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Hello, everyone. Welcome back to this Week in Guns. It has been exactly one week since the last episode. It's brought to you by Patriot Patch Company, FFL Payments, Traditional Arms and MAF Corporation. The show offers commentary in the latest firearms industry news, information and buzz. I'm your host, Matthew Rosier, and I'm joined by the Rat Man.
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It's me.
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Whoa.
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Here. It's only been one week, and I can tell because I had a Walther shotgun and then I went. I went into my little rat hole to work on it, and then I came out and it couldn't have been longer than a week.
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No. Yeah. No. So that's what happened exactly one week ago. We each got. I think we wound up with like, five Walther shotguns. And then exactly one week later, one
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works 80% of the time.
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Yeah. How are you? How are you doing, man?
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Pretty standard. I have a. Got a lot of shotguns. Things been going well. Been busy with cave shotguns.
B
Yeah. No. I'm not sure whether we should do the excuse thing or not, but some of the excuses will be obvious from the stories we tell today. But just like every time we come back, we promise we're back and we're gonna be better. There's been so much crap going on.
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Yeah.
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Like, it's been. It's been ridiculous. Way too much of it. Lawsuit stuff. But things are going pretty strongly in our favor right now. Thank God. As a lot of, you know, California sued us. That'll be one of the first stories we get into. But the NRA stepped in and really, really massively helped out. We're also suing California for suing us in a roundabout way. And, God, there's so. There's so many different moving pieces. We're suing the state of Florida over the waiting period where. Geez. There's a. There's a lot of. A lot of moving pieces, guys. But it's, you know, in part thanks to your continued support. Like, when the California news hit, I. I got so many new patrons that were just like, you know, just wanting to show support, and it was. It was really humbling and kind of like breathtaking. So it's been. It's been really nice. How much? Just positivity. Everybody's been raining on me. I don't know if You've been getting it, but
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at least a little bit, maybe not quite as much because you know, my, my initial reaction to the whole thing was much more of like, oh boy, there goes the free time. As opposed to. I guess I didn't, didn't want to make as big a deal about it publicly anyway because I guess it's the way that I am, but certainly in the same boat as you. Massively appreciate the support that's been shown. And like, like when these sort of things happen, it is heartwarming to learn exactly how many friends you have that you weren't aware of. Like people who are willing to, you know, throw their hat in the ring or step up or help out or lend a hand that you wouldn't even expect that these people cared about you or even knew about you, let's say. Right? So that's always very cool to see. And so yes, the, the support is greatly appreciated. Especially with regards to the NRA for sure.
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Yeah, no, it was, they like
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came
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in with some just awesome California lawyers that I had never heard of. But like the first phone call these guys were like, oh, this is what's going on. This is like they already knew the whole groundwork and it was just, it was just really like, you know, it take the, takes the weight off and allows us to keep on the offensive which, and we've, we've actually got some cool developments that have happened that I'm not ready to tell about. You know, I'm going to be the vague post king right now, but there's some exciting things that I figured out going on with the ATF that I think are going to have. It's going to be a significant impact for individuals who want to especially have their own ffl. But I guess with all of that out of the way, let's get into our first story which is. Oh, look at that. The, the ghost crackdown. This is so this is the, the press release that California Attorney General's office put out when they sued. They made their lawsuit and it's the like most self congratulatory like nonsense there is in one of them that they were like, these guys are pretty smart. But we're, we're smart too. They, that's why we filed this lawsuit that names an imagina imaginary entity. So basically, long story short, California passed a law, right. Fairly recently. I think it was like February of 26 that made it illegal to distribute into California what the law calls computer manufacturing code for making a firearm. It's also illegal to aid and Abet somebody in California to make a firearm. The interesting thing, though, is the way the law defines computer manufacturing code. So you know, when you hear that computer manufacturing code, you think of like, oh, like the CNC machine code, right? That's not what the law says it is. The law is so incredibly broad that it includes in this definition of computer manufacturing code any 3D model or instructions.
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Right. Instructions in a digital format, which could be a picture, a jpeg, it could be an email.
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Right. And so it's idiotic.
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It's sort of a case study in the legal profession. There's two terms of art, which is over broad and simultaneously vague. And this law is sort of a case study in the law could mean everything or nothing at the same time, which makes it not apt to apply to any particular situation. Right.
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It's over broad and under inclusive is the. Is the nomenclature there. So that happened. And some of the defendants in this action then file because most of the people they're suing are in Florida. The other interesting thing is that all of the conduct they're talking about, right. All of the files that came out were published long before the law took effect. And they're even like in their little affidavits, they're talking about how they were doing this back in 2024.
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Right.
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They're like, oh, we know they violated the law because like, years before the law took effect, we downloaded this and. And somebody did a gun. It's all. It's like cartoonish how they're doing this. But it's really problematic, right, because this is basically California is sitting there saying that because somebody elsewhere, and they're primarily attacking people in Florida, put something onto the open Internet through a third party years ago because of this new law. If you don't claw it back. Right. Like, do.
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You don't. If you don't, like, uninvent the Internet.
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Yeah. Then you're liable for millions of dollars in damages. And there's just. I'm sorry, there's just no way it works that way. So there was a countersuit that was filed, and we sought a temporary restraining order, which is kind of like. That's. That's kind of like one of the hardest things to get because you're basically saying, this is such an emergency, you need to rule on this court before the other side even has an opportunity to say anything. And the. The court in that case denied the tro. And it pointed to. This is very interesting. It pointed to a third Circuit. Yeah, Third Circuit case involving defense distributed where it's like, oh, well, no, look over there. That case said that the computer code isn't necessarily First Amendment protected. So it points to this Third Circuit case, and the court pointed to it saying, see, look, computer code isn't always First Amendment protected. And so this is. What did the defendant wind up being ultimately, it used to be v. Gruel. Now it's, jeez, it had changed.
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I don't even remember at this point.
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So here's that decision. It's defense distributed in SAF via the Attorney General of New Jersey. And it does say that it cannot find that there's a First Amendment protection here. Right. And so the court in. In this case here pointed to this decision saying, clearly, right, There's. It's not established that you have First Amendment protection. Here's the wrinkle, though. This is the problem with saying, oh, computer code, computer code, computer code, right. It's like a pocket sand thing that they're doing here. Let's take a look at this Third Circuit decision. Here's the problem. In that case, the court below repeatedly gave the plaintiffs the opportunity to say, how is this protected? Right? Because. And again, there's a lot of problems here. Number one, they didn't even identify which files were at issue. And it was kind of this game where the plaintiffs and defendants were pointing at each other like New Jersey's saying, well, we didn't actually specifically say that was covered by the law. Right. And then the plaintiffs, when they're given the opportunity to say, okay, well, what files do you think it is that are covered here? And their response is, see, here in the district court, appellants contended that all computer code is protected expression. And then when they got to the appeals court, that was unchanged except for their new assertion that the code in the complaint is protected expression under any conceivable test.
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And what the courts were really asking for them to do is articulate. Because, of course, in First Amendment case law, establishing that the speech that you're trying to do or have be protected, that needs to be expressive, have some amount of expression in it, where just saying the word square over and over again doesn't really necessarily warrant First Amendment protection. But saying I love squares and going to the circle people's rally and saying, I love squares, I'm a big, big square guy, suddenly now has expression because you're offering your views on geometric figures, for example. So there you have to articulate some basis of expression. And then the issue here became the court didn't find that argued by plaintiffs after plaintiffs had opportunities to bring it up. So they just sort of said, okay, then we're, we're going to have to. Because the court is there reviewing what's in this case. Right. Well, what's in the case isn't enough to say what is or isn't expressive all computer files.
B
Right. And so the, the, they wouldn't identify actual, like, actual files that they thought were protected. I think the most they did was identify file types. Is that, isn't that correct?
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That, that seems to be my recollection. And they may have, like, tried to suggest examples of these sorts of things, but from my recollection, the, the sort of discovery and the back and forth that went on. Back and forth that went on. There was very limited insofar as it was just sort of all files are code and all code is protected. And not getting off into the weeds past that point, Right.
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In which, I mean, again, that's a, it's not an insane argument, but it's, you know, you should have had some fallback to at least show expressive files.
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Right.
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And so a court can only make a determination on the facts that are in front of it. That's, that's the law. The court can't just divine facts that you haven't given it. So that's the problem here, right, Is we've got a bunch of states that are trying to regulate your ability to make your own guns at home, and they're desperately attempting to do that by targeting the information that you use to make them from. Okay. And they're. They know that they can't do a book ban. So there's an area where it's not fully developed in, under the First Amendment, and that's in computer code. And so what the Third Circuit did is it pointed to some cases and said, and again, despite there being no facts before it, it basically laid out a framework where it said, here's the questions. Is the code, whatever that code may be, is it meant primarily as instructions for a machine or is it human? Understandable, right? Because things that are intended to convey meaning to other human beings, there's your seed of expression that gets you closer to expression. It didn't say necessarily that gets you all the way there, but it's very important. It pointed to some cases that found that there was pure object code or pure machine code that is just gobbledygook to people, purely functional.
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Which is interesting because I guess the one thing I wanted to fit in there is the court makes this assertion with no facts whatsoever in front of it. It just Points to like another court's reasoning that sometimes it could be and they say, well, it would never be if the intended recipient is a computer. The, the gripe that I have with this is this invents a chicken in the egg scenario where none exists. Because computers weren't like it was not on the first day God made computers and the second it was people. Right, right. Humans were here and we made computers. Humans made the way computers think. Right. That wasn't for free. That wasn't a given.
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Right.
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Like the fact that computers think in binary was something that humans created. Right. Because trinary computers are a thing, it can think even differently. Beyond binary, it is possible. But humans created the way computers think because of this. It has to be human interpretable. Right?
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Yeah, no, that's. That's the thing, right. And we. That it's a very interesting thing because there are people who can read like assembly.
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Right.
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Or there are people who can look
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at that or even binary.
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Yeah. And be like, no, I know what that is. Right. It's not efficient, but there are people who can do it.
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And so people had to be able to do it to be able to troubleshoot to get us anywhere. Right.
B
Also for it to become a method of coding at all.
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Right. And I think that the court may an error assuming facts that weren't in front of it by saying computers are black boxes and the things that go into computers and the things that come out of them are not capable for people to understand. And that's simply untrue.
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Right. And so let's take a step back from that. Right? So we've got the third circuit that's kind of like. I don't even know what you guys are talking about. I don't know what it looks like. But if we're talking about the first amendment in terms of computer stuff, here's all these different ideas, right? And so think about what, what do we have in the gun making context? We've got a 3D model, right. Which is obviously conveys information. When you open it up on your computer, there it is, right. You get the written instructions, obvious, right. That's meant for a human. And then you've got the G code, which almost no one actually includes with like, you know, gun build stuff. That's, that's something that you, you generally make yourself for your machine. But even then, right. So in the whole realm of gun building, I think G code is probably
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as
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like granular as you're going to get in terms of what's actually used. And the problem Is G code is a thousand percent human interpretable.
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In fact, it was. G code was literally designed to be handwritten and hand read. Right. It, it was an evolution of the punch tapes that were punched out by hand.
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Yeah, it's, it's like, it's like basic. Right? It's totally like, it's so clearly interpretive because. And again, for you guys who've never done machining, basically it's a coordinate system and there are certain commands that basically tell the machine which axis it's going to move in and whether it's going to go fast or slow, whether it's going to move in one axis, two axis, or even three axes. But everything comes down to moving a tool in space. And that's really easy to understand. And like I've explained to people, I can, I can write a G code program that I could hand to somebody else who had any novice level of CNC machining and they could look at it and see in their mind's eye the part that's going to come off. That doesn't happen every single time. But that's the point I'm trying to make here is that this is not really a test. And whatever it is, it's squishy. And it's squishy in our favor. But so that's the thing that the court was pointing to in the, in the, you know, suit against California and say, oh, well, deal with this. And so here's the. I don't remember if last episode we talked about this or not.
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I don't think we had.
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What?
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I don't think that we had talked about any of this last episode.
B
Yeah, I don't even remember when the last episode was. It was only a week ago.
A
This is a week ago.
B
Yeah, but. So we took that invitation and. Here's the, the new suit. This is an amended complaint. Right. Which goes straight into exactly identifying what is an issue here, which has not been done in one of these cases before. And it was done explicitly and with pictures. So again, what's the quit. What are we going to talk about first? The 3D model, is it expressive? So we have Holiday, who's a plaintiff of the case. One example of his three dimensional expressive works is the Joshi Washi 9. Joshi Washi 9 is a 3D model depicting a pistol frame which is heavily adorned with political, satirical, artistic and cultural imagery. It includes the text we love you, Josh Shapiro hearts and a depiction of Josh Shapiro in the classical style of Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka, one of the early forebears of modern anime. Holliday, who is of Japanese descent, created that depiction pictured here. And so basically we're putting before the court, here's the 3D model here it is like it's going to be very hard to engage with that. You're seeing it, right? It's there on the paper. You can see what the model is. You can get ideas from it. Here's the documentation. It's full of jokes and quips, both of these things. California is trying to reach into Florida to ban. And so there's a pile of exhibits. You can guys, you guys can take a look at the amended complaint. Crump did a. A piece on it, but it is Control, Pew LLC v. David Chu et al. It's out there, it's on Court listener. You can give it a read. But. But yeah, so that's where, where things are right now. That was just filed. Geez, what was it Just a couple days ago. And
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it's.
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It's going to be pretty hard for them to say, well, how do you know if that's expressive or not when it's all been put right there in front of them?
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Right. And the job.
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Really interesting thing, though. Here's the really interesting thing is their law says straight up, the instructions, if they're accessible in California.
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Right.
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Are prohibited. Well, we had to attach. Because the court said we need to have the, the facts before us, so we had to attach the instructions. Now what are they going to do next? They have to take a position there. Right. It's going to either be saying, no, no, we didn't mean that. Right. Or double down.
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Right. We did mean that. And now PACER and Court Listener are complicit somehow. Interesting.
B
It's. I think it's going to be very interesting. And I think, I mean, I just don't think California can get away with this.
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And it's a battle that should have been settled a long time before now.
B
Yeah.
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And I guess, you know, and now hopefully here before too long, there will be answers to this question that will answer it correctly nationwide. Because of course. Right. We. Even if you have to go back to Anarchist Cookbook. Right, right. That was the yester generations. Yester. Yester generations dealing with this same question of can instructions that can make things that people are unhappy about.
B
Right.
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Be protected by the First Amendment? And the answer is necessarily yes, it has to be.
B
And then. But there's so many questions baked in here. And then on top of that, because to get what California wants. Right. Like they're putting it on the Floridian, to make sure that a Californian can't get something that's so backwards. Right. Because usually it's one thing to say, don't deliberately ship it into the state. Right. You know, that's kind of been settled. States can do that. States can say, hey, you over there, don't put it in the box and send it over here. Right. They've won on that a lot of times. But this is saying it's touching purely, purely, purely Florida conduct. Right. This is a Florida person putting something on the Internet and walking away. Ah, what's, I mean, where's your source of power for that? You know, it's, it's, it's, it's really problematic. So again, we've got the NRA helping us on the, on the defense side over there in California, and then we are here in Florida basically fighting back. Because this, I mean, this has to be challenged in this way. Because if it's not right, if you just defend the lawsuit, what's going to stop them from doing it again and again and again? Right. I think case law has to be made out of this. And look, if the courts are going to say this is how it works, I think that there's going to wind up having to be some results from that, whether it's, you know, Congress doing something or a higher court doing something. But that's, that's like a wildly chaotic and disruptive action to take to American law, um, because it kind of deletes the whole conception of laboratories of democracy, which is why we have dual sovereigns. They're supposed to like, they're supposed to be co. Equal, separate states. Where's your co equality when, when one can just purely regulate what happens inside of another. I mean, if you think about it, the only way to comply would be to like, somehow magically just block California. And there's no effective way to do that.
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Right.
B
There's VPNs, there's this and that. The other thing, there's a billion ways to get around this.
A
Disney is incapable of effectively geofencing.
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Right. And so then you want lay people to just do that.
A
It ultimately harkens back to a thing we talk about on the show a lot, which is the original excuse. Excuse probably isn't the right word, but I'm going to use it. The original excuse for the existence of a federal government at all was to keep the states from fighting amongst one another, taxing one another, passing laws that ban that state's thing from coming over here with regards to legal commerce or These sorts of things, largely commerce and taxing one another was the big problem. But you very quickly like it seems like in the past 10, 15 years. And blue states aren't the only.
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Oh yeah.
A
Of this because there have been some red states trying to do sort of the same thing. But you can blame this on the partisan, how partisan things have gotten. But I don't think they're necessarily more partisan now. But one way or the other, you now see these states taking their laboratories and using their laboratories to attack other states or conduct in other states or try to exert their citizens will on other states in very bewildering sorts of ways. Where I mean if you're to flip this analog on its head, it would be maybe akin to if I try to come up with an analog off the top of my head, like Missouri banning people who have put diy, HRT or birth control or something on the Internet but years ago they're saying that if you did it ever, you're going to be in trouble and Missouri can come and sue you for damages or something.
B
Yeah, it's like can Missouri tell you like sue you for putting a, like, I don't know, like hackaday article on how to make estrogen from latex gloves or something. Right.
A
And then like with the, with the one wrinkle here being there isn't a constitutional amendment specifically dedicated to your right to be able to acquire hrt. There is one about guns which just like it becomes a thing where it's like what part of the Constitution and this federal system of government that we have is what California is doing the most offensive to? Right. Because it's a lot.
B
Yeah. No, and that's why we have so many counts in our complaint against them because it's, it's extraterritorial. It's a First Amendment violation. It's a second Amendment violation. Right. And so, and it's not just a second amendment violation on the speaker because California's law doesn't prevent the speaker from making their own gun in Florida. But if you can't post your design on the open Internet and there's other Floridians or other anywhere in the country that depend on your information, they have a right to read under the First Amendment. They have a right to access the information that they could otherwise get. And two, under the Second Amendment they certainly have a right to, to man to make their own stuff. Now that hasn't been super explored in the cases, but it's necessary. Right. It flows very necessarily. And, and here's the Thing if California can dictate the rest of the country's dissemination of instructions which says in their damn law for self making of firearms, that necessarily implicates a second amendment right. Whichever, you know, however you want to say it for the reader. So super, super messed up there. It's, it offends like all of the core tenants of rights jurisprudence, but because it's gun related, you know, there's a, there's a like just instinct from the judiciary to, to recoil from it.
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Right. And its technology and like the, the court long time have wanted to treat technology as a black box. In fact the, the Supreme Court had to deal with a case regarding digital photographs and if copyright would protect a digital photograph and it made it all the way up to the Supreme Court for them to go duh. But like all the other courts wanted to look at it like well, but, but maybe the picture is different maybe because the pictures on a com because the picture's now ones and zeros. Maybe it's, maybe it's text and it's not actually a picture and they act all confused about something that in actuality is pretty obvious. Right, but that's the, the good and the bad thing about the way our courts work is the fact that they are, they tend to recoil as if bitten when dealing with new technology. Right.
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Not even new, but anyway, let's move on now. But that was, I mean obviously that's something that they were super interested in because we're involved in it. But I really think that this is a watershed moment. How this all plays out is going to have, it's going to shape how these, you know, four or five states that want to fuck the rest of the country are going to be able to do that. So thanks for your support, guys. Next up, let's have some good news. The ATF is like slightly unfucking themselves a little bit. The Senate is confirmed. Cicada, who by all accounts is actually pretty cool. I've gotten a lot of, of intel from the boys on the ground. Everybody loves this guy, everybody thinks he's great. And I don't have anything bad to say yet. Of course you guys know me. I'm gonna try my best. But yeah, so we had, we had Cicada come in and then we also had them, you know, immediately announcing a set of changes that they're wanting to make to the CFR. It's about 30 changes and some really important ones were. We don't know exactly how they're, we don't know how they're going to go at sporting purposes. But we know there's an appetite for it. Yeah.
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That they're going to change a part of sporting purposes. Yeah. At least in so far as receivers of dual use firearms go.
B
So that's in the, that's in the, the rule package.
A
Right.
B
And so that's, that's really important. And, and it might not seem that important to you, but, but here's the thing. So we have the, the sporting purpose requirement for guns to come in. And that is what has kept us from all of the cool guns that are in Europe and Asia for a long time. And it's basically, are you able to gimp the gun in such a way that it satisfies this 1986 newspaper editor's idea of what sports is?
A
And in my experience looks back even earlier because we had found the like committee notes, looking at sporting purposes, at least specifically as to shotguns, they wanted to look back to 1968.
B
Yeah.
A
Because in the thing that was brought up repeatedly in opposition whenever ATF was trying to revise the sporting purpose criteria in the early 2000s was everybody said, well, look, these days what people do for sport with guns is shoot cardboard silhouettes of people. Right. Tactical shooting is very popular. And the ATF looked at that and said, no, because actually silhouette shooting was more popular back in 1968. But nobody considered that sporting. They considered that as a part of martial readiness and it was sponsored by the CMP. So it's like, okay, great. The ATF's made an interesting point that nobody ever really picked up on back in the year 2000.
B
Right.
A
But now these days I think is maybe more ripe to be reanalyzed where the ATF is like outwardly saying if the gun would be useful for second amendment purposes, you can't import it. Which is.
B
Yeah, that is what they're saying and that is what they're still saying even under these proposed rules right now. But so again, that's, that's the backdrop is you have to understand the reason we haven't been able to import really cool is because, you know, for example, as a practitioner, I've had clients that try to get, you know, Valmets in, right. The Finnish AKs, which they came in before the big ban and they, they try to do things like they'd weld in a block to prevent, you know, a large magazine from coming in. And when ATF would evaluate these things, there was literally, I saw an instance where they attached a three foot cheater bar to the denial block and stood on it to, to get it to break. And they did. And they also destroyed the receiver. But because they were able to break it out, they said that it wasn't good enough and so not importable.
A
Right.
B
This is the kind of crap we've been dealing with. But if, okay, if. Now there's a dual use thing. And so let's take another step back.
A
Dual use.
B
The most recent time we saw dual use was on the barrel situation. For the longest time you could get almost whatever barrels you wanted imported. Then for the last like 20, 15 years. Yeah, they said, well, if it was a machine gun barrel, it's actually not importable. And that happened. All of a sudden it was like, what do you mean? And they're pulling it from their interpretations on what's the machine gun? Always a machine gun, but the definition doesn't include barrel anyway, so you couldn't get in machine gun barrels. That's why so many parts kits had them cut up. Then last year they changed to say, okay, actually if it's a dual use barrel. Okay. And so there is a sporting use for the barrel. You can bring them in. All of a sudden we started getting a lot more barrels in because despite the fact that it might not be in that configuration when it, it's separated from the gun. If you can articulate that there is a way to use this in a sporting gun which would be like, you know, a thumb hole stock, this, that and the other thing, gun, you can bring it in. That was huge. A lot of barrel started coming in. Now they're going to do the same thing to receivers. So what does that mean? Well, I'll give you, give you the skinny. If this works the way I think it should work, if you take apart the gun, it suddenly becomes importable as long as there's a way to configure it in a sporting fashion. So that's a really cool stock. Stop, stop gap. We still need to get rid of the whole sporting purposes thing. But if you do this with the receiver.
A
Right.
B
Because all the other parts are importable. The only parts we had problems with were the barrel and the receiver. Okay. That's actually pretty huge. Okay. So they're indicating a desire to change the. There's a rule about what countries you can come from. And included the entire former Soviet Union. Okay. Now they're kind of retweaking that. It looks like. And again, we'll see how this goes through the formal rulemaking process. But they're not doing that. Look back. Still, guns made in the Russian Federation now no Go right. Sanctions, whole nine yards. But guns that were made before the Russian Federation existed or parts that were made before the Russian Federation existed. Looks like it might be a different story.
A
Right. The Hopium there is that. Of course the State Department still has its list of sanctioned entities.
B
Right. And a lot of the shit you want is on them. Right.
A
And. But this sanctions countries, the atf, kind of apropos of nothing, came along and added its own list of countries to this. And then it started doing nation of origin for firearms as well, which is a whole separate thing compared to what State Department was doing with the sanctions. So if ATF rolls this back all the way, no telling if they will actually do that or just part way. But if they got rid of the whole thing, it would make it. So of course you still can't import guns directly from Russia, but Soviet era firearms, SKS IS SVT, 40s, etc. Which are in satellite countries or satellite nations or even in like weird places that you wouldn't think like I don't know, Ethiopia or Madagascar or wherever you would now be able. You currently can't import those. If they roll it back all the way, you might have a chance of being able to import them again, which would be really cool.
B
Yeah. However, now does this mean you're going to see Makarovs for 100 bucks? No, no. Yeah.
A
The unfortunate price there, the prices won't come back. It's the fact that you will be, there will be new blood if you.
B
Yeah, there will be some new blood. But the, the down. The unfortunate news I have to give you is that these, it used to be that these, these shits were just. Europe was just lousy with them. They're all gone. They got, they got bought up because again, the price got depressed, depressed, depressed, depressed. When the US which was the biggest commercial market wasn't buying them, they had to go somewhere. A lot of them wound up getting scrapped, turned into scrap metal. The ones that didn't get turned into scrap metal went to Africa and Asia, various conflicts.
A
And you know, what with Ukraine being a melting pot isn't quite apt in this context because they're actually melting the guns down. But there have been a substantial amount of small arms sent to that region for one reason or another.
B
Right.
A
And you know, it seems like a lot of that what, what I would call quote unquote, you know, slob. Right, right. Is now being soaked up in that region because it's, it was useful equipment to them.
B
Well, I mean they're not even getting the old Stuff though, the old stuff's gone like the PPSHS, the like that old's gone.
A
But like 50s, 50s plus was sort of still around.
B
Well I mean Ukraine is. Ukraine has like bought up the production capacity of like a year. Right. So like they're taking all of the modern AKMs well, or they were, right. Things have kind of slowed down a little bit more recently. But anyway, like point to say is there guys that no, this isn't going to be massively. It's a little too late, right? It's a little too little too late for this to make a huge bit of difference in terms of availability and price of, of most of these weapons.
A
But one, one thing we may see though is that like SKS's have been increasing, you know on, on par with like gold or silver which have been increasing a lot. Like SKS have been been their own inflationary currency.
B
Yeah, it's crazy.
A
You potentially. I don't know that there's really that many skss left out there, but you may potentially see their prices stop to increase as, as crazily as they have been.
B
Yeah, the thing about sks is that most of the ones that were sitting out in the caches were Chinese and so. And I've actually seen this, right. Like I've had clients that I had to help with this. What you have to do, you have to sort them by serial number and make sure that like you're getting the curios and relics, right? Because they kept making those for a while. So they were like staging them where this year they'd ship out this, this container. Right. And so they were like staged to come in. And this isn't gonna change that in terms of surplus, you still need to be curious relic to order in order to get inter importable as a complete rifle. Again, importation law is such an absolute mess and that's one thing that the government really needs to be sued on. And once we have a little more time, I'd like to start doing that. But I'm not seeing huge stockpiles of Russian SKS's that are going to be coming in. Yeah, but they'll show up, right? Because once in a while a hundred, two hundred show up like in Bulgaria or something. And so now we'll be able to see U. S importers more likely get them. So that, that's exciting there. Those are the two big things that I was most excited about. Were there any things that you saw similarly?
A
Those are probably the ones that stood out the most to me. There was one Footnote that I got my hopes up for a moment that they were going to try and clarify the fact that the Hughes amendment currently binds the hands of SOTs in a weird way. Yeah, in a way that's kind of like it doesn't work. But it sounds like what they're actually going to be doing is clarify. You know, they're not clarifying. They're going to actually kind of make it more difficult. It sounds like they're trying to close the. This is maybe offensive for me to say, but the Larry Vickers loophole, not that it was really a loophole, but I think they're going to put out guidance as a part of this that says, you know, if you're, if you're getting law letters that are somewhat less than honest, you probably need to stop doing that. The reason for this is there's been sort of a patchwork of ATF field offices actually enforcing that law the way that they should. And then there's this whole then question of machine gun rental ranges that are renting out law letter guns to people who aren't police. And it seems like ATF's trying to like put out guidance to. Because many people.
B
Something about that we're not.
A
Right.
B
Yeah, we're not 100 sure what yet.
A
But those are, those are kind of the standout ones. There's. I mean there's like a whole bunch of things they're doing but many of these are very little. Like they're going to make the 4473. So it's maybe only one or two pages. That's cool, right? Cutting down on the. How heavy the form is. Of course.
B
Maybe they're going to get rid of my. They're going to get rid of my gender question.
A
They're going to get rid of Matt's gender question.
B
I accidentally did the.
A
I guess the other big one is this is like a little known as like very inside baseball gun law nerdery between 1968 and I think it was 93, whatever year the Brady Handgun act came along. You get guns because most people understand before 68 you could get guns mailed to your door. You could get guns from other countries mailed straight to your doors. Absolutely crazy. After 68 though, you were supposed to buy guns in person from an ffl. However, you could write with your FFL saying I am me, I live here. I promise I'm a good boy. I promise I haven't broken any of the laws and been put in the loony bin before. And you could mail that to an FFL and they could mail you a good gun. Yeah, that was the law until the Brady Handgun act said that now we have to do background checks every time a gun is sold.
B
Right.
A
It required that the person's identification be completely validated in person and that the ATF would put together a rule saying how that gets done. Well, ATF said in person, with your ID in your hand, then your ID has got to match the address that you're putting on the form. Right. So, okay, now they've locked you down. You are who you say you are. We don't know the exact way this is going to happen, but in one of these proposed rule changes, they have said that they are going to try and find a way to make it so that you can comply with the Brady act without having to be in person.
B
And there's a hundred ways I can think of like, you know, I, I've. How many times have you had to do it with where like it scans your face or whatever?
A
Right.
B
Why would that not work? So that, I mean, that could be huge. It would also, like, maybe this is a bit of catharsis I'm getting, but it would also, like, delete the. I'm the one FFL in town, so I charge $70 for a transfer.
A
And now there is like a. I'm predicting the counter argument because I've seen a couple people phrase it where it's. Doesn't that create security concerns? Sure, if you're one of the people who are, if you are of.
B
How do you reckon. Security concerns.
A
I saw a lot of people complaining that. Okay, but now if we're going to have to be sending our ID and our information digitally to an ffl, and that FFL is going to have to run our information digitally with the atf, then somebody's going to find out that I have a gun. Right. The ATF will be able to find out that I have a gun. Well, the, the hitch with that. Okay, I believe that there are some people out there who have managed to never use a credit card. They have no paper trail to them whatsoever. Right. But most of us are already so screwed in that regard that, yeah, the government, they, they know you have, they know you have guns already.
B
Right.
A
Just the way that. Is it unfortunate? Yes. Is it an abuse of the government surveillance state? Yes, but it is what it is. So if, if you're somebody, of course you and I both have ffl, so what difference does that make to us? But for, you know, for, for. If I didn't have an ffl. I would certainly want to take advantage of this because rather than have to show up in person and pay, you know, armed robbery level FFL transfer fees, it'd be really cool to have them shipped straight to your house.
B
Yeah, no, I mean, it's how it
A
should be, your driver's license and whatever and go from there now or whatever,
B
you know, and I'm sure, like, you know, there's all these companies that, like, you know, there's all these companies that are just focused on the compliance sector. I'm sure they'll come up with, you know, some app, right, that. That'll do it all and have it all be encrypted or whatever. But, you know, that's all we're gonna have to see what the exact text of the rule looks like.
A
Rules.
B
Yeah, yeah. And. And I mean, we're gonna have to go through them, but that's another big one. And you know, a lot of you guys, I feel like that would. Because, you know, maybe I'm a weirdo, right? But I like to buy cheap garbage. You know, I see something on the gun joker for 100 bucks, I buy it. Right. But if you have to spend 50 bucks and, and drive to dip shits, you know, that makes a big difference. So it could, I don't know, it could just be a very nice thing for a lot of people. That's all I'm saying.
A
Certainly true. And of course, as you can imagine, the anti gunners saw this proposed list and were stamping their feet and getting mad about it. And the one thing that was then weird to me is, of course they, they're not going to take the position that the ATF doesn't have the ability to do these regulations. Right. Because, you know, first off, the ATF does. It's. It's in the law. And you people get. People get their feathers ruffled these days because Biden did use the ATF to make up rules where they didn't have authority to. Yeah. Whereas the things that the ATF's proposing, they're rolling back here are. They're either rolling back things they never had the authority to, and they're like, oops, we never had this authority. Or, or it's stuff that the law literally says they have the authority to say how this works, and they're changing how they say this works. And so it was weird to see the anti gunners then get mad about like one of these rules that I could potentially see being not fantastic is the ATF allowing ffls to keep completely digital records. So no paper bound books. No paper 4473 at all. Which of course leads people down the whole. Isn't that just a hop, skip and a jump from a registry? And the, the only times that I've seen people demand that full digital be allowed is in anti gun states suggesting that that be forced on FFLs. They were probably trying to do it as you know, that this will increase compliance costs and make people not want to sell guns at all. But it's sort of an interesting thing that now the anti gunners are still complaining about that because I guess it's. Because it's an option and it's not mandatory, but it's interesting.
B
Yeah. Well, next up, the, the, the Supreme Court listened to the arguments about whether drug folks should be able to gun and yeah, so there was oral arguments in this case and the court, the, the, the justices were of course skeptical. I don't, I.
A
This is.
B
Yeah. Money.
A
Yeah. It was a, it was about a weed user man.
B
Jazz cigarette smoker.
A
Yeah, jazz, jazz or cigarette enjoyer, but he doesn't enjoy them a lot. And that was most of what the oral arguments centered around was of course they were doing a pretty good faith application of Bruin at least to the oral arguments where they were asking what's your best analogy? And you know, where do you find this tradition?
B
Right.
A
And there are some laws around the time of the founding that you habitual drunks would have their guns taken away at least until they sobered up.
B
Right.
A
But that then makes your best analog. Okay. If you're an actual problem, like an actual problem because you can't stop drinking, they're going to wait until you stop drinking to give you your gun back. Yeah. Whereas here the, the law that they've propped up modern day is it's like 20 years in jail if you smoke a jazz cigarette once and got in trouble for it.
B
Yeah. And then, and then no gun. It's like I haven't smoked a cigarette in years. It doesn't matter.
A
And so the, I guess my read on this, it was a couple of months ago and so I guess it's kind of old news. Even though even those last last week we did the last twig. It's very interesting.
B
Yeah.
A
But the, the, the, it seemed like probably a 7:2 split if I had to guess with Robertson, Alito maybe being the holdouts, they were the only ones that gave the government any credence at all. Everybody else was like really? That's your best analog? You see the problem here, don't you? So it will be very interesting to ultimately see how that ends up being disposed, how the court rules on that. It will probably be a victory for gun rights insofar as narrowing how the prohibited person with regards to use of a controlled substance works. It's just a matter of how narrow it ends up being right.
B
And we will have to see the Hawaii handgun limits law. That's another interesting one.
A
See the, the super court also heard oral arguments in the past week. It was, it was back in January, but they had heard oral arguments about. Oral arguments about Hawaii. Hawaii has its own ruin response carry law similar to. And the Supreme Court granted cert on this, but only as to ask answering the vampire rule question. And I think it was because if the Supreme Court doesn't ever like having its hand forced, it doesn't ever like having being forced to do something. But Hawaii was I think the fourth or fifth state to implement a you cannot carry anywhere in public unless you're invited to carry, which is the so called vampire rule because you have to invite them in.
B
Hawaii's law requires express authorization to bring a handgun onto private property open to the public, either as verbal or written, including clear and conspicuous signage, which is just like so aggressive.
A
But it's a, like could you pass a law that says look, I'm not infringing the first Amendment, but you're not actually allowed to speak your mind unless the business posts.
B
This is a, it's like it's not speaking mine.
A
Go ahead, stop, stop. You know, go ahead. No, stop.
B
But, but yeah, so that was, that was argued by a friend of ours, Alan Beck did a good job and it definitely looks like he's going to win.
A
Yes, it was a.
B
Because this is nuts.
A
But another one of our friends, Gassa, said on Twitter recently that the most common thing in the universe is hydrogen and the second most common thing is Hawaii losing to Alan Beck because he does, he does routinely give them a shellacking. And the fact that the Supreme Court granted cert just as to this question is kind of an indication that they were very dubious to begin with. So I imagine again, right, this will be a win. If I had to guess, It'd be a 6:3.
B
Now by the way, Alan is, and I've run the numbers, the most winningest second amendment attorney has ever lived. He, he wins constantly. And it's because he picks laws that are shitty. And you know, it might not always be the sexiest law, but he, he wins. And so stop picking.
A
Picking on Hawaii is seal clubbing in this regard because they Got a lot of really dumb laws.
B
Yeah. Oh, man. But he, like. Yeah, he just runs that place. It's so funny. And nobody, you know, he's not affiliated with any group. He just, he just does his thing. And I, I just love him.
A
He's.
B
He's great. And I'm really blessed to have him as a friend because he's a great guy to bounce ideas off. Because if he gets excited about your case, it means you've got something. But.
A
But.
B
Yeah. So we will see how that goes. It's all going to come down to what the opinion looks like. Right. Is, will it be a ticket that's good for this train on this platform, or, you know, will it be something
A
better than to ride free and wide? Yeah.
B
Speaking of free and wide, ride traditional arms, holsters and gears. There is zero compromises available on this website. Sorry about that. Liberals there. This is the holster I carry. Ivan carries it. They're great holsters. Made in Florida by Friends of the Channel. And you can use promotional code FUD Busters or Ratman to get yourself a discount on these holsters. Guys. You got to check them out. They're good. What more is there to say? Okay, next up, the. So you remember when the. The DOJ's Second Amendment action whatever group came to exist? Yeah. They started doing stuff in this last week. Yeah. They've. They've challenged DC's AR15 ban and the Denver assault weapons ban. And this has gone about as you would expect in response to the, the, the DC AR15 ban. All of the lizards started freaking out and doing that thing they do with their throat. And by that I mean made noises at a camera. Yeah. Former Justice Department attorneys and national gun violence preventions organizations say a Trump administration lawsuit targeting DC's ban on AR15s and certain other weapons lies on atypical and dangerous use of a federal civil rights statute.
A
Yet the. I guess we had barely touched on this one week ago whenever the last episode was one week ago. But the show's name is this week in guns. It's every week, by the way. Yeah, we had touched on this previously
B
where our weeks are just different. They're better than your week.
A
Cave week. Yeah, the mythical Walther week. So we touched on previously that the Department of Justice was sort of using the civil rights statute to come after localities that were restricting the Second Amendment. And it was sort of novel. Right. Like this sort of thing had not really been seen or done before. And we'd observed, like, that's kind of, kind of cool, kind of Slick. Neat to see them doing that. And so naturally like I, I figured the, the anti gunners and the opponents to this, the victims of the Department of Justice's wrath, I figured they would come up with something smarter than not know you. But it seems like most of what they've come up with is you can't, you can't use the statute meant to protect people's rights to sue us for violating people's rights. Okay. It's like that was written for the, for the other rights, not the, not the number two. Right.
B
No, that was for the good ones. Cool. When you do it.
A
And so there's, there's been a lot of hand wringing. And this article did sort of summarize that the DOJ on their. Because they filed a lot of amicus briefs.
B
Right.
A
I think that's specifically what we talked about before. But this is DOJ on their own coming swinging after DC And DC has historically not been the best at defending its own gun laws.
B
Right.
A
And so now you have the full weight of the capital D, capital O, capital J coming after. Right. Which is, I don't want to say heartwarming, but in a way it is kind of heartwarming.
B
It's just funny, that's all it is. Like this is, this is clown world type behavior and it's, I mean it's cool to see.
A
Right. Because ultimately people will continue to find things to complain about in black pill about regarding this administration and the second Amendment. But all things considered, as we sort of. At least I've taken the position before, it has been the most pro second amendment administration. Not that that means that they are faultless. Not that that means that there are still things that they are doing that are kind of silly or that it
B
means that that is very much at all.
A
Right. Like doing anything historically puts them in the number one seed.
B
So yeah, no, literally like to make the, to get to the number one seat, they had to like stand up out of their chair and like look awkwardly
A
point at Denver, Colorado and say stop doing.
B
Yeah. Which is, which is what they did. They, they sent, they sent a letter
A
to Denver, Colorado saying stop that.
B
Yeah. They literally sent a letter to the mayor and attorney's office saying stop and differ.
A
Sends a letter back saying, no,
B
we get to do it now. And now the journalists are talking.
A
And so now I hope to takes this, the city of Denver, Colorado to the bone grinding machine.
B
Yes, it's fun. I mean it is. We can always enjoy when the lizards are fighting because no matter what happens, it's funny.
A
My tax dollars are fighting my tax dollars. Really what it is like, okay, let's stop, let's stop and put on our open to accepting new ideas hats. This is gladiatorial combat in current year is what it is.
B
It is, yeah.
A
It's state sponsored spectacle put on to make people feel better. And look, you might actually win. We might actually win as a result of it. It's like the gladiatorial games, but you might get a, a piece of the lion.
B
Yeah, you're allowed to come grab a tuft. Well, speaking of which, other like cool happening. The NRA has announced their third lawsuit challenging the nfa. And you know, this is a really interesting thing, right. It's something I often forget. Everyone forgets that like the Hughes amendment. Because people blame the NRA for the Hughes amendment. They sued over it like they promised they do it. And they did
A
such a poorly understood part of gun rights in general. Yeah, the like. And it all stems from the fact like the Gun Control act was not one act, it was multiple. Right. And they, they were con. They were self conflicting and being wildly. And when I say wildly, I mean comically abused by the atf. Like people think what Biden's ATF did was bad. Not even close. The ATF between 1968 and 1986 would routinely find one person putting up a classified ad for selling one gun, show up and raid their entire collection. They'd find somebody that that person sold a gun to raid their collection too. They would take people's collections. In some of the cases, these collections were like back in the 60s, 70s dollars valued in a million bucks. So you think today that's, that's thousands
B
break all this too.
A
And the ATF would take all their, store them in a room that's not humidity controlled, so they all start rusting,
B
well them into a pickup truck. Right.
A
And then even if you beat the ATF in court, they wouldn't give you your guns back. They'd say, nope, sorry. Like you have to prove you beat us in court. Like, okay, so the reason that the Firearms Owner Protection act came along, like the original impetus for it was the fact that the ATF was acting the same sort of vim and vigor that we see in like the, the movie about Elliot Ness, right? Where he's going after the bad guys and all their alcohol and all their tobacco and all their smuggling. And the mob, right. The mob sort of stopped existing somewhere between 1968 and 1986. And so all of the ATF's agents historically had been in charge of tobacco and mob control and alcohol. Right. Moonshiners, these sorts of things they sort of applied, they had been used to.
B
Right.
A
Here's how they approach organized crime. They set up their own organized crime and they start like building bogus cases against people to make it easy to bust them. And parallel construction was a big part of it. Right. Where of course they were going against the mob so they weren't going to fight fair. But then they started applying these same tactics to mom and pop gun stores and individual collectors and causing a, like a horrible situation for gun owners in
B
this country, if you want to. And like this is so poorly understood and the only way you can really get instances of this is like reading Soldier of Fortune magazine from back then. And so if you want an example of this, the best account I have read it has to be taken with a couple grains of salt. And there is like kind of a hilarious amount of casual racism baked in, but it's called entrapment. The ATF in Action by Bill Holmes. And this dude got with like for decades and he has the receipts and he writes out in detail everything they did. It's nuts. It's nuts. It's a book that I really, really recommend and it. Yeah, I wish I could have met that guy while he was alive because he was like, if that dude, he, he came up with a lot of the designs that many expedient like homemade firearms were based on. And if that dude had a 3D printer, he'd have been spitting, he'd been
A
out there, he'd have been doing it.
B
Like in his guide he teaches you how to do cyanide bluing because that's just how he knew how to blue guns like super wild. But anyway, that's an aside. But so yeah, NRA has filed a suit about the zero dollar tax thing and they've done it in a significantly more intelligent way than the other ones will be, I guess following that, it'll
A
be interesting to see because this is like the third one that NRA is on and like some total. I think there's like eight or something. There's a ton of these lawsuits in general targeting the different angles to come after the ATF for the fact that many NFA items, so not destructive devices, not machine guns, but all the other NFA Items are now a $0 tax and squaring the whole concept of how can a zero dollar tax exist, is that legitimate? Etc.
B
Yeah, it is very interesting. If the courts hadn't completely stepped on the tax and spend clause it would be a very big winner.
A
Yeah, it could, it could be very easily open and shut if not for the fact that like the regular things that get taxed, the tax and spend clause has been bent a lot of different ways, maybe arguably to some public benefit somehow for some other good. But once it was ever applied to guns, it was just like. Useful was right out the window.
B
Yeah.
A
Like this isn't. Again, this isn't a tax like levied against manufacturers or the commercial sale of these things. It's like a tax to own them. It's like we're, we're cooked at this point.
B
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a permitting regime
A
that we're just going to sit here and say, no, it's not, it's a tax. It's not a permanent tax.
B
What's the revenue raising potential?
A
It's a permanent tax permit.
B
No, because if you, if you get to register the SBR, we'll get more bird taxes. But
A
whatever them.
B
Maf-arms.com wow, guys, you have to go to maf-arms.com and use promotion. You messed with the code in the show nuts.
A
Did I?
B
The show notes. Yeah, you made it safe for the dusters.
A
I must have done that a long time ago because I don't remember doing that promotional code.
B
Fun busters. And you can get a discount on your. Whatever the you do you want this? It's available. Look at this. Wow. Look at these blemished, heavily blemished magnesium handguards. That's a low price. They're very light actually. It's definitely worth it. You guys check out maf-arms.com. check out all the the that's on the website. It's available. Maf-arms.com that's a high.
A
That's a good review. It is available.
B
There's a lot of on there available.
A
It's the hot and ready joke. Right. Our pizza is two things. You know, I can say this joke as a disciple of Little Caesars. I like it a lot better than the other like chains.
B
Yeah.
A
Like I will elect to have Little Caesars over Papa John's or Domino's, which I know a lot of people give me funny looks about but it's not just a value thing. I do actually like the way it tastes better. But like the whole joke about it's hot. Is it pizza? No, it's hot and it's ready.
B
Yeah. So now this is, listen, this is very important for the average normal gun right guy is that Ms. This guy. This ace Ventura is going to allow this soldiers says he will allow troops to take personal weapons onto the military base.
A
I've heard that he's a really personable person in person.
B
He looks like it.
A
But
B
I mean, yeah, you should have your rights.
A
Yeah. The reason that I wanted to talk about this one was more specifically about the reaction to it from the usual suspects where the anti gunners were like soy facing as hard as they could about like, oh my God, oh my
B
God, the military is gonna have guns.
A
Oh my God, the military is going to have guns. Like.
B
Yeah, I mean, I guess the, like, I mean is the thrust of the argument the like incidences of domestic violence on military bases?
A
I guess, I guess so.
B
Well, I mean that would be the only one that could like be logically shroud. I'm not saying it's a good argument. Right. But if that's the, the, the path you're gonna hoe. Right. That would be the, the, the way to do it. It's still stupid because
A
then you're talking to and interacting with many people who are currently in or veterans or whatever. The overwhelming reaction I got to this was, huh, it's like, oh, we weren't supposed to be doing that. Right. That it seems like it was broadly being disregarded anyway. Now you won't get in trouble for it sort of thing.
B
Yeah. Because that was probably one of the things that's like big trouble. Which is stupid. Right, Right. It's like you can, you can check out and train with all of this, you know, but if, God forbid and you know, and also especially there were some notables that did happen at bases and that's terrible. Like these are people that are supposed to be trained to be able to defend themselves at a moment.
A
Like this was. I think this is a story we covered a long time ago, but there was like the, there's like a Neo Nazi group that was routinely breaking into a military base and stealing night vision and a whole bunch of other stuff. And a guy tried to stop him and they like caved his head in.
B
Yeah.
A
I mean, at some rate you ought to figure that military bases are not very well defended outside of the perimeter. And you know, at some rate, like, okay, these guys were just there to steal stuff and sell it online. But you know, heaven forbid they were someone worse than that that was there.
B
As neo Nazis do.
A
Secrets are technology. Right. Actual bad guys doing some James Bond stuff. But being able to shoot them would go a lot better than you're getting beat up by them.
B
So yeah, when you shoot them, they Don't. They don't steal. Good.
A
Their ability to steal things, it's dramatically. It's a. It's a strong debuff to their steel.
B
Deep boost, Bob. Yeah.
A
It limits their dialogue options to. Please help.
B
Stop shooting me if you use a P90. Next up, Beretta gets to have more Ruger. Yeah. So Ruger and Beretta are holdings announced strategic cooperation agreement where Ruger Beretta is now allowed to own 25% of Ruger. This is, you know, another chapter in the long saga of Italy purchasing our industries and somehow making them shittier. After. After they did it to mopar, which we always wondered whether there was a possible way to make them shittier. Not that Italians don't know how to make guns. Beretta doesn't know how to make.
A
Yeah. I guess the background to this story, the context. Context speaking, is Ruger. Out of nowhere, just headline, Ruger accused Beretta of trying to do a hostile takeover. Because Beretta was trying to do a hostile takeover.
B
And then.
A
No, we're not. Like, we just own enough of your company that we think we should have more people on the board. Yeah, you're. What you're describing is a hostile takeover. And so they've agreed to make it not hostile, and it's just a partial takeover that they'll totally not come back to and revisit at some point in the future whenever Ruger stock price is down. But, you know, ultimately.
B
Right.
A
Beretta has been on a campaign of consolidating gun makers where there is fat to trim. And historically speaking, it is fun to make fun of Brett, but historically speaking, they have been very good at turning these companies around and making them profitable. Right. Like, if you. It is a fun thing to do sometimes. Just Google Beretta Holding Group and see how many companies in the gun space they own. And a bunch of them, you'll go, I had no idea. Like optics owned by Beretta, Frankie's owned by Beretta, Benelli's owned by Beretta. Those are the ones people are more aware of. But Beretta owns a lot within the broader gun space. And by and large, they have been good to the companies that they have taken over. So frankly, if it were to happen, I don't think I could. Because. Because in my mind, Right. I don't.
B
I'm scared of this. What if Ruger becomes good?
A
I don't like Ruger and I don't like Beretta. Yeah, for different reasons, but.
B
Yeah. Wildly different reasons.
A
The funniest outcome would be a extremely hostile takeover of Ruger by Beretta. And then Beretta changes their entire product lineup. Yeah, that'd be the funniest thing.
B
That would be very funny. And I would.
A
1022 was just canceled. They're never making one of those again. They have to make something good instead.
B
Yeah, like, damn it. God.
A
You know what they could do? I don't even know if I want to say this out loud. They put the Super Sport back in production.
B
I was about to say they're gonna. They're gonna fucking get rid of the 1022 and be like, you guys want to see one that doesn't jam?
A
You want to see one that's, like, incredibly good here.
B
Here it's our Super Sport action. But no, that's. That was actually. I was right before you said that. I was like, damn it. Why are so many of my favorite guns Beretta's?
A
They really could improve Ruger's lineup by just making, like, the back catalog of out of production Beretta sporting guns.
B
Yeah, but just like, delete. God, can you imagine the shock if it's like, 1022 discontinued, and it will be replaced by a good gun.
A
It's the meme where it's like a picture of four things that people like, and it's like, you got to get rid of one. Except with Ruger, you couldn't put up four guns of their stuff. I like. It's like, which one of these have to go? And it's like, oh, I want all of them going. Like, you give me a mini 14, you know, and a 1022. Jeez. Those are the two guns of players that I hate the most. That would be one of those two, regardless of what the other two are.
B
So I thought, is it. You have a complicated relationship with the Mini 30 though, right?
A
I. I like the Mini 30, but I'm not gonna. I won't look you in the eye and say, it's not a piece of.
B
What about the. What about our. Our Deerfields?
A
That's the one Ruger that I think is redeeming. And it's especially funny because they stopped making it.
B
But it's still a piece of. Yeah, I mean, it's still made that way. It's still made all wrong. And then he also went and did that mag to it.
A
It's not that it's not a piece of. And in fact, it's like, even with all ideal conditions, like a mag that fits tight in the gun and the ammo that's well suited to it.
B
Yeah. The ammo in that 5% of the pressure range of 44, that just works.
A
It's just. It's like. And it'll run like one. One mag in five. Just runs without issue. And like, you appreciate everything about the gun as you have to tighten every screw. And it's like. It is. It is quintessentially Ruger. And maybe that's why I like it so much. Like with the mini 14 to many 30s. Right. Like the ejecting the trigger group out of the bottom of the gun, that's like. That's just quintessentially Ruger. Of course that's Ruger. Right. It's bespoke. Ruger is. The gun is going to disassemble itself randomly when you shoot it. And their. Their way, like, their suggestion to fix this is just put the trigger group. This cast stainless steel trigger group. Just put it in a vise and bend it somewhere, then so it's tighter and it's like, yeah,
B
I'll just glue it in. It just aglass the whole thing.
A
And see, I've got a. I've got a complicated, let's say, relationship with Ruger. But the complication is that my favorite gun of theirs is one of their shittier ones.
B
Oh, wait. And then there's the other one that we both want. The. The number two.
A
The number. The. The number ones. And number twos are very cool. They're. They're a single action versus single guns.
B
Yeah. And that. Which they're. They, like, don't want to make. And so they make like five every year.
A
And.
B
And they.
A
They're. It's like one caliber that they'll make them in every year. And then they rotate through the calibers, and it's kind of interesting because, like, there's cool calibers they make like. 22, 250, which is a cool caliber. And then there's lame calibers, they make like most of the rest of them.
B
Oh, God. So, yeah, this will be fun. I really hope Beretta has a fun time and that Ruger doesn't.
A
I hope that Ruger buys. I hope that Bretta buys Ruger. It'd be really good.
B
Yeah.
A
The Ruger Beretta group.
B
The Berettors. Oh, yeah, this. So I'm gonna read you guys the headline that I. I haven't put in the show notes for this one. CIA agent declares Virginia a slave state again, which is very good. This is. Spanberger has amended, signed, sweeping gun legislation reshaping Virginia's firearm Laws and Virginia went
A
from pretty close to overnight being one of the better gun law states, at least not one of the bad ones. Right, right. Overnight went from not bad to really close to just New York.
B
Just hours before a midnight deadline, Governor Abigail Spanberger on Monday submitted a series of amendments to high profile gun legislation passed by the General assembly while also signing several related measures into law. So yeah, it's fucked
A
past. It's like there's a unserialized slash self made slash quote unquote ghost gun band, a bunch of other stuff, minimum age to purchase like a load that's already been signed in. But then there's two that are being batted back and forth still I believe.
B
But the mag one. Yeah.
A
There's the magazine one and then the assault weapon.
B
Yep.
A
Where? And it's not whether or not they're going to do it. The governor wants a wider scope.
B
Yep.
A
It's like, oh man, it's a tough
B
like ordinarily can you imagine, can you imagine being this. And like looking that way and saying I'm not taking this, do it again. Like yeah, I'm not saying do it again. No, just think about that. This is Virginia and we have an anti gun governator that's turning down the opportunity to gun owners because it's not enough.
A
Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not raw dogged enough.
B
Yeah, no, we thicker and of course
A
like I thought her office explained that no, we didn't actually want to expand the scope. We wanted to make it easier to understand. But their amendment was like instead of defining assault weapon any sort of way, it's like basically any semiautomatic firearm that's self loading. It's like yeah, you sure did help.
B
And so we want to ban all guns. Right.
A
Virginia is in a particularly tough spot. And so the one merciful thing to the fact that the governor's office wanted it a certain way and that the legislatures is not going to give it to her is that it has extended the amount of time for the panic to set in. And so as a result Virginia has seen a massive influx in the number of people buying guns. Like I saw a couple anecdotes from a Virginia based gun store I had seen where they had never sold an MP5 or clone and they've sold multiple HK, you know, HK branded. The SP5.
B
Yeah.
A
They've sold like 10, 15 of the clones.
B
Right.
A
In the span of a week they've sold, went from nobody here is interested in MP5s to they sold like 20. So like, it's a. Caused a massive spike in sales.
B
Yeah, that's. Oh, boy. Well, they should have made D.C. square again. Oh, well, that is literally the whole thing.
A
Yeah.
B
I don't know. And why do they not want it? Like, I know. Because they don't ever leave. They don't ever leave. Like, the D.C. metro. They don't.
A
Like,
B
why do they want to own the rest of the state this way? I don't know if you guys know, I lived in. In Virginia for years. I worked in D.C. and it was like the weirdest, like, hard division, right along that line of what D.C. was supposed to be, where the rest of it was. People who were like, I hate everyone over there. And. And the people inside the square, hated everyone outside of the square, and yet they control the entire state. It doesn't make any sense. Well, that's what you get, I guess. But you don't have to accept getting the short end of the stick every time, especially if you're in the gun industry. Stop paying too much for credit card processing and stop getting bad things, all right? There's only good things available if you do FFL payment processing, guys, that's FFLPaymentProcessing.com get the best rates in the industry, the best service. They're never going to turn you down because you're doing the gun.
A
All right?
B
It's in the stupid name, idiot. Just go on there and tell them I sent you something. I don't know. It's good. Have your local gun shop do it. Tell them it's good. FFLPaymentPressing.com tell them mad sent you. And.
A
And then if they get confused, be like, Matt,
B
there's like, there's a good chance if you do tell the Matt sent you, they will know. But if they don't, it will be way funnier and say you're going to tell her. Yeah. So. Oh, this is a really interesting one. And it's caused a lot of waves that I don't think are super deserved. But the 5th Circuit, right, in saying no to a machine gun ban challenge, has said, like, pretty much said, can you. Can you guys do this again? But like, not a crime guy.
A
It was a big crime guy that, like, somebody down.
B
Yeah.
A
And they said, like, let's not. Let's not have it be a case where we. Somebody got switched down.
B
Right? Yeah. No, like, so two of the judges were like, hey, can you. And remember, this is the whole entire fifth circuit. Right? So grain of salt. Right? But at least we have two circuit judges that Are like, I wanna, I kind of want to know a little more about what you're thinking here. Right.
A
And. And had they voted with what was the minority, it would have decided this case the other way. Right. So they were both. Yeah, you know, they were both of the counted in the majority which was 922 oh is constitutional. But they both signaled, hey, we're saying this for this case, but we're not actually sure.
B
Yeah, they're like, this was a crime guy and he did a big crime and we are willing to do whatever it takes to keep him in jail. But can you try again?
A
And you're down off into the weeds of their opinion. They're talking about 922, which is near the Hughes amendment. Part of the, of the no machine guns can be registered after 1986. Which. And okay, I guess we can also address the fact that in the time since the zero dollar tax thing, people have gotten more, let's say impatient about the fact that machine guns are still regulated. And I think, I think a lot of that came down to people getting their hopes up for one reason or another. Machine guns still have this ridiculous zeitgeist around them. And Costas and I were sort of batting back and forth the fact that machine guns to most people are a totem at this point because most people's understanding of machine guns is utterly sophomoric. It's like video games and movies and that's it. And this goes for both the pro and anti gun side of this debate. Like neither of them really like there's a lot of program people think no, I need a machine gun to defend myself. Well, probably not. Likewise there's a lot of anti gunners that are like if you have a machine gun, you'll just basically wipe your handgun.
B
You're like unstoppable. Yeah. Just like having. It's just like the most. Because they saw falling down.
A
Right. And the actual truth of the matter being the rot majority of machine guns are less effective than the arms that people pick for everyday self defense. Those being your they are 15 carbines and your striker fired polymer handguns like Glocks. Right. Which is why by and large you see, you even see professional militaries choose instead of full auto AKs and horrible Slavic pistols, Glocks in semi auto AR15s for their like high speed low drag operators. So certainly there's like a lesson here in that the zeitgeist surrounding machine guns is really bad.
B
It's idiotic. And it's like the problem is, is that it's so. But it's so prevalent that it has poisoned the minds of all these judges. Like, judges don't want to hear it because they know, right. I'm using scare quotes here, but they know machine guns are like, whoa, dangerous. Like really, really bad.
A
And they'll even point to the Thompson specifically saying, what about Tommy guns? Like, what about a antique?
B
It's like, you should watch Blood Blasters.
A
What an antique, antique dog ass submachine
B
gun that's impossible to hold and weighs
A
a billion pounds was never the best submachine gun ever.
B
Yeah.
A
And they'll point to this like, but in the movies, right? And that's where it always starts. It's like, but in the movies. But Congress banned them because of its depiction in media more so than actual use in crime. Right. And so rap music and, and so there's a, there's a massive Overton window shift that needs to happen. And I think people get impatient because those things take time, right? It took, it took handguns 50 years. And that's the. Don't mean to be a doomer. I mean to be realistic, it took it 50 years for handguns to go from. Handguns were in a similar place to where machine guns are now. And now everybody's like, of course, like Kamala admits to owning a handgun.
B
So here's a, here's the question. Would it help or hurt if more people actually got their hands on machine guns and got experience with them? I think it would do nothing because then it would be that. Because I've, I've put machine guns in the hands of anti gun people and the result was, oh, it's really not that different. And then when you put a machine into the hands of a pro gun person, they're like, oh, cool, that was fun. You know, it's like, like once you get enough experience with them, you'll lose your passion for it. I still, I still want it to happen, but like it's this weird thing where it's like, oh, if only they knew that they weren't that dangerous. Right. But like in order to get that, we have to have everybody know that they're not that dangerous, which would then get people less excited to try to unban them.
A
Right. And a lot of it comes down to it is very machine gun specific. I know you always like to point to the show Shaw machine gun because by and large, like semi auto hunting rifles that came out even like 40 years later, or in fact even the semi auto hunting rifle that came up
B
before it that inspired Us. Yeah. Shoots way faster.
A
Is a more effective firearm.
B
Yeah. Like you can lay down, I mean aside from reloading but like, like for the shots that you're, you're putting down you can lay them down way better.
A
And so it's, it's just one of these. Like there's so many like it is difficult to unravel the number of counterfactuals on both sides of the machine gun question. Like this, this. Oh but it's necessary for self defense and rights and all this. Well if you had the option you probably wouldn't use it anyway and if you did you'd be handicapping yourself. Meanwhile there's this competing counterfactual on the anti gun side where it's like this is actually a weapon of mass destruction and it's like what the military uses. Well no. And the anti gunners are throwing a baby out with the bathwater because the weapon of mass destruction if we're to use these scare quotes that the military uses are ars on semi auto.
B
Yeah.
A
So I don't know, we give the
B
big dudes they get a nice trigger.
A
So it's all just utterly ridiculous to
B
the full auto guys get the, the full auto is just so you have to pull the bad trigger list.
A
But I guess back to 9:22. Oh the, the question that the Fifth Circuit is signaling it might be interested in reconsidering is is the federal prohibition on the registration of new machine guns essentially the federal government saying you are no longer able to pay this tax to register to have these things. Is that a valid exercise of the government's tax and spend or commerce power?
B
Well it's intersected between the two closed under tax and spend. So it would have to be unless we want to fix tax and spend. I don't know but maybe that's exactly what they're thinking is they're like this seems weird, right?
A
It is a weird federal power intersection that 9220 finds itself at.
B
Right.
A
And perhaps overripe for a court to take a serious look at it and go okay and in the grand scheme of things, right there's this, there's like a third party now to this counterfactual where like they're going to come out and their counterfactual is going to be. It doesn't matter because we've got FRTs now right? Where okay, the counterfactual they're being FRTs are garbage compared to actual machine guns. Like anybody saying well it's just basically the same. It's just, it's Good. They're wrong.
B
Yeah.
A
It simply isn't. Especially, especially whenever you consider reliability into this whole, this whole mess in this.
B
Yeah. No, a, a auto sear doesn't make your gun fail if you squeeze it wrong. Right.
A
At least it shouldn't. But like, okay, so there's this third counterfactual and, and frankly I think that that may be the one that shifts the window the most because I have seen now a lot of people who go and mess around with FRTs go great, but they're stupid, right? They have the bump stock reaction where it's like hahaha, for the first magazine or two and then they go, great, this is stupid, right? Like, this is very expensive. It makes me hit the target less. It puts me in danger of shooting the ceiling more. Why would I, you know, what's the point? Right? And so I think, you know, that that is probably the most honest and accurate understanding of what most machine guns are like is it's fun, it's less accurate and you shoot the ceiling more. And at the end of the day, maybe, maybe you don't mind that, but the people who own that ceiling do.
B
Yeah, I mean I like, the only, the only machine guns I really like are submachine guns.
A
Yeah. Some carbines can, can slide in there and stuff off of bipods can be fun, but it's like very contextually fun.
B
Very use case. No, like I love my. I think, I think my favorite machine guns that I have access to are the suppressed sterling. Yeah. Because the thing's just funny. And, and the Chatellero 2429, which is a bar turned upside down, totally completely French. They didn't take it. But, but those are two things that have like a very specific use case. Like the, the 2429 weighs like 30 pounds. I, I wouldn't want to take it anywhere, you know what I mean? But it's really cool to hold that thing that's so heavy that you can let loose the equivalent of.308 and it not move.
A
Right.
B
But anyway, let's press on. So yeah, this is. Someone tried to shoot Trump again. The one that I'm sure everyone. The correspondence dinner. You guys probably don't want to hear much about that. And again, this just backs up our, our refrain. Shotguns are not for shooting people.
A
The interesting thing here is that in the video footage that's available, it's not evident that the guy actually fires his shotgun. And so now there's a whole theory out there that, that there was an agent hit by something of Course, it was caught in their vest. And now it's a question of, is the, Is the DOJ or whoever's investigating this at this point? FBI, somebody, are they. Are they lying and covering up the fact that it was a little bit of a friendly zoop zap?
B
Yeah, they.
A
Kennedy, because I think it was Emily Miller had asked. You had asked on Twitter. You know, she was the one first and maybe only woman, at least the first one to get a carry permit in D.C. but she was asking the. And think it's a, A. It's a good question to ask. How do you only get hit by one buckshot pellet at three feet? It's like a. It's like a circus trick at that point, because your extent of spread is 4 inches, and all the, all the pellets are touching it at three feet. So I don't. I don't know how you pull that off. You got. You got some custom loads that are just one pellet each or something. So this is another one of those situations where obviously somebody was trying to do something bad and evil and wrong. Right. But all of the circumstances, in fact, just as they come out, it's like, what? And it just gets more and more frustrating. I mean, the Charlie Kirk thing is another one where it's like, the details continue to come out and it just fuels the most bizarre conspiracy theories about it, where it's just like everybody gets to pretend that guns don't work, how they actually work, because we've got, you know, partial evidence or an out of context from this, that or the other thing.
B
When I was, When I was on, we like shooting, just says, well, we all know that wasn't a 3008 or 306. Like, do we know that?
A
Who's weird?
B
I said, what did you say? Good. It's funny. But yeah. No, in totally unrelated news,
A
just today,
B
somebody tried to shoot Trump again. Again.
A
Again. Again. Again. The judge asking why Allen has faced.
B
Yeah. Secret Service officers exchange gunfire with armed suspect near White House. Juvenile bystander injured. They are really not good. Why do they keep doing this?
A
It's no longer the United States Secret Service. It's the United States Secret Spetsnaz or something.
B
Yeah.
A
Bystanders should know better.
B
Oh, by the way, the guy who did the first one, the. The shotgun guy, the. The guy who was trying to do the TF2 Scout thing, he had a game on steam. I played it. It's really bad.
A
He also had a.38 Super 1911.
B
But, yeah. So I don't know what do you know about this? I, I didn't say. Juvenile bystander were struck during the exchange of gunfire. Yeah, the Secret Service is like, we got the guy. Keep going.
A
The next time we're going to be able to do this is probably going to be like at least another week. So go ahead, get it out of your system.
B
Yeah, just, just keep shooting, dude.
A
I guess not, not a whole lot. This was still a very developing story, but I, I figured it might as well be included. It's like, it just keeps happening. It's like at this point, it's like a national thing. Just once a week, somebody, somebody gets to take their, take their crack at them. Just the, the, the, the. Maybe I retract somewhat of my. It has never been so political before because I think the last time that it was probably about this much political bipartisanship and unhappiness like Kennedy got limousined. So there's like a, a lot of this going on and of course still very, very early situation here. But
B
so here's the issue is about, about the kid that got struck a quote from. Oh yeah. Quote from Secret Service Deputy Director Quinn. Everything I've seen leads me to believe and, and the investigators believe that the, the juvenile was actually struck by the suspect. Me thinks the Secret Service doth protest it too much.
A
Everything I've seen closes eyes leads me to believe
B
the shooter.
A
Guys also think it's like taking a vow of silence. I'm taking a vow of blindness. I will never see anything else. And everything I've seen tells me it wasn't my fault.
B
That's. Well, I'm glad that the juvenile is okay. It should probably stop happening, but whatever. No one listens to us anyway. Speaking of which, guys, you complete me, guys.
A
Thanks.
B
This is the newest patch from the Patriot Patch Company. Guys. Patriot Patch co. Longest time supporter of the show. We've got. Wow. May exclusive honoring their legacy, courage, valor and sacrifice. That's got a tank on it. Oh, guys, it's. It's a great show. It's a great, It's a great store. Use promotional code TWIG10, you get yourself a discount. Whatever you want off of there, man. It's a great website. Good people show their support because they have supported us for the longest. So yeah, Patriotpatch co. And use promotional code TWIG10 to get yourself a discount.
A
They should have made the submarine a 688. The 688 and they should have made the airplane the B17 just.
B
Yeah, that'd be funny. But yeah. Thank you guys for bearing with us. We've got more coming. There's another FUD Blasters that's almost done. It's about an Italian gun.
A
Oh boy. It's about an Italian gun that everybody gets wrong, including us. And we got it wrong on this show even.
B
Yeah, we did. But we will show our work and eat the crow, I guess.
A
Yummy, yummy Italian crow.
B
But yeah, guys. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for bearing with us. Subscribe to our respective Patreons get yourself discord access and you can come bother us and we'll bully you and and yeah, that, that kind of support helps keep us keeping the fight on. So thank you guys again for everything. It's been amazing and we will see you next time and next week.
A
Seven days. Sa.
B
Foreign. This podcast has been a production of the Firearms Radio Network. For more visit firearmsradio.net SAM.
Podcast: This Week in Guns (Firearms Radio Network)
Host: Matthew Rosier, joined by "the Rat Man"
Air date: May 10, 2026
Episode Theme:
This week’s episode unpacks recent and ongoing lawsuits related to firearms laws (with a focus on California, Florida, and federal-level changes), key arguments in the courts, regulatory and administrative shifts within the ATF, and major industry and political developments affecting gun owners and the firearms industry at large.
Overview:
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"It's sort of a case study in the law could mean everything or nothing at the same time, which makes it not apt to apply to any particular situation." – A ([06:40])
Memorable Moment:
Overview:
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"It would also, like, maybe this is a bit of catharsis I'm getting, but it would also, like, delete the 'I'm the one FFL in town, so I charge $70 for a transfer'" – B ([45:12])
Memorable Moment:
"Isn't that just a hop, skip and a jump from a registry?" – A ([48:00])
Memorable Exchange:
A: "The funniest outcome would be a extremely hostile takeover of Ruger by Beretta. And then Beretta changes their entire product lineup." ([73:23])
B: "Can you imagine the shock if it's like, 10/22 discontinued, and it will be replaced by a good gun?" ([74:21])
"They had never sold an MP5 or clone and they've sold multiple HK-branded [ones]... in the span of a week they've sold, went from nobody here is interested [to] they sold like 20." ([80:22]-[80:35])
Overview:
Notable Quote:
"Judges don't want to hear it because they know—I'm using scare quotes here—but they ‘know’ machine guns are, like, whoa, dangerous." – B ([86:04])
Memorable Moment:
Overview:
Notable Quote:
"'Everything I've seen'—closes eyes—'leads me to believe it wasn’t my fault.'" – A ([98:04])
"If you don't claw it back... If you don't uninvent the Internet, then you're liable for millions of dollars in damages." – B ([08:21])
"There are people who can read like assembly. Or even binary... it's not efficient, but there are people who can do it." – B/A ([15:12]-[15:37])
"If you take apart the gun, it suddenly becomes importable, as long as there's a way to configure it in a sporting fashion." – B ([34:32])
"You can't use the statute meant to protect people's rights to sue us for violating people's rights." – A ([57:22])
"There’s a massive Overton window shift that needs to happen... It took handguns 50 years." – B ([87:20])
"I mean, yeah, you should have your rights." – A ([68:12])
"In the span of a week they've sold, went from nobody here is interested in MP5s to they sold like 20." – A ([80:22])
"'Everything I've seen' leads me to believe... the juvenile was actually struck by the suspect. Me thinks the Secret Service doth protest it too much." – B ([97:33])
The episode eloquently surveys the current legal, regulatory, and cultural terrain for guns in America—mixing deep legal analysis, accessible explanations, spirited banter, and industry gossip. The hosts urge support for ongoing legal battles, continued engagement in the political process, and an appreciation for the complex (and sometimes absurd) shifting landscape of American gun law.
For more detail, discussion, or community access