New Firearms Technology & The Fight For The 2A Continues | The Cap and Ball Saloon: Ep. 11

The YouTube & Guns Round Table

YouTube & Guns Q&A Roundtable (Feat. Bloke, Ziga, and PSR)

• Ian’s point about not liking content that might un-nerve advertisers is kind of right, but YouTube can and will put ads on videos that are not monetized, if anything they are getting more and more aggressive with the ads, however, I do agree with his thoughts on YouTube wanting to be a “TV Network”.
• YouTube will do what’s best for their viewer retention and revenue. So it comes down to how much pressure is being put on them by advertisers about specific kinds of content, with the cultural shift that is currently happening being more pro-2A, we’ll likely see a loosening of the policies, but probably nowhere near what it should be.
• Ziga is onto something with the credit card payment processors being an influence, and it is possible that the change in attitude that Ziga is mentioning is coming from some recent changes that banks and payment processors have made, specifically Citigroup after Trump took them to task.
• Citigroup Reverses Firearms Policy After Trump Blasted Banks | TIME
• Is there anything we can learn from this? Well, if you as an FFL are interested in leveraging YouTube for promoting yourself, there’s a few ways you can go about it.
• One the entertainment route
  • D’Boss Firearms, their YouTube channel focuses on funny gun culture skits and they have a good sense of humor.
  • Showing off cool guns
  • This is a bit more difficult since you’ll be shooting, and as things change, you may end up with retroactive violations. The full auto restriction has been biting people.
• Two
  • The pure educational route
    • No shooting just table talks
    • Informational, educational, etc.
    • Gun smiths could easily go this route, but they do need to be aware of YouTube and other platform restrictions to read off of YouTube’s policy as of right now.

Don’t post content on YouTube if the purpose is to do one or more of the following:

• Sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales (e.g. private sales by individuals) or links to sites that sell these items. These accessories may include:
• Accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire,
• Accessories that convert a firearm to automatic fire, such as: bump stocks, gatling triggers, drop-in auto sears, or conversion kits,
• High capacity magazines or belts carrying more than 30 rounds.
• Provide instructions on manufacturing any of the following:
• Firearms,
• Ammunition,
• High capacity magazines,
• Homemade silencers/suppressors,
• Accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire,
• Accessories that convert a firearm to automatic fire, such as: bump stocks, gatling triggers, drop-in auto sears, or conversion kits.
• Provide instructions on how to convert a firearm to automatic or simulated automatic firing capabilities.
• Provides instructions on how to install the above-mentioned accessories or modifications.
• Provides instructions on how to remove certain firearm safety devices, such as a device that limits the release of a magazine. This does not include removal of a device used to temporarily disable a weapon like a gun lock.

Please note this is not a complete list.

From <https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7667605?hl=en>

• The review route
  • Talk about products and offerings.
  • This can get tricky for FFL’s, because you can’t link directly to your website, but setting up a single landing page website can give you a shield to more easily move traffic from YouTube to your website.
  • The next level of this would be to spin off an accessory focused company that does not do any firearms sales on your website. Then you could do more from an advertising perspective.
  • With the review route I would recommend that you do through testing, or have some kind of standardized testing process for your products. Have a minimum round count, maybe some kind of torture test, etc. but have a process that people can be sure when they are looking at your reviews that you have a review that can be trusted.
  • If you want your reviews to build brand ambassadors, and by that I mean people who will actively go out and say your brand can be trusted, running off a spec sheet won’t cut it. Showing what a product can go through and still work as intended will.   

Something Cool Coming from PAMAX Tactical

https://x.com/PamaxTactical/status/1937265416356958421

• One word, magnets

https://x.com/Frytechllc/status/1936826778645107063

• Now you may be looking at this guy and saying, who the heck is this dude, honestly, I stumbled across him on Twitter.
• But his magnetic buffer system is incredibly interesting to me. Essentially he’s replaced the recoil spring and buffer system of the traditional AR-15 with a magnetic system, and now it looks like it’s not going to be just a hobby project, it’s going to be an actual product that you can get.
• As of right now there’s no word on pricing, but this does have the potential to give increased durability and longevity over a traditional spring system.
• Another point of interest to me would be as part of a suppressor host. Changing up spring weights is part of getting a DI AR cycling properly with a suppressor, so I’d be curious to see how this buffer will react to standard and flow through designs.
• Fry has also gotten prototype pistols working as well using the same kind of set up. Apparently another benefit of the buffer system is recoil reduction. I’m curious to see if a magnetic buffer system like this would help to deal with recoil in a meaningful way, allowing for “snappier” calibers to become more popular? 

The Backdraft Suppressor

Seeing Inside a Suppressed Gun Barrel! Outlier’s BackDraft Technology

• This is a very interesting suppressor design
• Multiple expansion chambers, but the real trick is that big expansion chamber around the barrel.
• I’ve seen attempts to do some crazy geometry before to increase the volume of the expansion chambers but this is so dead simple that it might be a far better solution since it would be simpler to machine and produce.
• This is probably the most amount of volume that you’ll be able to give the expanding gasses, as the whole idea of a suppressor is to trap the gas so that it has time to expand and cool, but the video testing shows that this design works and is able to

The next shooting trend? Simunitions

ATF Reinterprets Rules to Allow Import of UTM, Simunition Training Rounds, Dual-Use Barrels – Shooting News Weekly

• The ATF has reversed a decades old ban on simunition and barrels that use the ammunition.
• Quote from the ATF letter
  • “The devices that fire training rounds are not “weapons” within the meaning of the GCA or the AECA. These devices are design to work only with training rounds that have no value for offensive or defensive combat”
  • Section 925(d)(3) requires a consistent standards to determine whether a firearm barrel may be imported. Firearms technology has progressed over the past 20 years. Many parts, including barrels, are modular. This modularity allows the same barrel to be used in both a sporting and non-sporting firearm configuration. … If at the time is being imported, there is an identified sporting configuration for which the barrel may be used, the barrel is sporting and may be imported.
• I wonder if there won’t be a new shooting and training trend leveraging simunition for force on force training.
• I would definitely want to do some market research to see what kind of desire is out there for such an offering, but this may be a market niche that will grow with the reduction in red tape facing it, especially if this spurs a wave of more affordable simunition on the market.   

T-Rex Arms Breaks the silence

Why We’ve Been Quiet And The Future of T.REX ARMS

T.REX ARMS Timeline

Partnership-Agreement-3-Apr-2015-redacted-final.pdf

• Honestly there’s not much more to this, the timeline, the posted shareholder agreement is interesting and I’ll talk about that in a bit.
• However, they frame or omit Luca’s side of things to put some things in a light favorable to them.
  • IE the pre-nup agreement
  • “Family” tools and guns being used
  • Left out the relations of the image incident offender
  • Who the attorney was hired by
  • That other wife’s were employed by T-Rex
• Again I find myself falling back to
• I’m mostly with Lucas’ take on things
• Again, the image incident is not what I think the real issue is.
• The shareholder agreement was actually a bit worse than I thought in terms of profit sharing.
  •  The profits were split, 35% to Lucas, 25% to David and David each. 
  • 50% say for Lucas 25% for the other two.
• Apostasy agreement – what?
  • So you get kicked out as an apostate you lose control of the company?
  • That’s kind of crazy.
• Arbitration of the elders of the church? – No, that is YOUR company, and putting any arbitration clause for church elders is a bad idea.
  • This bit, this right here rubs me the wrong way. If you look at how Lucas was the “black sheep” of the family, by his own admission, this gives an opportunity for the “good boys” to come in and push him out.
  • I say this with the following. I want the Botkins to heal and be able to be a family again, but that arbitration clause looks like this was the plan from the start, get Lucas back into the fold, control his life direction, or take his company. Why else would you include an arbitration clause for Church elders to be sticking their nose into any disagreements?
  • Arbitrators will ALWAYS favor the person pay or bringing them in.
• Where is the previous shareholder agreement that came after this one?
• I want to see that.
• Again, they have made a mistake of underestimating marketing and its impact, I think to everyone there Lucas was “just the face” of T-Rex Arms, and they fail to realize that they have a brand because of Lucas, not in spite of him. And while yes, I don’t want to see T-Rex arms go belly up, they have made a mistake that I see too often in business. Forgetting marketing and neglecting it.  
• If things are bad, sell harder, put more money into advertising, not less. 

Big Beautiful Bill full of Big BS

• Well it looks like the Big Beautiful Bill is going to be just another swamp bill
• From the land sales BS to now the parliamentarian stripping out the removal of the NFA language this bill is turning into another swamp bill in real time.
• As best I can tell right now the language would remove all taxes, but not NFA status from all SBR’s, SBS’s, and Suppressors.  

Lima SIX Update

LIMA SIX: The story of my belt fed AR15 project

• Update on the Lima Six
• I’ve been following this for a while now
• 10 Beta units are in production and being completed
• Very excited about this project. A belt fed AR upper at an affordable price point is exactly what the market needs, and I’m super excited to see the Lima Six project go forward and move into early production.