be fairly heavy duty.

And it's got nice heavy duty, you know, like nylon, nylon, uh, great handles on it. But normally what I do is I, in that, I will have typically, um, my CZ Scorpion, my MERS. So with that, I've got, you know, spare buser magazines for my gun or for my carry guns, spare magazines for the scorpion. I've got the blowout kit in it. To that, I'll sometimes add like a couple of emergency rations, maybe some water. And it is my, it is my bag of like, this is the stuff I need to keep close at hand in case weird things start happening. Yeah, your hotel room bag.

Exactly. And that's the thing. That's the thing. That's the biggest reason I got it years ago was because, A, if it's sitting in the back of my wife's Jeep when we're on a trip and we have to open it up in public for any reason, it's not a frigging like a rifle case or a. bag, it just blends in. It does. I have a hiking bag that is specifically purchased because it is long enough to put at the time I would travel with a broken down AR.

I can't do that in this state anymore. So changes have to be made. Yeah. But a 50-liter hiking bag when you're in a location, because most of the time when I'm doing my wife travel, it's to places where we can't. go hiking, everybody is carrying a random colored hiking bag. Nobody notices, nobody cares. Yes, if somebody's smashing grabs into your car, are they going to grab the hiking

bag because hiking gear is expensive and you can flip it for sale pretty cheap? Yep, but they would have grabbed the gun case too in that case. Yeah. You know, it's really meant to just not attract extra attention. Yeah. And since you were talking about how you used to carry a, a broken out of AR like when we went to Michigan this past year that's what I had in mind

because you know I was going a little bit further a little bit for a little bit longer than usual so in this one gym bag I had my scorpion and the MERS and an AR 15 broken in half wrapped up it I just wrapped it up in a couple of towels so that didn't beat eight beat itself to death yeah and a chest rig

and I think three or four extra magazines. That's fair. So I'm sitting here on like, you know, a mag in the gun, three more on the chest rig, three or four extra mags, and that's all in 5, five, six, and that's on top of the fact that I have a whole scorpion plus all that.

And this all fit into one gym bag. One heavy gym bag, but one gym bag that I was able to take from the back of the Jeep, put it on the floor of the bedroom, and no one had any earth. idea until I brought you in there to show. Another great one for that, is hockey gear bags. That would actually attract way more attention than you would imagine around here. Yeah, down where you are, sure, where there are several hockey, like, leagues around me.

There's four or five hockey leagues, and that's just the rec beer leagues. half I see in the in the fall and winter when I'm going to the gas station it is not uncommon to see two or three guys with hockey bags in the back of their truck just rolling around in the open bed of a pickup and see that's a fine thing around here a rifle bag in the back of somebody's car or SUV really wouldn't talk much eyebrows nope but around here the police may depending on your county ask a question and around here like I don't have to worry about the police obviously but like my biggest worry is all always that one random a hole who does not respect your property. And just on the offhand chance, they just smash a window, look for something to snatch. Hopefully their eyeballs won't latch on to the nonscript gym bag that's sitting there. Yeah, that's true because, okay, best case, it has some high-end gym gear in it. Best case.

For the most part, for gym bags. You know, the other one I like is a halfway decent backpack. Yeah, dude, get a Jansport. The next time you buy- I don't mean because they're anything great, but I mean because they're nondescript. You know, the interesting thing about that is, I see more people today in my area

wearing mollied out backpacks everywhere. Everywhere. Everybody at my local game store. If it's not a Hello Kitty or other like anime-themed backpacks, backpack and even some of those have molly on them now it's a molly covered 511 bag but a hell 11 style but a hello kitty bag would definitely fly under the radar if you saw me wearing a hello kitty bag the first thing going through your head is there's a gun in that back no first thing i would think i have one first thing i would think of is weeb maybe i'm about the furthest thing from a

fucking weep though hey easy easy now i've been well i've been an anime head for friggin, like, three decades now. I like anime, too. But there's a difference between liking well-made media and being a fucking weed. Oh, it's a guilty pleasure, though. That's fair. I mean, every now and then, you just have to squeal like a girl while watching snail. There it is.

All of those bags are well and good as long as you don't get out of a vehicle with a giant Glock or shall not be in fringe sticker, Blue Lives Matter sticker. It's a very excellent point, KD5. PCK. Let me introduce y'all to a term that is not unique to the military, but that's where I first got introduced to it. Something being sterile. Other than the fact that it's a

Toyota Tacoma with a soft hopper on the back of it, which in most circles just means I'm into overlanding or hiking or camping. But there's not a single bumper sticker, not a window sticker, not a license plate frame, nothing on my truck to indicate

the types of things that might be stored in it. And I encourage all of you, knuckleheads out there, you have the right to do whatever you want. I'm not debating that. But I don't like to advertise to the person behind me, especially given the current political climate of 2026, what I may or may not be into that they might be having a bad enough day to want to do me physical violence over. Look, the element of surprise when it comes to self-defense is probably your best tool. Yeah. And if I, look, you guys all seen the truck that that we're talking about. It's got a rammer bar, probably on the front.

It may have an upgraded heavy bumper on the rear. It's got Punisher Skulls or military unit insignias or the, what is that? Calvin Pissing on the Glock logo or all that other stupid shit. Carried by six instead of judge by 12 or something like that. Yeah, any of those things. You know, no offense to those of you that like to fly your political flag, but if you've got RNC stickers on your car, if you've got DNC stickers on your car,

if you've got the coexist, but it's made out of different gun logos. All right. Look, if I'm looking for a free gun, and if I'm already planning on doing a felony, I might as well steal your gun to do it with. And let me just, let me just have one thing off the pass.

There are somebody out there who's going to pump their chest out and Billy Badass, be like, oh, I dare them. Well, guess what? Every now and then you park your car in a parking lot and leave it unattended, sometimes for hours at a time. I would rather my vehicle, I would rather not come back to my vehicle with multiple broken windows and everything taken out of it because I advertise that I have easily sold and pawned things in my vehicle while

it's left unintended for hours on end. And that goes for tool logos, tradie logos, anything like that that says, I might have expensive shit. Those salt life stickers that everybody has in the back of their car. I know a fishing guide, the reason he doesn't put that shit on the back of his car anymore is because all of his expensive fishing gear got stolen out of his truck. They cut his soft topper open and took everything out. It do be like that sometimes. It do be. But that's another point, too, is,

if you don't have that security through obscurity going for you, you can use things like blankets, jackets, cargo covers, soft toppers, hard toppers, tinted windows, so that the random passerby isn't looking and going, oh, there's a gun case. Logs keep honest people honest. They do. And if it doesn't look like there's anything in your vehicle, they're less likely to try and get in to see if there's anything in there. They're going to go for the one that says, oh, there's a last.

laptop bag on the front seat smash grab go so let's talk about not so gray man storage first of all i have the midget coffin as you so aptly called it sitting back there behind me i'm convinced you could use that to bury a midget i mean it's only about that wide so it had to be a very thin midget but um let's not let's not critique the weight of most midgets i'm not critiquing anything. I'm just saying, you know, it wouldn't be a thickam. True. Anyway, so yeah, I did buy a hard storage case. First of all, because I haven't had a hard storage case since I deployed to Iraq. Like it has been, I've, up till this point, I've made due with soft-sided rifle bags and for, you know, bouncing in the backseat of my truck from

here to local gun range, that was perfectly fine. Mm-hmm. I love soft-sided cases for short, for short transit. I mean, let's start there. Soft side of cases have a lot going for him that this big old heavy bastard behind me doesn't. They're lighter, they're simpler, they're cheaper. And nine times out of ten, the protection offered by them is perfectly acceptable. It's good enough for short-term drives, but I wouldn't want a road trip, say, from Illinois to Kentucky with one. I wouldn't want to ship a gun in one. No, absolutely not.

Or put one in the cargo open aircraft. Oh, God, no. I've seen how those cargo handlers handle expensive items. Didn't I tell you I used to work in commercial aviation? You did. I'm not going to say that cargo handlers are unnecessarily rough, but I am going to tell you that they have a very short amount of time to eat all of your baggage from the baggage belt into the cart, and they have to get it into the cart as quickly as possible.

So it's kind of like playing Tetris at full speed and full contact. And then they drive it out to the aircraft. in a thing that doesn't have like, you know, rust for suspension. So it just bop, blah, blah, blah, the whole way out there on mostly solid tires and mostly solid suspension. And then they get out to the aircraft and they have another belt that they have to just chuck it on to as fast as possible to get it up into the belly of the aircraft. And they take it from there and they throw it to the back of the belly and they have to stack it up. It is not a gentle process. If you have things like Faberje eggs or the Queen's jewelry or something crazy like that, that is carry on.

stuff. That is not yeat into the belly of the aircraft stuff. Your guns, unless they're a lot less precious to you, are not yeat into the belly the aircraft guns without industrial great protection. Yeah. I mean, you know, Raggle's saying,

he even had his pelican case damage by flight handlers. That is some enthusiastic rough handling. That's what I was going to say. I've got a couple pelican cases for smaller stuff and goddamn, dude. It's brutal.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's weapons grade neglectful handling right there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that is some serious rough housing with the equipment. KD5 PDK, KD5 PCK. I yell at my wife all the time about leaving her purse, insight in her car when she parks and doesn't take it with her. That, no offense to your wife, but that is begging for a smash and grab.

And, all I can tell you, bud, is that if that day ever comes, boy, you better swallow that I told you so. Yeah, that's, that's, that would be a fight. That's where the fight started. That would be starting a fight. Yeah, I'm not even going to start the fight for you, because then you'll have to fight me to defend her honor.

Like, it will be some shit. Yeah. You might just need to leave that one alone. You know, I've, I have largely always had, I have some cheap, like the Plano heart side cases. you pick up the local hardware store because when I was first getting into guns, that's what they had for sale at the local hardware store. And I was like, I would, I went to my gun deal and they're like, okay, you got to have a case to take this home.

And I'm like, fuck. All right, where's got one for sale? He's like, Farmer Fleet, five minutes that way. All right. Go to Farmer Fleet, pick it up, come back. Put the gun in the case. Put in my truck. Good to go.

But not to mention, like, if. I didn't know any better. I don't want to cast any. versions, but I'm going to, I'm going to guess that when you first started out getting into guns, it would not have made a tremendous matter sense to spend $400 on a case to bring home, whatever gun you were bringing home. It was a Remington American or Remington Axis. It was the cheapest Remington bolt to action with no scope on it.

So, no. That's not an American. That's a Ruger. And it's not an Axis. That's a savage. Oh, well, it was the dirt cheap Remington that was made in like the mid-2000s. Not a 700. It was like 200.

No, it was not. It was like $230. So spending $400 on a Pelican case would have been a little bit. Oh, God, no. I spent $14 on that plaintiff case. And I was like, God damn, it's $14. I guess that was the point I was trying to make. Like, I got this thing, which.

we can talk about maybe on another show. Maybe at the end of this show, if you really want to, but I mean, I haven't even used it yet. You got to get some use out of it, I think, before we deeped out. Well, I mean, that's the whole, that's, that's what's going to be cart and shit up to Kentucky. So we're going to get some use out. Oh, look at that.

Raggle, ragel timed you out. Forgot to ask during the Fire and Storage portion, what's your take on the Magpull modular inserts they make for Pelicans and Plano's. The DACA inserts. Let's start that for just a minute. in generalities. So I like we were saying earlier, I got a hard case because I'm going to be throwing this stuff

probably underneath a whole bunch of other luggage and drive and get nine hours away from home. And I think that merits a little bit more protection than what a soft-sided bag would give me. Also, because due to the size limitation of the particular soft-sided bag I have, it is really at its happiest with just my bolt action or tight fit two ARs.

It's a joint rifle bag. It's got a divider in the middle. Yeah. It is really, really, really grumpy when you stick a 42-inch-long bolt action on one side and a full-size AR with an A2 stock and an 18-inch barrel on the other side.

That thing, those zippers were threatening to do violence. Yeah. So I needed something that could comfortably swallow two rifles plus some accoutrements. and I also want something that would be enough protection that I wasn't going to have concerns about this stuff getting damaged for a long road trip. Right. So to Rangel's point, what I wound up getting was this Magpull R44, which is basically Magpull's case plus their DACA insert. I don't have any experience with it yet.

Or than having taken it out and basically shoved it over there, I was going to actually take it to the gun range this week. again, but I don't yet know that's going to happen. That's contingent upon adult things. Yeah. But I will say that my particular reasons for getting this versus because with your hard cases, with your soft cases, which are really depending on is just the padding of the case to kind of like protect things. Or in the case of like little range bags, you can get these little inserts into the range bag

that your gun goes in. So there's two layers of padding. So the one thing I'm going to correct Stewart on, because he's saying if your rifle is in a soft case and can't get to luggage piled on top of it, it's a toy, not a serious rifle, except for two things. It's not necessarily that I am concerned about putting something on top of it, destroying the rifle, because I'm not. I'm not even super concerned about destroying the optic because I'm pretty sure the optic.

I'm concerned about it shifting my zero, not really. that is my concern because on just one of my weapons, I've got a red dot and a laser box. And they're both and they're both zeroed. I can see that potentially being a concern. It's also a little bit like the cost investment in it because your laser box is not cheap. I mean, it is a cheap one. It's already 800 bugs.

Well, you get what I'm saying. The laser box is twice the cost of your case. Yeah. So at a certain point, because of the value of the items you're putting into it, you do kind of want to spring for a better protection case just in case. I mean, long road trip's what happens if you get in a rollover vehicle incident? I mean, if I get a rollover, I have a whole different set of problems I'm concerned about before I worry about these. But it would still be nice to not have all your shit broken. But yeah, my, my, I'm scattered across the highway.

My bigger concern is not necessarily that like the items inside the case would be completely destroyed to the point of unusability, but it'd be more of the fact that like I would really like for my zero not to shift on any of my stuff when I go out to the range because zero is a constantly wander every time you take your gun to and from a place concerns me for one reason and one reason only. If the zero wanders on the way of the range, guess what's going to do on the way home? Could wander again. And if the zero wanders on the gun on the way from the range back to the house, then the work I just did to re-zero it has been undone, which means the next time that rifle has to come out and act in home defense role, it's not going to put bolts where I wanted to. I want nothing to do with any of that. And I understand Stewart's point. If a little tap on the scope causes to lose zero, the scope is probably the problem. True.

But I am not willing to play with. I'm not willing to play with the potential for something to shift or move in storage and squash a gun and cause a scope to move or, you know, cause even cause a scope to like twist slightly in its mount.

It's just not worth it. You grumpy old fart. If it shifts like that, the optic is the problem. I hear what you're saying, but I also believe in weird things happening and I'd rather just not tempt fate. Look. It is insignificant insurance is really what it is.

It's just added protection. Perfect analogy. You and I've had this conversation about how I used to race cars years ago, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. My particular brand of automotive masquism and excitement was auto-crossing and road racing. So I never did drag racing a straight line. I did things where you had to drive around corners.

Yeah, rally racing sort of thing. And if you do things really, really, really wrong, then that car tends to want to go upside down. It does. I was racing a Mast and Mata that has no roof. So I had a roll bar in the car for obvious reasons. But. Meadas are not well known for taking rollovers well anyway. But if I was a good enough driver that I don't need the roll bar, I still felt better having it.

Yeah, it's just one of those things. cheap insurance, the top of my pretty little melon is not going to stand up to pavement near as well as that roll bar will. Plus, you know, the soft cases while convenient, if you happen to be passing through a state that requires locks on your cases, some soft-sided cases are disqualified immediately. Yep. Because you can grab that case and pop the zipper open without ever modifying the lock. I was going to say the everything problem you're going to run to is if you try to fly up with them, I guarantee you none of those zipper cases are TSA compliant.

No, they're not. And while I do think that the TSA compliant shit is shit. Oh, definitely. The rules we have to live with sometimes. I have to live with the safe storage clauses for my state. And I will be in our seven and a half hour drive to Kentucky, six and a half hours of my drive will be in Illinois. I mean, I think income tax is ridiculous, but I'm not willing to have the government kick my door in to prove, you know, to pick a fight of them about it. Yeah. And if you don't think the state would kick your front door in over income taxes, stop paying it for a while and tell me how it works. They do. Yeah. Regularly.

Anyway, so that's kind of my spiel. The thing I like about the DACA grids and the, uh, the MAGPOL cases that have, have the DACA system in it is the fact that like, I've already been through this once with one of those hidden say. we were talking about where I decided to reconfigure some things. Because I had a primary home defense weapon that came out, got reconfigured, and then something else went in its place, and all of a sudden, the foam that I'd cut no longer fit. Yep. So I bought a brand new piece of foam, glued it back into that, it glued it back into that case, recut the whole thing. And guess what happened about four months later? Changed it again.

I haven't changed it yet. I actually kind of want to put a riser on that red dot on that primary home defense. And I am refusing to because to do it, I'm going to have to fricking refoom the case again. And I just, I refuse to. I will not do it. You know, I was looking. I might buy a smaller piece of foam and like just cut out the section where that one gun is and glue it in because I just don't care if it looks pretty or not. But that experience of having a refoam cases multiple times and any of you who've had a hard side of case long enough that have like the pick and pull, the pluckable foam or the foam that you have to like.

you've done it. Sooner or later, you have been in the situation where either the thing you cut no longer fits and you just live with it or you've had to refoam a freaking case and that shit gets annoying real fast. What I like about the bagpool case is you have a grid, you have all your little bumpers, and you can pull them all out, move it around and play gun Tetris inside the case. So I am no longer locked in to this thing fits this one gun or these two guns. I can play with it to my heart's content. And based on what I want to bring to the range, I just laid all out in there and make it fit and then latched up and go. That has been one of the reasons preventing me for a long time from buying a high quality hard side case. Well, number one, I don't fly anywhere. I don't. I just don't like flying. I tend to, if I'm going somewhere, I'm probably going to drive because it is simply easier for me and what I like to bring with me. And number two, because I didn't want to have to reconfigure the case every time I'm changing guns.

Now, I did not know until you mentioned the Magpul docket. system to me that a system like that existed. So I've been making do with the compressible foam, shitty Plano cases and soft side cases that fit pretty much all my guns because it's just Velcro's am in. Yeah. But knowing that does exist and knowing that the Harbor Freight Apache 9,800s are the exact same internal size as a Plano case, I'm. might tomorrow after I go to the range, go to Harbor Freight and pick up one of those and then order the DACA system on it on Amazon.

I mean, as long as now, you have to bear in mind that like the DACA system, they make it for specific models of cases. Yep. So if the Apache case you have has like a Pelican analog, you probably get away. And if not, I mean, razor knife and cut it. Exactly. It'll be close enough. I'll make something. happen.

Yeah. But like said, the one knife in the phone will do wonders. But the one thing I will point out, and this is kind of like cautionary note for anybody that's thinking about getting one of these things, I have, I have seen it, written about and stated many times. I haven't tried it yet. We'll find out the hard way. But I have heard it said that in order to make these little blocks that secure your gun in place

really work right, they have to go, they have to stretch from the gun to the edge of the case. So like, if you have a gun in the middle of the case, you need blocks to go. from the edge out to the outer edge of the case so that like, you know. So it can't push and fold out so that it can't like rock that insert up. Because like the way these things work is that it's just two little pegs that fit down to the grid. Yeah, it's like a Lego press fit. Yeah.

It really is like almost like an upside down Lego that pops down into the grid on the bottom. And there's that potential that if you push on a hard up, it would rock it up and out of the grid and then start sliding around. Sure. I don't know. I mean, that makes sense to me. I think that the key is, in my case, like I plan to put two long guns in the case, so I shouldn't have a whole lot of dead zone to obscure with those blocks. It's going to take some experimentation.

But I would be hesitant to doubt what I have, because I heard a similar thing reading about that case you bought on Reddit, that if you don't put enough of those blocks in, your stuff can shift. the guy that was saying it is a pretty well-known guy on the say shooting community he travels to a lot of different matches a lot of different places and if he's telling you hey you know consider this he's probably seen that occur yeah now i will say and for anybody that's coming up to matter of fact summer camp like you're welcome to take a look case full right i'm going to but i did go the extra step it comes with a bunch of two side, a bunch of two, two, two cell blocks and a bunch of three cell blocks. I also spent the extra money for what they call the V blocks, which is meant to like, you lay a barrel in the middle of it. Yeah. And some of the angled blocks that fit really well around like, you know, an angled grip on an AR-15. Nice.

And spent a couple more bucks on the little plastic storage cases that like pop down into the grid. Then you can put stuff in them. They're not big enough for magazines, but they are probably the right size for like cleaning kids or take the bolt out of your AR, drop it in one of them. You know, those kinds of things. A little croutrements. Yeah. The little stuff you don't want to just like run loose in the case. Sure.

I did what I tend to do. I kind of think the same thing I did with the last big project I did, which was the man pack where it was like I kind of went way past the point of most people will do it to demonstrate what could be done, how feasible it was, how it could be done. if you just wanted to check all the boxes, all the bells and whistles kind of set up. Yeah. But I'll be honest with you. Like my reasoning to Raggless point about like, what do I think about it?

I think it answers the one problem that I've always seen out of hard side of cases. There's no debating that they're very good of protecting your gear. There's no debating that they have their place. But my single major issue with them has always been. Once you cut the foam, you're stuck with it. Yeah. And the foam's not.

inexpensive to replace it's not terribly expensive compared to the cost of the case but it's not as cheap as you would expect i'm going to tell you that even when you buy from a third-party source like just search on amazon that shit gets a lot more and it kind of depends because like if you can put several smaller pieces together to fit your application that's oh it doesn't look great but it's okay but if you have to get like one very large chunk of not the super squishy low density foam, but like the hard stuff that you'd cut with a razor knife, that stuff gets expensive real fast when you're talking about a big sheet of it. And the shipping gets expensive too. Because you've got to ship this big old chunk. Like it's not like a, it's not like a little thing of foam. You can just roll up and stick in a bag. I'm looking right now for what the Pelican replacement foam is. See if I can find it. Because they used to sell just the replacement foam cases or just a replacement foam inserts for the case let's see here yeah i'm not seen it listed real quick i am just checking real real quick so that i can see i mean euline has the

replacement foam for the 1750 case at 131 dollars for the foam set uh no the last time i had to replace foam in my in my one of my hidden safes it was one and a half inch polyethylene foam it was 50 bucks before shipping I believe that

it was for a 54 by 16 inch piece and as I recall I had to actually cut it because it wasn't the right dimensions but it was the right square footage so like I was able to get this one chunk and then like cut a chunk off the end and then, you know, like, glue it in there, make it work.

Yeah. But now imagine every single time you want to change the, every time you want to change the setup of like a particular, you know, case, you got to friggin' whack 50 bucks out to frigging go and refoam it. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not terribly inexpensive. Or you can just do what I do and live with the compression foam. And the compression foam has...

In my hard cases for a long time. The compression foam has a place. My concern is, like, it doesn't give you anywhere near the same level of protection as like that hard, that non-compressing polyethylene foam wood. Sure. Or in this case, you know, you've got the grid, which is there to, like, stabilize the firearm.

And then you have compressible foam on the top that is largely uncompressed. So it's there to provide some shock value. you or some shock resistance to the power yeah there's there's a lot of ways to do it i mean i you know i i i never had a range bag until extremely recently i've always just tossed all my shit in a backpack or duffel bagging gone to the range but i recently bought i don't remember exactly what model it is but savior makes it comes with three of these like little pistol bags it's got all the different pockets for your range kit it's really nice for a pistol range bag but But it really only works well for, I'm going to say, two pistols plus ammo, plus cleaning kit, plus hearing protection for two people.

I will agree with that. And that's why, like, over the years, I've had, I have, I've gone through this, this iteration of, like, soft side of range bag. And then I got literally, like, what I ended up calling my go-to range bag, but it's only really big enough for, like, some ammo and a pistol and some ear. pro. And then I got a larger hard-sided case which is compressible foam, but it's got multiple trays in it so that you can fit like, you know, three, four

fire or three-four handguns in it. And that's what I'd take if I was bringing a bunch of handguns. And then if I was bringing like a couple of rifles, I had my big twin rifle case. I've gotten to the point where I have over the years continued to add to my collection of crap to carry guns around.

Just because not all these things fit all uses. Sure. But they all fit a use. So. Okay. Was there anything else to toss in here? Transporting firearms, we didn't really talk about transporting ammo,

but we kind of did earlier when we talked about like, have reasonably sized ammo cans. Please, for the love of Christ, don't break a 40 millimeter grenade can full of ammo to the range. Your friends will hate you. You know, it's a thing that I've started to see on people's gun cases now that I really like. All right. For one on these pistol cases, they've got these little right on Velcro things that you can rip off for your different guns.

I've noticed a lot of people either putting a sticker on one end of their hard cases or an arrow on one end of their hard cases. Muzzle direction. Fucking love that. Because then when you go up to the line, like, oh, arrows that way. flip it around open up your case firearms always pointed in a safe direction yeah i screw that all up because i have because in order to make two rifles fit in my rifle case they have to be criss crossed i i get it it's a limitation of the storage media but if you have the option like these little removable inserts a single rifle case put some sort of designator on that that to you says

muzzle is pointed that way oh Two of our things we can insert here in transportation. Go for it. I wouldn't say so much of a, if you're like flying with your gun or if you're keeping in your vehicle, but specific to if you're going to the range. First of all, anytime you're transporting a firearm and it is not literally on your hip or in your hands ready for use, it should be unloaded. Yes. Can I get a hallelujah, amen? Yeah.

Range officers get really pissy when you show up to when you show up to their place of business with a loaded firearm. I cannot tell you. So I worked a couple of years at my range. We did a deer rifle side in day. We had a barrel that was the clearing barrel. It was buried in the side of the hill. And before they could, they had to uncase their firearm, put the barrel in there, clear the gun, and then pull the trigger to ensure that the rifle was clear before they went, walking up to the line with that rifle. How many bangs every day?

we did it two days two weekends two saturdays and i worked that twice no less than three people had a round clack off after they cleared the gun so in other words they had some in the magazine when they when they ran the handle backwards of force they loaded one yep they ran the bolt and ran the bolt and ran the bolt and ran the bolt well it was a three round magazine and they would show up with these high powered rifles loaded they'd been driving around with them now is the gun going to go off on its own no these were people that claimed to be experienced hunters i mean experienced firearms owners i mean it's a rim that their gun was cleared if it's a remitin 700 maybe look yes all can a gun malfunction can it go off on it potentially potentially

If it's a SIG, if it's a, if it's a shitty maid or Emington 700, if bubble went in there with some files and didn't know what he was doing, could. Far too many times did we get a bang when we should have got a click. I mean, I'd argue with any of that. It's, there's a reason why we had the clearing barrel. The other thing I'm going to offer, and I'm going to say, I'm going to say this kind of tongue in cheap, because my, my gun range recently mandated this. and I thought it was the most, like, it personally offends me because it just annoys me. But given some of the horrendous gun handling I've seen at this range,

I'm not fighting them about it too much, chamber flags. I'm going to tell you that for a public range, chamber flags are not a bad idea. Or when you're teaching a brand new shooter, the level of, the level of like peace you can feel. when you open that gun up and you put that chamber flag in there so that you know at a glance that gun is definitely 100% not loaded before you go to the other side of a firing line

and leave the newbie back there with the freaking gun so that you know 200% it was definitely not loaded there was definitely not around in the magazine there definitely cannot be around in the chamber because it's got to go through the chamber flag to get into the chamber just consider it. I've always made the rule of newbie comes with. I've always to prove to me that you can be safe at the range.

You come with me downrange. I would enforce that except when it was like my eight-year-old daughter. That's fair. Although, frankly, my eight-year-old daughter had better gun handling sense than like most adults I've run across. Most of the newbies I'm teaching were people that were my age, a little bit younger, a little bit older, you know, within a couple of years of me. I, there were some stupid things that I saw,

but I always made sure, newbie, you're going to be downrange too, because I don't trust you to not fuck around with stuff until I've shot with you a few times. Yeah, and Raggle, Fraggle is saying weed or string. Not a bad option.

If you can get like white zip ties, like the big ones, those work really well in a pinch. They do. Especially if you're putting your pistol in like, say like, my MMP came in a hard side case from Springfield. Full-size chamber flags, you can't put the gun back in the case.

The action is open too far for it to fit in their foam cut out. So I actually do like the zip ties for that. Yeah. Or you're in a situation like I'm in with my bolt action where like in order to make that chamber flag fit in there and not have the bolt handle at this weird frigging angle where it's getting pressed against the side of the bag. I just pull the bolt handle completely out of the gun. Yeah, pull the bolt out. And just stick it. Can't go off with the bolt out.

Well, but I still have to have the chamber flag to appease the range officer. But I just pull the bolt out completely so that it's not just hanging there wide open. It's not as big of an issue with my AR because I can just ride the bolt for to let rest on the chamber flag. But you're right for some of those. Or how about this for a for a lever action? Yeah, I love. We do not want that lever action just halfway open, halfway closed just sitting there. That's just an invitation for something really bad to happen.

Yeah, they can be quite prone to random shit getting in the action at that point. Yeah. So, I mean, as much as I totally believe that like this whole, this, this, this fetishistic nonsense about must have chamber flags is a little bit stupid when what really should be doing is demanding smarter shooters. I'll give ground on it. One thing I will say, that A300 eats chamber flags. The bolt return is aggressive if you do not ride it forward. It will just sheer chamber flags off. I will have lost that.

The, that Brett is enthusiastic about sending that bolt home if you, if you banged it. The round will go into the chamber. Hoya. Yeah, that A300 does not ask politely. if the shell would like to go into the chamber, it says it basically pulls the happy Gilmore, like get on the ground and be like, that's your home.

Are you took a good for a year home? I've actually been curious. I have a bunch of old paper cartridges for 12 gauge. I want to see if they feed reliably in the 300, given its aggressive feeding. I mean, dude, I'll be honest with you. I'd be on board to see that too, but like I'd be shocked if it didn't because so far that A300,

I mean, dude, it eats like a fat kid and all you can eat buffet. It does not care. Half ounce target loads. Doesn't seem to care. Nope. I've run everything from one ounce slugs all the way down to literal birdshot. And it just, it does not care. It's like, it just goes.

Nope. It literally just goes nom, nom, nom, nom, more, more. Yeah. Including chamber flags. including chamber flags. All right. We have one more episode before the matter before the camping trip. We will probably be skipping that week.

You will get that when we get back. The week of the camping trip, yes, definitely going to skip it. I've already had somebody ask about when, what day we're going to record, because it is traditional that we record an episode. I was thinking probably Wednesday, like as we used to do this last night. But yeah, depending on if anybody's leaving Thursday, some of us are leaving Thursday, some of us are leaving Friday. Yeah, see, I'm leaving Thursday morning to start heading home. And, but if anybody is leaving Wednesday, we might bump it up to Tuesday.

That's why I was saying, like, we never set a hard day for what day we're going to record, but it is very traditional. They would record one very unhinged, moderately inebriated episode around the campfire. I will try to feed, fill at least two old fashions. Yeah. Last year we were drinking, we were eating sour, homemade sourdough and drinking with drinking moonshine. Yes. There was quite, quite an experience. And the night before that was, um, taco night at, uh, the Wilson's cabin.

Oh, God. We ate so, we ate way too much that night. Too many tacos. I mean, those were not big cabins and there was like 14 freaking people eating tacos and shit in there. It was unhinged. It was a lot. And it wasn't even just tacos. It was like, freaking tacos, burritos.

enchiladas. It was like a Tex-Mex restaurant just vomited into the kitchen. It was awesome. Some quality chefing. And that sourdough bread. My God, that sourdough bread. Oh, yeah. That was good. Especially the jalapeno cheddar. Big win. Big win. Yeah. A couple last minute comments here. Pump gum will Stewart saying pump gum will eat even when an A300 won't. I haven't seen anything that A300 won't eat though. And that's the thing. That's why I'm wondering about the paper shells. wax paper shells. I think I'm going to try it. I mean, maybe not tomorrow when I got out to the range, but maybe that time after that I'll I'll try and throw 100 rounds of paper shells through my 8300.

I mean, the thing of it is is that it's kind of like fighting an old man at that point. Like if it doesn't run, it's like, okay, it was old wax cover paper cells. Who cares? But if it does run, then it's like the 8300 will literally digest anything. Let's try 50 cow next. Yeah. I mean, flare shells. That's a good point. I don't have any flare shells. I have I have some rubber I have some rubber rubber rubber ball rounds but I really don't want to shoot them. They're not cheap.

You know, they were not cheap. I, I would have to question how much I didn't want to shoot somebody with live ammo before I pop one of those. My problem and, and I think you and I have discussed this before. We have. If I'm shooting you, it's no longer a less lethal. option. You crossed that line a long time ago, and I've made my peace with shooting you. The one exception to that, that I've always, I've always cooked this off and I've always got

everybody in the room to agree. Like, this is that narrow edge case. What if it was a dearly beloved family member who was having a psychiatric episode? Not violent through no fault. Like, they're, they're unhinged, they're violent, but they're not in being, they're not being maliciously violent. They're having a psychiatric episode because they're not talking about drug addicts or anything crazy. This is a person who like you need to stop them, but you would really rather

not have to plan a funeral. I am a rather stronger than average, six foot tall, over 200 pound male. There's a lot of other options I have other than being bad grounds

or rubber buckshot. But that is one narrow, edge case example of when you might need to stop somebody from doing something you don't want them to do but you really don't want to cook them. I get the argument and I understand that it would have its place

but given the size I am the experience I have had handling people that didn't want to be handled I would bet on that before I would bet on rubber shotgun rounds that's a fair point

it's a personal preference. I just just like to play devil's advocate. Yeah. I just, I don't, I don't know that I would want to. Having seen people in police encounter videos,

shut off those rubber rounds. And I've also seen the other way where like those damn things hurt. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they do. Not just painful hurt, but like potentially like hospitalized. Like crippling hospital visit hurt.

Sure. And I've also been pepper. sprayed and tased because when drunk frat guys find out a girl has a taser in her purse, everybody's getting tased. Yeah. It wasn't as big of a deal as it seems to be. Stewart saying disagree better options. I'll also say that I have a box of breaching rounds for absolutely no rational reason.

Or than sometimes when you get a chance to buy the stuff, you just, you just put it away for a rainy day. Guy that comments makes an excellent point. Rubber rounds work great in teams. Yeah, they work really great. I'm not operating in a team. They work really great when there's someone else next to you that doesn't have rubber bullets and their gun just case yours don't work. Tazers and pepper spray also work very well in team settings.

I'm not operating in a team setting. Sorry, guys. Yep. All right. Let's go ahead and roll this one out the door. We will see you next Thursday for the last episode before summer camp. I have no earthly idea we'll talk about. I mean, I could always figure it out by Tuesday.

I could always look through the list. I will maybe have a shit load of random dope data for various 22 loads going back to the 70s. I'll have to see how bored my wife gets at the range if I get through it all.

I'm sure we could tizema about that for 45 minutes to an hour. We might be able to. All right. Well, heading out the door, Matter of facts, podcast is going for another week. And I'd everybody see you on Thursday and either stay out of trouble or be really good

to explain your way out of it. Talk you later, Bob. Tonight.