John

Welcome to Goa State of the Second podcast.

John

I'm John, and today we're joined by Othais and May from CN Arsenal.

John

How are you, folks?

Othais

Good.

May

We've been doing the traditional Southern thing of debating foods for the past five minutes.

John

I mean, that's what it should be.

Othais

You think it was five minutes?

May

Yeah.

John

So let's go ahead and start off.

John

How did seeing Arsenal start?

John

How did you get into this?

John

What's the whole backstory between you two?

Othais

This one's favorite.

May

Yeah, unfortunately, it really is.

May

So actually, between the two of us, May was a shooter before I was, so she grew up with it.

May

I did not.

May

Just despite being raised in the south, it wasn't my family's bag at that time.

May

Not that my family didn't have guns, but just we didn't go shoot.

Othais

Meanwhile, for us, our family, essentially, it was a tool.

Othais

It was just like a really good pair of scissors in the household, essentially.

May

So I picked it up post college, sort of first job out of college, hanging out with one of the guys, went out to the farm to do some riding, some shooting, some things like that.

May

And that's the first time I really shot a rifle.

May

It was a Mosin M38 carbine, and I was given Sony earbuds for hearing protection.

May

So that woke me up a little bit.

May

I might have some permanent damage from that little adventure, but I was like, okay, this was fun.

May

And I think, like, a week later, his girlfriend at the time was not big on him having the rifles laying around the apartment, so he sold me, like, that, a 9130 for, like, 100 bucks.

May

And, you know, I gave the 9130 over to a roommate of mine and just kept the car being.

May

Because I was like, oh, why would I need more than one?

Othais

Dating you a little bit?

Othais

Because the price on that.

May

Yeah, yeah.

May

So to be fair, at that time, that was probably not even the best price.

May

But.

May

But the mosins, to this day, people get fascinated by the number of markings because of all the refurbs and stuff they've been through.

May

So I did the same thing where I was like, what does any of this stuff mean?

May

And I did not find the answers I wanted to.

May

So I ended up buying books, and I didn't find the answers I wanted to.

May

So I kind of set that aside and started working on other guns, and I became a gun collector.

May

And in the process of this kind of process of researching things and finding the next thing that I want to look into and buying all these books, I lost track of what I was doing.

May

So I had to start writing notes to myself.

May

And since I was already doing that and I was already friends with like two photographers, I started taking photos of the firearms.

May

And then I would do little write ups and I would put it out on the Internet blog style.

May

And also Reddit was very big at the time and not as censored as it is now.

May

So I became really popular on Reddit.

Othais

Of all things, your pictures, your photography, it like was something people had never seen before.

May

Everybody loved it.

May

And now it looks so terrible.

Othais

We've gone so far beyond so bad compared to now.

May

But I guess it was sort of a niche hobby and people weren't putting a lot of attention to actually photographing and documenting on the Internet.

May

They were just doing it, you know, for their own magazines or trade journals or whatever you want to call them, like the hobby journals were doing it.

May

But publicly, you know, I kind of became a gateway for a lot of guys.

May

And so eventually we realized, well, we kind of need to make the jump to video.

May

And then to be perfectly honest, my family kind of imploded.

May

My parents were much older.

May

They had both pre.

May

Deceased.

May

Well, they predeceased me, which they should, but much earlier than you'd think, you know, in my early 20s.

May

And so my siblings kind of scattered.

May

I didn't really have much going on and other members of extended family were kind of dying left and right.

May

And I reached that age that, you know, in my 20s I was kind of in that position where most people are in their 40s, where family starts dying and you have to start kind of reinvesting in your future.

May

And I went, I don't want to do what I'm doing.

May

And so I kind of launched the video series.

May

I gave it like a, like a one year Hail Mary out of my savings to see what we could do May invested in as well.

May

And you know, she came in because I can't, I can't film myself shooting.

May

You know, I mean, you can.

May

A lot of people do selfie stuff now.

May

But at that time it was weird.

May

I was trying to do something a little higher brow.

May

So she became our designated markswoman so that I could film her.

May

Over time, she's learned to run the camera.

May

So now we both take responsibility for that.

May

But it gave me enough room to run what I was doing.

May

And then from there, as the show's grown and we've had more funding, she's taken over more and more roles and come in full time.

May

And so now we both do it.

May

Full time.

Othais

And then we eventually got Bruno, our animator, in like 30 something episodes in.

May

No, it's like 60 something.

May

Okay.

Othais

I couldn't remember.

May

We.

May

We did.

May

We ended up with a part time animator because we were doing 2D animations to sort of support how everything works.

May

Because the whole emphasis of the show was to have a very visual format to be able to show people exactly how these things work and where they came from.

May

And I was doing these horrendous 2D animations by.

May

By literally taking the guns apart and photographing everything and then animating it.

Othais

Pretty good for 2D.

May

Monty Python esque.

Othais

Yes.

May

But they did get the point across.

May

Except for you start getting stuff like the one that broke me was the Luger.

May

Because the way the Luger's trigger mechanism wraps around, you kind of need to see it from more than one angle to understand it.

Othais

You actually did have to show a second angle of it working.

May

And unlike a 3D animation where you define the object and then you could rotate the camera around with a 2D photo animation, I had to take photos from both directions, animate two separate animations, and then keyframe them together so that they work simultaneously.

May

So it's like exponentially more work than just a 3D at that point.

May

And I went, okay, hold on, this is going insane.

May

So I kind of voiced that actual concern on the show.

May

And someone who was watching the show, Bruno, actually reached out to me and said, well, you know, if you, if you want an animator, I just graduated from this arts program and everything.

May

And I went, okay, can you come on up?

May

So he ended up moving over to Charleston with us.

Othais

I do love him showing up, by the way, because he didn't tell us he was coming.

May

So now Sarah has me, who does most of the research and stuff like that, May, who does most of the editing and handles the sort of business management side of it and a lot of the camera and audio now.

May

And then we have Bruno the animator, and that's really it.

May

We have other people that come in as needed ad hoc for certain sub settings of things.

Othais

But yeah, we've got like patent researchers overseas for us.

Othais

Currently we have some people doing little things for ammo acquiring and stuff like that.

Othais

Yeah, Suze does a lot of ammunition now.

May

Yes, Suz will help out with ammo loading.

May

Every once in a while we get somebody that takes on a special project because they're invested in it and they're willing to help us out with that project.

May

But generally, in terms of core team, there's just the three of us.

John

So you started what, about 10 years ago?

John

Right.

Othais

Our first video was in 2015.

Othais

Oh, okay.

May

June 2015.

Othais

Actually, we just passed our anniversary on the fifth.

May

That would have been nine though, right?

Othais

Wait, what year is it?

May

20, 24.

Othais

Nine years.

Othais

There you go.

Othais

All right.

May

Now, we've done article work and had the website up for several years before that.

Othais

Yes.

John

So some of your first videos were all about World War I, the Great War Guns.

John

Was it just a happy medium that it fell in right around that 100 year anniversary?

May

It was like the worst thing I ever did.

Othais

Yeah, literally the worst thing you've ever done.

May

I was a World War II collector and the.

May

We had, we had the guys from a series on YouTube called the Great War that a lot of people enjoy.

John

Yes, I love them.

May

They reached out to us for licensing images and I said, well, actually we're about to start doing video.

May

Would you like to do video with us?

May

And they said, sure.

May

And we came up sort of livestream idea, but the problem is they're doing World War I.

May

So I went, well, I got all this World War II stuff here, but how hard can it be to really pull in some World War I stuff?

Othais

How could it be?

Othais

And wonderful question.

May

The problem is actually, at the time, World War I stuff was cheaper.

May

So it was not insane to think that I could just acquire what we needed and then move it along, you know what I mean?

Othais

And then luckily we had a friend of ours who actually had a substantial collection in town down the road from us, essentially.

May

Right?

May

So we're like, okay, we've got this, that and the other.

May

Oh, boy.

May

Because then, you know, Battlefield one drops.

May

The Great War is doing well.

May

All of a sudden the World War II stuff becomes very collectible in a way that it wasn't before.

May

And so it becomes almost punitive.

May

And then there's a lot more firearms than I realized in World War I because I was a World War II focused guy.

May

So I just promised something that was very hard to deliver.

May

And I guess what made the show is that I was willing to just keep delivering because I went, no, no, no, I already said I'd do this.

May

And then eight years later, we were still doing World War I.

Othais

It was literally until we could not do it.

Othais

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

May

Great War is done.

May

We're still doing it, right?

May

So.

May

But we made it through as much as we could.

May

There's still some odd machine guns and sort of rare pieces that we're struggling to get in.

May

But we've done the vast majority of small Arms that were in World War I.

John

Well, it's, it's crazy when you think World War I.

John

You just think of like it seems like the Civil War.

John

Like it's, oh, these guns are the technology boom for firearms during that time.

John

And the amount of different guns in that time, the different changes in innovation, I mean, it's insane.

May

Oh yeah, we're, we're actually under a number of NDAs with current manufacturers.

Othais

Yep.

May

Because a lot of times it's easier to reach out to me to a very expensive like patent researcher and they'll just sort of say quietly like, hey, you're.

May

Could you sign this NDA real quick?

May

Yeah.

May

Okay.

May

What's up?

May

Have you seen this before?

May

Yes.

May

1914.

May

Yes.

May

1910.

May

Yes.

May

1905.

Othais

Do you know the solution to this?

Othais

Yeah, they solved that in 1907.

May

What?

May

And so I'll just pull up examples on that and I'll tell them this might not be the first one.

May

I just know of this one.

May

And they're sitting there going, I thought I invented something new.

May

And you're going, no, no.

May

Because there's so many people were working on these problems at the time.

May

And it's just funny where the bottlenecks are.

May

It might be a cartridge development issue, it might be a gas system issue, but there's a lot of ideas around those core functionalities that were already developed but then not implemented well until some other emergent technology comes out.

May

We actually see this a lot in the handgun world because until you have metallic cartridge, it's kind of hard to do a lot of things that are, let's say double action.

May

Because if you end up with a failed cook off or something like that, you get out of time and blah blah.

May

So it's just simpler to do single action, blah, blah, blah.

May

Well, once you have reliable metallic cartridge, all these ideas kind of come back around, but they've already been patented and the patents have already expired.

May

So now they're in the public domain and people are going insane with them.

May

And it's just interesting how much people were sort of too far ahead of the wave and they didn't profit by it, but they had the right idea of where we were going.

John

Well, I mean, just think of the advances Browning made from 1899 to 1911.

May

Right.

John

Just the amount of changes and iterations of his designs throughout those years is just insane to think about.

May

What's crazy is actually if you start exploring sort of the pre Browning era is how much he didn't invent, but rather deeply refined and combined there's a lot of times that Browning would end up in these sort of like either threats of lawsuit or lawsuit because the core concept actually was already out there.

May

It's just that it wasn't done anywhere near as efficiently, which was, you know, people kind of remark on him being a genius for thinking these things up in his head and never really drawing them.

May

Having an idea that just appears in your head that is like a core concept of how something might lock together.

May

Not that remarkable for someone that has that kind of mindset.

May

Most engineers are able to do that.

May

The interesting thing is how that he was able to iterate on his designs in his own head to sort of say, well, wait, where's the waste?

May

And being able to keep multiple points of contact in his mind and sort of go, well, hold on, can I delete this and put it over here and get both functionality at once.

May

And he's like, yes, you can.

May

And he also got a lot of help, though, from, like, Winchester and Colt.

May

They would also help refine the designs down tighter.

May

And that efficiency, I think, is what people really appreciate about his work.

May

They might not voice it that way because they don't understand that's what they're really seeing.

May

But I mean, the efficiency of, say, like most people are familiar with the 1911 of having that sort of slide locking, tipping block, or tipping barrel action, very efficient.

May

It's hard to get away from.

May

Most handguns use that system now because it's so efficient, so crazy that you.

Othais

Know all the way back to 1911.

May

Right.

May

But then again, most people don't realize most modern handguns, okay, so you lock.

May

You guys would be familiar with this.

May

You like a Glock, there's sort of an extension over the chamber that locks into the slide, and that's your locking surface.

May

Well, a lot of people don't realize is the competitor of the 1911 at the time was designed by Whiting, who worked for Webley, and he did the Webley autoloader.

May

Now, that gun used sort of a dual camming system, like a horizontal diagonal line that would bring the barrel back and down, not tipping, but sort of.

Othais

Parallel, but it locks into that block in the back of the receiver.

May

But that gun is the first one I know of that locked sort of an extension over the barrel into the actual hole for the ejection in the slide.

May

So your actual port in the slide that you already have to have.

May

So Browning use separate lugs.

May

They didn't take advantage of the already existing hole that you had to have the slide in order to kick out your spent casings.

May

Whiting did.

May

So most modern guns are actually sort of a combination of Browning's design and Whiting's design.

May

But we never think about it that way because we just see the Browning part of it, you know?

John

Oh, yeah.

John

You don't think.

John

I mean, Browning had such a large name, Everyone still contributes him to the high Power.

John

Even though he didn't finish the high power.

John

Yes.

John

Which is the same man who made the.

John

The fal.

May

Right.

John

So it's like, okay, well, Browning's just got this big name, and I think that's just because he came up with so many designs.

May

Oh, he was absolutely prolific.

John

Yeah.

May

And extremely efficient in what he was doing, like I said before, and his ability to sort of move between and also to do iterations of the same concept over and over again.

May

We often talk about the Winchester 97.

May

We have one here today that I brought in for you.

May

But around the same time, he was designing what became the, I believe, the Stevens 500, which is, you know, that sort of humpback shotgun that we're all kind of familiar with, the old Sears that a lot of people used to have.

May

It's like nearly on top of the 97.

May

He was already designing that and several other shotguns.

May

If you go over to, like, we have friends at the Cody firearms Museum, There's a number of shotgun designs that are there that never got produced by anybody that were also perfectly valid ways of doing the same thing.

May

So he had this way of sort of making multiple approaches and sealing out all the competition because he's like, well, we could do it this way.

May

We could do it this way.

May

You could do this way.

May

Normally it takes five inventors to come up with those five ways because.

Othais

And then he just patents them all, and it's like, aha, they're all mine.

May

Yeah.

John

Well, I mean, even when he came out with the.

John

What was it?

John

The 86 lever shotgun.

John

What was that?

May

85.

May

I believe it's 85.

May

But now we're doing.

John

We're going way back.

Othais

Yeah.

John

Even then he was like, this is inefficient.

John

Why are we doing this?

John

And Winchester was like, well, we make lever guns.

May

Oh, oh, oh.

May

You're talking about the 87.

May

I'm sorry, I'm thinking of the original.

May

The original falling block rifle.

John

Yeah.

May

But you're talking about the 87 lever action shotgun.

May

Yes, yes.

May

Yeah, yeah.

May

No, because he's like, this is there.

May

Says, we want a lever action shotgun.

May

He goes, that's.

May

That's inherently Stupid.

May

And they're going, yeah.

May

But we do lever actions.

May

He goes, okay.

May

And he manages to make one.

May

But because it's naturally like this, they're sort of mortal enemies.

May

The lever action and the shotgun concept, it comes out terrible.

John

But everybody wants one.

John

Because of Terminator.

May

Yeah.

May

Oh, yeah.

May

To be fair, everybody wants.

May

When everybody thinks they can twirl it, they don't realize how heavily modified the one from Terminator was that you could do that twirl.

May

We've actually already filmed with one of those things.

May

They're so awful.

Othais

They really are.

May

They really are terrible, terrible firearms.

May

But beautiful.

Othais

But absolutely gorgeous.

Othais

Don't care for using them?

May

No.

John

They look great.

Othais

Oh yeah.

Othais

Cool.

May

The manual of arms is confusing.

May

Like in terms of where your cartridges rest.

May

Like it's just anything.

May

Any gun that sort of palms a cartridge on you is not my favorite because once it's out of sight, it's like the Spencer pump action shotguns.

May

They have a little spot where they can hide a cartridge on you.

May

The Madsen.

Othais

Oh yeah.

Othais

The Madsen machine gu.

May

Madsen machine gun for the same reason can kind of hide a cartridge on you.

May

And there's nothing worse than a gun that can make a cartridge just sort of disappear in this negative space.

May

And then you have to keep working it and hope that it comes out.

May

Bothers the crap out of me.

Othais

Oh yeah.

John

Well, I mean it's.

John

It's crazy to think like you pulled this out of the case when we were downstairs.

John

I smiled like a school girl.

Othais

You did.

Othais

Excellent.

May

For audio listeners.

May

We.

May

We brought along a Winchester 97 trench gun.

May

And actually we brought along Remington Model.

Othais

10 much they can see.

May

Well, not on the audio.

Othais

Okay.

May

Some of these guys are listening audio.

May

So there's a Winchester.

May

There's a World War I era fixed frame Winchester 97 dredge got in the room with.

John

With a matching bayonet.

May

That's true.

John

And it has brought much joy to me.

John

He.

John

He knew how to pull up my heartstrings.

May

I.

John

It's true.

John

I, you know, I.

John

I fell in the same boat as you when I first started off.

John

And I'm going to date myself too.

John

I bought a Mos and Nant 9130.

May

Many of us did.

John

89 bucks.

John

And then I got into the surplus game, right?

John

And it's so cool.

John

The surplus game is so cool.

John

And a lot of people just don't do it.

John

And I don't understand why.

John

Because you know, I've got the 9130.

John

Then I got the Nagant Revolver.

John

And then I bought.

John

I showed you guys the pictures of the ruby and all these things and you go, these are designs that are just.

John

Have gone.

John

I mean, just look at the Spanish.

John

The amount of designs the Spanish have copied.

John

And you can get them on the surplus market for next to nothing.

Othais

Oh, yeah, you're right.

May

I'm actually.

May

I'm struggling to find a particular Spanish gun because I can't get one for myself because they're always priced wrong.

May

The Spanish made a lot of copies of the Merwin Hulbert, and there are a great many Merwin Horowitz that have.

May

Merwin Hulberts.

May

I can't speak.

May

That have sold for well over $1,000 today that are clearly Spanish copies.

May

But what they do is somewhere along the lines the markings got rubbed off conveniently.

May

And you can tell if you know what you're doing, but it's.

May

It's kind of hard to tell.

May

And so there's a lot of very high dollar Spanish Merwin Hulberts out there.

May

Now where I'm going, I just want an actual Spanish one for.

Othais

For the Spanish price.

Othais

Yeah.

May

So that I can talk about this period of Spanish history.

May

But no, everybody's charging for it like it's an American one and no one knows that they're out there.

May

It's something like 1 in 10 is not an American mall.

Othais

I wonder how many poor bastards are pulling theirs out of the drawer right now and just going, oh, crap.

May

Yeah, well, look close, because if you don't have the actual US Markings as supposed to be exactly right.

May

Then it's probably that they.

May

So if it's sort of scrubbed off blank, there's a good chance that those weren't Norwich markings that were scrubbed off.

May

It's probably Spanish markings that were scrubbed off.

John

Well, we.

John

I think when we were at the gathering, that was the one I talked to you about, because that was the one I just found out about was the Merwin Hulbert, where you pull the barrel and all the cartridges eject.

John

And if you look back and think about all the gun companies that have gone under over the years and the designs, they were up in quality with Colt and Smith at the time, but they were not making their own stuff.

May

That's.

May

That's it.

May

It was.

May

It was.

May

Okay.

May

Was it Hopkins?

May

I believe was.

May

Yeah, Hopkins was making theirs.

May

So it was sort of a licensed design.

May

And Hopkins Allen's actually made their own sort of like large frame guns that were kind of long forgotten now because they were rimfire for the most part.

May

But yeah, there's a lot of good quality that has just sort of disappeared, especially from the history books.

May

It's fun that we actually.

May

I'm wearing a T shirt and nobody can see it, but we actually came out with a T shirt last year for the fondue lock work, which was a Belgian patent that we managed to locate thanks to.

May

And by the way, we really appreciate our patronage.

May

Almost all of our shows funded by patron dollars.

May

And so I took some of those funds and I paid for a friend of mine to take some time, thankfully, because if I paid an actual guy to do this, it would have been a lot more expensive.

May

But he was willing to go over to the Belgian archives and just dig Belgian patent archives for us.

May

Because we know that a lot of revolver history is hidden in the Belgian patent archives.

May

Everybody thinks of America as sort of revolver central.

May

No, it's actually mostly Britain and Belgium, especially Belgium were sort of the innovators of the revolver once Colt left off.

May

And a lot of that history is completely forgotten.

May

So I'll read books on Smith and Wessons and they say, oh, yeah, they were looking at these three lockworks and I can sit there and go, that's a shamelo Delvigne.

May

That's a fanu.

May

That's a whatever.

May

And they ultimately chose the worst lock work of the three for this one design.

May

And it's probably because they were afraid of being hit by a patent lawsuit in Europe because it was marketed the European market because it was a double action.

May

But that's nowhere in that text, nor is the speculation in that text, because this is a person who's only studied Smith and Wessons or maybe only US revolvers.

May

So they have no clue that this is actually a Belgian design that has just been brought over and explored because they probably got sample pieces from Belgium.

May

Everybody went to Liege for ideas in the handgun market at that time.

May

And so we've been unraveling that mystery.

May

Anybody that wants to see what we're doing, by the way, all of it goes onto our website.

May

So it's like revolvers.c and arsenal.com and all the patents are there as we can get them processed.

May

We have a guy that's been volunteering on Discord to help us access.

May

And we just dump them all in there.

May

I pay for them to go get found or I pay the fees to get them, you know, copied out.

May

And we're just.

May

We're just trying to unpack as much as we can.

May

But, you know, everybody likes the Colt Pythons, all the snake guns.

May

Most of the Smith and Wesson lock work that we're familiar with.

May

Although they did make a change in their slide rebound.

May

Most of what we consider to be modern revolvers are derivatives of this 1874 patent, which itself is just one modification of a patent that came before it and blah, blah, blah, but totally forgotten about.

May

So the modern revolver as we know it was pretty much done in 1874 and no one's noticed.

John

Wow.

John

Yeah, that's just mind blowing.

John

I mean, there's a lot of things that people don't.

John

I mean, we talk about the revolver.

John

History is a big one because everyone's like, oh, Colt was the first one.

John

Yeah, but it wasn't cold.

John

There was other ones out there before Colt even patented his.

John

And even then there was arguments between him and other people on who should own the patents or even European patents versus US Patents.

John

We talk about.

John

I mean, look at Browning.

John

He split his patents between FN and Colt for a long time because one was European market, one was American market and Colt couldn't sell stuff to the European market.

May

Yeah, I mean, Colts, Colts, initial revolver seems to be some combination of.

May

There's.

May

It seems to, by the way, it's design suggest that he was aware of the precursor designs, even though he denies it, which of course he would because Colts ultimate appeal is that he's the quintessential American.

May

He's a salesman who is attempting to drag the rest of the world.

Othais

God, he's a salesman.

May

Yeah.

May

He attempted to drag the rest of the world into understanding the concept of economy of scale.

May

And at that time in the arms industry, we didn't have it, the idea that, okay, we need to make, we want to make this firearm.

May

If we can use machinery and jigs and whatever to make 10,000 of it, minimum, exactly the same way, then we can get the price down and then.

May

And you can see it in court records and stuff at the time, because he was, he was actually drawn into a court in England when they were trying to.

May

England was having a debate about starting their own state manufacturing and some things like that.

May

They were trying to get cost data from Colt on the cost to produce certain things.

May

Colt's deepest secret was how much it actually cost him to make his revolvers.

May

He was willing to sell them at a price below other people in the market for what you're getting.

May

But he wasn't willing to sell them at, you know, a thin margin.

May

He got a hefty margin on everything.

May

Because being the first person to really approach this economy of scale, he should reap all the benefits of It.

May

So he only thought about competing with the market price.

May

He didn't care about beating the market price deeply, which would essentially have driven everybody else out of business.

May

It probably would have been the smarter move for him to do that, because if he could have gotten his prices down, we now know discount marketing is the way to sort of kill a market.

May

But the problem is then you permanently drive that market down.

May

So maybe, maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong.

May

The point being is he hid his cards.

May

However, he did have to explain to the British, you don't understand.

May

You have to give me almost all the money up front so that I can buy the machines to do this.

May

And they're like, well, let's just give you some of the money up front, and then when it's all here, we'll give you the rest.

Othais

He's like, but I need the machines to do the thing, so you got to give me all the money so I can do the thing.

May

And they're going, but these other tradesmen that have been here for hundreds of years, we pay them piecework.

May

And he's like, yes, they've had hundreds of years to get these tools into place.

May

And then also they can't do it for that price in that economy because they don't.

May

They can't afford to buy the machine.

May

It's very interesting.

May

So through his sort of like essentially lying, I mean, just constantly lying and overselling and pushing and pushing and pushing.

May

He got people to understand this concept.

May

And then immediately after that, you suddenly see the next generation of firearms is people banding together, various prominent gunsmiths banding together to form things like fn, which was a coalition of gunsmiths in order to produce for the government so that they didn't have their manufacturing taking away from their country.

May

Because that was the big fear after that was like, well, hold on.

May

The first person to sort of be able to make everything, like Steyr and owg, Steyer and Austria, they're going to put everybody out of business in their own countries unless these gunsmiths band together and buy the same sort of equipment.

May

And so it's fascinating how he sort of pushed the industrial revolution, essentially, or at least the portion of it that would be like mass manufacturing interchangeable parts.

May

He pushed it by essentially lying about what he could do, but that started to get the capital available to do it.

May

And now that's how our entire economies work.

May

Like, we do everything on the scale method now.

May

So really innovative, but poorly understood because most people are just like, he made the Best revolver.

May

And you're like, okay, but that's so not what's important about Colt.

Othais

I still say Colt is one of the most fascinating individuals in history.

Othais

If I could ever have the actual truth of a man's life, Colt is the singular person I would pick out and be like, done.

Othais

I want everything that's actual truth on him.

John

The amount of times Colt went bankrupt, just in the beginning.

May

Oh, yeah.

May

With other people's money, too.

Othais

Yeah.

John

Like bankruptcy.

John

That's the important part in the fires.

Othais

He was truly a salesman.

John

Yeah.

May

Oh, yeah.

John

His.

John

What was.

John

It was.

John

The first one was with the Patterson.

John

And then after the Patterson came out, it was the.

May

Oh, he did more than that.

May

He designed a harbor defense system of subaquatic mines.

May

So he had these waterproof mines, and you would sit in this room.

May

The way it was supposed to work is you're supposed to sit in this little room at the corner of the bay and have these big mirrors that would let you see the bay.

May

And they were grave coordinates on the mirrors, like a grid, like a game of Battleship.

May

And you could literally go, oh, there's a boat at C5.

May

And push this button.

May

And then it would blow up the boat.

May

And they tested it, and it worked so well that it terrified everybody.

May

But the cost was prohibitive, so it was never put into place.

May

But his harbor defense system was basically like, we'll just mine the whole harbor, but it'll all be like, it won't blow up until we hit the button.

May

And you just have a guy that sits there, and if an enemy ship comes into the grid, he just hits the grid button, like, literally a game of Battleship and blows it up.

Othais

Just real life.

May

He was also responsible for the waterproofing.

May

So in that.

May

In doing that, he had to develop a waterproofing cabling method.

May

Well, that was actually used by Samuel Morse for the initial Morse testing for Morse code.

May

You know, same event or that.

May

But he was doing his, you know, telecommunication stuff.

May

And so he needed to run cable underwater.

May

And there's a famous test where he.

May

Both Sam Colt and Morse were trying to get investors for his technology.

May

And so they set up a thing where they were going to communicate between an island and the mainland.

May

It was an in lake island.

May

I can't remember which one now.

May

And they set everything up overnight.

May

And then the next day, it was a complete disaster because it didn't work.

May

Well, what they didn't know is that a fisherman, overnight, had been dredging and just hit the cable, was like, what is this?

May

He starts pulling it up.

May

He keeps pulling up and he keeps goes, to hell with this.

May

And he cuts it.

May

And then that's why the first, like.

May

That's why Morse, like, had a setback on the first go and couldn't get funding for another, like, five years or whatever it was.

May

It was him and Samuel Cole going, who the heck cut our cable?

Othais

Some dude in the middle of the night.

May

I love that.

May

Human Endeavor was set by, like, five years because some jerks just like, what is this?

John

Well, I mean, you think about all the military testing and how things have got set back.

John

I mean, you know how cool it would be to have a savage in 45?

May

Because.

John

Yeah, I mean, there's.

May

You say that it'd be cool because it's a failure at the time.

May

They're just like, this thing sucks.

May

So, like, the problem is, it's just like, they have high points in 45.

May

Go nuts, Bo.

May

Because it's going to be the same experience.

John

Well, there's all those things that, like the Luger and 45 that made the first trials, that everyone's like, oh, I want one.

May

And then my favorite is, everybody wants the.45 Luger.

May

And they're like, oh, yeah, it didn't work.

May

It didn't bother.

May

No, it worked great.

May

We wanted them to come back and do it again.

May

And Luger went, no, we're so tired of spending money on you.

May

You're going to make it.

May

This is actually a funny thing because it's very comparable to what we had with.40 Smith & Wesson, because everything goes in circles, right?

May

So the.

May

The luger is in a.30 caliber cartridge.

May

And they're like, oh, can we make it bigger?

May

And it's like, well, we could kind of straight wallet, and that'll give us 9 millimeter.

May

And so just as a kludge, you end up with 9 millimeter parabellum.

May

Like, the 9 millimeter parallel exists because it's like, I guess we could do that.

May

And then they're trying to sell it the US and they're trying to do anything they can to get a cartridge that the US would accept.

May

But the US is like, no, we want.45ACP essentially, for the precursor to that.

May

And they're going, if we do that, we have to build a whole new frame.

May

Everything has to be new, new tooling.

May

So we have to run a separate assembly line just for this little country.

May

I mean, it's big geographically.

May

By the time it was a small market, because for Germany, they had conscription.

May

So, like, the numbers of handguns that Germany Needed at a time compared to the US Is astronomically different.

May

So they're going like, the German army just bought these things from us.

May

We don't have to play around with America.

May

Like, we're going to sell like 2,000, 20,000 at most.

May

Like, where are we at?

May

You know, we don't even.

May

We don't know if we're going to get the contract.

May

They clearly favor their own guns.

May

This Browning guy's ripping us off at this point because he was.

May

Let's be honest, that's the thing that makes people very.

May

It's not Browning so much as Colt, but the Colt 1911 is clearly derivative of the Luger.

May

On the bottom half, you can look at.

May

We actually have a whole series on this where we approached it.

May

But the lock work, the slide, that's all Browning.

May

But the bottom half of that gun, it's like, oh, did it come up with a grip safety and a raked grip and a thumb depressible magazine release.

May

And where did I see all that before in 1900?

John

Oh, that's right.

May

Luger.

John

What do you mean thumb safety and everything?

May

It's almost like it took on all the best features of its chief competitor in order to win the trial, but also had a superior lock breach system.

Othais

How ingenious.

John

How.

John

How dare they.

May

Yeah, but no.

May

So the problem is Luger's like, we don't want to make two sizes of frame, which is what we ran into with 10 millimeter, where it's like, everybody's like, hey, can we get 10 millimeter?

May

And they're like, we'll have to make two sizes.

May

Well, three sizes.

May

Because then it would have been 45, 9 millimeter, and 10 millimeter.

May

All the group companies got together and were like, can we just make like 10 millimeter light that'll fit in a 9 millimeter frame?

May

And then everybody's just like, yeah, we'll tell them it's a good idea.

May

And then everybody ran with it for about 10 years.

May

And then, wait, this was awful.

John

Why did we do I still 40s dead.

John

I'm living.

John

I'm saying it right now.

John

40 is dead.

May

Smith & Wesson, anybody?

John

Yeah, anybody who wants 40.

John

Smith & Wesson should rethink their.

John

Their thought process.

May

The funniest part is that was done before when the US army wanted Colt brought a 9 millimeter.38 Colt.

May

There's 30 ACP, not 380.

May

They brought a 38 Colt in the original Browning lock breech pistols.

May

And the army says, We want 45.

May

And they're like, what's?

May

The most we could do without changing the frame.

May

And they got 40.

May

They tried to do on a 41, and it just wasn't working.

May

But it's the same thing all over again.

May

It's 40 Smith & Wesson.

May

100 years before 40 Smith & Wesson.

May

Like, it's the same thing.

May

It's like, okay, we got a nine.

May

Can we get.

May

How close can we get to this number?

May

It's like we could do 41, which is technically a 40.

May

Like, isn't it weird how it's just like, it's cyclical.

John

Well, it's weird.

John

Just like, what was it, the Prohibition?

John

The Colt came out with the.38 super, right?

John

And everyone's like, Wow, 38 Super.

John

Well, because it goes through corridors.

John

How.

John

Well, how did it go through car doors?

John

Because it was faster, Right.

John

And they were like, okay, that's all you need to do.

May

Yeah.

May

You could have just done that to begin with.

May

Sort of.

John

It's the same thing, like in Europe.

John

And I'm going to say it now, I watch a lot of your stuff.

Othais

So I'm so sorry.

John

Yeah, but just like in Europe, we're talking about Everybody.

John

When the 9 mil came out, everyone's like, oh, 9 mil.

John

And then there's the Italians.

John

Like, well, we want 9 mil.

John

We want it to feel like 9 mil, but our guns can't handle it.

John

So we're going to underpower it.

John

And then if you grab the wrong ammo, it blows up.

May

Well, sort of.

May

That was complete corruption.

May

So the man behind the Glenti pistol had already.

May

He was part of the trials board that was assessing it.

May

And so he's like, don't put my name on that.

May

Just.

May

We'll call it the Glass.

May

Like, he licensed it to glisten the glass entities, calling it the Glass Empty Pistol.

May

But it's actually this guy.

May

You know what I mean?

May

He's like, this is.

May

I'm going to vote yes on my own design without telling anybody.

May

I'm getting royalties on it.

May

And so the problem is, they get to the end and they're just like, okay, but the Germans have 9 millimeter Parabellum.

May

Can we do that?

May

And they're just like, yes.

May

No, but they're going to say yes.

Othais

Yeah.

May

So they did the exact same chambering, but when it came time to do the ammo, they're just like, powder back a little bit.

May

Let's dial it back a little bit.

May

What?

May

Bull.

May

Like, I mean.

May

And then you have this huge problem later on because of it, people not knowing what to Put and where and guns getting torn up and it's just like they don't blow up, but they just beat themselves to death.

Othais

Were people trying to do that with Villaprosis?

May

I want to say I've definitely seen a Villaper that was suffering from running 9mil Parabellum too often, especially because the loads have changed over time too.

May

That's the other thing is we have a friend with an MP18 that we used on the show and it's just like, yeah, you better put 124 grains in there because that's the closest you're going to get to the old truncated.

May

And even then it doesn't feed quite the same because they don't.

May

Nobody does truncated cone 9 millimeter anymore.

May

The shapes are different.

May

And it's kind of a hard thing because people are like, why don't you do ballistic shell tests?

May

I'm going because I can't get like the exact same dimension Malachor jacket with, you know, cordite powder that burns at a very specific weird rate.

May

So I'm going to give you a really bizarre approximation of what that cartridge can do, not the actual performance of that cartridge at that time.

John

So, yeah, I mean there's.

John

There's a ton of weird.

John

And I guess I blame you for this and I don't really blame you, but I, I bought, I walked in, I watched.

John

Was it the FN 1903 video?

John

I walked into a gun shop and they had a husqvarna sitting there in 380 because why convert it?

May

Yeah.

John

And I was like, I know what that is.

John

I'm buying it right now because it's cheap.

John

And I know that when people start watching.

Othais

Oh, no.

John

Yeah, Nice.

May

Did you shoot?

John

Yes.

John

Oh, 380 shoots.

John

Fantastic.

John

That's good.

May

It's better at 380 than it does in the original cartridge.

John

It's like nine.

May

They call it nine Browning.

May

But it was just sort of like a long not.38 AC.

May

It's like a.

May

Somewhere between.

May

I don't know, it's another.

May

They call it 9 Browning.

May

It's another 9 by 20ish.

May

Vaguely similar.

May

This is a problem in that era you have all these nine millimeter cartridges and this is what people don't understand.

Othais

Wasn't it like semi rimmed too or something like that?

May

I remember now.

May

There's so many compare because you got like Largo and Browning and then like the Roth cartridges that are around at the time.

Othais

Yeah.

May

And then I mean like technically Largo is a Piper cartridge and then you have 38 ACP, 9 millimeter parabellum.

May

Steyer's doing their own 9 millimeter.

May

And really, like 9 millimeter parabellum tends to win out because of, a, how many guns were available from the German army?

May

But B, it is shorter cased, so therefore you can have a more favorable grip.

May

So Largo, I think, was sort of the last fighter in that category where Largo held out for a little bit because of Spanish endeavors.

May

But it's longer, so it makes.

Othais

So I could see how they would be the competitor.

May

Yeah.

May

Having a shorter length case in a gun that feeds through the.

May

The grip is kind of important for keeping those ergonomics clean.

John

Well, it just makes me laugh.

John

Like, I showed.

John

Showed somebody the my FN, and they're like, oh, it's just a Colt 19.

John

Oh, go.

John

No, it's not.

John

It is a Colt 1903, but it's not Colt 1903.

John

It's an FN 1903.

May

Yeah.

John

And they're like, who made it?

John

I'm like, husqvarna.

John

They're like, the chainsaw people.

Othais

I'm like, yes, I got a chainsaw to match it.

John

They made guns.

John

Yeah.

May

My thing that makes me really mad is the Norwegians almost adopted, like, the Colt, I want to say, the 1902 military model with some changes in, like 38 ACP.

May

And then there was even a brief debate about doing essentially, like, the model 1910 that came right before the 1911, getting that in sort of a 9 millimeter caliber.

May

And then sort of things got stalled off, and next thing you know, they just had to buy the 1911.

May

So the Norwegians end up with their own version of the 1911.

May

But there's almost a period in which Norway adopted, like, the Colt 1902.

Othais

Were they gonna go with, like, the nail file checkering?

May

No, they were gonna do, like, the updated version that was available because they were doing it way late.

May

They were.

May

The 1911 was already kind of coming out the door when the Norwegians were assessing all the way back to the 1902.

May

And they're like, no, this is great.

May

We like this.

May

And then, you know, the poor.

Othais

That would have been interesting to see if they had some 1910s, though, because there would be more of them in the world.

May

This whole fight.

May

And the poor guys are like, can we just.

May

Can we just buy this now?

May

And they're like, no, we don't make that anymore.

May

We're making this.

May

And they hand them, like, a.45 ACP and they go, oh, my God.

May

Because the entire argument In Norway up to that point was again 9 millimeter versus 45.

May

And so they finally settled on 9 millimeter and all this other stuff.

May

And they go, okay, can we buy it?

May

And they're like, no, we only have this in 45.

May

And they went, crap.

May

Because it started the whole problem over again.

Othais

Well, that case was closed.

May

But they were doing interesting things.

May

They were like.

May

They were shooting.

May

They came up with some contraption to shoot like a bucket full because they were worried about the.

May

You know, everybody talks about.

May

What is it?

May

Hydra crap.

May

My brain's locked out.

John

Hydrostatic shock.

May

Yeah, hydrostatic shock.

May

So they were.

May

They were kind of obsessed with the same thing.

May

So they were like shooting into buckets of water to see how much water splashed out, like to try to get an idea of how much displacement they were getting for velocity versus mass.

May

Like they were doing all sorts of weird experiments scientifically test.

May

But that's the whole problem.

May

Hydrostatic is like a really hard thing to look at.

May

What's big now is these like ballistic shell dummies with stuff in them.

May

So everybody's sort of always chasing the how do I do?

May

Sort of terminal performance without actually terminating anybody.

May

Because everybody gets mad when you start slaughtering livestock like we did during the pistol trial.

John

Somebody, the US was like, hey, 45 killed cows better.

John

We're gonna go with that.

May

Those trials are.

May

Don't read them.

May

Don't read them so bad.

May

It's just like, just shoot an animal once and they just count how many hours it takes for it to die.

May

I mean, it's just awful.

Othais

Oh, you had to read through them extensively for the worst.

May

Like, we get so much trouble.

May

They did it in Europe too, there.

May

All these terrible experiments in Europe.

May

It's just especially because in Europe they were trying to justify smaller calibers.

May

So they would just do terrible animal experiments and then be like, well, it died.

May

I think how many hours?

Othais

I think bowl still has the best animal experiments where they're just like, no, we just put it in the.

Othais

The bellies of all the animals and they all just passed it.

May

Oh, yeah.

May

We took on Ballistol as a sponsor because we were already using them.

John

Yeah.

May

And we were doing some old reading and it's like in their own literature and it's kind of poorly translated from German to English, so it's even funnier.

May

But their literature, they're talking about the non toxicity because balustol is derived from a medical oil, so it's extremely safe for human skin.

May

As a matter of fact, it is an antibiotic, essentially.

May

Yes, except they can't market it that way because it's not FDA approved in the US for that use.

May

They have a product that is.

May

But that's a separate thing because they don't want to go through it for every batch of what's supposed to be a gun oil.

May

But if you were out in the woods and you needed an antibiotic that is not.

Othais

It's mild, but it can be.

John

I may keep a can of ballastal in my bag just for that reason.

May

The wipes, really, the wipes are great.

May

The wipes are awesome too, because for not everybody.

May

For a lot of people, if you get like a bunch of mosquito bites and they're itching, the wipes tend to get the itching to go down a good bit.

May

But you're kind of oily, so.

Othais

But no talk about the animals.

May

Oh, I'm sorry.

Othais

So that was what I was thinking.

May

About this quote there.

May

Like, we, we.

May

We fed Ballistol to lab mice, but the way they said, it's like we filled the mouse's entire intestines with Ballistol.

May

And I'm like, how did you know that you filled its entire test?

May

But anyway, so that's like.

May

And then after it had some mild discomfort passing the Ballistol and you're like, was it an animal?

May

I don't understand what's going on.

May

But apparently like they filled a mouse, the live mouse, with Ballistol, and then the mouse passed all the Ballistol and it's like, other than seem to be uncomfortable, it was fine.

May

It lived a normal life.

May

And you're just like, okay, so you could just do that and you probably won't die.

John

Well, we were talking earlier.

John

There's the guy on YouTube who does a history of companies and how he was talking about Zeiss and Zeiss.

John

What do you make?

John

Oh, we make really nice optics in crystal.

John

And they're like, what did you do between 39 and 45?

John

And they're like, we don't have.

John

Zeiss removed that history from their website.

Othais

Oh, they believe that?

May

Yeah, about.

May

I mean, it's because nobody wants to be associated this association game, which I find really frustrating because I don't.

May

I don't really like forbidden knowledge.

May

Things happen.

May

You can talk about them.

May

Just because you don't have to agree with everything a government or a people are doing to understand that they invented a Volkswagen.

May

You know what I mean?

May

Like, that's where it came from.

May

If it's an efficiency that we can.

May

Then the idea that you should throw away all Knowledge gained from a bad situation means that you're ultimately wasting the sacrifices of other people.

May

Like, at least take something good away from it.

May

You know what I mean?

May

So Ballistol emerged, I want to say around 1904 and was used through World War I.

May

And World War II is the.

May

It was the oil for the German army.

May

As a matter of fact, the US almost adopted it, but World War I broke out while we were testing it.

May

But there's actually ordinance notes of Balustal being absolutely superior to everything we had available in the US at the time.

May

So US Ordinance was just about to try to purchase and arrange manufacture their own product, and then World War II starts heating up and they're like, oh.

May

And then we never really got Palistol.

May

So it was a good.

May

It is still a very, extremely good product because it's safe for human skin, all other stuff.

May

But one of my favorite things is sort of in the interwar period, it became sort of a panacea because it was derived from medical oil.

May

So there was a.

May

Again, a medically marketed version of Ballistol that people were taking for stomach issues.

May

And Hitler notoriously had stomach issues.

May

So he was consuming so much Ballistol that it was affecting his vision eventually because, I mean, too much of anything's bad.

May

Right.

May

Like, so he was consuming way too much Ballistol.

May

And so his doctor took him off the Ballistol because of the headaches or vision or whatever the issue was.

May

And then that caused his stomach cramps and pain to come back.

May

So, I mean, maybe if we just let Hitler keep his Ballistol, maybe things.

Othais

Well, he just needed it in smaller doses.

May

Yeah, I don't know.

May

All I'm saying is we took away Hitler's Ballistol.

May

The next thing you know, just don't.

Othais

Give him the whole bottle.

Othais

Give him half a bottle.

Othais

Why do we have to give him a whole bottle?

Othais

He's Hitler.

Othais

He's not gonna know how to take the whole bottle.

John

He thought he knew better than everybody, so he really did.

May

We were one gun loop away from just having Pete roll bottles.

May

Yeah.

John

So the other thing that we.

John

We see in history with, at least with gun technology, is the amount of copying or.

John

Or licensed copies or as in for the Spanish non licensed copies.

May

Well, sort of.

May

It was legal in their country.

May

Yeah, that's true.

Othais

That's true.

Othais

It's fine.

John

Some of my favorites are like World War II movies, all of them using stars.

May

Oh, yeah.

John

Because they're cheap.

May

The funnier thing is in the US There's a Lot of sort of war movies during World War I, like silent films or early sound or whatever.

May

And Charlie Chaplin is famously in one, which is even weirder to see.

May

Right?

May

But because of all the arms being sent to the front, the only thing that they could lay hands on that was a magazine repeater were crags.

May

So you have all these war movies in black and white where they're just running around with crags in the trenches.

May

And especially with Charlie Chaplin is even funnier because, like, what is going on?

May

And then you still see it.

May

I think Hogan's Heroes still had Craig Jorgensen's in the hands of, like, German prisoner of war camp guards.

May

And you're going, oh, my God.

May

And my favorite thing about the collector's world is people trying to justify that.

May

Like, well, Germans did capture some cracks and bullshit.

May

It's a.

May

It's a.

May

It's a TV show.

May

We really don't need to try to shoehorn this into being a reality.

Othais

Also, why would they go with that when it's not the ammo they were using then?

May

Well, to be fair, prison guard is a good use of people that don't need to shoot a lot of ammo, but it'd be more likely they have mosins or something.

May

Just sort of like, okay, just use some of this.

John

The other thing we've, we taught, we touched on Battlefield one, so I got to bring it up.

John

There's a lot of video games, especially World War II, World War I related, that have guns that weren't really used or were just concepts.

John

So we see, like, what was it?

John

The Italian submachine gun?

John

Yeah, the Villaprosa.

May

I mean, they were around.

John

And then the other one was the.

Othais

There's another one that they had in there, though.

May

They had a ton of stuff in there.

May

They had a bunch of weird prototype stuff there.

May

Battlefield 1 suffers from the fact that they.

May

They're trying to do like the Battlefield 3 formula, where it's like, okay, we got these classes.

May

The class comes with this kind of like, it has to have this fire rate with this distance, with this sort of power per round is the vague category that they've created for themselves.

May

So then when they look at World War I, they go, oh, that's not really how World War I was actually more in terms of small arms.

May

It was very symmetrical.

May

And then it became weirdly asymmetrical towards the end.

May

And there's not as much to pull on the axis side is what you'd want.

May

There's definitely not as much to pull from sort of the lower powers as you'd want.

May

It's only really the US and Germany that are doing super weird stuff.

May

Maybe a little France in there, a little bit of Britain, but you know, Italy's got some oddball that you can pick from, but it's not enough where you can go, okay, everyone's gonna get this submachine gun class.

May

You're like, there's literally one.

May

Like there's just one.

May

There's technically, there's technically like four submachine guns, but in terms of ever finding one on the front line, there's either this dual barrel, two man thing or there's this thing that Germany came out in the last couple months of the war, right?

May

And that's really about it.

May

I mean, yes, the OVP existed, but who the heck knows if you ever saw one.

Othais

Did Battlefield ever have more than one anti tank rifle in there other than the.

May

I think it's just the T gear.

Othais

Okay.

May

Which is.

May

Which is fair.

May

But they only needed one.

May

It was a special Class 2 in Battlefield 5.

May

I haven't played five at all, to be honest.

May

I played one just to try.

Othais

I played two minutes of it and then I decided that was enough.

May

Five kind of took it to a whole new level.

May

It's like everybody, the stuff that people complain about in Battlefield 1, they're like, oh yeah, we're gonna do it harder.

May

And then wasn't it five that one?

May

They're like, if you don't like it, don't buy it.

May

And then nobody bought it.

Othais

Oh yeah, that was funny.

May

Like, it's weird, but they want to treat history as a playground, which is great.

May

Just make it.

May

I've always said make it 1946.

May

Like with battlefield one always said, just make it 1919.

May

You know, just pretend the war kept going.

May

Then you can shovel anything you want in there.

May

But they want to play this game of like legitimacy and entertainment at the same time.

Othais

Well, legitimately, when I shoot in Battlefield 1, sometimes I shoot the whole cartridge, like case and all, all at once.

May

The artillery shells.

Othais

Oh my God, that was so funny.

Othais

I captured a screenshot of that way back in the day.

John

I just want to know who was running around with the clevery.

May

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

May

I want to know who.

May

I really want to know who came up with the gun choices for that game.

May

Because the hell Regals were the most famous one, the Austrian belt fed submachine gun, because they included that game.

May

And when I saw it, I went, this is very surprising to me because I only knew about it because I manually went through an Italian archive of captured Austrian documents and that's where I first saw it.

May

And I still don't know what book or website or whatever referenced it.

May

That this guy, whoever was in charge of picking their designs, he came across it and it's been come across a bowl for a hundred years.

May

That's fine.

May

But where did he see it?

Othais

You kind of want to talk to.

May

Them literally go to the same Italian archive I did or did he.

John

Wasn't there one there where there was just one picture of somebody shooting the gun and they made a model out of it.

May

The Hell Regal.

May

There's essentially two pictures of the Hell Regal.

May

There's one of it sitting on a table with its drum sort of set aside.

May

So you could see that has sort of a chain link feed or a weird feedback.

May

I don't know that it's chain link.

May

I have to go back and look at it now, to be honest with you.

May

It's been a while.

May

It has a sort of weird belt system, but then there's a picture of a guy holding it.

May

So there's actually like one quarter of the gun we don't have any photos of, but you can kind of make some inferences.

May

But the problem is, looking at it, it's very hard to determine what the internals would actually be.

May

It seems to be sort of like a double return spring setup maybe, but we're not really sure.

May

But yeah, the Hellriegel was the one that they cloned out, which I thought was fascinating because I don't know if an ex didn't copy that gun.

May

We just have the photos of it existing in Austria at the time.

May

I'm sure it sucked.

May

Like the fact that we don't see it ever again probably means that it didn't work very well.

May

And looking at it, it looks very convoluted for what it's doing.

May

But.

John

Well, see what made me so I play a lot of Battlefield five.

John

Yeah, I know.

John

What made me really mad is they have an achievement.

John

They're like, oh, you have to kill so many enemies with ally powered weapons.

John

So I'm using a Jungle Carbine.

John

And they're like, oh, that doesn't count.

May

Why does it not go?

John

They're like, well, you can, you can use the mark, the mark 5.

John

You can use the top, the 1928 Thompson, or you can use an O3, but you can't use the Jungle Carbine, even though it's a derivative of the first one.

John

But no, because it's a Jungle Carbine, it doesn't count.

John

I got so mad because I said I'm very confused.

May

You talk about that you can use like a number four Mark one.

John

Yes.

May

Because I haven't even played the game.

May

I actually don't know what guns are in five.

May

I stopped paying attention after battlefield.

John

There's a lot of like.

John

Like weird junk.

John

I mean just like.

John

Like they had an original.

John

They have a.

John

So the M.

John

The M2 is in there which was not widely used.

May

Right.

John

They have the.

John

An M1 carbine with a.

John

An old school original concept night vision scope.

May

Right.

John

They have a.

John

Jungle carbines in there.

John

They've got the Johnson in there which was not very.

May

Right.

May

Stolen from the Dutch.

May

Yeah.

John

And then they have.

John

They have like all these different.

John

Like there's a Japanese submachine gun that I even know about that's in there.

May

Other than it's not a Type 100 or whatever.

John

No, I think.

John

No, it wasn't the Type 100.

John

It looks kind of like a bullpup, but it's got like a.

John

The magazine is long.

May

I know.

May

Actually weirdly know which one you're talking about.

May

I can't remember the name of it now, but yeah, not really.

John

There's a lot of.

John

That's the thing.

John

They.

John

There's so much weaponry during World War II too.

John

But they.

John

They've picked out like the really like for some reason the rubies in it.

John

I'm like, why is.

May

I mean there were a bunch laying around, but why didn't just reskin it to be a unique.

May

Yeah, that would make more sense.

Othais

Yeah.

John

But it was just, just so many weird.

John

The only cool thing about it is that if you use an M1 grand in that game.

May

Right.

John

You reload too quickly.

May

Yeah.

John

You get Grantham.

May

Oh, do you?

May

Yeah.

Othais

I like that.

Othais

Okay.

May

But in theory it shouldn't really.

May

Well, yeah, I'd have to see the animation.

May

But it's.

John

It's every once in a while that if you reload too quickly, it.

John

You put in and then you hear your player start screaming, ow, ow, ow.

John

And I was like, what the heck is that?

John

And then I look down and his thumb is in the action and he's like trying to yank it out.

May

We haven't done the Garen yet, but I wonder how much like I wonder how much that was really happening.

May

Because when they're fresh, they're not supposed to do that.

May

They're supposed to actually lock open.

May

But then as they got older, they don't do.

Othais

I can put on some gloves and we could try it no, I'm not sticking.

May

Well, mine actually, weirdly, the one I have doesn't eat people.

May

It's pretty good about locking up.

Othais

Yeah, I remember I've shot that before.

May

Although the gas tube was messed up so.

John

Well, that's the other thing.

John

Like guns.

John

I wish somebody would bring back some retro World War II production guns.

May

The problem is we can't.

May

It's lost.

John

Technology is that way.

May

It really is the milling, the milling again, it's an economy of scale.

May

First of all, let's be fair to the people.

May

So everybody says they want, like, let's go, we'll go simpler, type 1A case.

May

Everybody wants a type 1Ak.

May

The Russians didn't want the type 1Ak because it was.

May

The whole point was to be this folded, mass produced, whatever.

May

And it turned out that what they were getting for what they were, the effort they were putting in wasn't worth it and they had to move over to milled, whatever, right?

May

And a lot of the stuff that we see in terms of, you know, think about Lee Enfields is extremely, painfully difficult to make a Lee Enfield the correct way.

May

Because when they tried to do it in Canada, they just gave up and went to the number four.

May

They went, you know, by the time, by the time we spin somebody up and have this sort of inherited knowledge of how to get this process done just right, we should pick a different gun.

May

And so you have the sort of simplified number four version of Lee Enfield.

May

It's the same problem.

May

Everybody's like, oh, Lugers are so expensive.

May

I want them to bring back the Luger.

Othais

Yeah.

Othais

Do you know how much that would cost to be more expensive?

May

We still have not hit peak Luger.

May

Like this is.

May

The funny thing is the talent, the knowledge pool and talent and the industrial capacity is diminishing, right?

May

At a rate higher than the cost rising on the originals.

May

Because to go back and have that reproduction made, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars to have a brand new one.

May

You could spend thousands of dollars on an original one.

May

It's actually got the history that's always the problem.

May

Know a lot of guys that have tried to do this.

May

I mean, I mean, I've been friends with guys that have tried reproductions and unless you can sort of build them with existing parts kits and you're only building part of the gun and the rest of it, stuff that you're making that you find, then you're kind of stuck, you know.

May

And any compromise you make on the design is going to infuriate the core people that Want to buy it anyway.

May

So when you try to make it in 9 millimeter instead of 30 carbine or whatever, some people are happy about that.

May

But you better have a low enough price point because no one's going to spend big money to have it not be exactly right.

John

Well, I'm just surprised nobody's done the.

John

The Garen yet.

John

And there's too many in the market.

May

Though I don't think we reached saturation.

May

No.

May

Because what's the Garen go for now?

John

Like 12, 13, 1400 bucks?

May

I think nowhere near.

May

It would cost you more than that to make one because look at what's it cost for.

May

Look at dsa.

May

They do the foul.

John

Yeah.

May

DSA files are somewhere in that same price range at the low end.

May

And then the cool stuff is getting into the 2000s.

May

It's going to cost you at least that much.

May

And especially the wood.

May

Nobody can do wood right anymore.

May

There's no, there's no old growth walnut available anymore.

May

Like, you know what the cost is on that wood now and then trying to make it.

May

And then also a lot of it's sort of the final hand fitting on the wood.

May

So your labor cost is going to be huge to do wood.

May

That's why nobody does it.

May

And then I got guys that do reproduction stocks.

May

Some of you might have noticed there's been reproduction Craig Jorgensen stocks finally available on like ebay and stuff like that.

May

That's a friend of mine that's actually been doing that project and he's still like trying to get it even better.

May

He's getting it closer and closer to original.

May

But they can't get good old dark American walnut.

May

You're gonna have to stain it to kind of look like that.

May

You're not gonna be able to have.

May

I mean, you can get American walnut, but it's not gonna be as tight of a grain pattern.

May

It's not gonna be, you know, because where you.

May

How do you get it at an economical price?

John

You know, Same issue I ran into.

John

I bought a Enfield in 3006 and it was borderized, which I was like, oh, why?

John

But so I went.

John

I found the original lower stock.

May

Right.

John

I could not find the handguards.

May

Yeah.

John

And it's just.

John

And I, I'm like, I want to make this period correct there.

John

I had already cut off the ears.

John

So trying to find.

John

Find those to match is just a pain in the butt, you know?

May

Yeah.

May

We were talking about a.

May

I have a.

May

I've spent years putting back together Remington Model 10 trench coat.

May

And I got Very lucky to find the pieces for it.

Othais

But that has been years.

May

Oh yeah, it was.

May

And that's like, look, I have a part time job of just looking at auctions and stuff that go by with a very keen eye.

May

And so it's.

May

Most people can't commit those kind of hours, like I have had to do.

Othais

Right.

John

Well.

John

And that's, that's what, that's what I love about collecting because you find things that are sporterized and you want to bring them back, but you can't.

John

But then you find things that are in original condition.

John

We were talking downstairs, I bought a Carcano, a 1918 Carcano trip special with the ladder sight.

John

And I started cleaning it up and somebody had lost the original front sight and just shoved a piece of brass.

John

And you know, I've got.

May

That's at least an easy repair.

John

Yeah, it's an easy repair, but I've got like, I've got two Carcanos.

John

I've tried to try to collect as much as I can because when you find them for a good price, that's when you, you jump on them.

John

But then like, even I bought a Arasaka type 99 and I'm like looking at the dates on it, trying to look it up.

John

I'm like, please don't be a last dish.

John

Please don't be a last ditch.

John

And I pulled it up and it's like, okay, so this happened.

John

This was first of the last ditch in 44 before they went to the last of the last.

John

Okay, it's still good.

John

And then trying to find ammo.

May

Yeah, at least you can make that a.30 06 though.

May

7.

John

7.

May

Yeah, 7.

May

7 is easier to make than some of the other cartridges, but you're going to have to make it.

May

Payloading is huge now actually, because of.

May

You think about it.

May

Manufacturing capacity has been deeply limited by the production of primers.

May

And so you only have so many primers.

May

I assume that regulation around opening a new primer facility is what's really killing it.

May

Because that is an explosive.

May

Explosive.

May

It's not like everything's a gunpowder, you know, and you're like, no, no, no, no.

May

Primers are sensitive.

May

That's the tap and boom.

May

So transporting, manufacturing all that stuff, that's the big.

Othais

That's gotta be crazy.

May

Yeah.

John

All right, I gotta, I gotta ask this question.

John

One, one from each view.

Othais

Okay.

John

Any gun that's not produced anymore, what would you bring back?

John

If money was not a cost, what would?

May

To the commercial market or for myself?

John

For yourself.

Othais

Myself.

Othais

I could just have it an original one.

John

Not original or none.

John

Just bring back and make it yours.

Othais

I would probably do a colt 1910 just so we can have the damn photography, so we could have the complete collection of the.

May

We know where one is now.

Othais

Wait, now we went.

May

We went looking for a colt 1910.

May

And after we.

May

A week after the episode was in the bag, I got an email being like, hey, what's this?

May

I went, oh, my God, It's a cult 1910.

May

Why?

May

I've spent three years looking for this and somebody asked me what it is a week after we make the episode.

May

That made me so mad.

Othais

It's okay.

Othais

We're going to go out there at some point.

May

Yeah.

Othais

And then for me personally, oh, it'd be so satisfying.

May

Also the really crazy rarity of all the guns anyway.

Othais

What's that?

May

Your one that got away.

Othais

One that got away.

May

Yeah, we, we.

May

We actually saw an auction.

May

We might have been able to bid on it, but then we had the land stuff come up and everything.

Othais

Yeah, I kind of want a tiger.

Othais

It made an impact in more ways than one, but it, it was.

May

It's because you're a little boy and it's the biggest gun.

Othais

It was the biggest gun.

Othais

It's the dumbest gun because it's literally just a car 98.

Othais

Someone just went control and just like stretched it out.

Othais

And then that's pretty much what they have.

May

But single shot action.

Othais

Yeah.

Othais

It's stupid and funny.

May

It was designed as a hedge.

May

They were trying to make an automatic version of a Maxim and they're like, well, if this takes too long, we need something in between.

May

It's just like, okay, just make a big Mauser.

May

They did.

May

They just made a big Mauser.

Othais

I don't know what yours would be off the top of my head.

May

Really?

Othais

No.

Othais

Because I'm thinking about it and it could be something.

Othais

It's probably a revolver.

May

There's definitely.

Othais

It's probably a revolver.

Othais

Oh, it is.

May

I can't.

May

I can't say what I'd actually want because then somebody else might find it.

May

But that's the problem when it gets down to, like, there's one or two known that are floating out there, but they're unknown.

May

It's one of those things, like, I know what it is.

May

There's a number of firearms I've found that nobody's looking for.

May

And then we do an episode and everybody's like, that was a thing.

May

And you're like, yeah, it turns out that was a thing.

May

And there's a few Little pieces that fall into the cracks that I'm looking for from very obscure countries that hopefully I'll just find them and I could have them.

May

But in the meantime, I will say what I would love to get my hands on is like a Fedorov optimat to actually shoot, because that is a very interesting.

May

It's the right crux of interesting, obscure, and yet really well known.

May

So it's hard to find.

May

There's only a couple of examples, as a matter of fact.

May

The one that supposed.

May

There's supposedly one in the US that was part of, I believe, the Aberdeen collection that has just gone missing.

May

In terms of all the curators I know, everybody that I've made contact with, no one knows where that gun went.

Othais

That's in grandpa's basement.

May

And yet it was known to be an inventory in the US at some point.

May

And I'm like, can I get my hands on that?

May

It's like.

Othais

Or Grandpa's bunker.

May

Nobody knows where it went.

May

So I'm probably gonna have to go to Russia to lay hands on one.

May

And I doubt that that's gonna happen anytime soon with the way things are.

May

And I'd love to shoot one just because it is sort of a first for a lot of things.

May

It also has extremely, extremely bizarre lock work.

May

There is.

May

If anybody wants to see it, There is a YouTube channel in Russian that just did a video with an author named Chumak.

Othais

Yeah, you did just.

May

Chumac is a wonderful writer on Russian firearms history because he doesn't.

Othais

It's all in Russian.

May

Reading about Russian firearms history has always been difficult because it's so politicized.

May

And this guy sort of cut through a lot of that, and he's actually gotten down to the.

May

The bare bones of why.

May

So after doing CNR channel for, like almost 10 years, I finally found a man who just recently wrote a book like a year ago on the mosins that actually explains why the mosin is the way it is.

May

Because I couldn't.

May

In English, there was no answer.

May

People would say stuff, but it was observational.

May

It wasn't causal.

May

You know, it wasn't like, here's the why.

May

It was just sort of, this is the what.

May

And so this guy finally gives me the why.

May

And I go, oh, my God, that makes so much more sense.

Othais

There's a man over in Russia that you love and he has no idea.

May

Yeah.

May

And I really hate to do this because I can't remember the exact name of the channel.

May

It's like either Hex Tactical or Hexagon Tactical.

May

It's, it's something like that, but it's a Russian channel.

May

I'll.

May

I apologize.

May

I'll just tell you later so that you can put in the notes or something.

May

But they do take a part of Fedorov in detail.

May

That's right.

May

And unfortunately it's all English.

May

It's in Russian, but you can put the subtitles to English and I'd love to get a hold of one to do a proper animation on it.

May

Proper teardown.

Othais

So make Bruno cry.

May

Actually, it wouldn't be that bad.

May

It's, it's, it's fairly sensible gun.

May

In, in some ways it just, it didn't last.

Othais

Yeah.

John

But now the next question that I've got for both of you is who, what gun inventor or what gun was made before its time and if it was made today, it would do well.

May

Oh, today, yeah.

John

If it was made to.

Othais

In general, today's technology though.

John

Yeah.

May

I don't know, I feel like you could say it before it's time.

May

Definitely.

May

I can name a couple.

May

But to be fair, all of it would exist by today.

May

So I can't really say because now we know.

May

Right.

May

We've either ignored it or not.

May

You, you could.

May

I guess that would be a different question of like what's the most underappreciated thing but the.

May

Who was the most ahead of their time.

Othais

There were some triple action revolvers that were done all the way back.

Othais

Yeah, yeah.

May

Pre Civil War, the Beaumont was a pretty smart gun, but it couldn't keep up with itself, I would say.

May

Actually it's, there's a number of like piston operated mitrailleuse, sort of mechanical, like the Gatling gun kind of thing.

John

Yeah.

May

But there was a number of guys.

May

Maxim's the most famous, but there's guys trying to do self loading technology before smokeless.

May

And so smokeless became this big thing.

May

So it's kind of hard to pin it down to one design because there's actually like, there's like 20, 30 years of people knowing how to make a machine gun, but they can't technologically because black powder is just gumming it up.

May

So they could make some cool stuff, but it would jam up after like 50 or 100 rounds or 200 rounds, which is still not enough for a machine gun.

May

So it's hard to pin it down to one design because of that.

May

But boy, the number of people that had machine guns figured out before the powder technology caught up is absolutely wild.

May

And a lot of people don't understand this Smokeless powder Did not happen overnight in the sense that somebody just invented smokeless powder.

May

I've locked on his name.

May

LaBelle.

May

LaBelle cooked up a method for observing the detonation of the powder and the pressure curve from the powder over time.

May

So before it's like, oh, we put it in a case, we squeeze it down, we light it off, it goes boom.

May

This is how much boom we get.

May

And he managed to ascribe the boom over time.

May

So you get, you know, sharp initial boom, and then the pressure falls, or you get, like, heavy.

May

You know, you get light pressure at the beginning, and there's a spike in the middle, but then you have this sort of falling pressure.

May

The point is, he could track the curve of the pressure in the chamber, and then that allowed him to rapidly run through a bunch of combinations of, like, nitrocellulose and stuff like that.

May

And it let him sort of hone in.

May

And he did what would have taken another 50 to 100 years inside of, like, months.

May

And then, boom, you get.

May

So we were always trending to smokeless powder because we were making powders more efficient.

May

But we were doing this sort of by the trial and error.

May

And then all of a sudden, he could just rapidly isolate segments of it, and then, boom.

May

Overnight, you do this rapid advancement because you can now observe what you're doing right.

May

So.

John

Well, that bring.

John

That brings up a good.

John

Another good question, because you guys deal with so much throughout the years.

John

What caliber should be brought back?

John

There's dead now.

May

Oh, I have deep opinions on this.

Othais

You do have a lot of deep intermediary cartridges.

John

We see a lot of cartridges like.

John

Like what?

John

There's cartridges that you could argue like, okay, it's seven.

John

Seven Japanese.

John

It's six.

John

Five Creedmore kind of thing, sort of.

May

It's like a three or three rimless.

May

But, yeah.

Othais

35 Remington.

May

But it's still around technically, but I think it's underappreciated.

May

Yeah, I agree.

May

May and I are big fans of 35 Remington as a North American game cartridge.

Othais

And also, like, it's pretty dang decent.

May

It's just weird because, like, everybody's pushing.300 blackout and stuff.

May

And I know why.

May

Because it's the whole sporty Smith and Wesson again.

May

Like, I make people mad.

May

I'm like, 300 blackout is the.40 Smith and Western of Ars.

May

Sorry.

May

Like, you just.

May

You're just trying to get away with the same manufacturing, only unlike.40 Smith & Wesson, you can cause some severe problems with that car.

Othais

You can.

May

It's like, even even when they did.338 special, they're like they tried to make it so that you couldn't put it in a.38 Smith & Wesson.300 blackout just sends it, you know.

May

But the, the one I favor.

May

Oh God.

May

My blind just went blank on this for a second.

May

I had it right in my head.

May

No, it's actually the other, the other sort of turn of the century.

May

Well, early automatic cartridge.

May

I don't know that I specifically would say I want.

May

351 Winchester back, specifically that cartridge.

May

But I think that's the gap in the market right now.

May

And I think a lot of that actually comes down to the nfa.

Othais

What do you mean gap in the market?

May

We have.

May

We need a sort of.30 35 caliber intermediate cartridge that is not quite throwing it because in the current market we have seven.

May

60 by 39 is sort of the closest to that.

May

But it's still.

May

If you shoot AK pistols, you know.

May

You know what I mean?

May

It's still not exactly what you'd want out of it.

May

But it's sort of a.

May

We've really become obsessed with pistol caliber carbines.

May

But pistol caliber carbines are a little too pip squeaky.

John

Right.

May

And then you go up to a full intermediate and it's like this is a little bit hot and we need the locking action.

Othais

So you're just looking for something that's solid in the middle.

May

Yeah, I think if you had sort of, you know, if you have like a radial delay or a roller delay and you have a sub sub 76235 caliber like if it's going a little slower but it's a little beefier.

May

That being a sort of a man slapper or even for a lot of game is going to be great.

May

It's going to be pretty flexible for moderate game and human targets.

May

Which is what people tend to think of as in terms of defensive.

May

I think.

Othais

I think I'd say that's moderate game.

May

I like pistol caliber carbines, but I feel like we're missing just a little bit something and people like it.

May

People like.30 carbine.

May

You know, people love M1 carbines.

May

Love them to death.

May

Where's that energy?

May

You know what I mean?

May

Where's this sort of like better than pistol but not quite rifle cartridge.

May

It sort of vanished.

May

We don't have one in that category right now that I can think of.

John

The only one I can think of.

John

No, because it's not even that because technically 350 legend would be more of a more of a 9 mil maxim kind of.

May

Yeah, but I mean it could be applied that way, but nobody's.

May

You don't see it.

May

You're not going to PSA and getting something chambered in that for like 700 bucks.

John

Right.

May

I feel like the market could stand to have a.

May

Personally, I get a lot of flak because I like the Celtic sub 2000.

May

There's problems with, with it.

May

There's problems with it.

May

I've broken one before.

May

But conceptually this sort of fold away, efficient blowback design is great.

May

And if you could get something like that that had just a little bit of a delay in it and a slightly more powerful cartridge that you could displace, say a service rifle sized thing, then for most people in a home defense scenario, that and some hollow point, something that's compatible with hollow point two would be really good.

May

Then in a home defense scenario you're looking pretty good.

May

But I think we've sort of, we're sort of geared to think in terms of either rifle, carbine or pistol.

May

And then we already have our categories for that because we derive all of them from.

May

This is another thing is these days we derive a lot of our civilian cartridges from the military.

May

Whereas before it used to be the other way around.

May

The civilian market would create cartridges and the military would sort of look at them and either adapt them or make their own.

May

Now we tend to think in terms.

May

Most of the guys out there that are shooting are shooting 9 mil Parabellum, they're shooting, you know, NATO cartridges, they're shooting, you know, Soviet cartridges that have held over.

May

And we're starting to see it.

May

We're starting to see, you know, you just said legends.

May

People are starting to wildcat again.

May

But it's more individually driven instead of business driven.

May

You don't have any companies trying to do, I mean not, I mean not none.

May

But you don't see this big market.

Othais

Thing where like there's no big market push for it.

May

Yeah, you'd have to see like it'd be the equivalent of Glock coming out with like 35 Glock all of a sudden.

May

But that's what they used to do.

May

They used to just come out with their own cartridge.

John

What about like 30 super carry?

May

That's new.

May

That's actually, I mean, that's.

May

I mean we can compare it to previous cartridges like everybody likes to do, but that is actually a new concept.

May

I don't know that everybody was that like people got kind of into it for a second.

May

But then I think every kind of backed off because I don't know, that had the utility point we thought, because 9 millimeter subcompacts are actually doing pretty well right now.

John

Yeah.

John

And I mean the only thing I can think of when they came out with that was, okay, you're trying to hit a market where you can't sell military cartridges.

May

Right.

John

That's, that's, that made the most sense to me.

John

And it just didn't seem to kind of take off from where it was.

May

This also kind of touches on what we started to say before.

May

Remember I said primers are sort of the limiting factor for ammo production.

May

What we've seen is.

May

I was trying to say at that point we don't see people reproducing the old ammo anymore because why would, why would they.

Othais

Yeah, it's not worth the money.

May

You have to stop your manufacturer for.

Othais

Hours to then change out the dies and everything.

May

Yeah, right.

May

And then you start producing it.

May

Well, in those hours, how many thousands of dollars did you lose?

May

Because you have pre sold every 762 NATO cartridge you've made for the next 10 years.

May

It's all pre sold on contract.

Othais

Yeah.

May

So we're going to take down the 762 NATO making machine to make 77 Japanese that will sell at what rate?

May

For what dollar amount?

May

So.

May

And everybody's mad because like why does it cost me 40 bucks a box?

May

And you're going because they gave up several hours of just money printer to make like subsidized money printer.

John

You know, there's one cartridge that I want to come back and take off.

May

What's that?

John

Yeah, 762 Tokarev.

John

That's in a modern pistol.

May

Talking about 30 Mauser Plus P.

May

Yeah, exactly.

John

But in a modern pistol.

John

So when I, when I got my Tok river, you know, you do a bunch of research on ammo and things like that.

John

And then I think it was a company out of China was shipping them to Canada, only it was P226 clones and 762 tokeras.

May

Oh yeah, yeah.

John

And I was like, I want one.

John

And then you're like, I can't get one because of import restrictions and nonsense.

May

Our animator has a.

May

Oh, good lord.

May

Is it a Bernadelli?

May

It's a very steeply raked 70s 1970s era.

May

I want to say it's a wonder nine.

May

I want to think it's a single double.

Othais

I can't remember.

May

It's.

May

It's a modern handgun, slide operated, that runs 30 Luger, I believe.

May

And.

May

Oh my God, is that so fun to shoot.

John

Well, I believe.

May

And I would bank on it.

May

I would bank on like 30 Luger is not as good as 9 in some ways, but I still like in terms of recoil and on target and just dumping rounds and I think have beautifully swept grip and everything.

May

Awesome.

May

So I could see the same thing.

May

But to be fair, you could.

May

I guess that's what they're trying to do with the 30.

May

Supercare is the same concept, but I just don't think people are ready for it.

John

Well, this brings up another question that I think is it's been bugging me and I want your opinion on this, both of you.

John

So we have Colt, we have Remington, you know, Browning, you know these names of gun designers.

John

The last big one that I can think of is Glock.

May

Right.

John

We don't know.

John

We don't have it Seems like everything's designed by committee.

John

So is there a name an individual.

May

First of all, barrier to entry is huge.

John

Yeah.

May

And this is legislatively too if you think about it, because I talked to a lot of firearms guys.

May

So I actually came up with a firearms concept based on something I've seen in history that hasn't come back around I think needs to be done.

May

And I don't want to say too much about it because I would like my friend to be able to work on it before going to market.

May

But we haven't done NDA.

Othais

But yeah, we prefer to try.

May

Yeah, yeah, no, it's.

May

Let him have first crack at the concept.

May

But I had an idea and I was talking to him about it and it came down to can we design it in such a way so that it is a non firearm and therefore can piggyback the current firearms market.

May

Because the minute it becomes a firearm, what do we have to do so much.

May

And I think that's a big part of it.

May

And so because of these sort of legislative.

May

Not only it's, there's, there's the law and then there's the fear of the law and then there's the fear lawsuit.

May

And so I think it drives a lot of engineers into working for the bigger companies.

May

And then when the engineers work for the bigger companies instead of launching their own insane madhouse ideas on their own, they get where they're sort of anonymized.

Othais

Well, they're also, they're not having to front a bunch of money themselves to get all set up to be able to do that stuff.

Othais

The company's paying for everything for them.

Othais

So it's making convenient.

Othais

Oh look, it's so convenient.

Othais

You can make all these ideas for us.

May

Even if you're an innovator for that company, they don't want to put you on the front face of it because they're trending on their old name.

May

Right.

May

And so they're going, well, we don't.

May

We don't want to put Randy on the face of everything, because if Randy leaves us, then we're screwed.

May

You know?

May

So a derivative of Glock would be Bubbit's.

May

So he designed what is the Steyr M9, which is.

May

Or the M.

May

Whatever.

May

Because the L9.

May

The S9.

May

God.

May

Steyer.

May

Give it a name.

May

I think he want.

May

I think I read that he wanted to call it, like, the Draconi, and they wouldn't let.

Othais

Oh, that sounds cool, right?

May

He likes.

May

I think he likes mythical creatures, but he did the Caracal as well, and the BB tech, I believe there's a couple of guns, and they're all fairly innovative handguns, but they kind of went to.

May

First of all, he took the M9 to Steyr, and Steyr did not push that pistol, which is actually a very smart pistol in a lot of ways, but they're not pushing it.

May

So it doesn't.

May

Nobody does industry coverage of the Steyr M9, like, because they don't.

May

They don't play the game, and they don't get out there in front of everybody, and they almost seem reluctant to sell it.

John

Well, they're not even owned by themselves anymore.

May

Yeah, it's all.

John

Or rx, whatever you want to call them.

May

So, like, I would say Bubbitz is a good modern inventor, but then who.

May

What, you don't see them putting them out front?

Othais

I honestly, I didn't know that name until you said it just now.

May

Yeah, I might be getting it wrong, to be honest with you.

May

I don't.

May

I hope I'm not offending.

John

I mean, George Colgren, maybe.

May

Oh, yeah.

May

But see, Kel Tec runs itself, which is good.

May

He branded on himself.

May

But then I'm trying to think of, does he individually say that I invented each of these pieces, or do you say Kel Tec does now?

May

Because how much of it is Kelgren himself now got him saying, like, what's.

May

I'm not entirely sure what Kellgren did himself versus who else at this point, with some of the designs, they've come out more recently.

May

I'm not sure, because they tend to.

Othais

Anonymize how much of it is him and how much of it was extra parts from other people assisting.

May

Yeah, I mean, to Be fair.

May

I have a friend that's involved in the accessories market and also is a quiet firearms designer who does it on license for other companies.

May

So you never know.

May

There's.

May

I can name five companies that have sold his firearms, but you wouldn't know they're all from him.

May

They're in different companies.

May

And it'd be nice if he could trade on his name, but he's NDA'd out, and that's how they do their payments for whatever, and it's all obscured.

May

So it's just the way the market works now, I guess.

John

I mean, and that's sad, though, to me.

John

That's sad that you don't.

John

Because we have all these legendary gun designers.

John

You know the name.

John

You know the Samuel Colts.

John

Like, you know the John Moses Brownings.

John

You know all these legendary names, and now you just don't.

Othais

The company's also protecting themselves with that because the individual, let's say they have some political affiliation.

May

I mean, you can look at Browning's history.

May

You understand?

May

Oh, God.

May

Like, because when he stopped working with Winchester, it was a disaster.

John

Oh, yeah.

May

So it would have been smart for Winchester to never let anybody know that he was the man behind it all.

May

But luckily, he thought to put his own name on it as part of his contracts.

May

You know what I mean?

May

It's like Browning's patent.

May

They led with it, but now I think they're a little more savvy than that.

May

I don't think they want you to know who's doing their inventing work, so.

John

Which is.

John

I just find that sad.

John

Like, I don't know.

May

It is.

May

But it's self protection, though.

May

They don't want their designer walking out and causing.

May

Also, to be fair, we have a very reactionary society now.

May

So if your lead designer goes out and does something that nobody agrees with, then all of a sudden you're in hot water.

May

So if nobody knows who the designer is, then he can go get arrested or charged with whatever.

May

He could say whatever bigoted thing he wants, you know?

May

Not that I know is a bigot, but, like, it's weird, but if you think about it as a company, it must be scary to say, like, you know, if Randy over there gets a head injury and just starts yelling about, you know, conspiracies, we're going to catch so much flack, right?

John

Or if you ever find out who redesigned the R51.

John

I really wanted to love that.

John

I really did.

May

Yeah.

May

It didn't.

John

It didn't.

May

I had a buddy that was actually.

May

We were Talking about him before.

May

He runs a little channel called Phoenix Fart.

May

He was deep into that gun, and that was such a disappointment.

John

Oh, I got really deep into it.

John

I.

John

I bought one and I.

John

I'm probably the only person who put like, 2, 000 rounds to that gun.

May

No, no, he did, too, I'm sure.

Othais

Oh, yeah, he probably did.

John

I really wanted to love it.

May

He, like, sent his back and everything and got it tuned up.

John

Oh, I.

John

I did the same thing.

John

I sent it back, got tuned up, still ran into issues.

John

They sent new magazines.

John

It's like, now.

John

I can't blame anybody because they don't exist under the.

May

I was kind of offended by that gun.

May

Not because of the internal problems.

May

That's its own issue.

May

I did not like the slick grips.

May

It just felt too smooth.

May

I'm going.

May

I thought we moved into texturing because I deeply.

May

I like painful texturing.

May

Like the.

Othais

It's true.

Othais

The most aggressive checkering you can have.

May

The Steyr M9A2s with their, like, modular grip stuff.

May

Feels great to me.

May

Like, anything that hurts.

May

I mean, just the more aggressive, the better.

Othais

To remind him of one person who.

John

Wanted, like, the sandpaper from Smith and Wesson on the.

May

I've got a CZ75 compact with G10 scales on it that are just.

May

Most people will pick them and be like, ah, God, how can you shoot this?

May

I'm going.

May

It doesn't move when I shoot.

May

Who cares if it feels a little pinchy?

May

Like, when I shoot, my hands don't slide.

John

I.

May

When I.

May

When I reach to draw, I'm on it.

May

There's no.

Othais

We also do come from the Charleston humidity, so we are used to cover being covered in sweat all the time.

Othais

It doesn't go anywhere.

Othais

It doesn't evaporate.

Othais

It stays with you.

Othais

So you need the texture.

John

I live in the desert.

John

I don't have that problem.

Othais

Oh, yeah.

Othais

You can leave your bag of chips open.

John

Yeah.

Othais

And not care.

May

No, I can't even.

May

Mine go.

May

My chips go bad if I open them every time I reach in there.

Othais

Yeah.

John

Ours just goes stale real fast.

John

It's about it.

John

Because there's no humidity.

Othais

Ours just gets soggy.

May

Yeah, soggy.

Othais

Everything just gets soggy.

May

Everything gets soggy.

May

Everything's covered in mold.

Othais

We are.

May

Did you.

May

You stop.

May

You stop scrubbing the outside of your house down here for like, a week?

May

And it.

May

It's reclaimed by nature.

Othais

And the way to work, in the sweat, too, in the heat.

Othais

You have to learn how to operate differently in this Charleston.

John

It's the same thing in the Arizona desert.

John

You go there and you're just like, okay, I'm good.

John

It's a great day.

Othais

It turns out you should been drinking the water.

John

Your body's just like, okay, you're done.

May

We had that.

May

We had Ian over.

May

And it's so funny comparing notes, because out in the desert, it's like, if you just.

May

If you can keep the sun off you and you can keep hydrating, you can keep going.

John

Oh, yeah, sure.

May

And we were trying to tell him.

May

I was like, I know you think, you know this heat.

May

Stop jogging.

May

You know, it has to be like, just stop jogging.

May

And he's like, what do you mean?

May

I was like, your sweat is.

May

Because eventually he realized.

May

He's like.

May

Because he's having to wipe sweat off.

May

He's like, it's not evaporating.

May

I was like, right.

May

We're at 98% humidity.

May

There's nowhere for it to go.

May

It won't evaporate.

May

You're not cooling off, period.

May

There's no cooling off.

May

Your temperature cannot be.

May

You can hydrate all you want.

May

The temperature won't go down.

May

You know, we get the thing of, like, lazy Southerners.

May

And it's like, well, hold on.

May

Because once you jog and your body temperature rises, you can't get it back down until you find shade or water or something and.

Othais

Or ac.

May

Yeah, well, now ac.

May

So, yeah, you gotta.

May

You gotta pace yourself.

May

So it's funny, but, you know, it might look like I'm.

May

The younger guys will go out with me sometimes because they don't.

May

They're not as outdoor oriented, even if they're from here, you know, And I'll go out, and I'm 40 now, and I'm just.

May

I'm just walking around and they're hustling, and they think they're out running me.

May

And then within three hours, they're.

May

They're.

May

I mean, they're lucky the last three hours.

Othais

Oh, yeah.

May

And then I'm on hour six still just walking, and I'll just.

May

I'll bury them by just wandering my butt around, because I know how to pace what we're doing in this heat.

May

So.

John

Yeah, well, the.

John

Like, Ian said, you don't.

John

In the desert, you don't sweat because everything just evaporates.

John

So when I go out and film and shoot, like, you'll go from like.

John

Like, I'm really good.

John

It's a good day, drinking water, and the next thing.

John

Next minute, you know, you're just like, oh, oh, I'm done.

Othais

Like, I don't feel bad.

Othais

I feel bad.

Othais

Sit down.

May

Yeah, I've heard.

May

I've heard horror stories about some of the guys out there taking, like, Californians out for industry work and just being like, oh, my God, this guy might actually die because he didn't remember to drink water while we were working.

Othais

Did he bring a single bottle?

Othais

That's 24 liters only, or 24.

John

Oh, yeah.

John

I bring four or five water jugs just to stay hydrated.

May

And you're just like, oh, I'm so under.

May

I would die.

May

Because, I mean, I'll take one water, like, one bottle of water, and it'll last me almost half a day.

Othais

Remember that one time, even in the.

May

Heat here, because it's like, well, I'm not.

May

It's not going anywhere.

Othais

Our first film session, we were really stupid.

Othais

And we didn't realize that the weather was cooperating with us and making us believe that we didn't need water or food.

Othais

We were fine.

Othais

The very next time, we went out, blistering sun.

Othais

We were stupid, didn't ride any water.

May

The first test footage we did outdoors was overcast, so it looked great.

May

And then we went out to film.

May

Film our second session.

May

And we went.

May

Everything looks like, what is going on?

May

Oh, God, the sun is bad.

May

So now we've had.

May

We did this last week.

Othais

Yeah.

May

Partially cloudy days are the worst.

John

Oh, yeah.

May

Because you sit there and you just.

May

You go, okay.

May

Am I filming in highlight?

May

Okay, get all the cameras adjusted.

May

Hit record.

May

Because we run, like, five.

May

We run a bank of, like, five cameras.

May

Yep.

May

And then you hit record and the cloud comes over and you're like, crap.

May

Because now it's just pitch black in there.

May

And now the cloud's better.

May

So you end up playing this game of, like, watching.

May

I'm gonna have holes in my retinas.

May

Cause I just watched the sky waiting for a big cloud.

May

And I go, big cloud, big cloud.

May

Hit record.

May

And, like, hit record.

May

She gotta run through the whole scenario under one cloud.

May

Or maybe we have to stop in the middle and then wait for another cloud to finish filming.

Othais

Yeah.

Othais

We try to make our segments look as consistent as possible, but sometimes it's more than one segment.

John

Oh, yeah.

May

Yeah.

John

And between ISOs and ND filters, your friend real quickly.

May

Yeah.

May

I feel.

May

I think other guys are just running auto.

May

They just let it run auto and I can't.

May

Continuous auto never plays right.

John

Or does it?

John

Doesn't look great at all.

May

No.

May

So we use.

May

We use, like, four cameras to capture four or five cameras, depending on what we're doing to capture everything May's doing.

Othais

Yep.

May

We run.

May

We were talking about this before the show.

May

We run four layers of stereo, so eight channels of sound.

May

So we have, like, a lavalier on her hip that's set fairly sensitively to pick up the clicks and pops.

May

Yep.

May

We have two shotgun mics set further back to catch the sound of the firearms.

May

Boom.

May

We have an omni mic that's sort of set for average human hearing that's just sitting there picking up the boom as you and I would normally hear it.

May

And then we have a.

May

Another omni mic that's set up that is dialed way, way down.

May

So it's very insensitive.

May

Like, you have to get.

May

You'd have to scream into it to get it to really hear you, but it's picking up that round sort of top of the crack of the gun.

May

And so if you ever watch, like, a CN Arsenal shooting video, we've gotten tons of compliments on the sound because it sounds much more like a real firearm.

Othais

And actually, we've been doing that since.

Othais

Since probably episode six or seven.

May

Yeah.

May

We've got it designed so that it basically, as one mic caps out, another mic, starts collecting data, and then that way we have the full sound of the gun going off.

Othais

It's beautiful.

John

Yeah.

John

I learned a lot about audio and realized, like, if you've ever filmed and then you're like, oh, this audio sounds awful.

John

I really wish I ran a backup.

John

You know what I'm talking.

Othais

That's also the cameras, actually, Weirdly, sometimes we're like, I wish we had a sixth camera sometimes.

May

Yeah, Generally.

May

Generally we have four.

May

Every once in a while we have a fifth.

Othais

So we can't waste ammunition.

Othais

We can't be, like, someone running around with a single camera.

Othais

This area, this area.

Othais

This.

Othais

No, no, no.

Othais

We capture it all at once.

May

We have to get it all set up.

May

We have to wait for the light to be right, and then we.

May

I have to go around, turn everything on, focus at everything, get it all ready, and then turn it off, because they'll cook in the sun.

John

Oh, yeah.

May

And then I have to sit there and wait until we get the right moment, and then I run around and turn them all on.

May

And then I have to do a back check, too, just to make sure they're actually recording.

May

Because you never know.

May

You.

May

You turn it on, you go to the next camera, and then it has a memory card error or something.

May

So I actually.

May

I'll sit there.

May

Every time I rhyme to myself, I'll go one.

May

Like, I'll set them all up, one, two.

May

And then we have two audio channels to record on.

May

So I'll go buckle shoe.

May

And then camera three and four.

May

And then if I have a fifth one, I'll be like, all right, shut the door.

May

And then I'll do sing the rhyme back again the other way just to make sure they're all recorded.

Othais

Just him checking.

May

And it's like.

May

So that takes.

May

I mean, yeah, that's like 30 seconds of running around for a second, you know, and then she starts doing her thing and it's over in less than five minutes, hopefully.

May

And then we.

Othais

Less than five minutes.

Othais

What am I doing?

John

So we normally I run three cameras.

John

I set up the one time we were filming.

John

I set up a shot, B shot, and then I got this dope angle on C.

John

I'm like, cool, this is going to time up perfectly.

John

Somehow it got set to slow mo.

John

So the whole day it was just all slow mo footage from this dope angle.

John

I'm like, great.

May

How much data was that?

Othais

Had to be a ton.

John

That's the harder one of data.

John

And I was like, why?

John

Why is like, the camera all full?

John

What is happening?

John

And that's when we found out everything was run slow.

May

We run into that problem too with data because everybody, like, we have so much data because all of our photos, all of a video, we run a big nas.

May

And then I don't really want to cloud store all that stuff.

Othais

Nope.

May

So I have to have a second nas on a different location and sync it to the first nas.

May

Like, it's a whole mess.

May

I.

May

I come from a technology background, thank God.

Othais

So, oh, yeah.

May

I.

May

That's how the show exists is because I basically came from a technology background.

May

I was like, I guess I'm gonna learn how to film and animate and edit and all this other stuff, and I'm gonna have to learn.

Othais

And then I learned what I could from him and YouTube.

Othais

And then now this is what we do.

May

Yeah.

May

Poor May came in and did not know this stuff.

May

And I was like, here's the template.

May

And she had to hit the ground.

Othais

All I'm really good at is being a bulldozer.

Othais

That.

Othais

That's.

Othais

I'm gonna say that's consistently.

Othais

I am an excellent bulldozer.

Othais

If you put me on a task, I will go and go.

Othais

I'll forget to eat and drink water along the way, but I will just not go until the task is complete.

John

That's shot show.

John

I'm a bulldozer.

John

Like, I'll go.

John

My boss, the co host, Kaylee, who normally is here with us, she's.

John

She wasn't doing well today.

John

I set up meetings for shot show, and I'm a bulldozer.

John

I'm like, I will take a meeting whenever I can.

John

She goes, did you look at the locations before you took this meeting?

John

I'm like, no, I'm taking a meeting.

John

Oh, you should see a meeting.

John

And she goes, you have to drive.

Othais

30 minutes that way, an hour.

John

She goes, what the heck are you doing?

John

I'm like, well, we're on the main floor.

John

We got to go to Caesar's next.

John

And then we got to come back to the main floor.

John

And then we did like 20 miles just on the floor.

John

And she's like, why did you set it up that way?

John

I'm like, because I'm.

May

We got to get done.

John

We're getting it done.

May

We've done this.

May

So the same.

May

Same thing.

May

We.

May

Our big show is usually like, Louisville, because that's a big collector show.

May

And in Louisville, every third person talks to me, so I end up meeting hundreds of people and wandering around, which is weird for me.

May

The first time we went to Louisville was insane because we're in South Carolina.

May

YouTube caught on a little late here.

May

People were more outdoor oriented.

May

There's not as many old gun guys necessarily, and if they are, I can.

Othais

Count on probably just two hands.

Othais

How many times I've been recognized in.

May

South Carolina even today?

May

Yeah, well, it depends.

May

Gun shows are slightly different outside.

May

Outside of a gun show, I've only been recognized, like, 10 times in this state.

May

Yeah, I will go to even, like, Virginia and just get recognized out, you know, just randomly.

May

I mean, I've probably been recognized in Virginia 30 times, and I haven't even been to Virginia about three times in 10 years.

May

But then we at the South Carolina gun shows, everybody already knew me before the show.

May

I already was that guy that wandered around, talked to everybody.

May

So almost no one that's a vendor thinks anything of me as a slate.

May

Every once in a while, once a year, one of them figures out what YouTube is and goes, you got people following.

May

Like, all of a sudden they're like, yeah.

Othais

One of them saw the Patterson video the other day, and they went, oh, man, I saw you on that video.

May

Even though we probably told him 20 times.

May

Yeah.

Othais

And they were like, yeah, yeah, sure.

May

Now that the younger guys are finally coming around, like, the zoomer generation came in.

May

Every once in a while, I get recognized by zoomers, but that's really about It.

Othais

They're interesting.

May

And that's at the gun show.

May

My favorite is, did you ever.

May

I don't know the Gundies.

May

Did you hear our whole Gundy debacle?

May

That's a great.

May

So we went to the Gundy's that one year, and nobody knew who we.

Othais

Were except they were, like, so confused.

May

The only people that knew us were guys that already kind of knew us because Brandon Herrera's from around here, so he knew who we were.

May

And then I kind of know.

May

I know at least one of his dirty secrets.

May

So I sneaked up on him, so now he really knows me.

May

But he won't forget you.

May

He's a Southern boy, so we knew him.

May

Ish.

May

You know what I mean?

May

And then I had Ian with me.

May

I made Ian McCollum come with me and Matt Larosier from Fud Busters, which is the best combination because Ian is a very.

May

Like, when it comes to public handling, he's a very center of the road, don't make waves, calm kind of guy.

Othais

Which is pretty good going.

May

Matt and I are chaos agents.

May

Like, we're both.

May

We're both Floridians in every sense of the word.

May

I often say to people that Florida is America's PVP zone.

May

It is.

May

It's like PvP and PvE.

May

But we.

May

There's this thing.

May

I keep running into other Floridians out there, and we have this like.

May

Like 80s and 90s Floridians have this manic.

Othais

If you say the word likewise one more time, I'm going to staple your mouth shut.

May

We have this manic energy around negotiation and fun.

May

And I actually was talking to a friend of mine about this.

May

Anybody that grew up with this, this is why Florida people are the way they are.

May

When we grew up as kids, it was the DARE program.

May

Don't do drugs, right?

May

But every adult around us, like Uncle Ted or whatever, was on cocaine.

May

They're all using coke, but we're told, okay, you got to keep up with that guy.

May

And they don't tell us he's on cocaine.

May

They just tell us that's how it is.

May

So don't do drugs, but keep up with him.

May

So what do we do?

May

We develop this mania about, like, work and, like, focus, and everything's up for negotiation because it's very good.

Othais

I've heard all those likes, right?

Othais

I'm just teasing.

May

Yeah.

May

So we go.

May

We're very aggressive in this weird, friendly, friendly, aggressive way.

Othais

It's true.

May

And we like chaos.

May

We're completely fine with things that make other people uncomfortable.

May

So it's us with Ian.

May

We stuck him in the back of the.

May

For the event.

May

For the Gundy's, you go to this hotel, they put you in a bus and drive you, like, 45 minutes to the event.

Othais

Yeah.

May

And we put Ian in the middle of the back.

May

And then Matt and I start trying to sing sea shanties.

May

And it's.

May

It's causing people to be upset.

May

Except for.

May

I think Herrera was the only one that joined us.

May

Everybody else is.

May

They don't know any sea shanties.

May

So Matt larosi is egging them on.

May

And so we're winding everybody up.

May

We're making them irritated.

May

They have no clue who we are.

May

And it's actually really funny because I think most of them are like, Instagram guys or whatever.

May

I think Herrera and I were the only two in the bus that had over 200,000 people at that time or something, because we were in the other bus.

May

And so I'm going.

May

I'm like a 500,000 user channel, which is not huge, but it's bigger than a lot of what's here.

May

But they have no clue because we're in this little market that nobody knows about.

May

So I'm anonymous.

May

No one at the entire event recognized me other than, like, three people.

May

You know, it's like, I know Rapid Fire Rachel personally.

May

Not because she.

May

It's cause her dad watches.

Othais

Yeah, her dad loves ocean, so.

Othais

Well, she likes us too.

May

Yeah.

May

I mean, she's friends, but.

May

And it's like just a handful of people knew us.

May

But otherwise I'm completely anonymous in an environment where everybody's competing to have a quarter of the views that I have, which made me laugh.

May

So, like, this is my perfect chaos.

May

So by the end, we had tried to force a bus into yelling sea shanties and embarrassed Ian so bad that he avoided us for the rest of the night.

May

I got her hair to drunkenly sing a few bars of some songs that he shouldn't know.

May

And then you stole a golf cart for, like, half the day from the venue.

Othais

I stole a golf cart.

Othais

I found out golf cart.

May

And then everybody thought she worked.

May

So May's running around and everybody there.

May

I wanted to go, think she works for the venue.

May

So she just started playing Golf cart Taxi driver, and they think she works for the table.

Othais

I met a lot of nice instant people.

May

Single person was like, aren't you May?

May

No, no.

May

They don't know who she is.

May

So, like, we were just, I mean, pure chaos.

May

And on the way back, there's this Horrible drunken fight on the bus.

May

So some woman got engaged and then.

Othais

Oh, God.

May

That she wanted to sit next to her now fiance, but they didn't have the seat openings the right way.

May

So she arbitrarily decides this one guy has to move so they can play the shuffle game.

May

There's some other way to solve it, but she fixates on one guy.

May

He's like, I'm sitting with my friend.

May

I'm staying here.

May

Instead of moving on, she starts arguing with him.

May

So now it's like a 20 minute argument in the bus.

May

And it's right next to Matt Larose here from Fudbusters, and he's an attorney, so he's like, no, you just need to understand that this is.

May

So he starts trying to do like negotiation.

May

He's like, just offer him 20 bucks.

May

And she's like, I'm not giving him 20 bucks.

May

And he's like, I'm not moving for 20 bucks.

May

He's like, okay, 25.

May

And like, he's like, he's like, he's escalating this argument.

May

She goes to throw a drink at him and ends up smacking some of it onto my animator who's behind him.

May

So he's like, oh, great, now I'm covered in whatever.

May

And the whole time, rabbit fire.

May

Rachel has remembered the shanties.

May

She heard about the shanties in the morning.

May

So she's like, I want to sing shanties at night.

May

But nobody.

May

Now they're drunk and they don't know any shanties.

May

And also she doesn't want to shanties.

May

She's like, I want to Yellow Rosa, Texas.

May

I was like, these guys are not gonna know Yellow Rose of Texas.

May

But she's.

May

She's in the seat in front of me and she spun around, so she's like.

May

Rachel's leaned over practically in my lap, trying to like, yell in my ear so I can hear her over this, trying to get her, her.

May

The other girl's friend's trying to get her.

May

So now basically all the females on the bus are like pulled around where we are.

Othais

I guess technically I was there too.

May

Yeah.

May

And you're with me.

May

So like, all the girls are like right in the middle of the bus, in the middle of this weird, insane argument.

May

Matt and I are egging everybody on and the rest of them are going, who are these guys?

May

What the heck is going on?

May

They've gathered every bit of attention on this bus and no one, like, no one can figure out who we are.

May

And again, I left nobody.

May

I don't think anybody Ever figured out.

May

I think there was, like, a fist fight right after the bus.

May

I mean, we wound it up so bad.

Othais

That was interesting.

May

And then just peaced out.

John

Well, I think.

John

What was it?

John

It was IV88.

John

The one year I met you.

John

I met you first and then I ran into you because.

John

Pause.

John

Derek was talking to you.

May

Yeah.

Othais

Yep.

May

Oh, that's her buddy.

John

Oh, he's fantastic.

Othais

I love Jeremy.

John

I love Jeremy.

Othais

Yeah.

John

Jeremy and I grew up 20 minutes from each other.

Othais

Oh, my God, that's so cute.

Othais

Oh, man, they're cute.

John

Yeah.

John

But when I go home, I'll drive down to a shop and hang out with him for a little bit and drive back home.

May

Yeah.

May

He had a baby.

John

Yeah, he's had several babies.

May

No, but recently, I meant.

John

Yeah.

Othais

Congratulations on baby.

Othais

Oh, yeah.

Othais

Congratulations on babies, people.

May

She was here right before baby, right?

John

Yeah.

Othais

She still had baby.

May

I think she still make friends with her on Facebook.

May

I see this stuff, but I think.

John

She announced the pregnancy.

Othais

She did.

Othais

She did some pregnancy.

May

I talked to her dad more than her.

John

Her dad's an interesting guy.

John

Yeah, really interesting.

Othais

Her mom was really nice, too.

Othais

And her sister.

May

Sister, Yeah.

May

I don't think I've met her poor sisters.

May

I haven't met the brother her mother, I love.

May

Her family's much more introverted than her, except for maybe her dad.

May

Yeah.

May

So her.

May

We were having dinner with the parents, and because they just breezed, I found out I was talking to Rachel about something with the machine gun shoot, and I was like.

May

I was like, what's your dad up to?

May

And she's like, actually, I think he's in Charleston.

May

I went, can't call me.

May

So then I have to go call him and be like, are we getting dinner?

May

And he's just like, oh, I didn't even think to call you.

May

So I go with her dad and mom without her.

May

And so now we're gossiping, and she's like.

May

And their other daughter's very quiet and, you know, calm and not public.

May

And so I'm not sure what she.

Othais

Thought of me when I came out.

Othais

Oh, my goodness.

Othais

Hello.

Othais

Nice to meet you.

May

So we're talking.

May

We're having a great time with the parents.

May

Her mom's like, yeah, we don't know where she came from, because no one else in the family is that extroverted.

May

Before I came on here, I had to review the podcast because you guys sent me the email.

May

I was like, oh, I haven't heard that podcast.

May

So I went to listen to some episodes, and I was like, looking for people I knew.

May

So I saw Liberty Doll was on here.

May

I started listening to episode.

May

Imagine my surprise when I was mentioned in that episode.

May

And you guys did not know that I was mentioned that episode.

May

In that episode, she said when she first moved here, she was, like, at a gun show in a group, like, five people.

May

Just, like, way later, and it was like, hey, we know who you are.

May

It was us.

May

Yeah, we were the ones.

May

The reason we're five is because I can't go to a gun show without five people following me around now.

May

So, like, it meant to be just me.

May

I was just gonna be like, hey, I'm.

May

I saw you moved here.

May

If you ever need anything, I'm down in Charleston.

May

You know, I'm.

May

I'm aware of you.

May

You know what I mean?

May

Like, I've seen you in the industry.

May

I don't know if you watch us, but here's my contact.

May

But the problem is it's me surrounded by people.

May

And she's, like, so panicked.

May

And I was like, oh, my God.

May

I didn't realize how small she was.

May

She's very tiny.

Othais

She's very tiny.

May

It's me.

May

So I'm just, like, hulked up to her.

May

I was like, oh, hey, Liberty Doll.

May

I'm.

May

Blah, blah.

May

And she's like, I guarantee you from her expression and the story she told you.

May

I started explaining who I was, and she just heard, like.

May

And so it's really funny because I listen to that podcast, and even before I send an email, I was like, hey, sorry for Waylay.

May

So we actually had a conversation about her mentioning.

May

Because I'm the jerk in the story that showed up and was just like, I know who you are.

Othais

With a posse of five.

May

I think the other person with me that I don't even know, I don't know if she registered.

May

I think I want to say the person that was standing with me was such double lot, because he also goes to that show with me.

May

So, like, it's like, such.

May

And I hang out in Greenville, so I bet you he was in that group at that time.

John

We need to get him on, too, at some point.

May

Him?

John

I think they did, but we.

Othais

I think his daughter handles his contact usually.

May

Yeah.

May

Yeah.

John

There's a few people I wanted.

May

Did you need somebody respectable to reach out to him?

John

I guess so.

John

I don't know.

May

Okay.

Othais

So not you.

Othais

That would be me.

May

Oh.

May

I mean, to be fair, the family loves you.

Othais

Yeah.

John

Well.

John

All right, we're gonna wrap up again, guys.

John

Thank you so much for being on.

John

I've had a fun time.

John

I got to nerd out with this awesome shock trench gun in front of me.

John

I'm so happy that you brought this.

John

I know we didn't play with it while we were talking, but it was.

Othais

Such a good yelled at.

John

Oh, it's very.

John

I was getting yelled at.

May

Do we need to.

May

Do we need to record another one of these so we can actually talk about what we're supposed to talk about?

May

Wait, we're supposed to talk gun policy or something?

May

We did.

John

We touched on it briefly?

May

No, we just talked history and then gossip.

John

Oh, yeah.

John

Well, here.

John

Here's the.

John

So I am not the policy guy.

John

I come from the industry.

John

I'm the gun nerd of goa.

May

So we need cable.

John

So Kaylee's the policy person.

May

She should bring, like, she wants to ring your neck when she hears this.

John

It's okay.

John

Well, we touched on it.

John

We touched on a brief bit of policy.

John

Talking about designing new guns a little bit.

May

But, like, if you want me to yell about the government, we can do another hour.

John

Do another hour.

Othais

Sure he can.

Othais

I'll just leave and just let you guys yell.

John

But yeah, appreciate.

John

I really do appreciate you guys being on.

John

We will have to have you on again to do more policy talk because, I mean, we had to get the gun nerd stuff out because this would have been.

John

She would have gotten mad at me while I was staying here because I would just gun nerd for like an hour.

John

But appreciate you guys coming, really do.

Othais

Thanks for having us.

John

Guys.

John

Make sure to, like, share and subscribe.

John

Wait, before we do that, where can people find you?

Othais

Oh, my goodness.

Othais

Who are we?

May

It's unspellable, so don't worry about it.

Othais

No.

Othais

C and R.

Othais

S, E, N, A L is our name.

May

C and Arsenal.

Othais

C and Arsenal.

May

Or just go on YouTube and look for your favorite World War I firearm.

May

I'm sure we're in the top three recommendations on whatever it was.

Othais

God, I would hope so.

Othais

It's the long documentary one.

May

Yeah, it's the ones that are an hour long that nobody watches because they're just like, who's got an hour to watch?

John

Maybe one person watches if you want.

Othais

Peepaw, who doesn't know how to spell that very well.

Othais

Old gunshow.com.

May

Oh, that actually is true.

May

We did.

May

We did grab the domain oldgunshow.com because then it will just redirect to us.

John

Yeah, I like that.

John

That's.

May

Yeah, I forgot.

May

Thank you.

Othais

Old gun show.

Othais

Old gunshow.com.

Othais

we.

Othais

We got that for peaw.

Othais

Who can't?

Othais

Who's having a hard time?

May

Seriously, we're having.

May

C is the worst name I ever came up with because nobody can.

Othais

We regret that.

Othais

You know, we did think of simpler names at the time, and we totally just went, nah, let's go for Old.

May

Gun show was free.

May

We could have just done Old Gun show and we'd have been millionaires.

Othais

But no, now we stole the door domain.

John

The sad part is, I.

John

I've looked at your logo so many times.

John

It took me, like, up until six months ago to figure out that was a clip from a grand.

May

No.

May

I've learned.

John

I thought it was a bunch of books.

May

I.

May

I was so deep.

May

It's supposed to be a book and a Garen clip.

Othais

It's an embank.

May

I'm too.

May

I was being too esoteric.

May

Like, I.

May

When I started this, I went.

May

I had all these ambitions about being highbrow.

May

And then I found out what people on the Internet are like.

May

And I would still love to do the highbrow, but unfortunately, I won't make any money.

May

So I should have named it Old Gun show with gun Professor McBeard face.

May

And it would have been way easier.

Othais

Like, oh, yeah.

May

I mean, it's sad, but the.

May

Just the dumbest thing.

May

So much better.

Othais

Yeah.

John

Like, so from now on, go to comment Gun Professor McBeard face.

May

Yeah.

Othais

Fat Ian, you have been called that.

May

Yeah.

Othais

That actually is unfortunate.

Othais

Yeah.

May

Oh, we get confused for cotton weapons all the time.

May

The crowning achievement of my life is that we were at the Cody.

May

There's a Winchester show in Cody.

May

And Ian comes up to me.

May

I'm at the little commissary that's over there, and Ian comes up to me and goes, well, I know what it's like to be you.

May

And I went, what are you talking about?

May

He goes, I was talking to a nice gentleman over there.

May

He's going on and on about how much you love the show.

May

And then he said, yeah, and I like the way you got that woman that shoots all the guns for you.

May

You.

May

And I went, it finally happened.

May

Somebody confused Ian for me.

Othais

Did Ian look at himself, be like, did I get fat?

May

He was so dejected about it.

May

I was like, welcome to my pain.

Othais

Everywhere, all the cars.

May

Everybody thinks I work for Ian for some reason.

John

I mean, I feel like the guy.

John

Who's the guy in Britain?

May

Jonathan Ferguson.

John

Yeah.

John

I feel like everyone thinks that he works for Ian, too.

May

Oh, yeah.

May

To a degree.

May

To be actually proudly.

May

I was in the room when Jonathan Ferguson show was Invented.

May

Yeah, because we were at a museum conference and we were talking about outreach, and, you know, there were some doubts in the room, and I kind of made a sales pitch about, no, no, you should be doing this kind of outreach.

May

And, you know, Ian backed me up on that too.

May

He's like, yeah, you guys should be doing this kind of.

May

You have the research.

May

You should do it.

May

There's no reason not to do it.

May

It doesn't hurt us if they do it.

May

Because it's like, if three people make a video about the Winchester, 97 people watch all three.

May

It's not a zero sum.

May

So it's like he went back and, like, I mean, like, eight, nine months later, they started trying to put the episodes together, and then they kind of came out the next year, and I was just like, yep, I was.

May

I definitely remember his facial expression.

May

He's like, you know, I should really be doing that.

Othais

And he's done a great job.

Othais

The whole team has.

May

We send him snacks.

John

I just.

May

Crap.

Othais

I still have to send him.

May

We have.

May

We literally have a.

May

Jonathan, if you're listening, we have a box for you that's been in my house for, like.

Othais

I've tried to send it four times.

John

He's listening to this.

John

I want him to come on, and I want to be friends.

John

That's.

John

That's my.

May

Oh, he's.

May

He's love.

May

I love John.

May

He's a genuinely friendly person.

John

I think he's.

John

I think between all three of you guys, you guys are all my favorite people to watch because I love nerd.

Othais

Nerd stuff.

May

Yeah.

May

That's a Royal Armory's channel if you want to see John.

May

Yeah, he does.

May

He's a researching curator, too, because, like, I currently am, like, eight emails deep into some BS Revolver stuff with him right now, so.

May

I love Jonathan.

Othais

They're besties.

May

They're best.

John

Well, all right, I got to wrap this up.

Othais

Yes.

John

Guys, make sure to, like, share and subscribe.

John

Hit the little bell.

John

For notification.

John

Go to on all podcasting hosts.

John

Leave a five star review show over.