Matter of Facts: ATF Suddenly Kinda Cool'ish???

Welcome back to the Matter Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravele. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast. I'm Phil, that's Nick. We have three topics to hit, so we're not going to screw around at all. We're going to get straight down to business. I'm not promising that. I'm promising I'm going to do my level best to keep this rabid squirrel, you know, well-stocked on nuts and on task. I'm not promising it's going to happen, but we're sure as hell going to try it. Anyway, if you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron, the link's in the show description. The patrons promote bad decisions, usually bad financial decisions. I'm the voice of reason telling all of you psychopaths to, like, save for retirement and plan for a rainy day, and y'all mostly respond by telling me to quit being a nerd and buy cool stuff. Yes. Yes. Well, at least you can admit that. You're usually leading the pack, Nick. Well, you know, look. I like cool stuff. I also like stuff that makes cool stuff. That stuff is expensive and heavy. Yes, you also like convincing your friend to buy the cool stuff so you can have the experience vicariously without spending your own money. Yes, that is absolutely accurate. If you'd like to buy merch for the vibes from the Southern Gals, that link is also in the show description. One of these days we will finally get around to revising the merch a third time. We've already done it twice, you know, because every now and then it just we get some fresh ideas. The problem is we usually forget about them before we turn the ideas into a product. Yeah. Yeah. That'll happen. I mean, frankly, that's on Chris because he should be watching this show and we come up with most of our bad ideas or good ideas, depending on your point of reference, while we're sitting here talking. That's true, though I. Do believe he listens to the show mostly while he's. Driving a truck. Listen, I've seen plenty of truck drivers that are texting on their phones while driving, so it shouldn't be that hard for them to take a note. The Matter of Facts podcast does not condone texting and driving. Just throwing that out there, Chris. I do not condone you texting and driving. I do not condone you texting and driving either. I will name and shame you. I like Chris, and he has a small child, so Buddy better be keeping his eyes on the road. I'm pretty sure that his wife is going to keep him in line much better than we do. And last but not least, if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee, code MOF. I am not drinking it out of a disaster coffee mug. I'm drinking it out of the I Like Her Butt coffee mug, which... It's a proper good mug. Part of a match set. My wife has one that says, I like his beard. This one's mine. Hmm. I'm not going to throw shade, but something untoward may have happened to my disaster coffee cup. You dropped it. No, I didn't. Someone else did that lives in this house with me. My God, that was a limited edition. Well, I mean, I've got others, but here's the cool part. A little bit of advertising for Southern Gals who did the coffee cups and Disaster who sells them. That coffee cup took a spill off the counter, hit the ground. The handle sheared off in four pieces. The rest of the mug didn't even get a chip. Huh. That's impressive. It's a quality mug. I was fairly impressed. Very upset. Normally they turn into a million tiny foot-stabbing pieces. Yeah, usually when a coffee mug hits the ground, it turns into ceramic shrapnel. Yes. All right. I don't see a ton of people in the chat. I see Raggle. I see Stuart. He asked us to pause. We will not. We cannot. The show must go on. It must. All right. First on the docket, Ruger says no guns for you. So, yeah, this this, you know, we've discussed on the show before, Phil, how much I would love to be a revolver guy. And I really hate revolvers every time I try them. The Red Hawk, Super Red Hawk, Black Hawk, and Super Black Hawk were on my list of revolvers to try to see if I would love them. Have you ever tried a single action? I have. And you didn't like those either? Colt Single Action Army. I loved the Colt Single Action Army. I did not like the price tag. Oh, well, I mean, a Black Hawk or a Super Black Hawk is very similar. Well, the Single Action Army that I got to try out was an original Single Action Army revolver. With the original bluing left. With an original... And color case hardening. With an original price tag. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the guy that offered it to me for sale said, oh, you got to shoot it. Then you'll definitely want to buy it. I did. I also did not want to refinance my house. Yeah. So for those of you who've maybe heard of this, maybe haven't, this announcement started floating around the internet. Oddly enough, I've not been able to find it on Ruger's website. But I'm seeing it floating around on the internet that Ruger is... From a lot of places. A lot of places. It's gotten very, very... It got a lot of traction very quickly. But Ruger is supposedly discontinuing indefinitely the production of the SR-1911, the LC Carbine, the PC Charger, the PC Carbine, the LC Charger, the Redhawk, the Super Redhawk, the Blackhawk, the Super Blackhawk, the Single Series Revolvers, the Vaquero, the No. 1, the 77 Series Rifles. And the Hawkeye and the Ruger Precision Rifle, which is like every halfway cool firearm they make. Like, what's left after this, Nick? You've got, they don't make their AR anymore. They discontinued that several years ago, I think. You've got the RXM. Let's see. You've got the 10-22. The 10-22, the RXM. The RXM. You've got, do they make a Wonder 9 still? I can't remember. That is the RXM. Oh, the RXM. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, that's a little block copy. I was thinking of the old Ruger. Oh, you're thinking like the P-Series from way back in the day. Yeah, the P-Series or Rugers. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. I don't think they still make those. I don't think they do either. I haven't seen one in a very long time except heavily used. Yeah. Let's see. Do they? Yeah, that's all I can think of. My gosh. I mean, that's a really heavy cut down. Yeah, I mean, I've seen some people theorize that this might be parent company Beretta flexing their muscle. I don't know. Could be. What I do know is that... It could also be the fact that, look, with massive model lines come a massive cost in just logistics and parts and employees. If you are trying to save a company that is having a very hard time financially, which Ruger, I hear, is. You want to cut down to your core best-selling products. Focus on them. Oh, because the Ruger Americans, they're not in this list. Oh, I forgot the Ruger Americans. Which is a nice, respectable little bolt-action rifle. Yeah, it's a respectable, what I would call an entry-level bolt gun. Good hunting rifle, good training rifle for target shooting. Not the most accurate on the planet, but the price. Is very attractive. I mean. Don't they make a Ruger Ranch, too? Isn't there a. Ranch rifle they make? I think that is technically in the Hawkeye line. Ah, damn, that's in the Hawkeye line? That's kind of a nice one. If it's the one I'm thinking of that has, like, the forward-mounted optic rail and it's magazine-fed, yeah, that's based off of a Hawkeye. Oh, okay. Yeah. Or it's based off of 77, which the Hawkeye is also based off of. Yeah, it's basically. Wow, I can't believe they're getting rid of the 77. Oh, well. Hey, look, man. Sometimes to save a company, you have to cut away what is not profitable. Is this like the Thanos thing of the hardest decisions require the greatest wills? I guess. I guess. I mean, it could also be that they have a not-gun person in charge of trying to save the company, and they're like, the SR-1911 costs how much to make a gun, and we make what? No, we're getting rid of that. I guess here's my thing, though. Like, okay, the SR-1911, if it's not profitable, there's 10 million people out there making 1911s. Fair point. Same reason why I wasn't shocked when Ruger let go of their AR production. There's 10 million companies out there making AR-15s. If you're not making money on it, ditch it. You're not going to make a high return on building ARs. You're just not. But, here's my issue. Their revolver line has a very, very... very deep, enthusiastic, faithful customer base. And I don't know many people who only buy one single Ruger revolver. I am in the minority having just one. Most people buy every daggum revolver they have in multiple cartridges because they're just Ruger guys. They're Ruger revolver guys. Sure. And having spent some time, I don't want to say abusing, because I don't like the word abusing, but like, oh, the GP100' s not on this list, too. Thank Christ. Oh, yeah. Or the SP101, which is like the GP100' s little brother. It's a five-shot. 37 Magnum. You're right. You're right. So, there... I'm not a big revolver guy. Yeah. And here's the thing of it. Like, I'm not a big revolver guy. I enjoy shooting revolvers. I think they're the most fun you can have with your clothes on for a range day. For a woods gun, when I want more horsepower than 9mm carries, I take a. 37 Magnum out into the woods with me, and here in the very near future, I'll probably have a couple of rounds of snake shots sitting in a belt carrier just because. Found out that the gun range that I'm volunteering at, they've schwacked three cop baby copperheads on the range in the last three weeks. So somebody laid a clutch out there. Somebody did. But I guess I get, I understand the business sense to these things are not profitable. Let's get rid of them. Let's save the company. But I have to admit that there's, there's, there's a moat. There's a bit of pain involved because like I have a Hawkeye. It's a really nice, it's a really nice bolt action. They are. The Ruger Precision Rifle. They're also expensive to produce. I mean, I can't argue that point. I mean, here's my issue. You and I were having this conversation right before we went live about like the Ruger Precision Rifle and that when I started, you know, like when I started planning that three-way project I want to do by the end of the year. I look at the Ruger Precision Rifle. It's not worth $ 1, 900 to me. It's not. When it first came out, it was like $ 1, 200 or $ 1, 400. I think. Sometimes you could get it down to like. $ 1, 199. Yeah. And at the time, to get the same performance at about the same price point, you had to literally get an action from this company, a barrel from that company, a chassis from this company, and put it all together. A lot of times you did. I mean, there was a Savage 110 with a bottom metal that took A6 mags, but that one was, again, you know, a couple hundred dollars more, you know. Yeah. I feel like what happened to the Ruger Precision Rifle is that the rest of the competition caught up, and it just kind of kept being Ruger. I mean, the hard part about Ruger is they're a very... And I don't mean that politically, but like business product line wise. They're a very conservative company. They find something that works. They make it stupidly strong and they just keep making it forever. But because of that, they're a little they're the opposite of Caltech that like sneezes into into the mountain of cocaine in the break room and then new ideas just start flying around and they're in the market by the end of the week. These guys, I mean, when they make a revolver, they're going to make the same revolver for 25 or 30 years. They are, yeah, with very little change. Look, the Ruger Precision Rifle is a quality firearm. It is. It's a quality firearm. But the rest of the market caught up. Right. It is no longer special. It no longer has that niche place that it had when it first came out. Because just about everybody makes a chassis rifle now. That accepts A6 mags or AR mags or whatever. You know, whatever pattern of magazine you happen to like. Everybody does it now. But the other problem, and I think maybe the bigger problem is, there's so many $ 500 bolt actions out there. The Ruger American being one of them. And you and I talked about how the American is not like a burn the house down, super accurate rifle. But the problem is, at this point, a $ 500 rifle, a little bit of work, and a decent hand load, and you will shoot surprisingly good. So the problem is that when a person says, I want a bolt action to go hunting with, and I can get a $ 1, 000 Hawkeye, or a $ 1, 000 77 series, or I can get an Aruger American, and their performance isn't that far off, why would they spend double the money unless they just want some heirloom quality? If you're looking at an Aruger Precision Rifle and a Bergara, a Savage 110, if you're looking at all these other rifles that shoot very comparably for less money or shoot not much less accurately for a fourth the price, I feel like what Ruger has done is that they've rested and let everybody else catch up to them. And everybody else has either exceeded them in the product lines they built or managed to match them for less money. And that's, that's a death sentence in capitalism. I think that's really the case. And it's as much as I really liked the Ruger precision series, especially that they came out with the precision rim fire right alongside of it. So you had your 22 trainer and you had your 300 wind mag or your 30 odd six or your, or your six, five Creed more exact same pattern rifle. No difference between the two phenomenal product launch. the guys needed to take the next step. Yeah. Which was in my opinion, fixing that stock. They never really, in my opinion, got. The Ruger precision rifles stock quite right. I don't know. I've never, I've never shot one. So I tried a couple. I've shot a couple. I, a couple of buddies of mine have them and they bought them when they first came out and they were pretty decent, but, For whatever reason, okay, so if you shoot a lot of higher power rounds through those, the stocks tend to vibrate their little latch mechanism loose, and you start getting creep in the different settings on your stock. There was never a really great locking mechanism on there, in my opinion. I think that they could have done it better, even if they had only went to like, gosh, a secondary locking mechanism or something other than a flip lever and a nut. Something like maybe what the Magpul CTR has, where like you have, you have the quick release part that you can slide it in and out. But then once you do, there's almost like another part to that mechanism that applies tension and locks everything in. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. It needed a little something. Couple of things. Raggle asking, is the security a plastic fantastic? Isn't that a metal frame? If you're referring to the Security 6, that's like an old revolver that they haven't had in production since the GP100. Unless he's thinking of the Ruger Security 9. That may be it, and if that's the case, I'm pretty sure that's a plastic fantastic. I'm not familiar with that one much. I've never been a big Ruger semi-auto person. When it comes to semi-autos, I'm a die-in-the-wool CZ nerd. So, like, I have my wheelhouse, and I stick to it. Sure. And Stuart's saying Ruger needs to bring back the. 44 Mag Deer Hunter. Yep, Rag was confirming Security 9. I'm pretty sure it's plastic. As far as the. 44 Mag Deer Hunter, I'm trying to think of if there's anybody else that makes a comparable model. The ones I know of in. 44 are all lever action. Yeah. I don't know. I understand where Ruger is. I hate to see some of those guns go into hibernation, especially like the Red Hawk, the Super Red Hawk, the Black Hawk, and the Super Black Hawk. I would not be surprised if in a couple of years when they get their finances more sorted out, if we don't see a Super Black Hawk come back or a Super Red Hawk come back as a limited run or a made-to-order firearm. I will say that my dad has a Super Redhawk and. 44 Mag, and if anybody out there has been putting off buying a Ruger revolver, and it's like do-or-die time now, I will say that if you've ever handled a GP100, the Redhawk and Super Redhawk are going to feel really familiar really quickly, except for having a much bigger boom. Because the little ones come in. 44 Magnum. And the big ones come in 480 Ruger, which is like a 475 line ball cut down a little bit. That would be a lot of powder. Yeah, I mean, that would probably be another discussion to have in our time. But like the 480 Ruger was, we want more power than a 44 Magnum, but we don't want super high pressure like a 454 Casull. So it's fair. I mean, 454 Casull has some frame splitting issues. Yes. Now, that's not as much of an issue with like Ruger's because Ruger overbuilds the Christing hell out of all the revolvers. But the point still remains, you know, I don't know. I'm sorry. Some of these guns go Ruger and Magnum Research both do a very excellent job and stupidly overbuilding their guns because they know the people that buy them are probably making piss and hot loads. Because why not? Yeah, Stuart's saying if the rumor is true, production is suspended, not canceled. The part that makes me nervous is indefinitely suspended. Well, look, indefinitely suspended just means we are ordering no new stock. Yes, but you and I both know how it works when you shut down a production line. Tooling it back up comes with its own set of costs and everything. Especially if it's down for more than 12 months. Yeah. Or especially if they retool the whole thing to do something else. Right. Well, there's this magic thing that happens in every large manufacturing company. Within 12 months, you're going to lose someone of experience from that production line. If you shut down that production line and move them somewhere else. Because you're probably going to have someone retire. And they'll be the only one that knows how to make the commuter valve. Right, exactly. You're going to have that one guy that really understood how to get this setup going. And, you know, he was already going into retirement anyway. And the job he really liked to do, he isn't doing anymore. Maybe he retires. Maybe he switches careers to a different place. And there goes a ton of institutional knowledge. Yeah. And even shifting people to different production lines, then they forget. Stuff does not get written down like you think it should in manufacturing, man. It is a big problem. Oh, it does get written down in most market segments, but... Anyway, topic two. Number two. ATF folds like a lawn chair. No more enforcement after Texas court decision. Now, almost anyone who has been living under a rock for at least the last couple of weeks... is well aware that there's been some shenanigans happening in the gun community ever since the Texas District Court told the ATF and the DOJ and the powers that be, you cannot enforce a zero-tax revenue-generating statute when it generates no revenue. I... Look, I am a very.... Cautious person when it comes to being optimistic whenever a federal agency does something that seems to be in my favor. I think what the ATF has done is said, correct, court, we cannot enforce it when the tax is zero dollars. Do you hear that, Congress? The tax is zero dollars. We cannot enforce it when the tax is zero dollars. We have a midterm election coming up. Guess who's looking like they're going to get slaughtered in the election? It's probably going to be a Democrat sweep of a lot of different places because fuel prices are up. Inflation is still up. The economy is doing okay for the stock market, but it's pretty shit in a lot of other sectors. Housing costs are through the roof. Right. Costs are through the roof. Housing costs are through the roof. Oh, but wait. We didn't even finish the first unpopular war before we got involved in another one. Right. And now we're buying diesel. from Russia to fix the fuel issue that we caused by bombing Iran, even though we're sanctioning Russia for the Ukraine thing. Look, make sure the administration is not looking great. No, it doesn't. I know why they're doing it. I under, I understand completely why they're doing it because they don't give a shit what we think they're just doing the bare minimum to try and improve optics coming up to a midterm. Look, Historical trends show that the political party in power usually loses seats in the midterms. Almost always. Especially when there's all of these things going on that are negative. They're probably going to lose a lot of seats, which means we're probably going to get day one of the new DNC Congress and Senate. We're going to get a. $ 2, 000 tax stamp on NFA items. And the ATF is going to go, yes, daddy. $ 2, 000 text stamps, thank you for all the revenue generating potential. And it will completely overturn all of this. And they will attempt to make it retroactive. Or they will give you an amnesty period to pay your $ 2, 000 for the 17 suppressors that you have made or turned them in. So now that Nick has completely derailed my series of banners that I had prepared.... I did not remember the order of the banners. You just, you plowed through the whole topic all by yourself. Well, I'm sorry. I'm a bit tired and a bit ranty today. You did. That was a Nick rant. That was a Nick rant. I get to have one now and then. I've only had two and a half hours of sleep. Less angry and vitriolic than a Phil rant, but it had some good body to it. Solidly sarcastic. I like to think. So. Oh God. It just, look, I do not believe that this is the. End of the NFA restricting short barreled rifles, shotguns or suppressors. I know. Let's be really specific. Mm hmm. Even if Congress repealed the NFA, I don't think that's the end of it because the people who desperately don't want you and I to have cool things are not going to suddenly find religion on the Second Amendment and say, okay, you can have your things back. This is a fight we're going to fight for the literal rest of our freaking lives because the other side will do the same. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's way too much power up for grabs for them to let it go. And gun control is a hell of a friggin' wedge issue. Yes, it is. It's the reason why the Republicans never friggin' push as far as we wish they would, and the reason why the Democrats never push as far as the other side wishes they would when they have all three chambers. Oh, exactly. Yep. Stewart's saying it is not the end of it. But I'm saying even if the end of it gets repealed, it's still not the end of it. The fight will never be over. Ever. It's never going to be over. And really, that's the lesson we need to take away from this. Excellent. This is generally positive for us. Yeah. Now let's sue to get it repealed on the grounds that it is completely irrelevant as a law at all. 110%. And let's go after the state-level laws that are currently... Preventing some people from enjoying this brief respite from federal bull crap. Let's go after the NFA. Let's go after the politicians who support the NFA. Let's go after the politicians that refuse to support the Second Amendment. Let's start shaming and naming judges who refuse to let the people do as they please. Because these people are your employees, not your masters, not the noble class. They are not the state employees. are supposed to be our employees, and they should be frankly terrified of an armed, angry mob showing up on their front doorstep, not us terrified that we're going to have our wives and kids and dogs shot because we dare to exercise freedom for the brief moment that we have it. Yep. Agreed. Now, what's downstream from freedom? Brief discussion. You and I talked about the fact that for as long as this little respite lasts... There have already been quite a collection of shenanigans. Oh my gosh, yes. I have seen more oil filters and water bottles and household crap turned into suppressors all over Instagram recently. I have seen more... I mean, an entire cottage industry has sprung up of brace plugs and of... brace shapers and all kinds of stuff to like shove in the back of a pistol brace to make it kind of more like a stock. It's like the minute the ATF waved the white flag, the entire gun community said, we ball. 3d print suppressors are exploding everywhere and people are finding fantastic ways to reinforce them with stuff like monster cans, Red Bull cans. It's, it's wonderful to see. I really love it. I'm seeing that stuff popping up everywhere, and there are so many guys grenading 3D-printed cans on stuff like 308. It's phenomenal. Lessons are being learned. Science is being done. But I guess that's kind of my point, though, is that we haven't seen this kind of enthusiastic tomfuckery with the guns since World War II, since John Browning and since— Since Browning and Guerin walked the earth, since these giants, since Stoner was designing machine guns on a paper napkin, we're seeing all these people saying, it doesn't cost me $ 200 and a bunch of federal paperwork to try it, so let's just see what happens. But it's this kind of enthusiastic nonsense that is prevented by government paperwork and red tape and registration and legalese that has suddenly been unleashed. So yeah, a lot of learning is happening. But I think two things are going to happen. I think in a very short time period, until the door gets slammed shut, which I'm sure it will. I'm positive it will. But in a very short time period, I think two things are going to happen. I think people are going to push suppressor technology to the absolute butt-puckering limit in both directions. We're going to see suppressors make leaps and bounds forward. In terms of design and technology, because without the regulation, you can iterate on something so much faster, and there's virtually no penalty for a suppressor that blows up on the range for a manufacturer. They can try every crazy-ass design they ever had in their mind, and it's a little bit of material and machines. time if it doesn't work. And realistically, material costs labor and machine time are very little with stuff like this. But it's also going to work in the opposite direction. We're going to see suppressors get so freaking cheap because people are figuring out real fast this isn't a great suppressor, but it kind of works and I can make it for like 15 bucks. And the problem is pretty close. And here's the problem. When we eventually get to that point, Nick, where we have that $ 2, 000 tax stamp that slams the door shut and all this, the guys who know how to make $ 15 suppressors are never going to register them. No, absolutely not. They're not going to pay $ 2, 000 for the shit they turned up in their garage. And that knowledge is never going to go away. Like that's what we've said before about, All these attempts to, like, regulate and make homemade firearms go away. It's like you can't ban 3D printers. You can't ban machine shops. You can't ban Home Depot. You can't ban the knowledge of how guns work. Well, you, in a very short amount of time, you're not going to be able to ban the knowledge of how suppressors work either. People are going to know how to make them out of frigging just crap you find on the side of your house. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And you know what? That's fantastic. And Brady and every town can friggin' cope and seethe and choke on it as far as I care. Because the genie's out of the bottle. Although I would argue the genie was already out of the bottle because there were a lot of people doing hood rat stuff that just weren't doing it publicly. Now it's public. Yeah, now everybody is showing you on the internet to millions exactly how you can do it. People like me have known for a very long time that I could, in about an hour and a half, make a suppressor. I could. It wouldn't really take me all that long at all. I could make a crappy one in about an hour and a half. My definition of crappy. If you know how a well rod works, you could make that out of shit from a hardware store. You can. It doesn't have to be great. And it doesn't have to last for very long. Nope. I mean, I'm just saying, like, you know, if you're willing to make something... Look, There is a reason why there are high-end grocery stores that sell caviar by the teaspoon, and there's Walmart, because there's a person to serve every segment of the market. Well, there's going to be people who are willing to make suppressors stupidly cheap, even though they only last for 500 rounds. And people will buy them, because look, Your great uncle that goes to the deer stand twice a year and shoots two deer a year doesn't need a 1,500-round suppressor. He needs a 500-round suppressor. Stuart's correct, though. Prices are going to surge at first, and then they will probably collapse. Yeah. But, you know, it's one of those nifty things that this just improves the in common use argument. Oh, yes. Great. Do we have any idea now how many hundreds of thousands of 3D printers are running off suppressors as we speak. We have no clue. Raggle, isn't there a military document on how to make a makeshift suppressor? Several. So for Raggle and for everyone else, Uncle Phil is going to advise that you get a VPN. I like Proton. Pick the one you like. But I would advise you get a VPN and then go on the internet because there's all kinds of stuff available to be learned if you're willing to do a little bit of fooling around and looking around. But yeah, I'm pretty sure... I believe it's the Improvised Munitions Manual. I'm pretty sure there is a TM or an FM. Don't ask me which one. I've got like... Stuart's got like every friggin' FM since they were making trebuchets, for God's sakes. But I'm pretty sure I have that one. Yeah, if you're in the Patreon chat and you don't have the link to Steward's digital archive, get it. Yeah, Raggle's saying way ahead of you. I'm just saying, like, I would love to think that I am irrelevant enough to slip under the gaze of the FBI. But just in case I'm not, I like the idea of having a VPN. I want the FBI to know exactly how weird I am. Oh, they see my Instagram history. They already know how weird I am. But they don't. Whether they want to or not. Go ahead. Start digging. It's a deep hole. Your poor wife. Our poor wives. There is a reason why folks like us tend to be married to early childhood educators. I mean, the fact that we are as similar personality wise as we are in both of our wives or early childhood educators. Like it's a small sample size, but it's a really odd coincidence, man. There is a really huge overlap between tool makers and being married to early childhood educators. There's also a lot of autistic tool makers. There's, there's a certain amount of hyper-focus you have to have to do the job I do. And it, You ain't quite right in the head. I mean, I spend my day today working as a program analyst, jamming out to aggressive EDM and doing nerd crap. So I feel you. I got to explain to a customer why their error is going to cost them the price of a modest two bedroom condo. Well, they probably shouldn't have made the error if they weren't prepared to pay for it. That's that's how errors work. It is. Yes. And this is why documentation is important. So is paying attention. So is there anything else to toss in here before we get to that last big topic? You know, I like what Stuart threw here. What is downstream of freedom responsibility? Use these new toys responsibly. That's all I'm going to say. Use them responsibly. Yep. Guys, be careful. If you are attaching anything to the end of your gun barrel, please do be cautious. You can cause yourself some injuries if you do it wrong enough. Let's be responsible about our tomfoolery. Please don't shoot your eye out. Yeah, don't do that. It's bad for your eyes. Yeah. All right. Last but not least, reloading theory versus experience. Now, reloading, as much as I would love to say, is one of these super scientific things where everybody keeps like, you know, a journal and they write in it very precise notes. I also know that there's a lot of, like, lore and a lot of theory and a lot of rumor in the reloading hobby, reloading space. There's a lot of things that a lot of people swear up and down as fact, even though they never confirmed it before because, you know, the old hand that taught them said that and they just took it as gospel. And what I've noticed in my reloading journey is that a lot of those things... Like a lot of things, I think they have a kernel of truth to them, which makes them really, really hard to argue with. They matter just enough that if you ignore it at the wrong time, it's problematic. But the rest of the time, it's just fine. Yeah. Or more, I guess more to my point, though, like some of these things like you want to disprove it, but it kind of it kind of seems like it proves itself. Maybe not for the reason you thought it did. Or the difference is so minute, it's very difficult to prove or disprove. Yes. Also, because, like, bearing in mind the fact that, like, most people in the reloading hobby are manufacturing their ammunition completely by hand, there's a... It would take an extraordinarily experienced, careful person to be able to control for every single variable. And I would argue may not be possible to control every single variable. It's not. So the minute you get into that situation, it's like you could have an unrestrained variable responsible for causing a change that proves or disproves whatever your theory was, independent of whether or not the theory itself had any validity in the first place. So anytime you manufacture anything, anytime you manufacture anything, don't care what it is, don't care how careful you are. There is always a percentage error. The more money you are willing to spend and the more time you are willing to spend, you can lower that percentage of error down to very, very tiny numbers. But like I usually tell customers when they send me a drawing for a part and they have some wildly tight tolerances on there, every zero that you add after the decimal place in your tolerance adds a zero onto the end of the price. The thing we call it in statistics is confidence interval. In other words, it's like if you want, if you need to bear in mind in statistics, we can never tell you what's going to happen. We can tell you that within a certain confidence interval, this is most likely to happen. That's how statistics works. So if you want like a 50% confidence interval, I can pretty much take a wild guess and it's 50-50 out of the gate. If you want a 90% confidence interval, depending on The types of variance and everything else, and I don't remember enough of my statistics homework from 20 years ago to remember all the variables, but to a 90% confidence interval, you need X amount of data. You need X amount of information to make that informed decision. And then if I want to turn it up to 99%, I need 10 times more data. And if I want it to be 99.9%. it's kind of the same thing you're talking about where to make the margin of error narrower and narrower becomes infinitely difficult. And infinitely more expensive and timely. Yeah. Which in the world of statistics is data aggregation to make those decisions, that is money and time. Oh my gosh, yes. Massive quantities. So, pitter-patter, get at her. Are certain powders more accurate in air quotes? Okay. Here's what I'm going to say. There are powders that for the application are more accurate because of a more consistent burn rate in that application. So that's a bunch of qualifiers. Of course. I'm a machinist. I like qualifiers. But this is also why I started out with the conversation the way I did, by saying, like, there's, like, IMR 4064 in three-way Winchester. A boringly, stupidly accurate powder that has a reputation for making very accurate ammunition. In 30-06, I can make it stack rounds on rounds on rounds as far out as I want. Now... Try to use that exact same powder to load 6.5 Creedmoor. It is not applicable to that cartridge. It is not near as happy of a marriage. Your burn rate is wildly out of sync for what that cartridge wants. Try to use IMR 4064, for example, for like 5.56. It's a much skinnier, longer cartridge. It's worth pointing out that IMR 4064 is a stick powder, so it's not going to be a happy marriage in that really thin, spindly little case of 5.56. Correct. Within certain variables, within certain cartridges, there are certain powders that kind of have a reputation for being more accurate or happier marriage. But that's not an across the board like IMR 4064 is just a more accurate powder. It's just in certain applications. So, Raggle, what major factors dictate which powder would be most suitable? Burn rate? Consistency of the powder granule size. And, oh, let's see. Size of the granule size. Yeah, size of the granule size. You'll hear it referred to as bold. There are some stick powders that are shorter than others. There are. There are certain powders that are known for being very bulky powders. Like, not that there's anything good or bad about them, but like. They fill a case really well. They fill a case very well. Was it... Long Shot Trail Boss, I think, is known for making like. Yeah, Trail Boss is a very bulky powder. Better in large caliber firearms than small caliber. Now, that being said, Trail Boss is a great powder if you want to make reduced recoil loads for very large, like 45 long cold, those types of things. It's like traditional, what used to be black powder cartridges. But bulk matters because if you're trying to get to a given velocity... in a given case size and it's a very bulky powder, you're going to run out of room before you get to where you're trying to get. And that velocity target might be, I need a certain velocity target. It might be the fact that this barrel wants a certain muzzle velocity to really wake up and start doing things. So that's why I say bulk of the powder and burn rate are really, to me, what I think what drives you in that, that drives you in that direction. Like, I ran into this, you and I talked about how I ran into this with CFE 223. It's a little on the slow side of powders for 5.56. It's perfectly acceptable. It makes perfectly good ammunition. I didn't have a problem with it. But when I got to the point where I was trying to make the right muzzle velocity to make those 77 grain match kings really get up off their butt and start singing, I started running out of room in the case. Because CFE 223 is a very slow powder. Too bulky of a powder. Too bulky, a little on the slow side. And when I moved into faster powders, lo and behold, that cartridge woke up. Yep. I mean, I went from, I think I went from like a one and a half inch group to a 1.1 inch group. Better yet, I went from a four shot one and a half inch group to an eight shot 1.1 inch group. Well, that's better. but that was going to a much faster powder that has much smaller grain sizes. There are some powders that are less consistent as far as burn rate goes, some of the older powders. And some of the powders that are made less consistently, batch to batch. But Stuart, yeah, Stuart makes a good point. The burn curve, the temperature consistency, the grain consistency. Look, the modern. powders are extraordinarily consistent compared to what powders were even 30 years ago. Yep. The ability of chemical manufacturers to be more consistent in grain size, grain density, chemical composition, the even mix of the chemicals, the compounding consistencies, the filler consistency percentages is so much better than it was even 20, 30 years ago. It's phenomenal. Yeah. All right. Next up, primer slash powder batch. That's one thing I was kind of hinting at. Now, every once in a while, you will run into, like me and Phil have, old powder. Yep. That old powder may have a slightly different burn rate than a brand new off-the-shelf box of powder because of the differences in how the batch was manufactured. especially if, like, I've got some Hercules powder that's in containers that was clearly made in the 70s or 80s. That's going to require a very particular load worked up for those cans of powder using load data that dates to the time that powder was manufactured or near about there. Or if you're in the situation I'm in with this WCA-44, where it is readily and happily acknowledged by the community that WCA 44 is either, depending on which wives' tale you believe, it is either military pull-down powder or it is military powder that was rejected for use. So it's pretty close to H335, but it's not exactly. Now, again, depending on which version of the events you believe, Hodgdon goes and buys this stuff, and they mix a little from this batch, a little from this batch, until they get just the right burn rate for H335, and they bottle that up and they sell it on the commercial market. It's called batch equalization or batch blending. Now, I bought a jug of straight WCA44, and you and I have had all the talks about the wild inconsistencies I have found in burn rate with that stuff. Makes you wonder. Well... According to Midwest themselves, they say use H335 data and download it 10% for your start charge. And that start charge that I found was 250 feet per second slower than H335 for the same loads. So something's a little weird. Now, I did eventually find a load that is very consistent. I'm very happy with it. I'm going to make a couple thousand of them. I'm just going to use up the whole jug. It might as well. I'm going to use it up for 55s, for plinking, for target practice, for whatever. It's never going to be a serious powder, but it was never meant to be. If you drop around FPS here or there, it's not going to make a difference. Yeah, but. You're punching paper for drills. But I will never, ever, ever, ever in life use this load data with off-the-shelf H335, because whatever's in this friggin' jug is its own special little animal. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you get that sometimes with some of those powders. We've talked before about how we know people that are dramatically more serious shooters than we are, which is saying something. And those boys and girls, like your PRS or F-Class guys, they will get a jug of powder. When that jug is empty, they will get another jug. Well, actually, they'll have probably five or six of them sitting on the shelf. Ideally all from the same batch. But they will redo their load. They will redo and verify their load development to make damn good sure it's exactly the same. And if they get down to a certain amount before a competition, they will stop. They will go pop a brand new jug and they'll start then because they want to be able to shoot this whole competition out of one jug. Correct. Or even better, they want to be able to shoot a whole season out of one batch of powder. Now, I will say... For that caliber of shooter, it makes a difference. Because I have noticed on my IMR 40-64, from one batch to the next, I have to change my. Load data just a little bit. One or two tenths of a grain. One or two tenths of a grain makes a big difference when you're shooting at 1,000 yards. Yeah, Stuart heard saying WCA-44 and H-335 are both surplus powder made by Olin DuPont for the military. All I'm going to say is I've heard plenty of people tell me, oh, use H-335. 35 data. And that's bull crap. At least for my jug, like sample size. It gets you in the ballpark though. And that's really what they're, what they're going for. Yeah. And raggle. I got this jug from Nick DeVrata's at red eye reloading years ago during COVID when you couldn't get powder or primers to save your fricking life. I get a lot of my gunpowder from dead people. Yes. Yes. I got a lot of my gunpowder from a dead person who I'd like to think his spirit is still lingering around those jugs. Which is good. Hopefully it will help your accuracy. It hasn't improved too so far. Oh no. Maybe he hates you. You're using incorrect load data. He's probably some grumpy old codger. It's like, you're doing it wrong! You're using the wrong primers! He's going to be really upset when I dip into those federal gold medal match primers that I've had on standby for my. 308. Dude, I have boxes upon boxes of them. I do like those. Those are good primers. I'm aware. That's why when I found all of them in the 40mm grenade can, I was like, ooh, Christmas in August. It's Christmas. Effects of storage conditions. Now, I will be the first to admit that Other than keep it dry, I used to be in the camp of it doesn't freaking matter. But after several years of having powder in my un-air-conditioned garage, I'm starting to change my opinion a little bit that it do change some things. Temperature swings, high to low temp, temperature cycling of any chemical will increase the rate of decay of those chemical compounds. assuming they're not perfectly stable chemical compounds, which gunpowder isn't. That's why we like it. It's not that stable. The more unstable something is, typically, the more explosive or radioactive something is. All of our favorite chemicals are unstable. So what I will tell you is if you live in a high humid environment, high humidity environment, where you get temperature swings, keep your powder clean. At a consistent temperature, if at all possible. Keep it at a consistent humidity level, if at all possible. As close to consistent as you can. My powder and primers all live in my basement where there is a dehumidifier and it never gets much. Warmer than 68, 70 degrees. And it never gets much cooler than 66 to 68 degrees. That sounds hilarious, given where I'm from. Well, I mean, my basement is also deeper than your water table. True. Well, look, it's a thing you're going to have to fight more than I do because I can store my stuff below ground where the temperature is more stable, and I can keep a dehumidifier running down here. A lot of guys near me that do not have the ability to store their powder indoors in climate control in the basement, here's what they do. They take a refrigerator that they find on the side of the road that still kind of functions. They set it at the second warmest temperature they can. They leave it in their garage and they put the powder in there because it keeps the moisture out of the air. It keeps the powder at a consistent temperature. That works. And it just doesn't run in the winter. It's also a great place to keep beers for reloading beers, I'm told. You're told. I don't have a garage fridge yet. Yet. I'm still building the walls and insulating for my garage machine shop where I could maybe put a fridge. That's fair. All right. Optimum barrel timing. Now, this has to do with barrel whip. Yeah. And for anybody that doesn't believe barrel whip is a thing. Watch high speed camera footage. We have a lot of it. If you scroll back far enough on our Instagram, I have a slowed down video that was recorded. like focused on the barrel of one of my ARs at the moment the round discharges. And you can watch the tip of that barrel do this, like wave at the bullet as it goes down range. All barrels whip to some extent. The amount of whip depends on the material composition of the barrel, the barrel profile, and the temperature of the barrel as well as ambient air temperature to some extent. Yeah. And humidity, a little bit. Now, it should go without saying that kind of in a similar... For a similar reason that traditional bench rifle shooting teaches you to shoot in the natural pause between your breaths, not when you're expanding or contracting your chest and all that, you're looking for things to be as still as possible at the moment you break the shot. And for the same reason... the perfect time for that bullet to leave the barrel is when the barrel is at rest and is not actively in the process of flapping up and down. Well, what you're looking for is the midpoint. Is it to be at one of the nodes where the barrel reaches the same or as close to the similar point in that oscillation up. And down as possible? Yes, Stuart, you are correct. It is technically barrel oscillation. And yes, it is in three dimensions. It is not just in two dimensions up and down. It's up and down, side to side. It actually forms almost a migrating figure eight. Yes, but we are very simple people and we have very simple fans, so we have to simplify things sometimes. It's easiest to think of as a modified sine wave. That's the easiest way to think about it. You want your bullet to exit at the midpoint of that wave every single time. And that's why velocity timing of your rounds matters and tuning to your barrel matters. Because if you can get to the point where you're say plus or minus 10 feet per second of where your barrel is perfectly level, your rounds are going, well, not perfectly level at the same point. Anyway, your rounds are going to be more likely to hit the same place because they're exiting the barrel more consistently. Yeah. Now I'm going to, I'm not going to delete this banner out. We're going to move on, but we're going to come back to this in just a second. We got to hop over something that I think is an obvious falsehood. Pick the load that is X percent under max. I filed this under old reloading wives tales, FUD lore, because I've had at least one old hand reloader try to proffer this advice to me like, Oh yeah, you just, you know, you, you find your max load and you pick something that's like, percent under that and that that's gonna be your most accurate load and not only is that almost never proven to be accurate in my experience but i think it's actively counter and counterproductive because most loads i've fired out of rifles actually get less consistent or less accurate and the group sizes open up when you push them beyond a certain point until you hit the next node Or you blow your chamber in half. And you're really liquidating your primers. Yeah. There is a point of diminishing returns. No, you're right. If you bypass your last safe node, is what I'm going to call it, your last safe node, if you get past that, you get into destroying things territory. Now, how do we know it's our last safe load? You got to read the cases and you got to read the primers. and look for those overpressure signs. Once you start getting into dangerous overpressure signs, you need to back it off to the last node that you know was good. Yeah, and Stuart, I'm not ignoring your comment. I'm coming back to it. There's a thing here. We've got to get past this one that's bullcrap to get to the thing that I think actually matters, and it ties optimum barrel timing and your comment together. I do like when my primers look flat. That means I'm going as fast as I should be. I don't like pancake primers. They make my butthole twitch a little bit. But then again, I. Weatherby makes a very strong action. For a reason. Yeah, but I've... In my beginning reloading days, I made some very, very flat primers. We all do. Yeah. Some of us do it on purpose. I don't do it on purpose anymore. All right. Here's the thing that I've kind of been coming around to recently. So bear in mind that I started using Gordon's reloading tool ever since Raggle shared it with me. And I've been dipping my toe into kind of a different line of thinking beyond, beyond where I started with reloading, where it was basically like, I'm, I'm using published load data. I'm doing my traditional ladder tests. I'm just picking the load that makes the smallest group size. And even though I'm partly the best shooter on earth, I understand the fundamentals. I'm a decent enough shot to tell the difference between a one and a half inch group and a one inch group and a half inch group. My skill set allows me to tell those three apart. Yeah. But what GRT and the addition of a chronograph has done is it has started to clue me in on the fact that like there are certain variables here that are making much, much smaller extreme spreads in terms of velocity. And I am... coming to the idea using grt and paying more attention to like the case fill level that there might. Be that that does help your your average spreads. There does seem to be something to this idea that The less airspace you have in the case, the closer you get to 100% case fill, the more consistent the round gets, and also the closer you get to 100% burn rate in your barrel. You do. Because you get a more equivalent distribution of powder so that the powder can burn most evenly. And this is where I'm coming back to what Stuart was saying. It does not matter when the bullet exits in the oscillation as long as it's in the same point every time. And that comes from having a narrower extreme spread of your muzzle velocities. True. The reason why I said the midpoint is because it's just easier for people to visualize. It's true. It doesn't really matter. It could be at the top of the whip. It could be at the bottom of the whip. It doesn't matter. But the midpoint is easier for people to visualize. Yeah. But here's where these three things all kind of come together. If you can nail through strategic choice of your powder, one that has the right bulk and the right burn rate, that you hit 100% case fill and 100% burn rate, and the muzzle velocity. Consistent velocity. The consistent velocity is also at the point where your oscillation is at the midpoint, when all those... Or the same point every time, I suppose. When all those things line up, you now have found a very, very accurate hit load. So it's one of those things where it's like no one of these things by itself in a vacuum gets you to the goalpost. You might get a more accurate round than another by playing around with your ladder, or you might find a more accurate load by finding a certain muzzle velocity... But it's when you get muzzle velocity, case fill, burn rate, all those things line up together. Now all of a sudden we have a really, really accurate round. And that's multiple moving targets that all hit each other at the same time. Exactly. So kind of to the point I started off talking about, there's a lot of these things that There's a carnal truth on a lot of them. They sound like they make sense. Optimum barrel timing makes sense. 100% burn rate case film makes sense. Certain powders that just seem to shoot lights out in certain cartridges, that makes sense. And people will cling to these things like they're religion. And it's not that they're wrong, but it's that they're not always universally correct. And part of the issue that you can get is some of the guys, like the guy that I learned how to reload from, He was a. 30 cal guy. So all he shot was. 30 caliber cartridges if it was a rifle. He shot a. 308,. 30- 06, or a. 300 Win Mag. He recommended to me, IMR 40-64 is the only rifle powder you need. I mean. It was the only rifle powder he needed. It just does well in those cartridges. Yeah. It was the only rifle powder he needed for sure. I have four rifle powders now. But it's also like saying... Some of them shoot way better. It's also like saying Win 296 is the only pistol powder you'll ever need. If the only thing you ever shoot is. 37 and. 44 Magnum, that's not bad advice. It's the only powder you really need. But if you try to make 9mm with Win 296, you're going to have a really frustrating experience. Yeah, definitely. Or a very explosive experience. One or the other. Powder that slow and that small of a case, that's not a happy marriage. Not really. Anyway... Flash hole size. I will be the first to admit you could start a fist fight in a reloading shop over this one target because there are manufacturers that make specific brass for traditionally large primer rounds. Very small flash holes. With very small flash holes. And you also find people that make like large, like 308. They'll make it in large primer or small primer. You'll find different brass manufacturers that will only make their stuff with larger flash holes or smaller flash holes. I ran into this recently with a bunch of, oh, who was the manufacturer? It was an IK case head on 5.56 and Higgs rounds. And they used the tiniest goddamn flash. Hole Oh, did it bust your rod? Smashed. I mean, it pretzeled two of my decapping pins. That'll happen. Look, I will tell you this. If you are looking for the most consistent round possible, you need to control for flash hole size to a degree. Because the amount of The amount of burning primer compound that enters the main powder well of your round is going to change based on the timing, based on the size of that flash hole. Stuart's right, Igman. Igman. Not bad brass, but goddammit, after I munched two friggin' decapping pins, I was pissed. If you are. trying to control for as many variables as possible, flash hole size is going to matter to a point. If you have a 50% larger flash hole volume, not the diameter, the volume of the hole, which is a factor of diameter, you're going to get a slightly different powder ignition rate and therefore a slightly different powder burn rate. Whether it'll be faster or slower, it's gonna depend a little bit on the powder and the primer you're using, the temperature of the burn of the powder, the temperature of the burn of the primer. But when you're looking for consistency, you need consistency in as many things as possible. Now, for my 30-06 load, I use Federal Gold Metal Match cases. That's what I use. Federal Gold Metal Match cases. They haven't changed anything about those cases. In a very long time. They just work. But in my five, five, six plinking loads, I just kind of use whatever, because most of the time I'm shooting at targets between 250 and 25 yards. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of this can be mitigated by, I feel like a lot of this discussion about, I mean, I think, I don't think flash hole sides is a wife's tale. It's valid. I feel like a lot of it can be mitigated as long as you accept the fact that your high precision and your max charges. Max charge really matters for consistency in case. All need to be worked up with extra attention paid to brass sorting. You could do what I've done with my Precision 556 where I didn't go out and buy starline brass, but I did do a lot of case volume measuring across a bunch of different head stamps to make sure that like all these case heads are within like two tenths of a grain of water the same volume. Yeah a reasonable similarity in volume to with to whatever tolerance that you find acceptable for your load yeah but there are there are some brass in that box behind me that i am currently processing that i know for damn sure i cannot load my standard nine millimeter load in that brass Because it is a stepped case. 9mm brass, it will blow up my gun. Because the case volume is significantly smaller. And side note. Rago saying that large and small primer brass for. 308 and. 45 ACP. I'm going to tell you that whoever had the bright idea to make small primer pocket. 45 ACP should be punched in the dick. I actually shot a fair number of that out of my 97B because I didn't have to buy a second size of primers. So I looked for brass that had that. Also, whoever thought to make the stepped 9mm case definitely deserves dick punch. It was Blazer. Blazer? I mean, even Blazer that isn't the stepped case, though, that is consistently some of the trashiest freaking brass I've ever seen in my life. I would almost rate Wolf... I would almost rate Wolf Gold over Blazer as far as brass quality, and that's saying something. Yeah, the Blazer brass tends to crack a lot sooner than Wolf Gold. It's noticeably lighter. It is. It is. It has less zinc? It's tinier. No, more zinc, less copper. So you know that when brass cases clink together, it makes a very distinct note, right? Mm-hmm. Blazer is tinnier. I don't know. It's because of the higher zinc content. Yeah. Zinc is cheaper than copper. Zinc and copper mix together makes brass. Whatever it is, I don't care for it. And Raggle, if you bring that small primer 45 ACP to Louisiana. Oh, you live in Louisiana. If you bring it to my parish, I'm going to demand. that you smash it all with a hammer. You shouldn't reload it. Nobody should. Stuart's right. The purpose of a blazer is throw away cheap ammo. That's really the purpose of it. Look, the reason why people made step nine millimeter cases and any stepped cases, because I've seen step 45 ACP cases as well. is because smaller case volume allows the same amount of powder to generate slightly more pressure. So they save money, and it costs you less cents per round to shoot. That's why it is. That's what it is. Still dumb. But if you are reloading, and you built your load for a non-stepped case, do not put that load in a stepped case unless you try working up to that beforehand. Cause it will result in significantly different pressures. So raggle, I don't for what wound up being the most, the most accurate charge I've found for my 77 grain match Kings. The powder was right up to the bottom of the, um, the bottom of the shoulder, maybe a little bit up, up the shoulder. Bear in mind that I'm seeding a 77-gram Match King to magazine length, so I'm driving that bullet a whole lot down into the case. Let's see here. Last on the list, Jump and Jam. I have mixed feelings about this. It depends more on the bullet than anything else. Because I'll tell you this, Match Kings and Game Kings does not matter. Hornady A-Max? Super, super picky. Very, very picky. I went through an incredibly frustrating time and sent quite a number of Hornady AMAGs sailing into the berm trying to figure out how to make those fucking things group. And the absolute best I ever managed was right at a one-inch group with IMR 46-4, which we've already acknowledged for a. 30 cal. 308 is definitely the right powder to start with. It's not a bad starting point. And I was individually weighing every charge to a tenth of a grain. But even then, to get down to a one-inch group, I had to really toy around with the jump and the jam a lot. And when I finally found the magic combination, that group size went down to one inch. And then I switched to 168 grain Match Kings, and the group size dropped another half of an inch, and it doesn't give a shit if you ram the bullet halfway to the friggin' muzzle or you shove it halfway to the primer pocket. Does not care. Does not care. And for the people that don't know, jump and jam refers to when you seat the cartridge. When you seat the bullet in the cartridge. Well, no, no, no. When you put the cartridge in the rifle. Okay. Okay. Is the bullet engaged in the rifling, or is it back from the rifling? And how much back? And how much... Yeah. And to be fair, some cartridges, some bullet designs, really like to get a bit of a running start before they hit the rifling. And some of them like to be just about to have a little bit of a make-out session with the rifling, but not quite in it. And some of them like to have rifling engraved on the bullet. Just shove it all the way in there. I wonder if. The newer style of accelerating rifling or increased twist rifling or however you want to call it, where they vary the twist rate through the rifle. Gain twist. I wonder how that would do with AMAXs and Game Kings. I don't want to buy a new barrel just to do science. But I kind of want to buy a new barrel just to do science. I don't know. I mean, theoretically, you can get up to the same... You can get to a faster twist without shredding the bullet or shredding the jacket because you progressively spin it up to speed over distance. I wonder if that will decrease the amount that jump jam matters for some bullets. Because if you could make... If you could make. Hornady A-Maxes perform like Match Kings by using a gain twist rifling or a variable twist rifling, I could be convinced. Yeah, Stuart's saying progressive rifling dates back to World War I. It's not a new thing. I think it's kind of a new. Well, it's new in consumer bolt actions and consumer semi-autos. It was a thing in cannon-level firearms, like artillery pieces. Yes. Well, I mean, artillery pieces, even like 20 millimeters, which is still a cannon, but still. Yeah, that's still a cannon. Like your Lotties and your Soul of Therns and that kind of shit. Yeah, exactly. Your wife has just put the smack down on you. She has. To be fair, I have done the spending. Yeah. Our wives do keep us honest, though. They do. And it's good that we need them to. So, yeah, this is one of those things where like, I, I would, depending on the way the conversation was going around jumper jam, I would be equal. I would, I would equally jump on the person swearing that jumping jam matters and jump on the person that swears it doesn't because they're both right and both wrong at the same time. Yeah. It, Much like, are there more accurate powders? This is a depends. Yeah. And that's the weird thing about this. This weird little hobby is like, there's a whole bunch of stuff that kind of matters depending. And some of it, I'd argue a lot of it kind of doesn't matter. Depending like, especially if you are the person that only ever shoots at about a hundred yards or from a deer stand, looking to engage a deer at less than 75 yards. Most of this is kind of irrelevant as long as you're getting near enough velocity. Oh, God, the comments comes at the last minute. Is it really spending if it's an investment? It was definitely not an investment. I mean, I have invested in air quotes, substantial money in a variety of things that I'm pretty sure are not worth more than I paid for them. If that's how we're defining investment. but they make me happy. So there's that. Hey man, my stock market picks go bad all the time. So you're not, you can't be much worse. I mean, now on another note, my dad and I were having this conversation fairly a couple of years ago. He got curious. He has a Smith and Wesson model 39, which I've told him. Oh yeah. There's two guns in his collection. I want one of them in the will. That's one of them. And it's not, that it's a Smith Model 39, even though it's a beautiful-looking gun. I'd love to have it. It's the fact that it's my dad's gun. It has sentimental value to me. But he got curious, like, adjusted for inflation, what was it worth today? And we came to find out that the Smith Model 39 that he bought back in the 70s, adjusted for inflation because he still had the original receipt, it has held 100% of its value since then. So is the Thompson. So is an A1 Thompson. So the moral of the story is guns are better... Buy more guns. Guns are better investments than almost anything. Yeah, I mean, if you keep them in good shape, I mean, you could say that about a lot of things. I mean, if you had a factory new 78 Camaro, it's probably a better investment than gold. Yeah, but... I got to admit, that old blue wood grip 39 is beautiful. Oh, it's freaking beautiful. It's hard to argue. It's hard to argue with it. Especially if it's got just enough holster wear. You know what I'm saying? The edges are just starting to show. Not really much holster wear. He didn't holster carry this thing. This was like... Oh, so it's mint. This thing stayed in like a leather lamb's wool on the inside of. like, case for years. Mmm. It is a pretty freaking gun. I will admit, the only detractor is, a couple years ago, he asked me to help him track down some extra magazines for it, because I think he only had one, one of the original blued factory Smith magazines. Sure. And, um, couldn't find that exact magazine anywhere. So the ones we got are silver. That's hard. The ones we got are silver in color. That's okay. I mean... It's okay, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in this beautiful old Balut Smith. Yeah, I can see how it would. I will say that I was this close to getting a 5906 and God, to this day, if I had a chance to get one, I think I would derail a lot of friggin' plans to pull money out of savings to go get it. I know a guy that has an auto mag and 30 carbine that i want so bad i know it sucks i know it's unreliable i know it will be terrible but i need it in my life after your wife gets a bathroom remodel and how i am working on that. Rachel, I am here for you. I am trying to keep in mind. I filled the master bedroom with stuff from the garage to finish the construction. Of the garage instead of working on the master bedroom. There's a bathroom attached to the bedroom. Rachel, I'm on your side. I'm trying to keep them on track. I'm trying. I gotta get the machine shop done. Enough that I can heat it for this winter then I can stop I gotta get lights and heat in there and a dehumidifier which is easy that's quick it's almost done being insulated it will be done being insulated tomorrow and it will be sheeted Saturday so I can install the heat probably next. Weekend and then back to the master bedroom. Yeah definitely because then I'll be able to put the garage back together. Oh, Rach. Unfortunately, your neighbors live way too close that they can hear y'all banging away at six in the morning. It's my neighbors having a domestic dispute next door at two in the morning and six in the morning that we can hear. My neighbors are too close. And in my opinion, if your neighbors are within rifle shot and I can shoot an awful long way, they are too close. I mean, my neighbors are within like baseball throwing range. Your neighbors are within soft kick of a soda can range, but I've seen pictures of your neighbor. Yeah, I live in suburban hell one day. That's all right. Hey, man, look, better to have a place than not. True, true. And these days with seven, especially at the cost. Oh, God, with 7.7% interest rates. I mean, I'll just be thinking my lucky stars that I'm not homeless. I know my brother just had a baby and he's looking at having kids. to upgrade his house and... That interest rate. Yeah. I wish I could help him out, but... No. That interest rate. All right. Well, I guess we punt this one out the door. We had a good old time tonight. We talked about some fun stuff. I think that the ATF is going to pull shenanigans because... you know, we have to always bear in mind that the power invested in any position or any agency always outlives the people in that industry or in that agency. And even though the president and the director of the ATF seem to kind of be, you know, pulling the W lever for the gun community right now, I'm fairly certain that we're going to live long enough to watch that trend reverse itself. So, you know, I think the only reason they did what they did was to prevent another lawsuit that got the NFA gotten rid of. They're going, nope, look, there's no lawsuit to be had. You have no standing because we're not enforcing it. Yeah. That's what they're doing. And that being said, I'm watching with rapt attention as New Jersey takes their shot at trying to convince the Scots that AR-15s can be banned. So. Because of slave codes. Good job, New Jersey. If your whole argument about keeping a law on the books is that we used to use it to disenfranchise African-Americans. And Native Americans. You're probably the bad guy. And the Chinese. Forget not the Chinese. So, yeah, we might be having another conversation in recent times about wins for the DGUN community, but I'm pretty sure that this is a temporary one at best, if not a Pyrrhic victory. Yeah, I think we're more likely to see a long-term victory with the assault weapons ban cases that we see heading to SCOTUS. I think that's more likely to be a long-term win for us than what we currently have with suppressors and SBRs. I mean, I'll be overjoyed. Although, you know, the one thing we didn't talk about, after this bit of exuberant fun, anybody that has a shotgun over 18 inches in length, that thing's going to be worth some money when all this is over because people are chopping off barrels left and right right now. It's not like shotgun barrels were ever that expensive to begin with. Yeah but i'm seeing some coach guns freaking chopped down in like eight inch things like coach coach guns yeah they're getting they're getting awful spicy sure i'm not gonna i've seen some of them that are cut down to where it's almost at the at the plastic i'm not gonna lie i i've been thinking about taking one of those old hatfield mccoy like crack barrel single barrels and chopping that bastard down because like you can get those things stupid cheap and I have a hacksaw and I would send pictures of me hacksawing the barrel off to my co-host just to watch him become irrationally aggravated about it just use a pipe cutter it will give you a nicer edge but I wouldn't be having as much fun. At least use a file to clean it up afterwards what's a file? Oh god what if I hacksaw it and then dremel the edge I guess that's fine. As long as you burn ahead the grip with like, I don't know, a chainsaw or something. That's fine. Oh, the audio listeners really, really hack job it. And I'll accept audio listeners cannot see the look of pure resignation on his face where he just said, screw it. There's no point trying to talk. I can't stop Phil because I'm too far away. Bold of you to assume you do anything but encourage me if you were here. That's true. We are actually discussing whether or not we would get banned from YouTube if we took up wax bullet dueling. Dude, if we lived in the same zip code, I'm pretty sure we'd be sharing a cell together. Oh, it would be problematic to be sure. I'm pretty sure our wives would just let us run off into the sunset and then they'd move in together. That'd be wise. Oh, yes. The AR-1897. That requires. The machine shop? A rotary phase converter. Oh. Yes. It requires a rotary phase converter for the machine shop that I am building. In fact, I think what I'm going to do, I'm going to try to do as much of it as possible on manual equipment. No CNCing at all. We'll see if I can make it happen. The hard part is going to be thread milling that AR-15 buffer tube. interface, I may have to custom or I may have to buy a tap, which would be kind of expensive, but it'll be worth it because it'll be hilarious. And that's what matters. It is. It will upset my range. That's always a plus. All right, let's punt this out the door. It's nine o'clock on a Thursday night. You've got work tomorrow. I don't have work tomorrow, but I have chores because I am also doing improvement this weekend. Hey, man. Inertia will get you. If you don't do the maintenance, the maintenance will make time for itself. So you best do it first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Good night, everybody. Have fun. Keep out of trouble. And if you're going to get into trouble, at least send me pictures of it so we can enjoy it together. Yes. Good night, y'all. Good night. We'll be right back. Raising values while we watch the clock. Turn the dial, cut through the tricks. Welcome to Matter of Fact. 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