Matter of Facts: First AR for a Young Lady

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 the Matter Facts Podcast. You know what I forgot to do? What? I forgot to start the hardware recorder, which I just remembered because this is the least professional podcast on the internet today and possibly ever. I don't have a hardware recorder. I know, but see, we have a hardware recorder, we have a cloud recorder, we have cloud recordings, we have local recordings. I get multiple bites at the Apple just to make sure we salvage audio out of this freaking train wreck. We call a show. But that is like the weapon of last resort. If everything else goes to hell, I still have... A solid state recorder. Beautiful. Thank Christ. Anyway, I see Raggle, I see my wife, your wife, Katie5PCK, and that might. Be it for the moment. Yep, just the usual band of masochists who enjoy listening to us more often than everybody else does. Or they're just free at this time of night. Boredom could be an excellent explanation for what's going on here. It is Thursday. I have no idea what's on TV anymore because the only thing I watch anymore is reruns. That's because all the best ideas already happen and reruns is all we have left from the good old days. Have you heard that there's this literary theory? I love derailing a conversation immediately. There's a literary theory that there's only like 16 stories. It might even be less than that. But based on Hollywood's tendency to retread some shit over and over and over, that's believable, right? I mean, like there's only supposedly I'll have to do some research on it. We'll talk about it one of these days because I think you'd find it fascinating. But there's only like 16 stories that can be told either tragedies, comedies, heroic epics. And I think there's one more horror. Yeah, horror and then comedy. Of those five, there's still only like four or five each of a sub-story. That's very believable. Let me hit this comment in the chat real quick, and then we'll do admin work, and then we'll get to a show. Raggle was saying, damn, I thought the ladies would be on screen. So we've actually talked about inviting our spouses onto this show together, and I think it'd be really interesting. They should do the show next Thursday while I'm fishing. Is your wife not going to be... No, I guess she's not. No, it's the guy's fall trip. This is fishing from... So we wake up, we have a quickie breakfast, go fishing. Come back, eat real breakfast, go fishing. Eat lunch, go fishing. Eat dinner, go fishing. And then play dominoes. That doesn't sound like near as much fun as your front-loading it to be, but I don't enjoy fishing as much as you do, I guess. I love fishing. I don't. Anyway, we have talked about getting the wives to come on with us. It's in the cards. It's just schedules and tangents and things. Anyway, admin work. Then we have stuff to do. If you'd like to promote Bad Decisions by becoming a patron, that link's in the show description. A buck a month allows you to join in the mayhem and usually incite me to horrible financial decisions like the night vision and the shotgun and I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a number of things. Chainsaw? The chainsaw was a pretty good financial decision, actually. All in all, a chainsaw is usually a winning play. Yes, but if it leads to the purchase. Of a much larger chainsaw, then it will be an awful financial decision. Depends on how big of a saw. And if you buy an Alaskan rig for doing your own timber cutting. Not right now, at least. Anyway, if you'd like to buy merch for the vibes from the Southern Gals, that link is also in the show description. And if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee, code MOF. As usual, disaster coffee's in the cup. That mine's mostly vodka. I mean, you know, you had a day at work. You're entitled. And I am having a day off of work tomorrow in preparation for going on a week-long fishing expedition. That seems very reasonable and rational. You know, I think I'm going to text my wife from the cabin in the form of an old-timey expedition style. Like a British explorer in South Africa writing a letter home. That might be entertaining. Except you're ruining the surprise because she's watching. Oh no, it's actually going to make it worse because she knows it's coming and she knows that I'll overcommit. Because Nick has never heard an idea he doesn't want to overdo. Hey, look, if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. This is true. This is true. All right, let's hit a couple of mini-topics first. Bread and Circus from this administration. We've been really good about not talking politics for a while because, you know, it gets a little exhausting after a while to scream and yell about how Like a person with a room temperature IQ could do a better job of running the country than whatever idiot politicians are in charge at any particular moment. But one good thing will come out of this. We have to explain what this is we're referring to. I'm referring to the $ 5, 000 checks I got promised to taxpayers today. which will almost certainly be funded to the tune of like $ 800 billion to a trillion dollars worth of printing more money. Oh, definitely. We haven't already done plenty of that. Yeah. And completely strip-mined our own currency and devalued our currency and ramped inflation up to numbers never before seen. And, you know, the fact that we are cruising headfirst towards $ 40 trillion in debt because we won't get our spending or control. No, we're past $ 40 trillion. We're looking at $ 41 trillion. And on top of all that. The perfect thing to do is try to bribe the voters with $ 800 billion in unsecured money printing to hand out to the plebs. This gives off Fall of Rome vibes. It does. Although, I will say this. If Trump's going to send $ 5, 000 out to me, I'm 100% going to spend it immediately on a PBS 14. I'm going to do exactly what happened the last time the government said, here, free money to stimulate the economy. I stimulated the economy. Yeah, because otherwise it's going to be devalued in the next two days. Yeah, that was kind of my point of view. So you order that and PBS 14 is what you do. That was kind of my point of view at the time. It was like, okay, if I put this money. Yeah, the only thing you could do other than purchase something that you've been putting off for a while would be shove it into the economy. But I'll be honest, I think we're within two to three years of a reset that is going to crush. Crush people. Yeah, I think you're probably right. I don't like to put timelines on these things because, number one, the economy can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is a quote for a reason. True. And that includes hedge funds, as we saw with the meme stock push with GameStop. They remained irrational longer than the hedge funds remained solvent. Also back to. 2008 when all the mortgage-backed securities were falling apart, catching fire, but they wouldn't lower the valuation on them. Not until everybody managed to dump, not until all the big banks managed to dump enough of them to stay solvent. Yeah, that's usually how that happens. Look, I mean, anytime the government doles out cash like that, even your tax returns is money printing. Because the taxes you pay don't actually go anywhere. They just, poof, they're gone. They disappear. They shred them. Even if you paid in physical dollars, they would just shred it. Because what they're doing is... Also because the government spent more than they took in. Right. So, like, even if. Even if you, like, you gave, like, here's my money to the federal government. They spent that and then they gave themselves a loan for another, like, 25 to 35% of that amount. And that was all spent. So, when they have to give you money back because you gave them too much, yes, that is money printing. Yeah, it is. But... Two, taxes are not used to fund the government anymore, except for state and local. At the federal level, taxes is pulling money out of the economy to slow down inflation, to try to keep it at their 2% target goal year over year. 2% year, 2% to 3% year over year. Yeah. Although, let's do some math here. If it's going up 2% to 3% every year from the previous year, What happens after about five or six or seven years? Functionally, you get to the point where you're quite considerably more devalued. You get to the boomer mean where it's like, number go up. Yes, the number of inflation goes up. And that's a big part of the reason why stock market number goes up. Because productivity, while productivity has increased... And AI is going to lead to some productivity increases for certain sectors. It's not increasing as fast as the economy is growing. It's not. It's not increasing 500%. No. In fact, now what we're seeing is the guy that called the 2008 mortgage-backed security crisis, he's betting against not just the AI companies, not just the big tech companies, all their subsidiary suppliers down the lane. down to the people that build generators, the people that mine the rare earths, the people that process the ores. He's shorting everything. Now, hey, he was right once. Does it mean he's going to be right twice? Not necessarily. Not necessarily, but I would not want to bet against Michael Burry. He's a very, very smart man. I don't know enough to say that he's right or wrong. What I can say is, if not. Bubble, why bubble-shaped? Yeah, I mean... Caterpillar's stock went up, what, 150% in the last three to six months? A lot of heavy machinery being sold. No, just generators. They build generators, and that's what boosted that. They build natural gas generators. They're one of the builders of those for the AI plants. Mm-hmm. Problem is, they're... They have sold more generators than they can build in the timetable that they're supposed to deliver them. Is this kind of like the stock prices for all these AI companies has gone up so high so fast that it is almost mathematically impossible for the companies to be worth enough to justify the price? Yes. No, it's not almost. It is completely mathematically impossible. Just like Tesla, just like SpaceX. These companies are valued more– some of these companies are valued more than the GDPs of not small countries, not shitholes, European countries. Yeah, the guy that comments, he's got– I think he's got the smoking gun here saying that Warren Buffett hoarding a lot of cash sounds like he's getting ready to buy up all these businesses. But here's the thing. One thing– okay, you might be on the same thing. Well, I was going to say that, like, Warren Buffett is traditionally the guy that is, like, always be buying, put in, you know, time in the market is better than time in the market. This is not a guy who has made a freaking phenomenal pile of money by being an alarmist. No, he is not. Or by diverting from his plan and his schedule without. Really, really good market intelligence. And the fact that he is changing his position as far as, like, stocks, bonds, and everything, and cash at this conspicuous of a time, I'm going to assume he's probably on to something. Part of why I'm not as concerned about what he is doing is this. He has said that he is not going to leave his fortune to his children. He's going to donate everything. I think his kids get a few million dollars, like five or ten million dollars, which is basically nothing to him. Yeah, but enough that unless they are gigantic screw-ups, they'll be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Exactly. Now, in order to liquidate that stuff at good cash value, he has to do it over a number of years leading up to his death. They can't just do it when he dies because if he liquidated everything in an hour, it would crash the stock market. It would. He's too big of a player. Now, And also, it's in his best interest to liquidate it at what he believes is the top of the market. Exactly. But we know he is quite old. He's in his 80s, I believe. Possibly 90s. I don't remember. But he's quite old. He's above the average age of mortality, I'm pretty sure. Now, could this be him unwinding his portfolio in order to prepare for his demise? Absolutely could be. He could have been starting to roll the... I think he actually started... holding a high cash position like two, three years ago. Now, you're going to get the most dollar for his assets, these stocks, if you do it over a multi-year to 10-year span, probably. It could also be that he's seeing the same thing that me and Phil are worried about and Michael Berry's worried about. And we might have a massive bubble coming worse than 08. And the reason why I say worse than 08 is because the average consumer's cash holdings have been crushed and never recovered. But here's the reason why I'm a little bit more concerned about what's going on right now versus 2008. Oh, yeah. We've started buying our own bonds. Yeah, and propping up the Japanese bond market, too. Yeah. Now, I explained this. I explained this to my wife, and I think I explained this to you, like, what exactly this is like. Because, like, unfortunately, when you. Talk about economics and finance on a macro level to people without a background in finance and economics, like, it starts to sound like lawyers speak after about five seconds, which is fair. Because it is. But this is as. If, like, in this analogy, I am a creditor. You are the person who has loaned me this money. You are Visa, MasterCard, whatever. Mm-hmm. I ran up a $ 10, 000 balance on the card and you said, Bill, I need money because you've maxed out your credit card. And instead of paying off my debt, I have gone and gotten a loan or found some cash in a mattress or more than likely printed off. Of a bubble jet and told you, hey, Nick, I got a great idea. Instead of me paying my debt back, I'm going to purchase the debt from you so that when I pay it back, I'll be paying myself back instead of you. I am purchasing the right to collect the debt that I ran up on credit. With more credit. With more credit or with money I printed off the bubble jet because that's how governments work. And if this sounds. Like the most psychotic Ponzi scheme on earth, it freaking is. And it's why the minute I heard that our government was doing this, I was like. Sweet baby Jesus. Oh, but it gets worse. It always does. It gets worse because, all right, everybody knows what a pension is, right? Yeah. You work for a company for years. They claim they will pay you X number of dollars every year or every month or however it's structured from the day you retire till the day you die. It's an annuity payment. Now, what's something they can't do with that money? They can't play the casino stock market with it. But what they can do is buy government bonds. Now, it really doesn't matter to them what the rate of return is on those government bonds. They just need to know that that $ 2, 000 they promised you every month, they will have to give to you every single month. Now, the way that they did that was a lot of them bought bonds. A lot of them bought bonds, 30-year bonds, long-term bonds at really low interest rates. Who gets a pension anymore? It's all 401ks, IRAs. Government employees. Government employees. That's the only people that have really pensions anymore. Since, what was it? Since 2000, no, it was like 2004, 2003 is when they started going away. And they've only accelerated in going away. Instead of 80% of people being set to receive a pension now, it's like 20%. So all the guaranteed buyers of those pensions 30-year bonds are now gone. And governments throughout the world are having to find new people to sell debt to, and people aren't willing to wait 30 years on half a percent to a percent. Yep. And it's also worth pointing out, because I can hear that somebody in the background that's like, government employees still getting pensions. But KD5, PCK, I'm assuming you're being a little facetious saying, what's a pension? Yeah. So it's worth being. pointing out that even in the government sector where pensions are still fairly common, over the years there's been a massive reduction from the value of the pension and a massive increase in what the employee cost is to pay into it. So even in government where they've held on to that pension system far longer than private sector did, that balance point is shifting where the pensions are getting a lot less generous and they're costing the employee a lot more. And that's actually been happening with the change from the CSRS retirement system to the FERS, or Federal Employee Retirement System. That's when the TSP, which is a 403B, came into play. So they start shifting more of the retirement saving burden to the employee. And they've had. Two or three rate increases in FERS. Since that program was stood up. The most recent one, I. Want to say it's like four times what the employees were originally expected to contribute. That's a lot. I mean, we're still. I want to say it's like 4% and some change. So we're approaching Social Security prices, which, by the way, they're still paying in Social Security. And you'll never see a dime of it if you're under 40. Quite potentially. No, quite probably. I mean, every... I've talked to a couple of financial advisors being that I never like getting one quote. Let's put it that way. I never like getting one quote. I've talked to a couple of different financial advisors for myself and my wife's retirement planning. And we are fortunate enough that we can set aside money for our retirement. We live well below our means is the way I like to run our budget. Because then if we ever get into a problem up a creek, we've got some cushion. We've got some wiggle room. That's called responsibility. Every single one of them has advised us to anticipate our Social Security return being zero. Either zero or substantially reduced. No, they said plan on it being zero for your age group. They said if you get it, great, gravy on top, use it to go on a couple vacations a year. plan on it being zero now these people make their living by I don't want to call it making you money helping you not lose money yeah more than you otherwise would. So and I don't disagree I don't disagree with that but on the flip side of things I'm also like currently witnessing my government and my country's willingness to like like their house on fire to keep warm in the winter. Oh yeah. So I'm kind of like, I think the day that somebody has to admit there's no more social security money for anybody. I think the whole country just comes apart. What it will be is that the amount of money you get from social security, which will still be like two, $ 3, 000 a month will be functionally worthless. That's what it will be. Inflated to the point of useless. Inflated to the point of useless worthlessness. I mean, world war one veterans in the Weimar Republic still got their pension. Every single month. Right. It would buy less than a loaf of bread. For their monthly pension. Both of our wives were saying we're screwed, but take heart, ladies. We both believe in having six months to a year worth of food stocked away. So six months to a year worth of food and being really good at violence. Yes, yes, yes. There is also that. All right. One more. And then we got to get to the main topic. What is an MSC tangent? Miscellaneous tangent. This has nothing to do with anything we're talking about. All right, Phil. Does this have anything to do with this podcast? No. Except for it is somewhat preparedness related, I guess. Your worst enemy as a homeowner is the idiot that owned your house before you. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay, so for the patrons, you guys know that I was running new power out to my garage because I had call it conservatively 10 amps worth of current out at my garage um had an electrician friend of the family um come over and give me a hand pulling the new wire and all that he got curious it's what the voltage i had out at my garage previously was now for all you electricians in the audience it's a 141 foot run underground 14 gauge wire not underground rated interior grade romax on a 40-amp breaker in my panel down here, and two 20-amp breakers in my garage. Now, for those of you that are on audio only, Phil looks like he's about to have a stroke. 14-gauge is not a lot. 14-gauge is very small. 14-gauge is okay for, like, LED lighting. Dude. A 10-amp outlet. 14-gauge is less than I wired up my freaking truck with. And yes, I mean, it's DC versus AC, but.... That is less power than I use for medium-sized DC power projects. Yes. Yes. It was quite small. That's 14 gauge. I knew it was under gauge. I might have 14 gauge in the frigging delivering power between the battery and the radio on that man pad back there. That's a reasonable use of 14 gauge. Yeah, but not running 140 feet for freaking 40 amps. Correct. Now, 40 amp in the panel, 40 amp to a pole breaker in the panel, run to two individual 20 amp breakers outside. Number one, you're not supposed to do that. Number two, the entire garage was ungrounded. Number three, that is terrifying. There was no neutral running back to the panel. Okay. Wait a second. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know how it works. So you just had a hot So you just had a hot and a neutral going 140 feet underground. To drive 40 amps. Theoretically. I think their breaker kept popping, and so they just kept upping the amperage of the breaker until it quit popping. Well, at least they didn't safety wire the stupid thing shut like I've seen some idiots do. So we checked the power at my panel. to confirm that the new wire that i ran which was two gauge by the way that sounds much more appropriate oh yeah for how many for how many amps uh currently 60 max i can go with 75 safely on that wire two two two gauge makes my heart happy thank you two gauges nice two gauges very nice um had about 122 volts at my main coming in well within nominal spec At the garage on that 14 gauge, we had 95 volts. A 22% loss. Now, for people that don't know, 3% is considered acceptable. 3%. Now, 3% is still making my butthole twitch a little bit. When the electrician checked this, he said, do you have a multimeter? I do. Went and got it, and I checked it. They agreed. Because he thought for a second there, his multimeter was broken. They agreed that the previous owner was a psychopath. Yeah! So, everybody I've talked to agrees that that should have started a fire, and probably the only reason why it didn't is the ground contact cooling on the not-shielded-enough wire running through the direct ground. Okay, we have comments. Raggle said, this all sounds like voodoo to me. Raggle... This is what you call in the biz, bad. Real bad. House fire bad. Oh, yes. Essentially, the only thing that was holding that garage from burning down was a considerable portion of luck. And the fact that it doesn't get all that warm here most of the time. I was going to say luck. It's like that meme that I sent you recently where I was like, I don't think your power panel is supposed to be arc welding. No. What was it? Did I say unattended or unsupervised? Unsupervised. Your main breaker panel should not be arc welding unsupervised. That's fair. It also shouldn't be dropping 22% amperage or 22% voltage. My garage door now closes and opens in half the time it used to, so we've got that going for us. KD5PCK is saying he grew up in a shotgun house that had all 110 volt outlets on the outside wall on one circuit. had a supply of pennies in the fuse box. See that? Pennies aren't fuses. That is the shit that I've seen before. That always scares the holy hell out of me. Oh, yeah. I think every fuse panel I've ever pulled out of a house, at least one fuse had a penny in it. At least one. You always pull them all out because you got curious to see what was stuck behind there. Yeah. So the reason I bring this up, preparedness can also mean verifying... the things that could burn your house down ahead of time. Now I did not realize, I knew it was under gauge going out to that garage and I knew it wasn't quite enough power out to that garage. Um, I did not realize how bad it was. Lesson fucking learned from now on. I am going to verify that the wire gauging is appropriate everywhere in this house and in every house I buy from now on for appropriate to the breakers that they're on. and the amperage of the fixtures that are on it. Because switches, outlets, all of that is limited to a set number of amps. And if it's over-gauge wired, that's okay. If it's an oversized breaker on under-gauge wired, that's how you burn shit down. Yeah. So if you guys happen to have a detached structure that was built by a hack like I do, check it. My God, check it. And let me just tell you, I'm not an electrician. Nope. I'm not a plumber. I'm not a framer or carpenter. I am a guy who knows how to do just enough stuff to get by probably well in excess of the average homeowner, but certainly not like I would be putting an addition on the side of my house. Okay, if you understand the skill set I'm describing. It is not cripplingly expensive to find a local carpenter. reputable electrician or plumber or home inspector. Hell, someone who's just a general contractor and can kind of look over everything. And when it's not an emergency and when it's not like, hey, I got to get this done by Saturday so I could sell the house, it's like, hey, when you got time, cut me a decent rate, rip the house apart and make sure everything's cool. Open up, check things. It is. It's very much worth it because if that garage had burnt down, it would have cost me, well, you know, my insurance deductible to replace it, but a shitload of time and effort. Yep. Now, and that's if the smoke damage didn't intrude into your house. Well, fortunately it's a detached garage. So, well, I'm thinking prevailing winds and everything. Else, but yeah, that could entirely be a different issue. But, For me, part of the reason why I didn't really check it is my thought of, well, it's a detached garage. It's 50 feet from my house. If it burns, I get a new garage. But it never did. Luckily, there's no imaginary roads underneath that. There is. Are there? There is. That is that is where the imaginary road runs, which I did not know at the time would stop me from rebuilding the garage. So. Oopsie poopsies. Seriously, guys, if you move into an old house, check that stuff. Because it's one of those ounce of prevention, pound and cure situations. I could have diagnosed that in about 15 minutes with a multimeter and some Google. I could have found that issue. And I probably would have escalated it from waiting five or six years to correct it until I bought a mill. I could have corrected it years ago. I'll tell you honestly, I've got, and it kills me, I cannot remember the brand name. I want to say it might be Fluke, but I don't feel like I spent that much money on it. The basic Fluke models are not that expensive. Well, I'm not talking about a multimeter. I'm talking about like a purpose-built, like an outlet tester. You plug this thing into an outlet. It's got little LEDs on the back of it, and it tells you like, is this grounded? Is this wired correctly? Those kinds of things. But it's also meant to where you plug it into an outlet, and then you go and you start probing your breaker box, and it'll tell you which breaker goes to that thing, that. Circuit that you're plugged into. Black & Decker makes one that's pretty good. I don't think it's Black & Decker. Anyway, my point is that that probably would have told you you had a gigantic problem on your hands the minute you said you weren't, the whole structure wasn't grounded. Oh, my whole house wasn't grounded until they switched our main panel out. When I bought the house, it was entirely ungrounded. I walked down here with the realtor and I went, There's no ground in this panel. Well, how do you know? Because there was no ground rot outside and there's nothing tied to the cold water supply. We had some negotiating room in the price of the house and I still think I did well on it. But I'm betting that came up in the negotiations. Oh, that came up before the negotiations. I sent a list to the realtor of the issues with the house before we Yeah, we did not have... There were no smoke detectors in the house either. Yeah. Not a single one. Check that stuff, guys. You can get a cheap multimeter from Menards or Farman Fleet for about $ 30, $ 40. They come in handy for so much stuff. Check your voltage coming in at the panel. Check your voltage at each circuit. And if you find one that's more than 3% drop from your average voltage that you get at the panel... It's time to start investigating because that could start a fire. True, true. All right. Let's get to the main topic. 34. Hold on. KD5 PCK. I've seen ground on a cable TV service grounded to a natural gas line. I mean, that's that's brassy. But my God, if that went wrong. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. Even if it works, I'm just not comfortable. All right, range report. So I went to the range. I've been making a point of going to the range more often recently. I've been doing a lot of load development, a lot of testing. Not getting as much practice as I would like yet, but you know how low development is. It's a slow, methodical thing. And this time, my daughter. who has not come to the range with me in, I feel like it's been at least two years. It's probably been longer than that. She was up at 6.30 that morning getting dressed and having a protein bar with her dad, and we went to the range together under the auspice of we could shoot. 22s because that's what she usually shoots, but dad has to go do load development first, so you're coming with me. And then after I'd been shooting for a bit, you know, pumping rounds down range and running the chronograph and recording my results in a book and everything, she approaches the bench and asks me if she can shoot my AR, the same one that I offered for her to shoot at summer camp and she shied away from it. I think, I think, with everybody watching her, she got a little nervous. Sure. It was just me and her on the range, nobody else in either direction for like five frigging shooting benches. She saddled up behind that AR, and I explained to her, you know, how to operate it. It was sitting on front rear bags. So, ideal new shooter situation. Oh, yeah. Very low effort from her. I explained to her, like, you know, she could, like, raise and lower the back end and therefore influence the elevation by, like, shifting the bag forward and backwards so it rode up and down the back of that stock. And I explained to her how moving the bag back and forth would let her tilt. It left and right. And I just explained to her, I'm like, look, the bags should hold the rifle. You're just there. To literally put your shoulder against it so it doesn't slide off the back of the bag and pull the trigger. The bags support the rifle. Move the bags until the guns point where you want it to point. And she. Ended up blowing through about 50 rounds, like having, having a good time making pretty respectable groups. I know that that hand load she was shooting really was never well optimized, which is why I stopped loading it. It does about a two inch group at a hundred yards. Okay. And that's what she was doing. I mean, she, she cracked about a two inch group at a hundred yards doing pretty daggum good for herself. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with that load. Cause I know it is, it is a little wild. It's not quite as a node for your rifle. That CFE-223 load, I mean, I. Know from experience when I loaded it that it is about as optimized as that powder is going to give me. Okay. Like, I just, I couldn't quite get enough more velocity to get into what is turning out to be that barrel's preferred node. Because, like, the load I made for Accurate 2528 is shooting like 100 to 120 feet per second faster. And that thing, the group dropped down from two inches to like 1.1. Oh, that's not bad. That's really not bad. Now, like I showed you, I had 10 shot groups. I'm going to count two flyers that were like. Well outside of the range. Clearly user error. Yeah. But the other eight rounds were like 1.1 inch. So I'm going to call that, I'm going to call that good. And I want to say the SD was only like, I mean, the extreme spread was only like 55 or 60 feet per second over a 10 shot group. I really wasn't upset about it. No, I wouldn't be upset about that. I, I try to get, okay. For, for a bolt action precision load, I try to get down below 20, but for a semi-auto for a plinking around 50 is not bad. Yeah. Yeah. But in any case, so this was the first time she's ever shot center fire. This was the first time. Didn't she shoot Tommy's suppressed AR when we were down there? Uh-uh. I thought she did. Maybe it was your wife. She shot a bunch of y'all's various. 22s. I know she liked my Precision. 22. Oh, she liked your Precision. 22 a lot. But at the end of the day, she lit up shooting that AR for the first time. I've seen her that excited to shoot anything in quite a while. And when we were coming home, she told me she'd really kind of outgrown her chipmunk. A chipmunk is just a cricket with a little bit of a nicer wood stock on it. I mean, it's a junior-sized rifle, and she's 14 years old and comes up to here on me. So she's just kind of outgrown the gun. So we had a talk on the way home about... Was it time to look at getting her like a Ruger 10-22, something she could build? Did she want to stay in rimfire? Did she want to get into centerfire? And after a day of chewing on it, she went from. I kind of feel like I've outgrown 22s. I want to shoot centerfire. And then we batted back and forth, either a bolt action 223 or an AR in 223. And she's kind of come around to the idea that she kind of wants her own AR built for her. Nice. This presents two problems. First of all, I have, while I will happily admit, like, you know, you can go spend $ 600, $ 700 and. Get, like, entry-level ARs all day long. Yeah, PSA kit rifle. Which, don't get me wrong, Damn decent. Damn decent. Damn decent. I hesitate to go that direction only because I've handled them. There's nothing inherently wrong with them, but I also know that they are not up to my personal standards for an AR. They are what I would call a rack-grade, acceptable, reliable rifle. Yeah. But I guess... But. I think where I come down is that to me– and this is not like denigrating a PSA. No. To me, a PSA AR is like a high point. If you're going to– if every criticism you have of a high point is that it is not like a $ 600, $ 700 handgun like a Glock or an M & P or a CZ, then my answer is no shit. It's not supposed to be. Yeah. It is not supposed to be. Minimally acceptable. Yeah. And that is what a PSA AR-15 is. It is minimally acceptable. Well, they think of their base models. Some of their mid-grade and higher-end models, while I would not call them quality custom level, they're very good. They're very good. But at that price point, I would still build one. You could, and you'd do better for the price. Yeah, you'd do better for the price, and you'd probably outperform. I agree. So the problem I'm butting up against is that either. We just go get her. A PSA AK, throw a Holosun 407 or something on top of her, maybe a 6-hour, one of the cheaper 6-hour red dots on top, and it'll be a plinking rifle for her. She'll probably have a grand old time. Definitely will. Or I build her something that I would build myself, knowing that even though there's some room to upgrade it, It is not a rifle she's going to outgrow, nor will her shooting skills outgrow anytime remotely soon. Did you, I know me and you discussed this a little bit before the show, did you guys decide between you and her on an SPR or a general purpose? We did not because she is still, she's still kicking it around. And frankly, she's also still kicking around the idea of like, buy one for a bit less something entry-level or have me build something for i personally would rather the two of us build it together so absolutely how it works but like those are all the debates we're having. However will she be upset by the oh shit pin flying across the room and getting lost in the carpet if she doesn't build it. Because her father is going to save her Because I have still not found my oh shit pin, which is sitting out in the yard giggling at me every time I mow. That's great. Yeah. Anybody who has built an AR and not launched a friggin' detent pin in outer space at mock fuck, you have not built ARs. Either the detent pin or the detent pin spring, one of the two, is gone. Just buy four, you'll be fine. And to Radcliffe's point, must it be 5.56? I'm personally going to mandate it to be in 5.56 for a couple of reasons. First of all, 5.56, 2.23, very soft shooting. She's 14. She's 14 and she's also half my weight. Also, I will say, magazine compatibility with the other ARs in the house, ammunition compatibility with all the other ARs in the house, Phil's already reloading that round. That's three really good reasons before we even get into the shootability of five, five, six. And those are all the reasons why, like some of this is being driven by like personal recommendations I make to anybody, but I would tell everyone's first AR get it in, get into five, five, six. Yeah. There's look, I understand not enough good reasons not to, not to start with that. Round, not to start with. I will agree. There are good reasons to go away from that. But not for a new shooter, really, unless the only thing they're doing with it is a suppressor host for home defense. In which case, 300 blackout, end of discussion. Go forth and don't blow out your eardrums. Yeah. And so to Raglo's point right at why not rimfire, I honestly, I think based on the conversation she and I've had, I think she kind of regards rimfire the way I do, which is almost like it's something. To graduate from. Like, I don't get any enjoyment out of shooting Rimfire. You know, there are those people out there that, like... You must not have my flavor of shooting Rimfire, because I try to shoot really tiny things with my Rimfire rounds. I don't know. To me, like, I've never... I just. I literally, until I got this Chipmunk for Piper, and until Gillian inherited this Moreland 990... I had one single rimfire in the entire house, and it was my Henry US survival rifle. And that's it. I've never been that enamored by shooting rimfires. The thing I love about shooting rimfire is it allows me and any other new shooter I take to the range to practice fundamentals for pennies. All day long. I mean, there's truth to that, although... bearing in mind that because I grew up in the suburbs and everything, and we didn't have a lot of firearms around when I was growing up, like my dad had his. 22 that we almost never shot, and his 9mm, which was more of a home defense gun. And the only time we ever really got a chance to go shooting was at my great-grandmother's property out in rural Louisiana. So I just didn't grow up doing a lot of shooting. See, I grew up popping rimfires and pellet guns in the backyard, so. And by the time I got to that point where I was in a position to do a fair amount of shooting, I was back from Iraq. I was a grown man. 2004 had just passed, so the assault weapons ban had sunsetted. And all of a sudden, ARs and AKs were just flush everywhere. So I jumped straight into... Actually, I got into AKs first, but I jumped straight into centerfire. Yeah, I remember you giving me grief for telling you AKs suck. Oh, no. I. And look, I will happily say, and I've said this multiple times on the show, I enjoy shooting my AK. I enjoy shooting my SKS. They're fun guns to shoot. I took them out of the home defense role the moment I realized that 80% to 90% of the ammunition supply for 7.62x39 was all imports, and it didn't even take congressional action to make all that stop. Nope. And guess who was right? This guy. So anyway, I don't think Piper. Is super interested in shooting rimfire anymore. I am not really that interested in shooting rimfire. It wasn't really that interesting shooting rimfire in the first place. She really wants an AR, and it's probably going to be in 5.56 just for all the before-mentioned reasons. But here's the kicker. If we go the route of building this, there's a couple of things to bear in mind. First of all, that this is a 14-year-old teenager. She has been shooting rimfire since she was eight. She knows gun safety. She knows rifle shooting fundamentals. She understands sight alignment. She took to a frigging rifle scope really. Really, really quickly. I know she picked up my first focal plane scope in two rounds. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so far, it seems like she really enjoys shooting off of arrests and off of bags, like kind of more in the vein of like an SPR shooting technique. And because of the difference in upper body strength for me and her, I just don't know if she's going to be to kind of be interested in like shooting standing or shooting unsupported. I would love to spend an afternoon with her working with her on sling shooting. I think that would, I think we could get her into that. I think so too. But I'm also of the mind of like, meet her where she's at. Oh, absolutely. Because it's more important to me at this point that if we go down the route of building her first AR, we build something she. Wants to go shoot. And it is predisposed to the style of shooting she wants to do because it's more important that she comes out. This is one of the things I love about ARs though. and me and Phil discussed this a little bit before the show. Um, if she decides to build an SPR and later she doesn't necessarily want it to always be an SPR, we can drop a 14 and a half inch with a pendant welded flash hider on there for done and dusted. Now she's got a, now she's got a general purpose rifle. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's a beautiful thing about ARs is that they are adult Legos and with the same, basic base parts, you could change a lot of what's going on around them and make them do different things. Although, let's be honest, unless you just special the crap out of the rifle, it's going to do multiple things to some degree. It's just kind of what it's better suited for. Let's take my AR, for example. My primary AR before my state got stupid was a 20-inch AR. SPR length, you could put a scope on it I ran it with a dot and I was pulling headshots freestanding at 300 yards, but I also was able to do room clearing style three gun matches with it with no issue. And I was competitive. I didn't always win. I didn't always get in the top five, but I was damn competitive. It never really slowed me down having those extra four or five inches of barrel length. Yeah. So you ready to get into this? Do it. All right. So, I put all this into a spreadsheet to keep track of things, and because I'm positive I'm forgetting something in here because it's been quite a number of years since I built an AR, and I've got the big pieces, but I'm convinced I'm missing something small and probably stupid. Probably. But this was the list of parts and the price and the current value for kind of like the base parts that are going to be used no matter what. Sure. So I'm looking at Toolcraft, Bulk Air Group, C158. No problems. No problems. I will be the first to admit, I like their nickel boron coated bolts. Do this. They do clean a fair bit easier. Yeah. They are out of stock everywhere I went looking for them. They'll be back. Sooner or later, yeah. And that's like. Another $ 25, $ 30, $ 35 over the $ 100 listed here. So like, yeah, this is just for their basic phosphate coated, which I've actually got one in my closet as a spare in case I break one of the bolts on one of my two ARs. Yep. I just have a whole spare carrier. So, like, no matter what takes a shit, yank it out, stab the new one in, and go back to work. Fax and receiver set was about $ 200 for a stripped upper, stripped lower. I think when I priced out PSA, it was going to be like $ 100. 5 to $ 125, depending on which upper and lower you went with. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things where I know you could save a couple of bucks, but I also have a lot of faith in faxing to make decent products. You know, I have nothing bad to say about faxing components. Yeah. And I'm perfectly happy to spend a couple extra bolts on like a couple extra bucks on like faxing receivers and tool craft bolts and things that I know ultimately are not parts I'm going to have a problem with later. Yeah. CMMG lower parts kit and a CAC upper parts kit just because there's nothing really that special as long as they come from manufacturers that are capable of making non-crappy parts. Ambilore parts kit or just right-hand drive? Right-hand drive. And I'll be honest with you, I still to this day do not have Ambi controls in either of my ARs. I don't like them. I have them. I never use them. This could totally be just like an old man screaming at sky moment because I grew up with M16A2s and they. Don't have Ambi controls. But it just.... I learned how to run the silly things without aiming controls, and I just don't feel the need to have them. They are what I would call a nice-to-have if you're doing cool guy stuff on the regular. Yeah. So, CMMG-branded charging handle, just a regular old GI charging handle. I've actually got a spare in my parts bin. I hate that charging handle. I know you do. I hate it so much. But. It is like a $ 60 discount on a Radian or something like that. I throw a Raptor on every AR I build just because it's so much easier for a novice shooter to grab that. Totally understand. And that'll be a phenomenal stocking stuffer for it. Absolutely. I am valuing this at $ 30 because I have one in my parts bin. You can get stabbed into a rifle. Um, CAC carbine buffer kit. I debated, I debated on like an A2 length stock. Like I have my 18 inch rifle. The problem is her arms are a fair bit shorter than mine. And I think going with a, going with a carbine buffer. Get it a little more compact for. Yeah. Let, just let, let me crunch, crunch the stock in short of the length pull. I think it would make it more comfortable for her. She struggles. She seems struggled just a little bit with the longer length pull on my, on my rifle length stock. I mean, she's 14. I mean, she's got growing to do yet. Yeah. And then Magpul K2 Plus grip. I like the rubber over molding on the Magpul stuff. And I mean, it's Magpul. You know, the thing I will say about rubber over molding is where you guys are temperature wise, if it sits out in the sun a lot, and I do mean a lot, it will deteriorate faster. You can also put another grip on it for another 25 bucks. Not a big deal. Yeah, and Raggle is saying barrel, gas block, gas tube, muzzle device. Shh, we're getting there. We're getting there. And actually, I did forget. A muzzle device on one of these lists that's coming up, but an A2 birdcage. Is like 15 bucks. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Landtack Dragon. No. Landtack Dragon 556. Punish the people next to you, Phil. Punish the people next to you. No. If someone ever breaks into your house, you have a flashbang right on the end of your rifle. I will be standing next to her while she shoots this thing. No. Good. She should punish you for it. Anyway. So if we go down the route of building something that's more of like a GPR, I'm going to lean on a little bit of personal experience here because I have the facts, that same facts and 60 inch gunner profile barrel. Nothing wrong with it. In my GPR. I understand where you're coming from earlier about a 14 and a half with pin and welded, you know, flash hider on the end. I'm saying it's like a secondary upper. I mean, if you're going to build a 20 inch SPR and have a 14 and a half pin and welded on your short one, perfect. Because then you got enough difference that it could make a difference in mobility. But the reason I'm going with the 16 inch and actually, I think it's like 16.1 inches that if later on down the road, she decides to swap out the muscle device. No problem. That, that doesn't require, it doesn't require legal shenanigans. It's just spin the old one off, spin the new one on a Bravo, Bravo company gas block, because oddly enough, it's, it's getting very difficult to find non-adjustable gas blocks. You know, I, I understand why it is that way. You really don't need adjustable gas blocks on an AR. You don't, if you build your gas system correctly and you, Select the correct buffer spring and buffer weight. You will never have to adjust your gas block unless you're going to suppress it. And the facts in a 16 inch gunner profile barrel, they use a mid length gas system on a 16 inch barrel. Oh, so it's over gassed anyway. It's a bit over gas, but honestly, I've never had a problem with it. It's not going to. It's there's not enough recoil or gas pressure there to cause actually you. It's debatable if it's over gas because it's a longer gas system than the carbine length that would. Normally come on it. I don't like carbine length gas systems. But mid-length is longer. No, I know, but I like rifle length gas systems on ARs for a couple of reasons. And my 18-inch has a rifle length gas system, and it has an A2 buffer, and has... Like, there's a reason an 18-inch gun shoots as soft as it does. Oh, yeah. It's supposed to. My 20-inch... If you watch a video of me shooting the 20-inch with a muzzle brake on it, it doesn't rise. It recoils straight backwards, and it's beautiful for follow-up shots. Yeah. So, spikes gas tube because there's nothing special about it, but it's at least a decent part. Midwest Industries. 12.625 inch, which is the silliest bull crap I've ever heard of in my life, but a free-floated slimline handguard. Makes sense for the size of her hands. That's kind of the direction I'm going. For $ 170, I know I can trust Midwest. And by the way, the whole reason we're talking about using Midwest Industries and we're talking about using fax receivers is because Aero Precision is. Going through a little bit of a stutter and a restart right now. Yeah. So I kind of feel like my go-to, which would have been the M4E1 upper and that proprietary handguard. That's probably going to be a little hard to get a hold of for a while. Yeah, it probably will. But I think that you're never going to be upset with a Magpul product. Is it going to blow you away with quality, fit, and finish? No, probably not. You can buy better. It is acceptable. But it's very, very good, especially at the price point. Yeah. Yeah. Hence Magpul CTR stock because there's freaking nothing wrong with them. There's nothing to go. Wrong with them. I have a Magpul CTR on my high-end AR that I have to store out of state. There's nothing wrong with them. No, there's not. They just work. They just work. Same reason there's an ALG ACT on this list. Actually, my Precision 30-06 has a Magpul CTR stock on it. There's not a lot to go wrong with them. Yeah, it just goes. But the ALG triggers in here, because even though there are much better triggers, that's not a bad one to start with. No, I agree. You and me disagree heavily on how heavy triggers should be. I don't. I refuse to put a two-pound trigger in my 14-year-old. I know. I would never tell you to put a two-pound trigger in a novice shooter, especially a young novice shooter's rifle, because you're setting them up for disappointment and failure. because they haven't developed the trigger control yet. I like the ALG triggers. And also, I have one of these in my parts bin. Oh, yeah. I'm not surprised. You really like the ALG triggers. I like them. There's no reason not to like them. They frigging work. And it's that mil-spec trigger like it's been. Polished up just a little bit. Yeah, it's like a well-worn-in mil-spec trigger with a little bit better quality spring. Yeah. Nothing wrong with it. No criticisms from me on the ALG trigger. I like a flat bow trigger on my ARs. Don't know why. Just do. I think they do make a flat bow too, but it's a little more money. I don't think for the ALG. At least if they have, I've never seen one. Not for the ALG. It's a different model of their trigger, yeah. And then for Red Dot, 6-Hour Romeo 5. No criticisms. 6-Hour makes a good product. I haven't tried one personally. It's been recommended to me on several occasions. They seem like they're fairly decent mid-level quality. Are you... considering it all potentially magnifying. This not initially okay. My my only thing i have heard with some of the sig romeo fives the glass doesn't quite play well with certain magnifiers But doesn't Sig themselves make a magnifier? They do. I don't know anyone that's bought a Sig magnifier to go behind a Sig Romeo. A lot of the guys I know that have Sig Romeos have bought Vortex magnifiers. Don't ask me why. They just have them mixed and matched on there, and it doesn't necessarily play right. I mean, I've got a Vortex magnifier. It's not a bad piece of kit. No, it's a quality magnifier for the price. It's not the Vortex that I think is the issue. I think it is the curvature of the glass on the Sig Romeo 5 doesn't necessarily always play well with a magnifier. Well, needless to say, I'd probably go the direction of matching the magnifier to the brand of the Red Dot if we went that direction. Because then, you know, the heights are all perfect. Yeah. But this was kind of what I was thinking if we go down the road of building a GPR. Now, what am I forgetting? Because I know what I'm forgetting. Oh. And I'm annoyed that I didn't think about it until after I put this list together. Yeah. Hand stop. Hand stops. I'm not a huge fan of hand stops, but for a novice shooter, they're useful. I don't think I'd put one on initially. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to think of a good base to build from. Okay. With the understanding that I would put an A2 birdcage on the end of this thing just because. No criticisms. It works. To me, unless. Unless you're putting on a suppressor hub or something like that. Or a muzzle brake. There's just not a lot of good reasons not to put an A2 birdcage on. It does its job efficiently. It's freaking dirt cheap. It works. I mean, it just works. You don't have any crush rings on the list either? Yeah, well, I have those in the parts bin. But yes, to your point, I need some crush rings. I bought a 25-count bag because it was $ 3 cheaper than buying two. I have that and a whole oops kit, a couple of oops kits sitting in my parts bin. I've got parts in my parts bin. I bet I'm trying not to like cheat the system. No, no, no. But I think you're, I think what you're doing here, look, you could, can you get a sub $ 450 AR? Absolutely. You can. This is what I would call a middle of the road custom AR. It's going to be, it's going to be noticeably better. than a rack-grade basic AR. And this is $ 810 on top of. The $ 450. Yeah, it's still like $ 1, 300. Yeah, $ 1, 200, $ 1, 300, somewhere in there. Are you going to do backup iron sights on this? I mean, a set of Magpul front and rear flip-ups, no problems. I throw those on everything. I've got it. I mean, yeah, probably. And I've got a set sitting in my parts bin. As much as I love red dots on ARs, and I really, really do, I always put irons on those rifles. Always. It's just a thing I do. It's fair. I think, what, you're another $ 50, so call it $ 1, 400 all in for a reasonably good custom-built rifle. And for one that she and I can put together in the garage and she can learn how these things work. And it will likely play nice with your hand loads. Knowing that Faxon 16-inch gunner profile barrel, because that's exactly the one I have on my GPR, I think it'll play pretty nice. You're going to find differences barrel to barrel. I'm sure I will. You will. Barrels are witchcraft. But you knowing the guns I've built to the degree that you do, you recognize there's a lot of parts here that are definitely like, Phil was asked what he would put on this gun, and he put the thing he uses because he knows it works. Oh, yeah. You know, the only thing on this that I'm not a huge fan of because of the battery life is the Sig Romeo 5. The battery life's not as good. You can spend another $ 100 and get a lot better battery life, but it's also batteries. Batteries are cheap. Yeah. Bring extra batteries. And to be perfectly fair, I could swap that out with something like a Vortex Strikefire. Yeah, you're not that dissimilar in price. And I also have one of those, and I've been whooping on it for years. She has an astigmatism, doesn't she? She does. Vortex Spitfire, the prismatic version. It's an extra $ 100 and a half. I thought of that. I thought of that, and it's not the cause that dissuades me. I have no experience with them. I have one. I love it. For somebody with an astigmatism, mine's really bad. Until I got this pair of glasses, I could not shoot red dots except for prismatics. I will tell you, you cannot magnify that prismatic, though. Yeah. Because it's a 1x. It's not a 0. There's technically pseudo-magnification with it. So let's flip over to the other thing that I am toying around with, which is more money. Always. I mean, any time you get into more precision, you get more money. So given that this young lady. Hasn't made a hard decision on which way she wants to go, But she's definitely giving me indication that she really likes this idea of shooting off of a bag, shooting off of a rest, shooting off. Of a bipod. Bench shooting kind of seems to be what tickles her fancy. $ 350 white oak armament, 20-inch barrel with a target crown. And a gas tube. Because nothing says screw utility like lack of flash suppression. Yup. And White Oak Arm of a Gaswap for another 50. Trigger Tech Duty Trigger, which is probably one of the cheaper trigger options to put in something like an SPR. But it's exactly the one I have in mind that she shot and she liked that trigger. That makes sense. It's a quality trigger. Well, there's no reason not to like it. The Trigger Tech Duty Trigger, I want to say, is like a three and a half pound trigger. It's a zero creep trigger, which takes a little getting used to. It does. It's a little softer on the reset than I would like, but it's a nice little trigger for a bench shooting gun or a bag or a bipod gun. It's not bad. Really, to get much better than that, you're going into like a $ 350 Geissele trigger. Yeah. $ 200 Midwest Industries Combat Rail. The flat bottom one? Yeah. Because again, if we're talking about building something that is predominantly meant to be shot either off a bipod or off a bag, that flat bottom just looks like to me, it looks like it's a better, probably a better fit. Well, it is better for that. It also tends to play nicer with certain bipods, especially if she wants to get into something like an Atlas bipod or, you know, some of the higher end. Ones or like this MDT bipod that I got spec down here. Yeah. I mean the MDT bipods. Okay. I like the Atlas a little better than the MDT. It's personal preference. Yeah. They're, they're both very good. Um, 130 for the Magpul PRS light stock. The biggest difference between the Magpul PRS and the PRS light seems to be lack of tool-less adjustment. But since this is going to be a gun dedicated to her, I don't feel like there's as much of a need to be able to tweak everything on the fly. Like, we're going to set this thing up for her, and that's her gun. I will say, I glued and screwed my adjustments... fixed into place on my long range guns the second it's all set i secure that shit so it will never move again that gun is sized for me and me only yeah and that's that's that's what a long range gun is be. It is sized for you. Yeah. And like I said, the difference between the PRS and the PRS Lightstock is like half. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So.... MDT bipod, just because... Good bipod. Very good bipod. Yeah. Nothing wrong with them, and. I mean, honestly, I don't know if she would even be shooting off the bipod as much as she would off of bags. But, I mean, I'd certainly teach her both ways. And Vortex Diamondback Tactical 4-16. Great scope. I have two. Yeah. At a 100-yard range, 16X is, like, almost cartoonishly overscoped, in my humble opinion. At 300 yards, 16X is overscoped as well, in my opinion. For anything other than, like, when me and my buddies would go play darts at 300 yards, then I use 16. Yeah, but this would give her a range of magnification that would work perfectly well for bench shooting out of more or less ranges that she's going to have access to anywhere in this area. You know, Rigel brings up a good point, suggesting for the scope, look at Aethon, better glass, same price. I don't know. I mean, Rebel, I don't know that you're wrong, and I'm not trying to say that you're wrong. I have Aethon... spotting scopes and binos. I like vortex scopes a little bit better than the athon scopes that I've tried. Uh, one of the guys I shoot with uses athon scopes. He really likes them. Um, the, the, the windage and elevation turrets just, they just don't feel right on those athon scopes. And that's an older generation of athon. So they might be better now, but the ones I've used, I like the Vortex better. Yeah. So this is kind of the direction I was thinking about going on this. Plus that base, that list of base parts puts us definitely a little bit closer to like 1900 bucks and two grand. Yeah. So this is, this is the toll. This is what I hit off that first slide is that a GPR build the way we have it spec'd out here, 1260, 1300 bucks. When you throw in, the muzzle device, the cross washers that I forgot, $ 1, 980 for an SPR build. Yeah. That's not unreasonable. I mean, your optics are twice the price. They are. Yeah. They're just flat, twice the price. Well, the barrel is twice the price. The barrel is twice the price. I mean, you pay more money for more precision. Yeah. But kind of what I'm looking at here is, like, if we go down this route of build versus buy, I know we could buy an entry-level PSA, get her a stack of magazines, buy her her first case of ammo. She'll be happy as a hog and slob. Oh, yeah. For quite a while. The only thing that keeps pulling me away from that, and the only reason why I'd be more interested in, like, buying kind of one of those kits you get where it's like, here's all the parts, put it together yourself. Like, maybe they barrel the upper for you, but you have to assemble the lower. Mm-hmm. I would be more interested in that only for the experience of showing her how to assemble an AR. Cause I do feel like you learned so much. Oh, you do in assembling it yourself, learning how all those parts work together. And the simple fact that if anything ever goes wrong, you know how it's supposed to look. Cause you remember putting it together. Nope. It's not like it takes all that long to put one together. I mean, we built a couple on lunch breaks at work. Yeah. It was like a half hour and it was good to go. But the big thing about if I decide to go this route is at no point in putting this list of parts did I want to say I'm going to buy that because. It's the cheapest option out there. No, that's fair. Every single part was that is like the lowest amount of money I can spend and get what I think is going to be a part that is going to stay on this rifle forever. For years, for thousands and thousands of rounds. With the understanding that, yes, things like bolts, barrels, gas tubes, these are all expendable parts at a certain point. Springs are expendable parts. That's what I was getting to. I shoot a lot. I've busted a lot of parts off my guns, and none of these parts here concern me for durability. And that's kind of my thing. There's a difference between a 3,000-round part and a 10,000-round part. There is, and it's usually only a few bucks. And the difference in price is usually not that much. It's down to the quality control, the materials, the care paid on the assembly line, and all those other things. So I'm trying to go down the route of, if I'm going to build this thing, I'm going to build something that she will not be outgrowing, getting rid of, or shredding it anytime soon. You could hand either one of these rifles to a competitive shooter, and they would be very happy with them. Yeah. But on the flip side of things, this is either a $ 1, 300. Or a $ 2, 000 rifle. Yeah. Before magazines. Yep. Because you need at least 20. Well, before ammo. Yep. Before ammo. There's a thousand bucks in ammo. Or do we do exactly the same thing we did when you and I both decided independently to get Beretta A300s F1301s because it was like the difference in price is several cases of ammo plus a training class plus this plus that. I will tell you this. The difference you are getting in a rack grade already put together bottom of the barrel AR and what you have here is not the same as the difference between the 1300 and the A300. 1301 and the A300. I have shot both the 1301 and the A300. I haven't shot the 1301 as much as the A300. I don't notice a difference except in maintenance. It is much harder to take apart and put back together an. A300 than it is a 1301. It's just a much better thought system. Yeah, in my opinion. I have disassembled one of my buddy's 1301s. It is so much easier to put back together than an A300. There are traps built into assembling an A300 that if you don't know what to do, you can lock that up real bad. I will happily admit that the first time I tried to stab the barrel back into the receiver, I ran into one of those traps. Once you learn the trick, it's not that hard. It's not, but The 1301 is a more modern design. It is more user-friendly. They claim the reload on the shotgun from shell in to shell out to shell in is faster. Maybe it is. I can't tell. People claim the 1301 is softer shooting. I don't agree. I think they're exactly the same. I can feel no difference, and I would like to for that much more money. The difference you're going to find in fit, finish, and function of this versus a PSA $ 450 rifle is quite significant. It is, but to be devil's advocate. Mm-hmm. I also have a buddy who, years ago when he first started getting into firearms, had nowhere near my level of experience, and he got a very entry-level AR. Mm-hmm. And he was perfectly happy with it. Oh yeah, you will be. I was with mine too until I wore it out. And the problem was he shot mine and didn't really detect much of a difference. So I'm also hedging my bets on the idea that like, do I think that this would be a better built rifle than a $ 600 PSA? Yeah. Almost certainly. Unquestionable. But is a relatively new shooter going to be able to tell the difference? And... is it more valuable to give her more trigger time or better quality trigger time? Now you see what I'm wrestling with. It's difficult. And you know what? Your daughter's very smart. I've had a few conversations with her. I think that's pretty indisputable. If anybody has put the numbers to. Her, I. Already have rough numbers at least. And, um, Her immediate reaction was, I could just shoot yours. Yes, but then we can't both shoot at the same time. You understand. Covering fire. She covered that idea really fast, too, and said, you have two of them. Damn it. She's too smart for you to trick her into letting you buy another rifle. I'm going to tell you, man, raising smart kids is hell. It's probably way easier to raise dumb kids because they just listen. I mean, I don't have a dumb kid. I've never had a dumb kid, so I'll have to take somebody's word for it. But raising smart kids is rough. I mean, rough but rewarding. And especially if you are even a remotely intelligent person, you can't get upset with them for being smart because some some amount of that probably came from you. But dadgum, does it get tricky to friggin like verbally and intellectually outmaneuver them? Yeah. I mean, I don't know that you need to outmaneuver her on this. I think that if you have the opportunity to, you know, this is not a problem. She has to she doesn't have to solve it or answer it today. She doesn't have to answer it next week. You know, if, um, if she's more than happy to shoot your rifle off bags or off a bipod or freestanding, let her get some more trigger time on that. Let her find what she doesn't like about your rifle. Well, and also the fact that like, now I will say that I did, I did when we started going down this road together, I did tell her, I'm going to expect you to like, have some financial weight in this little project too, because I, I explained to her, I'm like, honey, I'm like, rifles are not $ 100 enterprises. I was like, a cheap rifle will be $ 500 or $ 600. Yeah. And then she asked me the question that I hate getting asked. Nick, what question do you think she asked me? I have no idea. She asked me what the rifle she shot cost. You don't want to know. Oh, no, that's the cheap one. That's the one that doesn't hurt as much to admit. Good. The. the one with all the battery powered shit on for night vision. That's the one that, that's the one that hurts. Yeah. You know, I, I like to take new shooters out and I'll, I'll put them on my nicer guns, my really nice shooting, very accurate firearms all the time because it's, it's more, they can have more fun with it. Right. Then, then like an ultra light Safari weight Magnum rifle. Yeah. And they're like, Oh, this is great. How much would it cost to get one of these? You don't want to know. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, so here at the end of the day is like the end of this discussion. If she decides tomorrow, hell, tonight, she really doesn't want to invest the time, the trouble, the money in having her own. She's welcome to shoot mine. Oh, yeah. All she's got to do is be waiting by the truck for me at 8 o'clock in the morning when I'm ready to go to the gun range, and she can tag along and shoot any damn thing I have. Mm-hmm. I just would rather know she's coming, so I pack something she'll enjoy shooting, because, you know, sometimes I bring things out there that would scare the crap out of her. I offer for her to shoot my three-way bolt action. Hard no. Really? That's not that much worse than a 5.56. Uh. In a hunting weight configuration. Nevermind. Yeah. This thing is not like, this is not. This is not the precision rifle I want to build by the end of the year. That's going to be a very, very intentionally heavy thing that shoots off a bipod or a bag. This is a, this is a 20 inch hunt, you know, like pencil weight hunting barrel. Yeah. Those get a little spicy. Yeah. Well, she doesn't like the noise. And I think that's the biggest problem. She, She watched this thing rock my shoulder one time and was like, no. Hard no. That's probably a good thing we didn't get her on the 300 down when we were in Kentucky. She didn't even want to sit at the bench when I shot this thing. She was like, at the benches, behind the benches. But, you know, it's one of those things, and this is also part of the reason why I said, yes, if she does this, we're going to start at 5.56, because. The recoil of a. 55 or. 77 grain bullet going down the range, especially in a rifle-length gas system and a rifle, a full-length A2 weight buffer, the gun is a puppy dog. It just does not recoil. It's, yeah. Yeah. That's the very accurate way to put it. Yeah. Raggle, I'm sure an SR-25 with a suppressor is also a puppy by our standards, but there's a little bit of a difference in recoil range recoil tolerance between like you know 220 to 240 pound men and 115 pound teenage. Girls yeah i mean yeah i mean there's physics behind that yeah but like i said that that's that's kind of where i'm at is if she decides she doesn't want to go down this road she's welcome to shoot my my stuff yeah If she decides that the amount of money she's willing to put up with the understanding that I would shoulder a majority of the financial burden of buying or building this thing because I'm dad. But I really want her to have a little bit of skin in the game so that I have an expectation she's actually going to shoot it. It's not just going to sit in the safe. And collect dust. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I get it. If she decides she'd rather the cheaper option, I'm okay with that too. If she wants to build something really nice, I'm cool with that too. And you're right, she doesn't have to make a decision today or tomorrow. But the simple fact that she brought this up sent me down this road of, I haven't built an AR in years. And there are companies that no longer exist that we used to love. There are companies that kind of still exist, but they're probably not going to be on the market for a while. Right. So it was one of those situations where like, not only that, but like, you know, the decisions I make as far as like pick this part over that part are always done with an eye towards like guns to me are not things of leisure. They're things for defensive work. They're a tool. So I would probably never choose a 20 inch match or target barrel for a five, five, six gun. I would rather something that I can still press into service and, as an SPR or as a push-come-shove, a gun that I can go literally fight with, hit and run around with. And an 18-inch gunner profile barrel is more of what I would be interested in versus a match or target barrel. Hence, that's the decision I made. I would pick different parts that I would recommend for her or that she would probably prefer. But I'm asking my guns to be more multipurpose than something I built for her. If what she really wants to do is shoot off of a bag or off of a rest, I want the gun to do that better than anything, because that's what's going to get her to go out to the range. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, if she wants to shoot off the bench, you're also probably going to have to get some 10-round or 20-round mags instead of 30s. There's a reason I have a stack of 20s specifically for that SPR, and all that gets loaded in them is 77-grade Match Kings. Yep. Because I'm going to tell you right here and now, even with those 20 round magazines, I am like this close to resting that magazine on the bench when you're shooting that thing. I have 10 rounders for when I'm doing load development on my AR as well. Just because I can sit low on bags. Grandpa is telling me don't cheap out. Grandpa's right. Well, Grandpa is also a rabid gun nut like I am. And it's not so much an issue of cheap out on her. It's more of. It's more of trying to give her the room to make a decision. Yeah. And depending on that decision, I mean, obviously, I'll make it happen. Yeah, and she's more than qualified enough to choose between those three options. Yeah. But right now, the decision seems to be... It's just. more in her vein to, like, shoot Dad's gun and Dad's ammo. Mm-hmm. Which doesn't shock me. That's fine. That's what Dad's guns and Dad's ammo are for. Yeah, yeah. That is a thing. Hey, she brought it up, which is great. Yeah, well, my big thing, you know, before we start wrapping this up, but, like, my big thing with Piper and shooting has always been that, like, I think everyone has. A built-in justification to learn to defend themselves. With the best tool for the job, which in my opinion is a firearm. And in this country, that is an AR-15 and M556. Magazine compatibility, ammo compatibility, parts, yadda yadda yadda. You can go get whatever you want. It's a free country, kind of, for a while. But that's my recommendation. I think everybody has an obligation to themselves and their family to learn to defend themselves and their life and their property. And that is all I ever expected of Piper was learn how. If she doesn't want to. Pursue this any further than I know how, that's fine. That's her decision. If she doesn't want to pursue this as a hobby or as a competition or as a sport or whatever, That's fine. That's her decision. My requirements were fulfilled. The moment I taught her gun safety, I taught her sight alignment, I taught her trigger press, and she knows if I hand her any rifle in my safe and I spend 15 seconds showing her how to load it, unload it, put the safety on, take the safety off, drop the bolt if there's a bolt hole to open, I spend just enough time to show her how the damn thing works. She will pick it up and figure out how to make hits. Mm-hmm. She knows how at this point, as far as she takes it from there is really her decision. Absolutely let's see here. Gillian saying I'll just say that I held my gun that dad gave me for my birthday in high regard for a long time yeah that's so she still has and is still sitting in the safe to Remington 74 auto. Nice. Yeah. I've been very upfront with her about the fact that I hate that freaking rifle. There are good reasons to hate that rifle, but it's a good rifle. It is. It's a good rifle. It is. It is the bitchiest thing on earth about... Like, look, it is. It is not a combat rifle. No. No, it's a hunting rifle. It really is. Part of the problem here is that I don't do hunting rifles, but. It irks the shit out of me that that is the pickiest bastard in the whole save. If you don't feed it the brand of 30-06 at once, it's not going to run right. If you don't keep the chamber freaking mirror-polished, the littlest bit of freaking carbon in that bastard, and it starts freaking having issues ejecting. It was really meant to make one cold boar shot two weekends a year. From a deer stand. It really was. And it's good at that. Yeah, and I'll be the first to admit, all the reasons I don't like it, it's almost like I don't like a high point because it's not a Glock. And I fully admit that, and I am okay with that. We should have a rant about guns episode. We could. I'm sure that there are plenty of guns out there that you and I don't like that we could have a good old time bitching about. I hate and loved My Cobra M11 clone for all of the same reasons. I don't hate that. I hate it and love it for the identical reasons. It's wildly impractical. It's incredibly stupid and uncomfortable, but it looks amazing. Raggle, if you put WD-40 in a rifle's chamber, I'm going to report you to the Rougarou. Oh, I learned something interesting the other day. There is... Don't tell me it involves WD-40. No, it doesn't. It involves... You know how you were saying the best firearm in this country for self-defense is an AR currently, unless you live in Illinois. Still the best rifle for self-defense in the country. The M1A with the traditional style stock is perfectly Illinois legal and not an assault weapon. Do all of your state law enforcement know this? They do, and they are for sale over the counter in just about every FFL store. two or three specific models. You just can't have the fancy polymer stock one with the pistol grip. And you have to have the, what is it? You have to have the break, not the flash hider. So I get to throw a muzzle break on it too and punish everyone at the range. I hate your state so much. I do too. But you know, I've never had a good excuse to buy a 308 battle rifle. I do now. Wait, An M1A, not an M1 carbine? Nope, M1A. Full bore 308. M1A is also magazine fed. But the M1 carbine is also legal. But it also sucks because it's 30 carbine and it's minute of basketball at 50 yards. The M1A with a red dot is just punishingly fun. And I taught you how to ebonize the stock. You did, and if I buy one, I will. I just looked at pricing on them, and they're like $ 2, 400. Oof-duh. It's like kicking the balls. But who knows? If Sugar Daddy Trump comes through with the money, PBS 14, M1A, might have enough for both. I'm sure we can make something happen. Oh, we can make something happen. All right. Let's go ahead and roll this one out the door. Grandpa is reminding me that Christmas is just around the corner, and he does love to spend my inheritance on things that his granddaughter will enjoy. If he's not blowing your inheritance on spoiling his granddaughter, what is that money really for? Buying guns that I will end up inheriting. Also that. Also that. All right. Matter of fact, it's going to go out the door. Good night, everybody. Hope you all enjoyed this episode. I wouldn't say that this was like an all-inclusive, this is the perfect meta, you know, like this is the meta AR build to end them all. But I thought it gave me a good excuse. Oh, my dad's saying I have a brother. But he doesn't have as good taste in farms as I do. So, you know. Anyway, Matter of fact, it's going to go out the door. I had fun with this episode. It gave me a good excuse to do some research, and hopefully some of y'all learned some things about it, even if it was just how to argue with me about things I'd already decided. Because Lord knows y'all love that. Good night, everybody. Good night. Clouds are heavy on the county line Signs are flashing, reading in the time Protecting the home, locking down the block. Raising values while we watch the clock. Turn the dial, cut through the tricks. Welcome to Matter of Fact. Well, we talk prepping for the storm ahead. The iron in the hand, the words they said. Guns, politics, and the lines they drew. We uncover what they hide from you. Yeah, lay it down. No spin, no tricks. This is a matter of fact. Static screams through the midnight air. A lot of folks talking, but nobody cares. For the M.O.F. standing on the track. We look at the truth and we don't look back. Well, we talk prepping for the storm ahead. The iron in the hand, the words they said. Guns, politics, and the lines they drew. We uncover what they hide from you. Yeah, lay it down. No spin, no tricks. This is a. Matter of facts. Yeah, lay it down. No spin, no tricks. Shout out to the MOFers. 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