Glock Cancels Even More Pistols, YouTube Nukes Buffalo Bore, and More 2A Industry News | The Cap & Ball Saloon Ep. 6

Hello everyone, I’m Ander E.T. Herzberg, and welcome to the Saloon, a firearms industry focused podcast talking about the Second Amendment in the digital age.

Today we’ll be discussing Glock’s Going and Gone Guns, Ruger’s Ringers, Seeing if a Trump Slump is sinking into the Second and more Democrat Dementia.

Grab a glass, sit back and let’s get into it.

*Break*

I’d imagine a lot of my subscribers are familiar with my coverage of the Glock Gen 6 and the discontinued model rumors.

Well we have some updates.

First, it looks like we got nothing from Glock at the NRA convention this year about the Gen 6. I was hoping they would do a formal announcement as the rumors suggested, but they seem to be keeping quiet for the moment.

Instead we do have a new line up for what is being discontinued, little bit different from what we saw previously.

I’ll put the new list on screen now and let’s take a look at some of the differences from what Glock was previously listing. You can see full screen shots for that list in my video linked below.

Using the old .eu page I had pointed out previously, that’s now directing users to the .us home page.

So breaking it down a bit, in the 10mm Auto camp, the G20 SF seems to be safe, or at least not on the list at the time of this recording.

For .45 ACP the G21 Gen 3 has been added to the list, with .45 GAP seeing the G37 Gen 4 Model get added as well.

Conversely the G28 is no longer being listed as the sole .380 ACP model discontinued, but looking at the .380 ACP offerings from Glock, we only see the G42 as currently available.

So with this new list, Glock seems to be truly abandoning .45 GAP, .40 S&W, and .357 SIG.

I would say it’s strange that the 17L’s and the 34’s but if Ben Stoger is anything of a competition trend setter, then the G47 is probably going to be the most popular option for competition shooting.

Also to make this even more confusing, the list of the models that are being discontinued has a number of entries for pistols that they still list as actively available on their website.

So, it’s kind of messy, but I’d wager that this is the list of models that they are going to settle with removing from their lineup.

To reiterate some of my pervious coverage and spec ulation, however I went into more detail in my previous video on this topic.

If Glock leverages the patents that I discussed previously in the Gen 6, then they only really need to offer a handful of the most popular configurations and sell caliber conversion and grip length conversion kits.

I’ll also address some of the comments I got, and I do appreciate each and every comment that I get.

One that kept cropping up was a potential redesign to address the use of switches.

I could see them doing something like that but it would take a redesign of the slide and striker mechanism, just for someone to come along in a few months at most with an alternative design for a switch.

So I’m 50/50 on that. On the one hand, I get why they would do it, but then they would be in the exact same position again soon after spending a lot of money in R&D and tooling costs. So while it might get them out of some legal hot water, it would be very short lived.

Besides, FRT’s are in development for Glock pattern pistols so it’s kind of a moot point in terms of keeping fast firing pistols out of the public’s hands.

Also FRT’s don’t have the inherent legal liability of a switch.

But hey if you want good, gun autist, legal analysis, go check out Matt at Fuddbusters, he’s a lawyer, I’m not, I’ve just worked with a bunch of them.

0/10 would not recommend by the way. Like herding cats with Esquire after their names, huge pain in the rear.

Anyway, another comment that I’ve gotten a few times was the need for a trigger pull to disassemble.

Eh, yeah you can do that but the trigger bar is in the way of pulling off the slide. So abuse your pistols however you want but a Glock is really not supposed to be taken down that way. Hence why they worked on an alternative patent.

I’m not going to tell you that your desired disassembly direction is not do-able, only that it may be daft.

Another good question that I saw was on the dust cover being longer or shorter. This I could see being addressed by the slide, like you see in the G47 or the G17L. The slide makes up for the space lost. Or they just have a dedicated short dust cover meant for sub-compacts.

And finally a good point of correction, I previously and cavalierly used the COA name for the A-Cut. I just wanted to correct for the sake of being pedantic. The A-Cut is the mounting cut that Glock is using for the COA Aimpoint optic.

It’s being used a bit interchangeably online, but I just wanted to correct myself here.

But to move on and wrap this up,

Without some kind of official word from Glock what the Gen 6 will look like is going to be speculation.

All I can do is try to make these educated guesses, I’m always willing to be incorrect about something, and as I stated previously, we’re working off of little known patents, Glock’s few officially published statements, and rumors.

I still don’t think it’s too nuts to think that Gen 6 is coming up sometime soon, since the offerings are being “streamlined” and a more modular take on the Glock pistol would let them keep doing that.

Time will tell, I hope I’m right about what the Gen 6 looks like, but hey, I’m willing to be wrong.

Now in more FFL orientated news, 4473 Cloud recently released a press statement, it’s the usual affair pumping up the benefits of their service.

Since I’m not an FFL, I’m not in a position to tell you if it’s the best thing since sliced bread, or if it’s a dog water software.

FFL’s and gun store employees I’m honestly interested in your feedback on it, but I did want to use this as a jumping off point about digital modernization of the 2A industry.

I’m painfully aware that the firearms industry at large has a bit of a love hate relationship with technology.

On the one hand it’s taken ages to get red dots as a mostly standard feature, and trust me, I was in the why stick a dot on my pistol camp for quite some time. Now I don’t see any point of having a handgun without optics capability.

On the other hand, 3D metal printing technology has let suppressor manufacturers experiment with and develop some much more interesting suppressor designs.

Metal injection molding was a dirty word, now I think most people understand that with the correct quality control it can be just as effective as regular machining for certain parts.

Though SIG does seem to be doing its best at trying to undo that.

But I think that the firearms industry as a whole is lagging behind when it comes to effective digital marketing and embracing the digital age.

Now this is one part platform and ad network bias, and one part people in the industry not taking it seriously.

Definitely not everyone, but I see enough poorly done and downright baffling websites from smaller FFL’s that I have to wonder what’s going on?

In a previous episode of the Saloon we broke down a ton of design and technical issues with a local FFL in my area. From web page layouts that changed from brand to brand, to early 2000’s web design.

I’ve even seen FFL’s bleeding sales because their “online webstore” directed them to a third party website that didn’t even direct the customer back to the FFL that sent them there in the first place.

I know there’s not a ton of agencies out there that want to or even could deal with FFL’s properly, but if shooting and the second amendment is going to survive, embracing the digital age is necessary.

Much of the younger generation is online and we need to be putting a pro 2A stance out where they are going to see it. If you’ll humor me for pondering out loud, I wonder if some of the decline in hunting is not because of those who would have passed on that desire are simply not leveraging the digital space effectively as a group and it’s only a handful of younger people that are into hunting.

There’s probably much more to it than that, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at.

So I’d like to invite FFL’s and others in the 2A space, if you’d like two knuckle heads with many years of digital marketing experience to roast and review your website let me know.

Comment below with a name, or message me on twitter.

Now onto our next segment,

Ruger seems to be doing quite well for themselves, the RXM seems to be doing exactly what people wanted from it, a G19 Gen 3 at a good price point without the quality control concerns of the PSA dagger. Ruger’s launching another partnership with Dead Air Silencers and in an article in Shooting News Weekly, Ruger says that 31% of their revenue is coming from just four guns, the 10/22 carbon fiber, the RXM pistol, the American Rifle Gen 2, and the Precision Rifle.

It seems that in this new, American manufacturing based future that we are headed towards, Ruger is in a good position to take advantage, with Ruger’s operations mostly protected from any negative impacts of the tariffs in the short term.

But as I’ve pointed out before, we’re unlikely to see any major long term impacts on end prices, as things get negotiated into a position where US manufacturing is protected from undue overseas competition, particularly China.

However, it’s not just Ruger that’s pointing out they are doing well, the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers echo’s Ruger’s claims putting the Ruger American Gen 2 as a top performer in bolt-action rifles in their Q1 2025 SCOPE report.

To get into more detail on the report, it does note that background checks are down slightly by 4.2%, and shotguns and rifles are taking a dip, but this is offset by continued strong demand for pistols such as the G19, G43X and P365.

Also we can see in the report that 9mm and 5.56 are stupidly dominate, with the two calibers accounting for around 35% of all ammunition shipments.

I’ll link to the full report below but In all the report concludes that while the firearms market over all is healthy its somewhat stabilizing due to some inflated demand caused by tariff and other election cycle fears.

So far it seems that if the 2A industry is going to see some kind of a Trump Slump, as there’s little reason to panic buy when the White House is looking at the Second Amendment mostly favorably, the slump is not going to be overly pronounced.

If anything, now is a good time to rev up your marketing, get attention, don’t fade out of your customers or potential customers minds. Leverage social media and polish your local SEO efforts.

Point out what your product offerings bring to the table, value, reliability, etc. And If you will let me be biased for a moment, reach out to Cap & Ball Digital Strategies for expert help.

We have a dedicated, free guide digital marketing for FFL’s if you sign up to our email newsletter on our website. I’ll link to that below.

Wrapping up it’s fair to say that Trump will probably keep more FFL’s in business because of his removal of the Zero tolerance policy at the ATF.

Shooting News Weekly, again as a full report, but in fiscal year 2024, due to this zero tolerance policy for things as minor as clerical errors, almost 1500 FFL’s surrendered their licenses. Compare that to 2023 when only 80 did so.

This zero tolerance policy was a direct attack on the Second Amendment through the back door. With our current system, FFL’s are critical to keeping the Second Amendment alive, and if the smaller mom and pop shops are forced to shut down then that right gets that much harder to exercise.

But of course that leads us to another Democrat dispensed helping of diseased discourse.

Democrats, Adam Schiff and Chris Murphy, in what I can only describe as a desperate attempt to remain relevant, have reintroduced their odious bill to congress that would ban so called assault weapons. Never mind that these two barely understand the basics of firearms use or operation.

While everyone seems to admit that this bill has no chance of passing, it would probably be a good idea to keep an eye on this and dump the usual pile of disapproving complaints on your congress critter’s desk.

The article that I read cited support for stricter gun laws in polling by Gallup, but given the continued growth of constitutional carry. I must reiterate the absolute state of public polling today.

Polling tries to shape narrative, not represent how people actually feel, be incredibly skeptical of any polling, especially when all you are getting is “X percent of Americans favor Y”.

Next a little bit of news from SIG.

In a brilliant marketing maneuver, they seem to want to feed the memes with not one but two new guns.

First is the California compliant M400-Tread California rifle. A name which I personally love, I mean it’s a rifle built for the California market an d it has the perfect name for a state that continually treads on its citizens rights.

At least that god awful grate looks like it can be easily cut off should you leave that particular communist utopia.

But hey, if that was not enough, SIG went on and released the P365 fuse in what I can only describe as the best possible way to feed those wanting to troll SIG online.

Seriously, to the poor guy managing SIG’s social media, are you ok bro?

I know ProTraBand just dropped another video so I just want to say, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.

And finally some news about Buffalo Bore, and it’s kind of proving my point about YouTube. While it can be a powerful marketing tool, you should be diversifying your strategy, leveraging Rumble as a backup, and building a strong email list.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened but it looks like Buffalo Bore has had to un-list all of their videos off of YouTube.

Links to their Vidos that I have previously saved do still work and they seem to be building watch pages for each video on the Buffalo Bore website.

I haven’t found out exactly what happened, nor YouTube’s explanation for the sudden nuking from orbit of Buffalo Bore, but the channel is still up, but all of the videos are gone.

If you’ll let me speculate for a moment, I do recall there was a scheduled live stream that I was going to catch up on later.

Then I found out that the channel had been nuked.

I may be completely off base here, but I’d be willing to bet that something happened on that live stream that violated YouTube’s firearms policy.

In that policy they specifically stat that live streams that show someone “holding, handling, or transporting a firearm”.

Without any other information, I’d be willing to bet Tim went on live with a collection of guns he wanted to talk about, picked up a rifle or pistol like any other video he shot and that got the channel nuked.

If anyone did catch that live stream, please let me know if I’m wrong.

Conversely, someone at YouTube decided to start picking on a growing 2A cha nnel and “found a violation”. I’m particularly suspicious that links to websites like Sportsman Wearhouse might have gotten them into trouble.

Again going back to the policy, “Don’t post content that … links to sites that sell firearms or these items, such as high capacity magazines.”

What did many of these videos have, links to PSA’s website, Scheels, Sportsman’s Wearhouse. What do all of those sites have on them? Firearms.

This also could be the reason the channel got nuked.

Either is possible, and again, I’m forced to speculate here as I can’t find any statement about what exactly happened and YouTube’s communication is often less than helpful in explaining what rule, if any you actually broke.

I don’t like any of this, especially when Cheech and Chong can run around on X with paid ads for TCH gummies, low effort ads for so called corn industry tricks can pop up, and YouTube is more than happy to let companies like Vanish Holsters run video ads, but heaven forbit the thing that GOES into said holster gets linked to on YouTube by an FFL that has undergone more federal rectal probing than any Google support agent ever has. Not to mention that in order to actually purchase said item, you have to do a background check.

So a take away now that the speculation is over.

I think the safest thing to do is to have some kind of a filter website, something that can act as just a landing page. One that does not have anything for sale on it, just outgoing links, maybe even reviews of particular products if you want to put more effort into it and leverage that.

Since that website would not sell any products, then it should be safe, under the current policy wording to use this as a way to ease traffic from YouTube to your own website.

I do not, I repeat do not think that this is completely future proof, but it would get very messy for Google if they started to ban links to sites that had links to sites that sell firearms and firearm accessories.

A curated and dedicated landing page, on a separate domain like the one hiding here might be the best bet for getting traffic from YouTube to your website safely if you are carrying firearms in your online store.

Beyond that I’ll just reiterate some of what I said in a previous episode of the Saloon. Have Rumble as a backup. No, it won’t get the same kind of traffic and it’s not as feature rich as YouTube is when it comes to analytics, but making sure you have some kind of a plan if one of your social media channels receives and orbital MAC round is good.

Just ask poor Lima Six, they lost their main X account for apparently no reason and have been trying to slowly build back up their following on the platform.

Yet they did have not only a backup but they were able to also get the word out through their email list.

So again, I also have to stress the importance of building your own email list. You own that, not a platform, so as imperfect as email can be, it is a powerful marketing and sales tool.

Even if all you are doing is setting up a basic website that is just a place to host a sign up form for that newsletter, it can still be incredibly useful.

Of all of the age-gated industries, I’d argue that the 2A industry is the safest, and least issue prone one of all that the ATF is responsible for regulating.

But we have to deal with where we are now, not where we’d like to be.

So with that, I’ll wrap up this episode of the Cap & Ball Saloon.

I’d like to thank you for watching and if you’d like to see more of our 2A in the Digital Age coverage be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. Our current goal is to hit 500 subscribers and we’re well on our way to that thanks to all of you watching and sharing.

If you apricate firearms and ammunition development history, stay tuned for the next episode of the Dead Calibers Archives, we’ll be taking a look at the history of the 10mm and where it stands today in the market.

Again drop a comment with your FFL’s name and location or tag @capandballseo on Twitter if you have a website that you’d like us to review and roast.

Let us know your thoughts about Glock’s discontinued pistols, if you think Trump is helping or hurting the 2A, and anything else in the comments. I try to respond to as many as I can.

As always, I’m Anders E.T. Herzberg, hoping to see you all again real soon.