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Sam, Welcome to another edition of Old School Guns, the podcast that tells you exactly like it is. And here we are at episode number 225. 225. And again, if you have any questions or comments, you can email them to me at KB M A K E L A O l dot com K B M A K E L O L dot com or you can post them in the comments section of podbean. And if you like the podcast, hey, tell your friends, you know, I mean, why not? I usually don't make a lot of pleas. I figure if people, you know, if they, it's, it's on Podbean and it's on these places. And so if they want to listen to it and, you know, subscribe, they can do that. Let's get to the news. Okay. The first news is, okay, Iran. What a strange operation this all is. I mean, completely from the air. And maybe this is portending the future. You know, it's, you know, we all kind of laugh at, you know, the Terminator movies and Skynet, but this is really looking a lot like it with drones. And pretty soon, if they don't and they, they have them already, but I don't know that they're really using them. They're, they're gonna have drones that they just turn loose. They'll do their own autonomous targeting. They'll just fly around till they find something and kill it. You know, very things that were science fiction in the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s are happening. And maybe it will be predominantly from the air because face it, ground forces have got a problem. They move slow compared to things in the air. The tank is about at the limit of its practical development. I mean, you can't make them bigger anymore. You can't make them faster, you can't make them more armored. That, that triad has to be balanced. And, and basically they've, they've topped out at 60 to 70 tons. I mean, that's, that's a heavy vehicle. Those, everything on a tank is super heavy duty. And I was never a tanker, but I worked with tanks very, very closely for years and years. And I know tanks are a very heavy, complex machine. And to get a better tank, it used to be a simple formula. Well, you made it bigger, put more armor on it, got a bigger engine, and put a bigger gun on it, and that's how you got a better tank. Well, now we've reached the end where they're so heavy and only the United States can support a 70 ton main battle tank. And in Fact, to call a 70 ton tank a main battle tank is actually kind of a misnomer. They would be heavy tanks under the older construct of heavy medium light. And we kind of replace that with, well, the all around tank is an mbt, a main battle tank. Well now they're just super heavy. They're, they're getting bigger, bigger and heavier, but they reached a limit where we can't move them if they get any bigger and heavier. You know, there's a lot of things that constrain tanks. You still have to move them a lot by rail. And so bridges and tunnels, especially in Europe, create a problem because it can only be so big to get through some of the rail tunnels there. It can only be so heavy to get on some of their rails and get pulled by, you know, you don't need 40 locomotives to pull a whole train of load of tanks. So there's all of these, all of these constraints are for our piling up on tanks. And I think that's one of the reasons you're seeing kind of more mobile gun systems starting to take place. Things that are wheeled, you know, like the, there'll be something on the striker, there'll be something on the, you know, all of these European wheeled vehicles that are, that are going to be lighter, very mobile, but not as well protected. And that comes with a big rub because now there's so many drones and other things out there that can, that can destroy a 70 ton tank. Imagine what they'll do to something that weighs a third as much with a lot less protection. But Iran is, is becoming a, you know, it's, it's, I'm amazed how successful it is. I still hold with my prediction and I have no inside knowledge. This is just opinion. My prediction is there will have to be an international force occupying the ground around the Straits of Hormuz. That's just the way it is. And we cannot trust even a successor state to the current Iranian regime with control of that. They just, they cannot control that. Number one, it's international waters, even though it is a very tight choke point. And number two, they've not proven in the past that they could be good stewards of anything, whether it's, you know, decency to human beings or anything else. And while they say regime change is not a goal, I think that's the only worthwhile goal in this. You know, face it, you look at the Middle East 50 years ago and you look at it now, 50 years ago, all the Arab countries hated Israel and were conspiring either openly or behind the scenes to undermine and destroy Israel. That's fundamentally gone. That's fundamentally gone. The Egyptians don't really care about Israel. They just, they're just doing their Egyptian thing. The Jordanians don't really care about Israel. The Iraqis don't care about Israel. The Syrians now don't care about Israel. The Libyans don't care about Israel. No, none of the people in that vicinity care about Israel or care that it exists. It's like, it's fine, leave it, Leave it be. The evil behind the scenes, who's keeping the last vestiges of this alive with Hamas and Hezbollah is Iran. So they are the problem. They have to go and we have to get rid of them. And, you know, that's just basic. I mean, you don't, you don't need to be an expert geopolitical or analyst to figure that out. It's just obvious if Iran was gone, these other countries, the Middle east would be a much more peaceful and more prosperous place for the people who were there. So it's absolutely, it's absolutely insane that the Iranians are allowed to create that much havoc. And between that and their, their shenanigans around the streets of Hormuz that their government has to go. I mean, they, there needs to be a government of reasonable people who we can deal with, who actually have the best interest of the people who live in that country at heart. So that's a deal with Iran on a very disappointing level. The Democratic Party is scum. They are filth. They are scum. They, they absolutely are totally against all this. It's like, you know, if you got criticisms, that's fine, but, you know, you kind of say when the country's kind of doing something like this, you have to kind of unite behind the effort. You don't have to love Trump, you don't have to love Hegseth or anything else. But you do have to admit reality. And reality is they've done a really good job. They've done a very, very good job. The guy who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs doing a great job. This has gone very, very well. And, you know, people need to get behind the effort because the work isn't finished yet. And we need to get tough with the dirt bag Europeans who are nothing more than just a bunch of freeloading toilet bugs. You know, I mean, there are sensible people in these countries who even admit, you know, Britain has more admirals than they have combat ships. They can't even put, they couldn't even put A ship down to defend their own base in Cyprus. They couldn't even do that. The British army has more horses than tanks. You know, I mean they have like 200 and some horses. They have like 150 tanks or some, some ridiculous number like that. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's, there's some, there's some stuff out there on, on that they've just, they thrown in the towel and I kind of understand, you know, after the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union comes apart, there were, the, the imminency of the threat just really wasn't there. So they, they just kept cheaping out. Now they have nothing. The British Navy is nothing. They have two aircraft carriers. They're both broken because the designs are bad. But even if they're out there sailing, they don't have any escort ships. They have to come to the US Navy and say, oh, by the way, can you put a couple of a cruiser and a couple of destroyers around to protect us? I mean, and the worst part of this is, the worst part of this is, is that the combined navies of NATO, Japan and all these other, you know, kind of friendly countries, we, there's, there's like a thousand combat ships and we could easily handle any global crisis with a thousand ship navy if those guys would just get on board. You know, just get on board. I mean, if we all cooperated, it would be nice, but they refuse to cooperate. They refuse to let us use bases that we pay for, that we pay an exorbitant amount for basing in these countries. It's not them being generous. They harvest money by the ton off these bases between the people stationed there who spend in the local economies to all kinds of our government paying them for the use of these bases. And then these bastards say you can't use it even though it's benefiting them. The free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz benefits them. So you know, I, I never thought I would be this way, but I'm like, we should pull out of NATO. We should tell NATO to go fuck off. And if you want to have a security agreement with the United States, you need to get in line and we'll do it with you. But you're going to do certain things. You're going to spend 4% of your GDP on defense. Because we're not, we're not the welfare office for Europe, you know, we're not the welfare office who defends you so that you can have these goofball social programs. You know, you can have a socialist economy and everything else. We're not paying for that. So they're gonna have to pay for their own defense. And they will get. They will get benefits. It'll be a good deal for them, but they have to pay more. And they don't want to do that. They do not want to do that. You know, so that's. That's kind of my thoughts on Iran is it has exposed really some what the future of warfare may start looking like in a big way, much more than Ukraine has. And it is exposing the facade and the farce that NATO is. NATO is a farce, and it really is an outmoded construct, and it needs to go. It just. That's just all there is to it. Oh, another thing that kind of comes up is just in this country, the political divide over anything Trump does, anything. And, you know, I don't like caving in. I thought that Noem and Bondi were doing a good job. When you compare the job that Noem and Bondi were doing in their respective departments, as opposed to what Alejandro Mayorkas, or as I call him, gay dork ass. As opposed to what he was doing and as opposed to what Merrick Garland, who is an absolute fraud, what he was doing as Attorney General. Nomen. Bondi were doing a great job. Hey, they were both doing a great job. Hey, are they perfect? Well, nobody is in a job. Nobody. Nobody can just walk in and be the attorney general or I would even say secretary of dhs. And the. The slings that they throw at them like, well, they're just these cute girls who are doing it. I thought they were doing a good job, and I don't think either of them should have been fired. And I think Trump made a big mistake. Why give the Democrats that satisfaction? Why do it? Just why do it? The political divide. When I was in college, I guess my father gave me two books, and one was the Winds of War, and the other was War and Remembrance by Herman Walk, who was a naval officer in World War II. He wrote the Kane Mutiny and some other. But War and Remembrance and the Winds of War were his. Were his crowning literary achievements, really. So, you know, I read those books and I never really understood why he gave me those two books as opposed to anything else. And after I read them, I understood is my father was of the generation that was just coming of age when World War II started. So his father was a career army medical officer. He himself, my father became a medical officer. My uncle went in the Navy, his brother went in the Navy. And his other brother was just too young to do anything in World War II, but he was drafted for Korea. So there you go. And served in the Korean War and was awarded a Bronze Star with a V device for valor. So there you go. But it showed how the international situation just impacted a single family. And the famous quote is, you know, the family's been blown around like tumbleweeds by the winds of war. And my father's family has said the same sort of thing happened. So I understood that. But one of the other things I understood is in War and Remembrance, it goes into the Holocaust. And you can see it in the miniseries they made. They made two miniseries out of these books, both starring Robert Mitchum. And, you know, I'm not here to critique those, but the area I want to go on is they cover in excruciating detail the mechanics of the Holocaust, okay? And when you see the thing that pops out is the vitriolic history, hatred towards Jews that was really stirred up by government officials just telling people over and over again, and that's how they motivated people to do these horrible crimes. And we see the same thing in America today. When you look at. And I'm saying by name because it's true. When you see Hakeem Jeffries, you know, it's clear. You can tell by the look on his face, you can tell by his demeanor, he hates everyone who's not like him. He hates white people. He hates black people who aren't like him. I'm sure he hates Hispanics. I'm sure he hates Asians. The dude is filled with hatred, and all he talks is hate. Same thing with a lot of these other Democrats. You know, the fact that the. The mainstream media, which, thank God, is losing its grip on the. The American people, but it's over 90% negative on Trump, just generating hatred. That's where assassination attempts come from. Even a peaceful kind of intellectual guy like Charlie Kirk is painted as a hate monger who really, well, he kind of got what he deserved. I was talking to someone not too long ago, and it's like, yeah, it was terrible. And the thing they said was, well, that's what you get when you, you know, you're a hate monger. And so I always challenge and say, okay, what. What did he say that was hate mongering? Well, he didn't like this. And it's like, none of. None of the stuff they come up with is even remotely true. But it's what they've heard from the progressive echo chambers, which are liars. They don't care. The ends justify to means to these people. They are liars, they are frauds, they're mentally ill. You know, as you see, you see it all the time. You see the 400 pound LGPTQ, trans. All that kind of a person talking about how screwed up the country is when the first thing they need to do is look in a mirror and say what's screwed up? You know, what's screwed up? You know, you can't listen or take those people seriously. Can't take any of them seriously. And yet the Democratic Party is vested full on in all this. And it's absolutely. And even on the Republican side you find some of the strangest things like Marjorie Taylor Greene is insane. She's insane. She's. She should be locked up. She absolutely, either she didn't believe what she was saying when she was in Congress or she doesn't believe what she's saying now. But no rational person can do the 180 degree turn that she's done in just a few months. She's crazy. And I think she's also been bought. I mean there's money. People will say anything if it gets some money, I guess. And maybe that's the case here, who knows. But it is just un freaking believable that, you know, she flipped out over the Epstein files. Something nobody should really care about. I mean, hey, I'm not. To me, Epstein was a pig. Got what he deserved when he was killed. This Ghislaine Maxwell, she can sit her ass in prison the rest of her life. I think they're dirt bags, you know, but so is P. Diddy with his freakouts. I mean there's all this stuff. People with money will indulge their desires and that's just, that's just kind of the thing there. And you know, I laugh because in Britain they're making such a big deal about this with Prince Andrew or the former Prince Andrew, when they actually have rape gangs go around and they're grooming young women, raping them, all this really bad stuff. And they don't want to confront that, but they want to talk about Epstein. Did, did the, did the horny little prince diddle a, a soiled dove back in the early 2000s? Well, you know, yes he did. She got paid and you know, whatever. However all that worked out, it's worked out. So to me it's not that big of a deal. To me the current situations are much more, much more deserving of effort and attention. Okay, so we do have some gun Stuff to get to. I do have to say I, I was kind of talking about it and laughing about it. You know, I thought the Pieta Python. You know the Pieta, they don't call it a python. I think they call it a blackthorn or. Yeah, they call it a blackthorn. The Pieta blackthorn, which is their copy of the older Colt Python. I thought that was like an early April Fool's joke, but apparently it's not. It's real. And I don't understand why it's apparently the pricing. And again, what you can actually what they want for them and what you can buy them for. Maybe two different things. A lot of times guns sell for under MSRP, but their MSRP is like 12 to 1400 bucks. No, I'm sorry, 11 to 1300 bucks. Something in there. Whereas you can buy, you know, the new generation colt for maybe $200 more. Why would anybody want a Pieta Python? I do not know. Perhaps in Europe where it's easier to get than it would be. A Colt Python might be a. Because of tariffs and other things, it may be more attractively priced, but there's no way it's going to have the royal blue finish that a Colt Python does, like my Python does, which was made back in the early 1980s. The only interest I have in this would be, and I would never do this because I just don't want one, but you know, buy one because I don't think they're going to be around. I don't think they're going to be around at all. I think though, if we even see them in the marketplace, they'll be gone within a year. Nobody will want it. No, certainly on this side of the Atlantic, especially if there's a tariff on it, it's going to be more expensive than a cold Python. So why would you, why would you buy that? That's the, that's the story of. On that to me, it's. Pieta has so many kind of good ideas. I mean they just kind of broke into the single action market. As a matter of fact, I think the, the single action used in the rust shooting was a Pieta single action. And from, from everything I've heard, those are good guns. They're, they're as good as the Uberti's. I mean, I can remember back in the day when Ubertis were considered junk, but they were good guns actually. And the same thing with Pietas. So I think if they stuck with western guns, they, they would, they would do a whole lot better and they have done it in the past and I think that's kind of their niche. I think that's their niche is being a bit lower priced competitor. Yeah. So that's what I would do if I were them. I would not make, I would not make a Colt Python. And if I did want to make a modern revolver, I would make something that would be more. I don't know what the import regulations are, but I would make something that is much more friendly to the concealed carry market. You know, they could, they could do a lot of that because they know how to make revolvers. So they could make, they could make some pretty cool revolvers for concealed carry. But I don't know. I, I'm sure, sure 2 inches are probably not the thing, but maybe they can, maybe they could make a 3 or 4 inch revolver that would be, be really good in some, you know, maybe in some new calibers, maybe, who knows. But we'll see, we'll see what they do. Okay. I guess, I guess, you know, there's no, there's nothing like throwing good money after bad. And we've Talked about the M7 rifle now because the cool guys can't use the regular standard weapon. There is now the XM8 carbine. And actually they used the designation XM8 back in, way back in the early 2000s for some stupid H&K G36 style gun that they tried to sell the US military. Larry Vickers and, and some other guys, one, one I knew personally were involved in that. And they were, you know, again, something that was not markedly in any way superior to an M4. And now they, you know, so they wanted to sell that. But now the, the same designation is being used for the 6.8 by 51 carbine which we developed that cartridge to get increased hitting power and increased range and increased penetration. But now with the XM8 we're putting it on it with a 10 inch barrel which negates which is going to rob it of velocity, which is going to rob it of accuracy. So that's bad enough. The next thing that's going to happen is from, from what I understand, Even with the M7, when you fire these things without the suppressor, the, it is a horrible blast and crack and everything. People around you don't like it. So they put these suppressors on them to make them a bit more tame and kind of acceptable. If you're, you're firing right next to someone in a foxhole, you know, the last thing you want to do is be, is being, is distracting them from their own target acquisition and firing with your muzzle blast and you know, the report of your weapon. So they put, they put suppressors on these things, which makes it longer. So we have a 10 inch barrel that's now got what looks to me like a six inch, maybe, maybe longer suppressor on it. So you have a de facto 16 inch barrel. But that extra 6 inches isn't helping your accuracy or your velocity. In fact, it's just helping noise abatement. So. Yeah, and it's apparently a little. Course it's going to be a little bit lighter, but not much, but a little bit. So we'll see how that goes. I think the, the real problem with these is the Marine Corps wants no part of it, and I'm sure the Air Force wants no part of it and the Navy wants no part of it. So this is now just an army program. And at a certain point Congress is going to step in. Congress is going to step in and they're going to say you all have to shoot one caliber. You have to have one caliber, you know, one for rifles and we'll let you have another one for machine guns. You know, kind of like we do now. 7.62 NATO and 5.56. We're not going to have this hodgepodge of weapons that we currently have. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's going to be hard if we get into a major ground conflict. Keeping things resupplied with the right stuff is always going to be a mess. Now, for contingency operations or coin, you can get away with a lot. But I'm not sure we're going to be able to get away. I mean, we've got three. They're developing machine guns in.338 Lapua. Not a bad idea. None of these things are horrible ideas. Even the XM7 and XM8 aren't horrible ideas. Well, the XM8 is a horrible idea that it's, it's a terrible idea. But the M7, if, if, you know, you could make a justification that in Afghanistan, longer ranges, you needed it over 5.56, I can understand that. But the rest of it I don't understand. I just do not understand it. If 556 is truly no good anymore, number one, why don't the Marine, why aren't the Marines thinking this? And number two, why aren't, why aren't Congress and other agencies do the Department of War saying, this is the new standard, this is the new caliber. You will buy weapons in this. And I think The Marines would very justifiably say, we've just converted to our, whatever their HK416 derivative is, M27 or whatever we just converted. We have just now fielded this and you're telling us to get something that we don't want. So this is going to be a big mess. And I mean, they're kind of kicking the can down the road. I think what will happen, if I had to guess what will happen is the lighter army divisions, the 101st, the 82nd and maybe a few others will field these things. The XM7, XM8, they'll use them for a while and then if we get into a major conflict, there'll be plenty of M4 style weapons that they can be reissued and they operate fundamentally the same way. So, you know, there won't be any real transition training required. And so they would, they would just say, hey, just first, for the sake of ammo commonality, you're going to use these now. But if you had to deploy somebody on a contingency operation like a Grenada or something, and they, they thought that the XM7 and 8S were better, the M7 and XM8S were better. No, they, they would obviously use those. So it'll be interesting. The thing that, that's most interesting to me is I haven't heard anything about US SOCOM on these. So I guess they're just standing by, biting their time, trying to figure out if it's, if it's really going to be worth it or not. All right, next thing is, if you live in the Kansas City metro area and you like historical clothing, firearms and the supplies that support all that also, you know, just in general, they have some antiques. There's a place in Liberty called James Country Mercantile, which is run by a husband and wife who are just, they, they are great people. They really are. And they really, you know, you really should go there. It's very interesting. I mean, they can make you, you could be a Confederate general or a Union admiral, whatever you want to be. They can make you the historic. If you want to be a Mexican War Dragoon, they can make you all those kind of uniforms and custom tailor it to you. You know, they have, they have the materials, they have all the patterns and they can, they can make all that. They have a lot of the hats and all those, all that good stuff they have. And they have a lot of, not a huge amount, but they have a nice selection of historical firearms, you know, current, currently made, and really good deal. So it's a really good deal. Another thing they do is occasionally in concert with the friends of the James farm, which is the birthplace of Jesse James and was the longtime home of Frank James. They do pistol raffles which they sell 50 tickets, 20 bucks a pop. So you got a pretty good chance, you buy two tickets and you got a, you know, it's a. Much better than any other raffle you can think of. And they, they usually have revolvers or I think this time they are raffling a very cool gun one that one that I'm lusting after. It is a TSIS 9 millimeter tank commander. It's a 1911 commander style gun. And apparently those are really good guns. And it's nine millimeter. Ammo is cheap. You know, you can shoot it, you could use it for defense. It's handy sized. Commander sized guns are really cool. That's one thing I've never really gotten into. I've always used the full size ones. But I really like the Commander guns. So anyway, they have, they have that. So James Country, Mercantile, Liberty, Missouri. And you can, you can find them on the Internet. All right, let's get to my favorite part, which is questions and answers. And as I'm looking over this, some of these I answered last week. These must have been something that were in route when that was put out. So I'll just kind of skip by them and give them a, give them a nod but not spend a lot of time on them. Okay, here the first question is a little weird one. If the M16A1 came out today instead of 1968, would it be a viable rifle or would it be obsolete? I've talked about this when I've been talking about M16A1. So I'm going to kind of, I'll just kind of cruise through this. If, if the United States had say, adopted the FN FAL instead of the M14, probably would have used it through the Vietnam War. Just guessing. The AR15 might not have been developed into the M16A1. But you know, sometime in the late 70s, early 1980s, we would have moved on to something else. And that probably would have been an M16A1 or an M16A2. So we'd be in the same place we are today with you know, M4, M4A1s and you know, the M7 on the horizon. So that's the first part. We adopting a different rifle in the 1960s might have delayed the M16, but I don't think it would have totally bypassed it. And if it came out Today I still think and say it's a viable rifle for a lot of military and especially police use, also militia type use. You know it certainly would have been fine. So, and, and that's, you know, Israel still uses a lot of M16A1 type rifles for their civil defense use and all this other. So I think it would have been fine, you know. So yeah, it's kind of an obtuse question, but it, it's still a viable rifle. Yes, it is. And it, while you can say certain aspects to its design are obsolete, like the non adjustable buttstock and the carry handle and the light barrel, they're, they're not deal breakers. They're not deal breakers at all. So that's, that's kind of where we are with that. Okay, next question. You recommended the use of 777 2F in cap and ball revolvers. 777 is more powerful than regular black powder. So how do you adjust the, how do you compensate for this? I guess is what he's asking. How do you adjust the load? Here's what I would say. I said 2F not 3F. So 772F is like black powder. If you could get it in 2.5F it's a little more powerful than 2F black powder, but not as powerful as 3F. So it's fine to use in the same volume equivalent that you would use in 3F. It's going to be just fine. So that's the clarification on that. Are volume black powder measures accurate? Well, I suppose you can always find one. That's, that's not. I found them to be. I've got a couple of the things and I found them to be pretty good. If you, if you dial up 30 grains, that's, that's about what you get. I've checked it against the scale but you should always check it against the scale. And what I mean by a volume measure is you know, it'll have the graduations on it and you kind of pull it, pull it down and so when it. You're at a certain level it should have 30 grains of powder in it. But that's the volume. It's the. And that's a. And they're regulated for black powder, not other things. So you know that's, that's that they're pretty much. I found that they're pretty much on slick shot nipples worth of money. Yes. Listen to last podcast. They are definitely worth the money. Now I haven't been said that I can clarify by Saying there are some times I've had Pieta or Uberti nipples that came on the revolver that worked just fine. There's no need to replace them. Before you go, you can make a choice. You can buy the revolver and not even fool with the ones that came with it and just swap them out. And that's not a bad deal. Put. Put the slick six nipples in there and you'll. Or Slick shot. I'm sorry, you put those in there and you're good. You know, you. You are actually, you know, maybe you've saved yourself some headache, but you can save the other nipples and, you know, maybe use them to. Or test them before you. Before you buy the slick shot nipples, just to see if you actually need to. You can do it. Depends on. Depends on how you want to do. Can't go wrong either way. So there. There you go. Is there a quality difference between Pieta and Uberti cap and ball revolvers? Yeah, kind of talked about that a little bit. You know, I'll be honest with you. I can't tell them apart half the time. If somebody puts one of each down in front of me, it's very difficult to tell which is which. It really is. You know, they've made Both brands over 40 years, maybe even longer. And you're gonna have varying qualities, a manufacturer with batches and things. So I, I would say that I've seen just as many YouTube videos with people having to do adjustments on their Ubertis as well as their Pietas. So, you know, you can take that. The. The biggest difference I see is that Ubertis are a little more. Are marked in a little different manner. So the markings are on the bottom of the barrel, and so they're not as obvious. Pietas are kind of on the side. So I imagine for reenactors who are striving for more authenticity, they probably, as my guess, prefer Ubertis. But I will also say that, you know, I don't see that many Uberti's out there sometimes I say, think that probably Pietas are on the marketplace or in people's hands are probably three or four to one, just because they cost less and they're. They're functionally just as good. So I would say that, you know, most of the ones you see are actually Pietas. So that's. That's something else there again. So that's about it for cap and balls. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I will say one thing. I've got a Uberti Colt Walker. Beautiful gun. Really beautiful gun. The color case hardening is the same kind of cheap, you know, crummy color case hardening that comes on these cap and ball revolvers. But it's fine. And I have a Army San Marco, of all things. Third model, no, second model, Dragoon. And it's, I mean, if, if you looked at that and said, this is a new Birdie gun, people would believe you. It's, it's really well made, really well done, really well finished. So I'm like, hey, man, that's. That's all right. You know, it's you. They all are kind of. I hate to say they're all kind of hit or miss. Mostly they're hits, but, I mean, I think you can. You can probably get one that's not to your liking from any of the manufacturers. And I think the only two that are left are you, Birdie and Pieta. I know Army San Marco went out ages ago. So that's the, that's the story on those Pyrodex pellets and cap and ball revolvers. You know, I've used them, didn't really care for them. The problem I have with them is it's awful easy to crunch them when you're putting the ball in, you know, because you want to shave a little ring of lead off the ball when it goes in the chamber. When you do that, you're applying some force to it, and it's very easy to apply a little too much so that when it does shave, it slips in there and it crunches the pellet. You know, it goes back to what I was saying about the. These things. I probably said it last time. There is no free lunch with cap and ball revolvers. There's no real way if you're going to use the, you know, the traditional ammo. There's no real way that you're going to be able to load them, reload them quickly. You know, that just. It's just not happening. The loaded spare cylinders are a farce. They were never used back in the day to, you know, so that's one thing, they're not authentic to the period. The other thing is carrying a capped cylinder around is probably not very smart. I'm just saying it's probably not very smart. And I, I really do. And if, and we go back to the economics and the. Just the common sense of the conversion cylinders are. Are what they are, you know. So anyway, that's the, that's the story there. But I don't really care for the pellets. I mean, it's just one of those things you're just, you just have to take the time. There, there's nothing that's going to save you a great deal of time using the pellets because capping is still a, you know, capping is still a thing. And you know, putting the right lubrication on and all that is, that's all time consuming. And if you do five or six shots depending on your revolver, then you, you know, that's going to take some time. Okay. Why didn't the Sharps company get any military orders after the Civil War? Oh, it's very, it goes to a, a little broader, broader thing. At the end of the Civil War, 1865, all the armies around the world were in somewhat of a panic and that is all their muzzleloading rifle muskets were obsolete. Those things could fire two to three shots per minute. And the fact of the matter is breech loaders could fire seven or eight. You know, it's, it's just that much more. So the firepower advantage of breech loaders was there. So countries were going through their, they had these large stocks and like the British did the Snyder conversion for, for the P53 Enfield. The, you know, here we had the Allen conversion for the Springfield muskets. And in other places they had various conversions, all kind of, you know, basically they were all the same. You mill off the back of the, the barrel and receiver and you fit some sort of a, a gate or a breech block and you could open it, insert a cartridge, close it and fire. And that, that tripled or quadrupled your firepower over a muzzle loading rifle musket. So everybody was going after those. Now in the United States, Sharps were breech loading rifles but, and carbines, but they used a linen cartridge and they were.52 caliber. And so there was a big move when 50 70, the.50 70 cartridge was adopted to kind of standardize everything. So they converted an ungodly number of these Sharps carbines to fire the 50 70. And they're good, they're good conversions. They, they are. But by that time the US Was only converting those simply because they had them on hand and they wanted to use them. You know, they just didn't want to buy new rifles. So they, they effectively lined the barrel to.50 caliber, modified the hammer, fitted an extractor, got rid of anything that was for the percussion cap. And, and there you go, you had a, you had a good serviceable breech loader that were available. Available in quantities in the late 1860s and early 1870s, the Allen conversion They were still fooling with. They started out with.58 caliber. Those didn't work very well. It was a.58 rimfire. Then they moved to 50 70. Those worked well. But eventually things evolved so that they needed a.45 caliber, wanted a.45 caliber cartridge for its superior ballistics. Henceforth we got the 1873 Springfield rifle, which is known as the Trapdoor. So they all kind of went that way. But why didn't people buy Sharps? Well, Sharps were very expensive. The government didn't want to buy any. US Government didn't want to buy any because they had the Allen conversion, which they owned and didn't have to pay any royalties on. Remington was had just the economy of scale of mass production were turning out very simple, easy to use rolling block rifles that they sold around the world. And so Sharps kind of, you know, they, they kind of got out of the military market and were more into the sporting rifle, buffalo hunting type market. And that's really kind of where they went until obviously there were no more buffalo to hunt anymore. And with newer designs coming out, Sharps just essentially went out of business. You know, they just like a lot of things, they had a good product. They really couldn't innovate and do anything else. And certainly, you know, rifles like the Winchester 1886 and you know, some of these other things, the Winchester High Walls, you know, all these things coming out in the later 1870s and 1880s just put sharps out of business. It's not saying that they weren't good guns. They are very cool. They're good guns and they're very cool guns. But just wasn't the, there just wasn't the market for them. Okay, here is another one. Do you have any anti drone advice? I do. And most gun people won't really care for it, but you know, when you look at drones, you got to look up the FAA regulations. If a guy's flying a drone over your property, unless it's doing some specific things, you can't shoot it down. You can't, you can't really do a lot. You cannot take law into your own hands and bring it down. You could get sued and have to pay for any damages to the drone, even though it's over your property. And I'm not a legal guy, I'm not giving any legal advice, but what I'm saying is, is that, you know, drones have to be flown under like it's under 400ft, 400ft or lower. The fact that it's transiting airspace over Your property is not a crime. Now if it's and, and whatever, if you think it's trying to surveil you or trying to do other things which it's not allowed to do, they're not allowed to. Like if you're sitting in your back, your fenced in backyard and somebody's flying a drone, you know, taking pictures of your family in their bathing suits or something, you do have to go through law enforcement and the FAA and get it, get it stopped that way in the. So do not take law into your own hands. Just because it's flying over your property does not mean you can bring it down. And there are several different ways to bring these things down. Nets, electronic scrambling so that the, the drone controls don't work anymore and it just kind of falls out of the sky or through some sort of kinetic means like a shotgun. All of those are actually illegal to do to a drone. So don't do that. You can use those means if you're in a, you know, complete breakdown world without the rule of law type of deal. But, you know, the last thing you want to do is interfere with a drone and find out that some federal agency is using it to track, you know, drug dealers or some other, you know, it's a law enforcement thing or it's trying to, you know, trying to find some things. There's, there's somebody lost and they're using a drone to try to, you know, fly around and, and maybe get an aerial view and see if they can find this lost person. You have no real. If you don't know what the drone's doing up there, you can't automatically assume that it's nefarious. So, and I think that's what the law is basically saying is the, these things could be transiting for definitely a legitimate purpose. So I would say that, you know, be very careful. There will be drone, drone technology and drone regulation will be emerging topics as these things proliferate more, you know, as they've already started drone deliveries of certain things and other other kind of stuff like that. So, you know, it's going to be something. It goes back to the Skynet thing of, you know, these things are looking more like science fiction than they are the world that we're used to. Okay, here's the last couple of questions. Are Thompson Force reset triggers any good? I don't know. Seen some, some YouTube type videos. They appear to require some adjustments to work. It's one of those things you got to tinker with to get it to work. I think It'd be awesome. I'd like to have one. But you know, my thing with all forced reset triggers are they're legal and good to go now, but are they going to be legal and good to go when progressive people take over the government at some point in the future and the ATF is, you know, being run by the jackbooted thugs again? Are they going to come hunt everybody down who bought one of these things? I don't know. The other question that's related to this are AR15FRT is any good? From what I understand, they, those things work pretty well. So, you know, go with, go with how that is, but I wouldn't, I would not if I had one, I would always have in the back of my mind that maybe this thing's going to get taken away from me. That's. That's the thing. I would think about that. So if that figures into your thinking, then that's it. But I really like the idea of having my Thompson with an frt. That would be a very cool thing. It would get me performance that I would really desire out of. I'm not displeased with them in semi automatic only, but this would definitely be icing on the cake, that's for sure. Well, that's it for this edition of Old School Guns, the podcast that tells you like it is again. Kbmakel if you have any questions or comments or post them on podbean. But until then, this is Old School Guns out.