The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Roast My Sh!t part 2

Episode Date: August 10, 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*Last week, Nic stood in front of the firing squad of internet opinion for Rate My Sh!t Part 1. Tonight, Phil is in the hot seat. A gunless EDC, an overstuffed Bag Gun, a Do Everything with lofty aspirations, and pure unfiltered Instagram LARP are all on the docket for this episode. Ratings will be 1 – 5 for practicality and cool.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 Ravill, Andrew, Nick, are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back in Matter of Facts podcast. I was this close to not turning our video on on time because I was goofing off with the wives, who are both in the chat with Raggle, who's not a wife.

That I'm aware of. Well, you never know. It's the first time for everything. It's 2026. I'm not here to judge. Not even here to ask questions. Do not do not. Don't,

hon ass, don't tell is not just an army policy. It is a policy with this podcast. All right. So there's a little bit topic and then a big topic that's carryover from last week. So last week, I wouldn't say we roasted Nick's stuff. We,

we critiqued it. Yeah. I think it was a fair critique. And, and I don't think we were unfair. Although you're drinking bourbon this time, so you might be unfair to me by the end of this, but we'll see.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't think I'll be wildly out of pocket with any calls unless you, unless you've slipped in some silliness there. No, I mean, no more than usual. I mean, I am off work tomorrow, so. I am off of work, but not off of duty. I have things to do in the morning.

I have to dig a tree. French. I don't have to do anything near that unpleasant. That's all right. It won't be too bad. I just, I have to go to a hospital to bring someone to and from a outpatient procedure. That's no fun. No, it goes well. Not as bad as digging a trench, but not fun.

Well, I mean, it depends on the hospital. I mean, I've dug some fun trenches before. It's not a, I don't think there are fun hospitals. Yeah. Anyway, so admin work, many top. Big topic. If you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron that Lincolnson's show description, you too can promote bad decisions, bad spending habits, horrible efforts towards retirement savings, potentially silly things

purchase that will, you know, maybe slightly delay renovation aspirations, those sorts of things. We shall see. We shall see. If you'd rather buy merch for the vibes for the Southern Gals, that link is also in the show description and it won't touch your pocketbook near as badly, a set of night vision. So, you know, buy a shirt and save some money. Yes. I would, I would say that that's the prepper equivalent of girl math. You know, you'll have to give it to me. You can. And if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee, use code MOF. This is disaster coffee in my cup. Actually, no, I'm lying. This is not.

This is a leftover Dunkin' Donuts because we, you actually drink that? Okay. So not from the store, not from the store. Like, We purchased the ground coffee, Dunkin Donuts. It's not even good. And I love terrible coffee. Well, okay. So that was Mrs. MOF that picked that up because we were getting ready to blast out of town last weekend.

And I just, I worked until literally like an hour and a half before we left. And I just didn't have the time to roast a batch coffee and grind it and pack it. So I told her, like, just pick up coffee. It'll be fine. That's fair. It was fine. It wasn't as good as disaster coffee, and I have now fixed that problem because I just got through roasting a batches afternoon from the 35 pounds that are on the shelf back there. Delicious.

Well, I mean, if I'm going to be a post-apocalyptic warlord one day, I have to have the thing necessary to keep all the minions under my control. That reminds me. I found a tea bush that will grow in Illinois. I might, it's a flowering tea bush. I might plant some tea. You should also potentially consider growing chickory. Chickory doesn't have caffeine in it. It just tastes vaguely like coffee.

Very vaguely, if you've ever drank it. I have not, but I've heard it's somewhat vaguely coffee like. It's an acquired taste. Kind of like Louisiana heat in the summer. It's an acquired taste. An acquired heat stroke, I see. Yes, yes. Jim Rawls saying, I tried to hide Andouy sausage this week.

What is wrong with you, Cajuns? Yuck. Oh, Jim. I'm so freaking disappointed. All right. That's fighting words, Jim. I'm, I am not a Cajun, but I love that sausage.

That's good sausage right there. So I will say, I will say, and doy is a very acquired taste. Like, I personally love it. I am banned from bringing it into this house because my wife says I smell like and doy sausage for like a week after I eat it.

Really? Oh, I love it. It's fantastic. Oh, it is. It definitely is. Dr. Scary Guy, how dare you suggest substituting chickery for anything with caffeine? I mean, I am the person who likes to promote bad decision making. That is a bad decision. Consider it promoted. Yeah, and Jim Rawl is saying, I love the red beans and rice. Okay, I mean, I'll let you slide on the and do we as long as we have the red beans and rice. put it in my red beans and rice.

That's what it's meant for. Good. Good, because that's what I use it for. Well, that and I made a sandwich out of it the one day. That was a good call. That, that was. All right, so let's have discussion before we have discussion. Silencer Shop versus BATFE will the NFA go down?

Before we give predictions, I do just have to say that the freaking memes on social media have been lit. The last couple of things. the days. Holy sweet baby Jesus in the manger have the memes been on freaking point. Every, every goon, every freaking larper, every gun advocate, every single person in the gun space right now is salivating over the idea that we just might see the NFA struck down nationwide. Man, all I'm saying is the reason I'm digging a trench is to power a mill in my garage. So if the NFA goes away, boy's going to play in the garage. I mean, I already told you that if you decide to go into business making certain things,

you might need an angel investor. And I might know some people who'd be interested. I also know some people who are interested. I've got a few different guys that I'm in touch with up here. We probably know a lot of the same guys. Some very similar guys. But I know some very similar guys that happen to have a fully equipped. live tooling CNC department full of lathes and free time.

They're not working three shifts yet. Jim Rawls is being the naysayer already saying the court decision sounds great, but you know it's not happening. All right. You want to know what I see happening? I see the Supreme Court going. It's Congress's responsibility. That's honestly what I see happening.

and they'll say Congress has already spoken because Congress did their job. Now, I don't see the NFA going away in its entirety. I could see them striking down suppressors. I could see them striking down short-barreled rifles and shotguns. I do not see this Supreme Court siding with gun owners and saying machine guns for everyone. I just don't see it. I just don't see it at all. Suppressers, I think, are a very hard thing to argue against at this point,

because look, the reason why they really got banned back in the day was two things. It was one organized crime and two, poaching. Poaching being the biggest one that sold that. And let's be realistic here. Most poachers, they weren't using suppressors. It was the argument that they used, though. So, yeah. Most poachers nowadays are using either crossbows out of season, crossbows all.

year round or unsuppressed rifles all year round in areas where there's just not enough police presence to deter it. Yeah. So kind of my thought process on this is like, first of all, bearing of mind that I am the guy who looks at every single gun law and says, we already have a gun law that trumps all these and it's written by a bunch of old guys in the, you know, in the bill of rights. Friggots for everyone. Yeah. But all that being said, I personally, have said on numerous occasions, I don't think I will live long enough to see the NFA go away.

Yeah, I would love to be wrong. I have so phenomenally little faith in this Supreme Court or any Supreme Court, and I know, I know, as Stewart listens to this, after the fact, he is already just furiously working his little thumbs to get a response together

about all the historical reasons why I'm wrong, but this is like an emotional response. I have no faith in this Supreme Court. Me either. I have no faith in this Congress. I have no faith in this White House. I have no faith in any of these politicians because the God's honest truth is

there is literally almost no one in power today who really wants to see Billy, Billy Joe and Jim Bob or Leroy and Daryl running around with freaking with suppressed short barrel machine guns. Nobody wants to see that.

really wants to see the common man armed with anything even approximating military-grade firearms. Well, look at all the surveillance companies that are now hiring massive multinational security firms for armed security for all their executives because of how terrible the anti-flock sentiment and anti-Palanteer and all those other stuff is. Even like at the AI data centers, all the companies that are putting up those things are starting to hire armed. security for their executives all the time because they're terrified of how much we're saying fuck you go away so two things dr scary guy you're a somebody but you're not in power almost i did say almost no one yeah almost no one i'm willing to allow for the fact that there are a few

freaking insane psychopaths out there that believe like i do that you should be able to buy RPGs out of a vending machine with no background check no freaking tax stamps and none of that frigging nonsense i should be able to freaking build a mini gun in my garage if i know how to put one together and everyone else can just go to hell if they don't like that that's what the second amendment means to me and it is the reason why i spent years shut out of the second amendment community at large because i was too extreme but my opinion hasn't shifted no in 20 years i've believed exactly what i did back then but the overton window of gun has also shifted in my direction.

You know what I think now? Shifted it? Hmm. Several things. Okay. First of all, COVID. No, I think it's earlier than that. Oh, hold on.

COVID. Okay. Summer of Love. Yeah, that's one. And even though this is not a recent event, I still to this day believe that a combination of Ruby Ridge and Waco in concert with every other time. time, including more recently where someone got their door kicked in over an end of a violation and got shot or got hemmed up or their family members got hurt.

I think that's happened enough times in history that now gun owners are waking up to the fact that like there are no good gun laws. Every time somebody says we need another gun law for common sense and safety, we wind up getting rammed, you know, run over by it. What do you think? I think it was GWAT. Because what we had was we had, okay, Desert Storm 1, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Afghanistan, all of that. Operation During Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. All of them. All of GWAT.

What we have is an entire generation of individuals who were from the time I was like 14, 15. Actually, no, I was like 11 when we first started the invasions. Jesus Christ, Nick. So for the last 25 years, we've been sending 18 year olds overseas in mass with fully automatic weapons, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, fucking tanks. I was 21 when I deployed. Exactly. We have been sending young people in mass overseas for the first time really in mass since Vietnam. And it was seen as at least acceptable, not possible. popular necessarily, but acceptable that we were there doing it.

And we all watched them do all that cool guy shit. And we also, why, why can't I? I'm 35. Why does a 17 year old get to have a 40 millimeter grenade launcher? And I, so I don't agree with anything you say, but Dr. scary guy had just hit on what I was thinking. It's not just G-W. Yeah, I think it's the combination of the two.

That's the other factor right there. It's the fact that like, because Baron Mollinger I deployed in, I officially like deployed. I was boots on the ground in OIF 2. So I was in country during 2004 when the assault weapons band expired or sunseted. So I was in that generation that literally was playing with M16s in the desert, came home, and all of a sudden, these things were freaking legal again for the first time in 10 years. And you guys all had experience alone. A lot.

It's a combination of the two. have a massive, fully televised war with all the people coming back with experience with those arms and a small amount of deregulation at the same time. And one in which my generation was heavily overrepresented in those engagements. Absolutely. There's a lot of GY feds that are between like 40 and 50 right now. Oh, yeah. Because we were that prime age range where like we were 8.

to 24 years old when that was going on. Hell, a lot of the guys I graduated high school with that went into the military, they all did time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not all of them in combat. In fact, most of them were not in combat, but they did time overseas. Yeah. And when they came home,

the first thing they did when they got out of the military, AR-15 ammo plate carrier. That's what they did. So one other thing, Raggle asked earlier, are machine guns still taxed? They are. SOAR SBRs and SBSs.

Suppressors are not. Yeah. So, I mean, I am firmly in the boat of I don't have any faith in anyone that has the ability to rule this one way or the other. And I live to be proven wrong. Oh, yeah. I would love nothing more than taking my 22 caliber

Gatling gun plans and just hooking a motor to that. because fuck you. This is silly and I love it. I would love to be proven wrong. I will happily go on social media and like tell, eat my plate of crow publicly and happily with perfect. I'm wrong. I will be the happiest wrong mother effort you've seen in podcasting.

Dual wielding looties. But at the end of the day, I just can't bring myself as much as I enjoy the memes. They've been fire. Great. As much as I enjoy sticking my. I stick in the middle finger up to the anti-gunners and rubbing it in their faces and be like, oh, look what's about to happen just to watch them come unglued.

Oh, yeah. It's good, it's good, clean fun. Yeah. It's not much, but it's honest work. Mm-hmm. But I just can't bring myself to believe it's really going to happen because I just don't think there's that many people in this country that really and truly want everybody to have the kind of guns I think everybody should have.

Even people in the second, even a people in the second amendment community, dude, get a little uncomfortable when you start talking about groups of people they don't think should have guns having lots of guns. Well, let's be very honest. There's still a very big section of the elder two-way community that's really fucking racist. And if not outright racist,

very classist, very agist. Oh, most definitely. Very much like, I can have guns, but the young folks shouldn't. I can have machine guns because I grew up with them and I know how to do it and I know how to handle it. What are your 75 You can't even fucking see the end of your driveway.

My personal favorite, I can have machine guns because I had to pay $50,000 for these things. Oh, yeah. Which, well, what about my investment? Fuck your investment. Yeah, that's like saying that I hope the housing market never corrects because I, my investment. My grandpa, my grandfather said that exact sentence. The housing market cannot crash because my retirement will be gone. Do you know what I told my wife?

If the housing market does correct, does correct, if our house dumps 30% its value, guess what? We're fine. I've been making extra payments on this SOB to build up a lot of equity in it. And my equity position is still pretty shored up. And guess what's going to happen if my house loses 30% of its value? So does everybody else's. Great.

We're all in the same boat again. Yeah. When the tide goes up, all the boats go up. When tide goes down, all the boats go down. how the economy works, boys and girls. The only way you get pinched by that scenario is if you're way over leverage more than you should be. And if I have to explain to you why that is, you should have a financial advisor that knows more than I do. You probably should. And even if we don't have to explain that to you, you should have a financial advisor.

They're really not that expensive. If you have a 401k, an IRA or any other kind of retirement account through work, the company that your job has that retirement portfolio through, has financial advisors you're an existing customer when we went to talk to ours it was five hundred dollars it was 500 bucks for from now till forever of them dealing with us for that because we have our retirement to count through them and as long as we have that account we never have to pay another dime for financial advice yeah 500 bucks is pretty cheap he helped me move some things around those investments have already more than made back that $500 and extra, quite a bit extra.

Funny how that works. A couple of things we've got to address. Adamson Video, I also don't care about their investments. You, me, and everybody don't care. If all these old people's frigging M60s are suddenly worth reasonable money tomorrow, hallelujah. Great. Let's see here.

That's cool. Jeff, If it does, I'll have a bit of me, President Camachoing Lutis within the month. Fuck, yeah. I will, I do, I will, I will, I will, I will superimpose a, a, a, a president Camacho's head over yours and put that on our social media. Mm-hmm. It's going everywhere. That would be freaking out, hell-landishly funny.

And raggle, fraggle, their wealth doesn't supersede our rights. Unfortunately, in this country, sometimes it feels that way. In every country, it does. It is that way. Look, let's be real here. Anything that comes with a fine just means it's legal for a fee. Always important words to live by. Oh, you poisoned millions of people.

$20 million fine. So $20 million fine, I can poison millions of people is what you're telling me. Perfectly. Okay. You're ready to, are you ready for part two of roast my shit? Rate the stuff. Rate my shit. I mean, it just really depends on which way you want to go with this.

The rules. The rules. One to five. Two scores. One to five. Five being the best. One being the worst. Rate for practical and for cool two separate scores. All right. I can do this. I am going to present to you my work EDC, which is going to have an interesting curveball thrown into it that you might see coming. You might not. I got an idea. The man purse slash PCC.

The do everything. And use car money on a helmet. Oh, I love that part. Yeah, I'm sure you do because you didn't have to spend it. Exactly why I love it. And there is a point I want to make here because you brought up brand loyalty and why you're not brand loyal. Yeah. I'm going to throw one in here that's going to be controversial. Not all Chineseium is junk and not everyone needs pro gear.

Agreed. Agreed. I'm just going to tell you personally, I always subscribe to the idea that like having something that is good enough and get you training is usually a lot better than having like, you know, the top tier hype beast, whatever bull crap, someone on Instagram is shilling today. I would rather you have airsoft stuff, which let's call what it is. Most of your Chinese nylon goods on Amazon are not that bad these days. They are not NIR rated.

They are not. Well, that's freaking horrible. I guess I, I guess I just won't be able to fight the Chinese when they paratroop into my backyard. Right. I mean, look, thermals will be a problem for you. Infrared reflectivity will be a problem for you. I'll just cover myself in mud. It'll be all right. Right. I mean, work for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Work for me too. Unless you are fighting a near-peer adversary with nods and thermals, it does not matter.

But in my, in my use case, I am much more likely to have to fight against a bunch of people trying to loot my house. Random bangers with Glock 19s, probably. And if they are running around with aviation grade PBS 14s on their heads, I have a whole different set of problems to deal with. Oh yeah, you've got a lot of problems. But there and like I said, that is semi-controversial. Like this is coming on the tail end of like us talking about how good Rebel Raider stuff is for the money. I love his equipment.

It is absolutely like top tier stuff for bottom tier prices. Value to performance is very peak with his stuff. but I also I also I don't ever advocate buying the cheapest thing out there but I also don't recommend that a person just sit on their money until you could afford the best of the best because if it's like the argument of a high point if buying a high point because it's what you can afford today and it makes you able to defend yourself and your family today that's better than saving your money for six months to get a Glock to get a Glock 19 yeah that's much better gun not arguing that point

but you have no gun for six months. That's not necessarily a plus. You know, it's the same argument that I have, I find that I have all the time with people that go on and on about the truck gun thing or the truck gun PCC or whatever, truck rifle. Look, man, the gun that you have on your hip beats the gun that's wherever the fuck else that's not on your side right now. Because at the very least, you can throw down covering fire and get the shit out the way.

All right. Let's start working through this. I don't know if that Matter of Facts logo on the screen is going to be in the way it might actually be. Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're just going to nix that and everybody knows what show this is. If you don't know what show you're watching, that's your fault. It is. Okay, so the work EDC, no guns allowed. Because as much as I would love to tell all of you out there that like, we have a right to carry guns wherever we won and yada yada yada yah i and a lot of people work in places where bringing a gun into your workplace won't just get you fired it will get you prosecuted yeah that's that's one of

those risk reward scenarios we've discussed before where the the everyday risk is considerably higher than the possible payoff yes so my work edc is incidentally enough this little bitty pocket knife because there's a specific provision in my workplace's rules where you can have a pocket knife with a blade less than two and a half inches. Perfect. It is weapon of some kind. Two and three eighths of an inch. It's a little bit of Gerber paraphrame. Dude, the Gerber paraphram is a great knife. I'm still pissed. I lost mine. I like it because like it's a classy looking little knife. I keep this thing like a razor blade.

Yep. And mostly it's for like, you know, literally mostly for utility use, but in the pinch, it's a knife. Any knife's better than no knife. I'm pulling stuff out of my pocket because I carry it all the time. Streamlight, ProTac 1L. Nice. This is a dual fuel. You can use CR123s or AA's and I keep spare batteries in my work bag all the time. Good.

And in my truck and on the shelf and in the safe. Pretty much anywhere I go, I've got CR123s close at hand. A mainstay ration because there has been a time, where I was at work until like 9.30 at night because we had a bomb threat called in the facility. And when that happened, they locked the place down. No one's allowed to leave. So I was supposed to go home at 3.30 that afternoon. And I was there until 9.30 at night. So forever, forever and ever after that, I make sure I've got a mainstay ration on me. So I've got like 3,000 plus calories on hand in case I need it. Not a bad call. A 26 house camel bag. That actually stays in my desk. Beofang UV5R mini because backup

comms are a beautiful thing if cell phones go down and I know that I can take that Beofeng and I can hit the Lecombe Repeater that's not too far from my house from my workplace from that third story. So if the cell phones went out, my wife were to grab any one of these radios and then just really powered on because they all stay dialed to the Lecombe repeater, I can reach her on that. Nice.

Power brick and a charging cable because the Beofan can charge off a USBC, my phone can charge off the USBC, and that is going to be my primary communications device is my phone. Dramamine, emodium, etc. Dramamine and emodium, because if you have a case of upchucks or downchucks, a double dose of that will help mitigate that, longer for me to get home, get done what I need to get done, et cetera, because migraines are a bastard.

Single use super glue, because in a pinch, if you have, I mean, really anything from like a broken zipper in your clothing to a button that decides to pop off to a cut or something, you might, you might would normally get a stitch put in. Band-aids, alcohol pads, shears, gauze, four-by-four, stare strips, chest seals, cat tourniquet, cohesive bandage, quick-clock sponge, and roller gauze. Nice. All of that stays in my work bag, which is usually like two feet to my left, or at the very most, I am never more. more than like 25, 30 feet away from that bag at all times. But now this is the stuff that comes to work with me every day, comes home with me every day. And it is there to make sure that, A, if there's a really weird situation, I have some bare minimum, you know, trauma stuff to deal with it.

But more than anything, there's a lot of stuff in here that's like comfort, owies, boboes, because I work a nine-hour shift and I work an hour away from home. So like if I suddenly get a case of down chucks or up chucks, I need to make it stop. And our drive home is a long drive home some days. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So practical, cool. I expect a one for cool because there's nothing here that's cool.

I'm going to go, I'm going to go practical first. I'm going to go practical. I'm going to give you a four. You're losing one point. You've got the water bladder in there, but you've got no way to filter or purify. the water. True. So I'm going to give you a four on practical.

I'm going to give you a two on cool for two reasons. One, you know how to use all of this shit. You know how to use every single piece of this. And understanding your gear is always a little bit cool. And I did not know those new mini radios charge off the USBC. That's fucking awesome. That's fantastic. You don't have to have a separate weird, random ass charger to

recharge that thing. It can all work off a power brick. That's awesome. And actually, the, uh, the bigger green Bayofangs I have, the GM15 pros that are GMRS only. Those also charge off a USBC. Dude, that's sweet. That is so much nicer than all the random ass chargers. All of my HTs charge off a USBC straight into the battery. I might have to upgrade. Dude. Having that other, having that other style of charger is a pain in the ass to bring with you. It, it is. And it is the reason why, like, I,

So everyone's heard everyone in the gun community's heard the gag of like doesn't take lock mags. Right. It's kind of funny, but it's kind of true at the same time. It's 12 gauge. Doesn't take lock mags. Yes. I'm going to tell you that in the, in the radio world, HTs, if it doesn't take a freaking USBC to charge, to me, it's freaking useless.

Like, it's too easy to integrate into the goddamn battery. It works too well. It's too ubiquitous. Just put a freaking USBC port in the damn battery and quit screwing around with whatever proprietary bull crap you're using to charge your radios today all you manufacturers if you refuse to put i am part of the us bc supremacy gang at this point if you refuse to put us bc's in your radios i will dog them out forever yeah it's at this point there's really no excuse there's no excuse other than greed that's really all it is so yeah dr scary guy say you can buy us bc batteries for the ub5r

that is true they do make them i will be buying those batteries this weekend but the USB, the UV5R mini is also a airband capable. I have no bruh, you can't no. No. I have no interest in planes other than not having them fall on me. They fly above your head. Yeah, I mean, sometimes they do, but most of the time they're flying the fuck somewhere else.

Okay, so to be, and to be fair, I have a, I have a regional airport like three quarters of a mile maybe from my workplace. We, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the building regularly gets buzzed with traffic that's making the pattern. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, we have a, we have a local single engine airport that's downtown for me, but I think three planes a week leave there.

It's, it's all a crop duster and these two old bastards that fly show planes around. Yeah. Dr. scary guys say, consider a small crank charger for. when the batteries are dead. I mean, that's not unfair. I don't like them. I don't like them. I lean in this direction because like this is, this is not a kid for I'm going to be stranded for three days. This is a kid largely centered around the idea that it really is just there to make sure that I am comfortable and provided for until it's time to drive home. Yep, that's fair.

Look, worst case scenario, if like my car is disabled or something weird happens and I have to hold up for like, you know, a longer period of time until someone can come into town and grab me and bring me home, I have 36, I have 3,200 calories sitting there in a mainstay ration and all the water that comes through the frigging building, which is already filtered. Yeah. Look, I don't know if any, Phil, have you ever used one of those crank radios or crank chargers in general? freaking obnoxious. They take so goddamn long to do anything. I would rather have a second battery pack than that because of just the

convenience because then I don't have to sit there and just wind away for a couple of hours. I mean, a small solar panel like the solar panel I was gifted by one of our patrons for Secret Santa does a way faster job. And it's also worth pointing out that like

as long as the building is powered, I have a freaking USB charge. or sitting on my desk. And you have a generator set on the building, don't you? There is a generator for the emergency systems for the whole campus. Okay. So there'll be theoretically power you could tap into. Yeah.

So this power bank is really a backup to a primary that has a backup. So I feel okay about it. I think it's fair. Okay. So a four and a two. Give you a four and a two. I'll take it. Next up.

Scorpion and Mers. Bad gun truck gun. I call it a MERS because it's a MERS. Stewart's been calling it Manned Purs ever since I built the silly thing and I can't break him of the habits. I'm not, I'm just giving up but with everybody else.

So CZ Scorpion, I actually meant to and totally friggin didn't remember to look up that light manufacturer. I do know it's a streamlined. and I want to say it's their it's their white light and I are light.

Oh, okay. That makes sense. And IR laser all in one. Neat. It's not a particularly high performing IR laser or IR illuminator, but it does have that capability. It works with my night vision. If ever I decide to employ the two together. I've got a red dot on the top and I

can still kind of use the irons if the red dot goes down. So there is that. it's kind of a weird position to have the light like on the bottom of the handguard like that that is actually strictly done to keep the width of the firearm down that's fair storage yeah because if I have light on the side now the whole thing's wider oh it's a lot wider do you have a folder on that uh folding that pistol brace is that is that folder I wonder if you put the light on the same side as the pistol brace when it's folded down you're going to get a similar width profile.

About that, but in the place this is normally stored, I store it with the pistol brace fully extended, so that keep the width to the minimum is really my best interest. Fair enough. I keep it stored with a 20-round magazine. The MERS, the Man Purs, has 3.30-Rown magazines in it, along with 2,15-round-hound magazines for my daily carry. and Israeli bandage, quick-clog gauze,

gauze four by fours, cohesive bandage, and a cat tourniquet. Nice. Basic blowout kit type of stuff. The idea behind this was, like, you and I've talked about the fact that, like, I don't do bag guns, like most people do bad guns,

where it's like a gun and a messenger bag that you go get your Starbucks with. Right. My version of bad gun is like hotel gun. Yeah. It's, I'm going to be four or five hours away from home. I really would feel better if I had a little more than one nine mill and one extra magazine.

I'd like to have a little bit more firepower, and a scorpion is like the perfect middle ground for me of definitely more capabilities than a handgun. Use the same ammunition as the handgun, which is a happy meal all by itself. It is. I don't have to carry two kinds of ammunition. I mean,

having magazine cross-compatibility where I could like use Glock mags and both of them would be kind of fun, but in this case, the scorpion is a really reliable firearm. It's dead simple, straight blowback. The magazines are freaking stellar. I've never had a function problem out of this thing. And the

MERS is the attempt to have like the things I would normally have on a chest rig in a non-tactical looking form factor. Because I can literally sling this thing around my, you know, over my neck, cross-body like a mastery bag, have it up against my side.

And it doesn't look like a chest rig. It doesn't look like have the PCC under your jacket. standard executive protection kind of idea. I mean, I've literally run this thing before where I had the brace folded and it was up against my chest with the sling really, really choked up short, so it stayed nice and high, and I had it underneath a coat.

Yeah. And no way any freaking clue. No, absolutely not. No. All right. So can you, I'm not, now I don't know this, so I'm going to ask, can you HK slap the scorpion? because this will impact your score. Yes.

You can 10 out of 10, pull the charge of handle the rear, and then rock it up to the top, and then drop in a magazine and then HK slap it. Okay, that's a 5 cool because you get a plus one for being able to HK slap it. That's always a plus 1 cool. I'm going to give it a 4 practical. Better than I thought I'm going to give it a 4 practical.

And the reason why I'm not giving it a 5 is because I fucking hate bags like that. I hate wearing them. I hate carrying them. I just, I don't know. I have tried those sling style bags before. They were all the rage when I was in high school. And I tried them.

And my God, they were just always in the fucking way. Okay. So let me ask, because it's hard to tell from this. Do you think this is one of those like cross-body bags at like, because this is literally like a, It's like a messenger bag that would sit down by your hip and the strap would be across most of your body, right? Like an old school, like Army Messenger dispatch bag. This is literally an old Army surplus.

I think it was technically like a mat bag or like a document bag. Yeah, a courier bag kind of thing almost. Yes, exactly. Yeah, you take the bag off, hand it off to the next guy. He goes, yep. I cannot stand using those. But my God, there's nothing in here that isn't practically. for the purpose you're going for.

Except I just hate those bags. I mean, fair, but for the sake of argument, what would you use instead? Not chest rig. That's the key here, as I'm trying not to have chest rig, tactical-looking stuff. I would probably go,

and this is less practical, but more comfortable to me, I would probably go mag-in-pocket, extra mags in backpack. Backpack is another perfectly good hood. I mean, and look, you can get a free of used transport for 15 bucks.

Right. I mean, look, these scorpion mags are small enough. I bet you you can find it inside the waistband pouch for those scorpion mags. Your torso is a mile long,

dude. Why you got to dougar me about my torso being tall? I'm just saying you got plenty of torso room to stick those mags up your torso. a little bit. I mean, listen, just because I could friggin appendix carry a friggin RPG 7 doesn't mean I have a tall torso. You do? And you could.

Someone's going to meet me in person one day, be like, you don't look that tall. And I'm going to be like, he sits down. He doesn't get any shorter. He just said I had a tall torso. I have a little bitty legs. I'm like an upside down T-rex. Right. I think I'm like four or five inches taller than you until we sit down. Then I'm shorter. Yeah. It is the, weirdest experience on earth. And I've been shaped like this,

like my entire adult life and still don't understand how it happened. Oh, that's weird. Biology's cool. I'm pretty convinced that, like, I'm a dwarf. And I'm just waiting for the magic to reactivate, and then I'll shrink down to my normal size. Do you think you could fit a second tourniquet in there, Phil? I'd be the only other thing.

Because sometimes, I have heard now. Granted, I don't have any experience with this myself, other than using a tourniquet one time on a work accident victim. You're thinking like a really big muscular thigh. Yeah. Because you're a muscular dude. If you take one in the upper thigh, I've heard of people needing up to four on a leg wound.

Not unfair. I had kind of, I mean, I do. It's on the list to just bulk order a bunch more cat turnicates. They do expire, by the way. They do. They do go bad over time. nylon does die just by existing. Most plastics do.

I will say that I'd kind of always, so bear in mind that like I am in that narrow generation of military veterans where we were pretty well taught to use an Israeli bandage like a tourniquet if one was not available. It can make do and so can your belt. But if, but a cat tourniquet is way faster. Can't disagree with that. I mean,

and that's, that's all fair criticism. For the cost of them, they're what, like 35 bucks? now, I think. I thought they were up to 40. They might be up to 40. Still, I dropped 50 on one because they're extremely effective and very easy to use with

extremely little training. Yeah. Especially if you stage it appropriately. Before we move on, backup. You got one in there. It's no, well, it's not very visible here, but it is visible here. You can see how a lot of that medical equipment is actually vacuum bagged together. Yeah.

Cut a notch. This is a thing I tend to do with a lot of my kits is I take it. I vacuum bag it together. I don't suck it down like super, super tight, but enough to get most of the air out. Yeah. And then I will cut a slit in the side, like not all the way past where it crimps together, but just enough that you can like rip it open barehanded. Yeah.

It's something I do more than anything just to keep like humidity away from it. And especially where you are. Yeah. Well, and if the whole bag gets submerged, then at least. medical equipment stays dry. Yeah, because the tourniquet will still be fine, soaking wet. I mean, you'll get a little more stretch out of the nylon, but not enough to matter. Yeah, but to me, it's just, it's a small thing, and it also means I can pull that whole thing out, and it's all self-contained.

Yep. All right. Next up, the do everything. The GPR with expensive bolt-ons. So this is the 16-inch carbine I built forever ago, air precision lower, M-4, Enh4, Enhant. upper, which I don't know if you and I've ever talked about, or you're aware of what the difference is between your standard, your standard error precision upper and the enhanced upper. Yep. So for the audience, it isn't aware.

The enhanced uppers use a proprietary arrangement around the barrel nut, where is normally you have like outside threads and the barrel nut screws onto the outside and then your handguard usually attach to that barrel nut. With the M4 enhanced uppers, that junction point is actually beefed up. The barrel nut goes inside the upper and has outside threads and it screws down. And then the handguard, if you get the proprietary arrow handguard, attaches directly to the upper. So you don't have, I really like it too. I will say that it is a bit heavier than a standard arrangement. I get a lot less flex out of the handguard like this,

which is kind of important if you're going to be mounting a laser on the extreme end of the frigging foreend. And it's freaking tough. It hasn't given me any problems. The only downside to it is you're kind of locked into proprietary arrow precision stuff, which is not a downside if you like it. And yes, yes, it's not a downside except they're dead. Rip arrow precision.

But that's fine. That just means I'm going to keep this for up. If you ever need a different upper, it's two pins new upper go forth and shoot more stuff yeah I mean it's it's not like you lose the firearm

because of that the upper is a consumable part when it comes to yeah and to be perfectly honest like I'll be honest at this point like if I had an issue that could be corrected like the the rear

the rear charging handle latch that's built into the upper start to wear out I would find somebody like a weld aluminum and just like put a little doll up there and machine it down. Like I would do what I had to do to keep this thing together. You'd be shocked how long it will take you to wear out that upper because I have, Phil, we've brought this up before.

I am an above average consumer of bullets. I have yet, the only upper I have ever destroyed was on a Springfield XDM and I cracked the slide at the frame rail. Hoofta. Well, it was on its third barrel. You know, it had been shot quite a lot, quite a lot. A couple of times. Yeah, I was told that that was not considered a typical defect for manufacturing or regular use by Springfield.

They would not warranty that slide. No, can't say I blame him. No, given the wear that was on the slide, I'm not surprised. Yeah. So back to this, 16-inch vaccine gunner profile barrel, which I'm a bit of a faxen whore. I like their gunner profile. I think it's the Goldie locks barrel because you get like lots and lots and lots of beef all the way out to the gas block. And then from the gas block to the end of the barrel where rigidity's not as much of an issue, they shrink it down to a pencil barrel to give you a little bit.

You don't have so much weight out front. Yeah, the engineering term is polar moment of inertia, meaning if, If you save a pound on the extreme end of a lever arm, it has more impact on how fast the gun swings versus if you save a pound at the pivot point. Yeah. It's really nerdy. It doesn't really apply to firearms much.

It doesn't. But it's one of those things where... I'll tell you this much. If you're trying to friggin save weight, that's the place to save weight on a barrel and not impact the performance much. I agree. Toolcraft C-158 bolt,

just because Toolcraft makes good stuff. And it was cheaper than every other option that had a brand name on at the time. ALG defense trigger group because I wasn't in the mood to spend Geisley money. Yeah, that's fair. ALG is decent. I've shot the snot out of this ALG defense and I really don't.

This is a, I want to say their ACT, their advanced combat trigger, whatever they call it. It's like the OEM plus, you know, a milspec trigger. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Jeff has a good question. I wonder how many barrels, bolts, and gas tubes you'd replace before you'd have to replace an upper. Jeff, I don't know that I've ever heard of someone wearing out an upper, and the Marine Corps has tried. I have heard of a few people wearing out uppers, and usually it's exactly what I talked about before.

It's the charging handle starts to just jump loose because that little nub where the latch grabs starts to wear smooth. Which that is after years and years and years and years and years and many, many, many barrels and gas tubes. Like that's, that's a gun that's been taken apart, reassemble multiple times. The gun of Theseus, as it were. Yes. Okay, Vortex, red dot magnifier. Nothing really fantastic about them.

It's a strike fire two and a three X magnifier. It's solid. Solid. It does fine. Holocon L's 321 because at the time I put this together, the Holocent Iris had not come out yet. I toy with the idea of upgrading to that. But it's kind of one of those things of like,

what I have is sponsor. and it works and it's like 800 bucks I'd rather put towards a chronograph. Yeah. You gain more spending that money elsewhere at this point. Yeah. Arasaka light, which

was not cheap, but I will just say like total shout out to Arasaka defense. If you are in the need or in the want for a really nice weapon light, before you buy surefire, before you buy anything, go to Arisaka

and just look through that tool that use where you can pick the body you want, the heads you want, the tail cap, the this, of that, and that, and that. And just look at what you can put together yourself. Because what I have here is a Malkoff devices head. I want to say it's Erosaka's own body, which is compatible with either a pair of CR1-23s or a 16-6-50. I like the 16-6-50. I like the 16-6-50.

I wouldn't have been opposed to an 18-6-50, except that body is not compatible with CR123s. and I since I'm so heavily invested in CR123s and every other damn thing that's gone related compatibility is king in that point compatibility is king I have four 16 650s that are all USBC rechargeable and I keep them topped off so it's one of those things where it's like I don't expect to have to use CR123s but in a pinch I like to know that the light that the battery used for everything else will also fit in that thing um surefire what is it again it's the tail switch that takes a crane plug, but it also has the button on the back

for a backup. I don't know what that is. I forget off the top of my head what the surefire's name, nomenclature is, and I don't really care, and a unity switch to run the light and the laser and all that crap together. Now, that's

the rifle. It's got some magpole crap on two, but nobody really cares. Howard Light earpro. Look, if you got magpole crap on your rifle, it's basic bitch. It only always works. And that's the thing. I don't,

I don't care if it's cool or not. I care that it works. And it just works. Just so happens to also be pretty decent. Yeah. Howard Light Ear Pro with a comms upgrade because I'm not spending Peltor money, not happening. Amazon Chesteroy, because like I said before,

not all Chineseium is junk. This really hasn't proven to give me any problems yet. And it will last long enough for me to eventually upgrade in something nicer or in a pinch. Take the freaking Bacarian and turn it. into a chest rig if I really needed something. I've thought about that. It's possible. Okay.

And in the chest rig. Beow-Fing radio, because this rig, you can actually see the push talk is up on one of the chest straps. It's rigged up for comms. It'll plug into that Howard Light. It'll plug into my helmet. Runs off a Bayofang. Any of the Bayofangs runs off standard K-plug.

This is actually the reason why I got those little short signal stuff, 440, monoban antennas because they're really, really small and they're really high quality and they don't, you know, come up to here on me when I'm wearing it. And spare batteries, chest seal, quick clot, four by fours, is Israeli bandage,

cohesive bandage, like your basic bitch blowout kit medical stuff. The idea here was very simply, this is the, the do everything. This is, I didn't want to bring a plate carrier out because frankly, you and I have the same plate carrier and there's only so many times I can show you how a Bicarian looks

whereby it's just like, okay, Phil, who gives a shit? Yeah, it turns out we're shows for Rebel. His shit's awesome. Deal with it. Yeah. But in this case, this is like, this is everything I think you really need to run rifle. Yeah. Plus, plus comms because one of the reasons I started dipping my toe so much into comms

was from the standpoint of like, if my wife and I are in a situation where, like, I am having to use this stuff to protect the home. I want to be able to communicate back into the house with her. Absolutely. And being able to do that through my cans where nobody else can hear what's being said. And her talk freely to me is a plus. Yeah. You know, I like the Howard Lights.

I had a pair for a lot of years. It now lives in my work toolbox. And I upgraded to some Peltor sport tax, which I think we're worth the upgrade. They give you better sound dampening. They give you better auditory awareness because they've got a, microphone on both sides. I have found they do a better job of maintaining consistent volume. The Howard lights, I've noticed, if you're having a conversation while gunfire is going

off, you just get emptiness, emptiness, emptiness every time there's a shot. It's like it's not, it's just cutting the audio instead of adjusting the decibel level. Does that make sense? And that's not to know. And then their cost to benefit ratio on the Howard lights are phenomenal. If you have a buddy you're going to take out shooting or a buddy that's getting into shooting and you're looking for a gift for that person for whatever, buy him a pair of Howard lights. What are they like? They're like 50 bucks, right?

I want to say they might be less than that. And I'll be honest. I mean, the closest competitor to these things is the Walker Razors. Yeah. I like the Howard Lights better. I'm not a fan of the Walker Razors for how they fit my head. because I wear glasses all the time. So I will say that for Howard Lights or Walker Razors, Amazon does sell the gel cup inserts.

The gel cups are a huge upgrade, especially the ones that have the slot for your glasses. I find that even the ones that don't have the slot for your glasses help because they just mold around your glasses so much better. They do. They do. They are better than the traditional foam shells. But I will say this much. The reason why I poke Howard Lights, if you're, if you're going to mimic this and you want to get the comms upgrade, which is another Amazon purchase. They do have that clip on Mike's mic boom for them, which is great.

Well, but here's the reason I push the Howard Lights, because they do make this exact same comms upgrade for Howard Lights and for Walker Razors. And Pelter's, I think. And for Pelter's. But what I found out was that if you use the comms upgrade on Walker Razors,

there's something about the way they're wired, where if the battery dies in this Walker Razors, you also lose your comms. But with the Howard, but with the Howard lights, if the battery dies, you like you stop hearing the outside world, but you still hear your comms loud and clear.

I think my Peltors are the same way. If you, if you lose your battery in the Peltors, you lose your comms. Interesting. Now, I will say this much. That's something I've not thought about.

Now, I will say this much. When I plug those up, I lose one ear. like it's kind of tradeoffs one way it's almost like if you put the comms upgrade on and by the way this is plug in through the head the headphone port so it's going to be the same way if you're like you know wiring in any kind of audio yeah but with the Howard lights to me at least it really sounds like I lose that that awareness in my left ear I hear you don't get that

with the Peltors yeah and I mean this is this is kind of like shades of user experience and also bearing a mind like price point But for my money, the Howard lights, the comms add-on, and the gel cups, that is perfect poor man's, you know, like perfect poor man Peltors. Yeah, yeah, no, they do a great job. I ran them for years, even shooting in competitions. They don't do great unless you're doubled up for like 300 win mag or something with a big heavy muscle break. Things I don't shoot for reasons.

Yeah, things you don't shoot for reasons unless you're like giving yourself concussions, I guess. I don't. One thing I have to include in here, and then you can rip me or gas me up. Go for it. Raggle said, does the height overbore bother you with that one? So here's the thing. If it weren't for the riser that's included here, which is not the easy thing to see, that red dot and magnifier would actually be about the regular height of maybe a touch higher than like a standards.

I was going to point that out. Yep. But there is a Bobrow Engineering riser. underneath that red dot and it's because of that little bit on the end of the rifle there yeah i mean that's jack in the whole package up about another three quarters of an inch now i will say and i like andrew and i talked about the sport when we talked about night vision i am i am perfectly capable of getting a pvs 14 in behind a non-raised-to-the-ceiling red dot you have to crane your neck a little bit you have to adjust your stance a little bit like it can be

freaking done. It is not as if you need these gigantic height beats risers that are like four and a half inches up off the gun. It's not that big of a freaking deal. It can be done. But I will admit that when you're in a hurry and you're

trying to come up on target quickly, you will bounce your PBS 14 off the top of your rifle a lot less with a little bit of a rise. I believe that. I believe that. And I'm going to say it is a little bit embarrassing and a little bit uncomfortable

when that that vibration transmits through the end of your $4,000 piece of night vision into the helmet that is rigidly strapped to your face. Because it should be strapped on fairly rigidly. Yes, John waning this thing is not a vibe. Like, you should have the chin strap fully engaged. And in my case, I actually wear a neck gator under mine just to keep the beard and everything like, you know,

tight up against my face. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just so it doesn't get caught in the straps and I end up yaking hair out. I mean, yes, it's like, you know, it's bitch boy YouTuber problems, but it's hard to put a price on comfort. All right. So what you got? I'm going to go practical for because you've got night vision shit on there.

And for the vast majority of people, that's really not going to enter into their use case. They'd be better off with a white light weapon light, which I realize your light. does that. I realize your light does that. But the extra cost to add the IR on for most people is not worth to squeeze. I was going to say I actually would rip myself a little harder on practicality. Okay. Because if you leave the light on this gun, and this is not a cheap light, but it's a very, very high performance white light. But if you leave the light on and you take off the hollow sun and the switch, you're saving yourself like at the time retail

about $1,100 bucks. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't negate from the practicality of it a lot other than price. Yeah. Now, but it's it's money that can be spent elsewhere for a gain that most people

won't get, which is why even though I have Night Vision, I like playing with Night Vision, I'm the first to admit that like Night Vision comes after a whole bunch of things. Oh my gosh, yes. I would say for the use case that it is, for when you've got to throw something on quick,

this is fantastic. For a doing chores around the house rig, it is way lighter than armor, because let's be clear, I think each of my plates is seven and a half pounds. So that's 14 pounds of extra weight. You got level fours? Yeah, for ceramics.

seven and a half pounds sounds about right seven and a half pounds a piece so call it 15 pounds of extra weight plus the nylon which is probably two pounds or so it adds up on wearing tear on your body it adds up for fatigue it adds up when it's hot out because those plates once they get up the body temperature guess what now you're just wearing a fairly heavy vest anybody that anybody that reacts to body armor is heavy with workout or is a an idiot be they've never worn it for three straight days. Has never worn armor in a combat zone for days or weeks or months on in. That shit gets heavy, quick, and it don't get any lighter just because you get stronger.

I will admit, you can acclimatize yourself to wearing it to a point. You can, but you could also not wear it and be even more in the green. I mean, for a post-hurricane hanging out around. the house chest rig, it's going to be comfortable. It's going to be user-friendly. It's going to be mostly out of your way. For home defense rig, it's fantastic. I love it.

For cool, I'm going to go three. It's pretty cool because you got comms and you know how to use the comms and you have a comms plan. You got your medical kit here. I'd like to see you add another tourniquet on here. Again, I'd like to have at least two. just because I'm a big guy, you're a big guy,

sometimes one is not enough. And I'm getting this from people I know that have used them in combat and have used them in emergency medicine state side. Not unfair at all. It's not here. And I didn't include it because I think it's kind of

unnecessarily weighing the scale. But like the expectation is also that I would also have my war belt on if I was wearing all this. And that war belt comes with another tourniquet. A whole other blowout kit, pistol mags, so on and which case, in which case, I wouldn't ding you for it at all. I would probably give it a four. But, you know, this as it stands.

As it stands, I'm going to call it a three because, you know, it's just, it does. It does the things it says on the tin with a little bit of extra stuff. You could probably get away with not having and missing a couple things I would like to see. This is the problem I see a lot with minimalist chest rigs. I realize I am not the cool guy that goes out and does the cool guy shit, kicking doors. But almost all of them I see skimp on the medical all the fucking time. And the one thing I've always heard from Vietnam veterans up through GWAT veterans, I've never really talked to a whole lot of World War II veterans because a lot of them were dead before I was really around all this stuff was you never, ever, ever, ever have enough medical.

or ammunition. No. 10 out of 10, like, and this is not a criticism of micro rigs. This is a trade-off. It is a trade-off. It's convenience.

It's convenience for capacity. I don't even want to call it convenience. So here's here's the problem. On the, in the one column, you have weight, speed, maneuverability, ability to access tight areas,

ability to slide through tight areas. Like you have all, all these things on one side. And on the other hand, you have in the middle of a freaking gunfight, damn all that, I want all the ammo, all the medical,

all the party favors. You cannot have both equally. No, no, you're absolutely cannot. So this becomes kind of the argument about like your everyday carry. There is the gun you would like to carry

because it's teeny tiny and doesn't weigh anything. It sucks. It sucks in a gunfight. In a gunfight, you want the big, Horkin double stack nine with the compensator with the freaking red dog with the stendo mags. You want all the firepower because you really need to friggin gun somebody down to save your life.

But on the flip side of things, you don't want to carry the stupid thing because it's this freaking big and it weighs three pounds. That is the tradeoff you have to make with micro rig versus chest rig versus recryg versus like carrier. You have to give to get. And it's just a question of like what balance point makes sense for. your use case. Oh, it absolutely does. I just, because of the things I've been told and the injuries I have seen people have at work, just doing homeowner shit around the house,

I think two tourniquets is the minimum for a rig like this, in my opinion. Now, feel free to disagree. If your war belt has another one, great. I'm trying to find a place to put two more tourniquets so that I've got four, because I've got four limbs on my plate carrier and belt that I usually run together. So that's my bias. Pro kit, pro tip. Everyone in the audience, raise your hand if you own a chainsaw. Now, put it down if you don't own a set of chainsaw chaps.

If you put your hand down, you're wrong. You should go get chainsaw chaps. And I ran without one for a lot. time and I was an idiot for doing so. First of all, they can save your leg, which is important. You only get two of them and you really need them both. Second of all, they make

interesting bedroom attire. Take it up for your spouse. I'm not here to judge. But if that's your kink, you should go for it. And third of all, my chaps have a pocket and that pocket has a cat tourniquet in it. Because Christ forbid I ever managed to sink that freaking chainsaw

into those freaking chaps. And it manages to get through them. I would very much like to have a cat tourniquet literally at my disposal immediately to slip on my leg because I like having two legs. That and chainsaw chaps don't cover your arms. They're chaps. Yes. But the point is you have a chainsaw.

It's really good at removing limbs. You should have cat turniquet. Oh, my God. It's great at removing limbs. Phil, have I ever told you what happened at the festival in a small town near me? no but I think my stomach is about to turn so there was a guy they had a dead tree out in front of the little museum in this town and they decided they wanted to have it chainsaw carved during the festival and then guy was about 25 feet up the tree and he slipped oh that chainsaw missed his chaps and went into his groin when he slipped oh jesus he was not alive when they got him out of the tree. Believable.

Cut us from a moral artery with a chainsaw. Done inside of 20 seconds. Oh my gosh, yes. I was not present for the event. There were a lot of children present for the event. So the chaps might not always save your life, but it's better. My wife just said I'd rather do two legs, but we don't need to bring in the outwear to the bedroom, weirdo. Well, I mean, babe, I would not be the first husband to wear chaps to the bedroom.

They just wouldn't be chainsaw chaps. That's true. I'm also trying to smooth talker into the idea that like silks and night vision on my head, that could be a bedroom vibe. That is considered lingerie. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's right. That's male lingerie. Uh-huh.

That fits. It's just as expensive. She's not going to go for that. Look, I've been trying to convince my wife to let me buy nons for a while now so I can night snack with the dog. And she tells me that the dog's already too fat. So, I don't know. What are we going to do? Damn.

Okay. Last but not least. You, we all saw this coming. Obligatory night vision LARP. Ludacrously expensive, Gen 3, PBS 14, white phosphor 2300 plus fom. And it's aviation grade, so it doesn't have a single blemish in the tube. It is what you commonly here refer to as freaking amazing. Mm-hmm.

Running this with the Wilcox G-11 and Mod Armory Bannet J-Arm, because they are are the only people that make an aftermarket J-arm out of aluminum that is not a plastic piece of crap that has been like run over by a Humvee and abused severely. I couldn't, I couldn't say that like, so if I had you a titanium one. Well, here's the thing. The mod armory one works, works fine. But it's a titanium. I will happily say, though, that if I had to do this all over again and I hadn't got the Wilcox G-11, for free thrown in on the deal from Andrew.

Fair enough. I would have gone and bought a dovetail, a dovetail compatible, uh, Wilcox and a dovetail mount. And like that would have been a much cleaner, nicer, more stable mounting solution than what I have here.

But I got the G11 for free and the model arm reband at Jarm works. So I'm not really upset. Uh, team Wendy bump, bump helmet and cover Enforced night light. Now, Enforce doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to weapon lights. But I'm going to,

tell you that their IR and Viz light weapon light makes a really nice helmet light. It's right enough for admin tasks and for IR use, you can pop this thing on and like fully illuminate a room. Nice. What I usually do on this thing is I actually like tilted back so it aims up at up the ceiling if I'm inside a room and flick it on and it's like turning the light on. Wow. Really useful.

That is sitting on top of a Unity Remora amount, which actually amounts. in line with your Peltor mounts. Nice. And it's sitting on another set of Howard Lights, Earpro, plus coms. The same thing that I have on a headband. I also have bastardized onto this set of Peltor mounts. And you have bungeeed your Night Vision appropriately. I do recommend that you employ some bungeys to help stable.

I kind of like add a little bit of preload to the night vision. It'll take all the slack out of the mount and the, the, the J-arm at everything. In this case, I actually I run my bungee. So what I'm careful not to do is I don't put the bungee like in between the J-arm and the night vision.

Right. I try to put it up a little bit higher, but point is it applies just a little bit of tension. And also the other thing you see on there is a homemade landier just made out of 550 cord. Yeah. Ties off to the night vision. It's got a-landier just smart. It's got a big Velcro pad on it, just stick it right

the top of your helmet. And that is specifically made long enough that when I have my night vision down inside of its pouch, that lander is long enough to reach up and out the pouch and then tucked down into the molly on the outside of the pouch. So, because I have talked to friends of mine that ran PBS 14s in theater, I didn't. We were still using PBS 7s. But they have like opened those bags up aggressively and spit their night vision out of the bag and onto the ground.

That was expensive. fortunately they take a beating but this was an attempt to like to make so that if the pvs 14 does fall out of the bag then there's a chance that the lander catched it before it hits the ground and that's the only reason for having a lander is that if it does pop off of its mount or something goes wrong it dangles from your helmet instead of smashing on the ground yeah that's a that's a pretty that would be a pretty poopy day given the cost so yeah this is the obligatory night vision larp it's love it i i i i The last time I added all up, I think it's like five Gs on top of the head. I mean, it's obviously a five cool. And it's it's ludicrously expensive. Everything in Night Vision is ludicrously expensive. It is, but it's an instant five cool. I mean, you can't, you can't knock it.

It's fantastic. It's perfectly usable. It gives you way more capability than not having Night Vision does. And practical. I might rate this lower than you would actually. I'm going to call it a one practical. Oh, we agree on something. It gets you, it gets you into Night Vision.

So it has some practical because it gives you a capacity you wouldn't have otherwise. But for fuck's sake, you can do so much with five grand. Okay. But I do have one extra slide. All right. Before we discussed the practical aspect of this. Not shown tripod and phone mount for photography and stargazing. Yeah, that's just so cool.

So putting Night Vision on a helmet is Instagram cool, but about a one practical. But just every day cool? My God. But having a phone mount so that you can connect, I can connect a literal phone phone to the PBS 14, put the whole thing on a tripod, pointed up in the sky, and use this thing for nighttime photography. just phenomenal, just phenomenal. Do I get a couple of extra practicality points? I mean, you do. I'll give you one.

I'll give you two practical because you can do cool science shit with it. You can stargaze with it. You can look at planets. You can do the night walking around. I'll give you a two. Stargazing with the PBS 14 is how I convinced my wife we needed night vision. I know, I know. And it is, it is neat.

It is. I'll give you that. But my God, man, I know so many people. that $5,000 would be a seriously advantageous amount of money to suddenly find in their checking account, that spending $5,000 on Night Vision for me just isn't in the cards. It's not. I mean, heck, that would be a considerable portion of the bedroom renovation I'm doing. That would be most of it, actually, if not all of it.

I mean, like we said before, that's not unfair. If you have adult things to spend money on, then you don't need to spend money on Night Vision. If your retirement is not fully funded, you should not be buying Night Vision. Okay. We have to discuss what fully funded means because... For your age. Okay. For your age.

If you are not to a point where your financial advisor says, no, you're on track. You're doing good. Then you should not be spending $5,000 on Night Vision, in my opinion. Because, look, you will probably never, I'm not going to say you never will, but you will, but you will not likely ever use night vision in self-defense. Unlakely. It's extremely unlikely. Might you use night vision in an aggressive situation?

Yeah, I would argue that's far more likely than in self-defense. Will you use it in the bedroom? I would. I would too, but I don't think Mrs. M.O.F is not swayed by such arguments. Look, what was it? The average American is carrying $15,000 in, credit card debt or something like that today.

I'm way it. Yeah, the average America's carrying $15,000 in credit card debt. If you are anywhere on that scale of carrying credit card debt and I find out that you have bought Night Vision instead of paying off that interest-bearing debt, I will harass you in person and over the phone because it's costing you more money to just cost you more money. You know, I related to someone just today that I actually don't own a single credit card and they were shocked. Look, I have a couple. We use them on and off. We use them for online shopping because it's easier to correct fraud on them, but we also never carry a balance on them.

So it's, we use it functionally as a debit card and that's how you should use it. That is how you should be using it. But look, some people don't. Some people get in over their head because they make poor decisions. Correct those poor decisions before you go buying fun stuff. Fair. So, oh, Jim, that's a fair point. If you have enough Bass Pro Rewards and Bass Pro Cells Night Vision, which I don't know if they do, go forth and rewards points. I used Mike Cabela's rewards points to buy what did I buy? Oh, my 870 Express combo, field and security combo. Yeah, and a case of shotgun rounds back in the day.

I used my Cabella's points for that. And that was all points from gas. Because you got two points for gas. You got five points at Cabellas and you got one point for everything else. But so just in gas points, I bought a shotgun. The guy at the checkout counter thought it was hilarious. That's freaking out. outstanding.

All right. So this has been rate slash roast my shit part two. I mean, I tried my best. I tried my best not to pick stuff you had already brought forward. I was trying to bring like a different flavor. Fair enough. Andrew has said he's going to make every attempt to join us next week for the 10th anniversary.

And we're going to start with rating and roasting his stuff. Followed by General Tom Foolery and goofing off. Yes. People have been saying make it a two-hour show. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. I have to go to work the next day. Yeah, me too, but that's what coffee's for.

Coffee up. Yeah, I mean, we'll figure out how to make it work. But the point is, I'm looking forward to it. Me too. I never thought I'd still be podcasting after 10 years, but here we are still having fun and people still tune in and giggle at us. So having fun is the important part. Having fun, I will be the first admit, and we will talk about this at length.

But like, I remember when I first started podcasting, I told Gillian and I told Andrew, and I'm pretty sure I told you too. The first day it's not fun, I quit. That's fair, man. Why add more hassle to life than you already have? I already have a full-time job. I don't do that for fun. I do that for money.

If this becomes a full-time job, I don't want to do this too. Like, that's just two full-time. jobs. It's going to have to be a job. Yeah. Only one of these two things pays me money to offset the pain and the acid is, and this is not exactly paying me bear 50-cow

money. True. It doesn't really, it doesn't pay me like Magpoopo P-Mag money for that matter. As long as it's not a negative on the balance sheet, that's all the matters. That is a point. Jeff Jags going to roll us out. If you've never used

Night Vision to peek at your girl naked, you failed the test. No, I haven't. I just leave the lights on and leave the night vision stowed. Yeah. Way less bumping into shit. Yeah. Way less bumping into shit.

Way less creepy too. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Matter of fact, is going to go out the door. Good night to everybody. Hope you tune in for the 10th anniversary next Thursday at 730 Central,

830 Eastern. If you're not going to make it, I understand. You can just listen to this. the podcast and all your favorite podcast director is you can watch it on YouTube or Facebook or Rumble at your leisure and we'll talk to another week by everybody good night