Matter of Facts: New Year, Same Us

Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, politics every week on iTunes, Ditcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwefpodcast dot com, on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us be a Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Raveley Andrew Nicker on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts podcast is January two. Me and Nick are back behind the mics. It's been two weeks. Two weeks, it feels like two. It feels like it's been more than two weeks. But you know, we decided. I kind of decided, and I think I just bullied Nick into a going along with it that we were going to take off during the Christmas During the Christmas week, to be fair, I had six Christmas parties. I think lost count. It was a long week. I was about say that usually happens when you do a lot of partying, Nick, you forget how many times you partied, or at least that that's what used to happen to me back in the day. Anyway, So I see Jeff, I see Raggle Fraggle, thank you guys for joining us. Let's see here, Jeff already dropping this on us. I missed the last show, but it must point out you miss jingle all the way for Christmas movies. I'm drawing a blank on that jingle all the way. You might have to watch that. Don't know what? Yeah, well if probably does. Also he's saying an extra sling is a perfectly valid reason to build another rifle. Don't don't be to the punchline. I actually could run one of rebels SLINKs on that rifle. I just look with he does capitalism bad enough. The man will not take my money for a backpack, even when I offer more than he wants up. Nick, you might have roboted. Are you still with me? Yeah? You're good? Okay, Nick's Knick's computer is missed, Beady, maybe my internet's I don't know. I don't know anyway. Raggles asking who bit in for new NFA items today. Nick cannot and I did not, because sad Illinois noises unless I get a Type seven or a Carrio and relic license. Unfortunately, all of that stuff is off the table because Illinois, says be sad. Yes, Illinois is a very very sad place. It is. We're trying to get out of here. But you know it's one of those things money. Yeah, well, I mean I can make you a hell of a deal on a couch if you you and Rachel just want to come crash my place for a little bit. I don't know that your floor can handle the weight of my hobbies. I mean, I know I live in the swamp, but that's kind of a low blow man, brossa if I've got like sixteen hundred pounds of iron behind and to the left of me. Okay, So what I'm hearing is that you too move in, You too move down here, and then you and me go find a shop to put all those things in. Hood could with a little apartment in the back for when we want to stay up all night doing hood rat stuff. But it's so humid down there, and it's so hot. You get used to it after a while, I promise. I don't think you do. Yeah, everybody tells me that, and I don't believe it either, but I keep saying it is part of the contract. We're agreement to live down here. Morgan is also with us. Thank you for joining us again, all right? Admin work and then tomfoolery. I guess. So if you are a patron, you already know how this works. A dollar a month lets you contribute to sociopathy, bad decisions, and poor behavior usually. And I really appreciate y'all supporting the show and supporting the two of us. I do capitalism badly, which is why I give y'all coat mof a disaster coffee. You get you five percent off of really good coffee and bunker beans, which is all that goes in this cup, which, by the way, this is this is what happens when you tell your wife one too many times that if I drank a coffee pot, I can count as a single cup. So this is what I got for Christmas. That's smart. She's looking after you, man, She's trying to moderate. It's honestly like one of the more adorable things that I've gotten for Christmas over the years, because my wife always does like unexpected things for me. And when I saw this, I was like, this is awesome. I have drank out of nothing but this since Christmas. That's fantastic. Yeah. I was gonna take to work, but I'm too afraid of getting destroyed. That's rough. Here's raggle, fraggle, how did you do for Christmas? I got a new coffee cup and I told my wife, and God bless her for listening for a change. So like, I am hard to shop for, and I admit that, And I'm sure a lot of us are hard shopped for from our spouses, not because we don't want things, but because we're adults and we buy things throughout the year. Like, as I can tell my wife all the time, I'm like, I'm an adult. I make money, I save money, I spend money. So if I want something, I've already got it, and if I don't want it, it's because I can't afford it, which bikes that she means she can't either. Yeah. Yeah, Unfortunately, big kid wants tend to come with big kid price tags. I mean, you know, I my wife knocked my stocking out of the park this year though, old fashion mixers from a variety of locales, which are fucking delicious, by the way, dangerously So she got me this apple honey apple old fashion mixer that went really good with the uh the holiday bourbon that they just brought out down the street from me. So well, man, that's gonna be dangerous. It sounds legit, almost as dangerous as that. Oh what was it? The the Maple Knob Creek that I only managed to get when I'm away from home. They don't stock it anywhere around here for some stupid reason, so I'm always on the lookout for it. I think my local liquor store has it. Well. I got a bottle wabs up in Michigan. They don't stock it down here for some reason. So whenever I go away from home, I look for a bottle and bring it home. But that stuff is extremely dangerous. It's not like sugary sweet, but it's maple sweet. And you can literally put that in the freezer or drink it straight and just get yourself annihilated. Accidental BlackBerry brandy. Man, it's for ice fishing. That'll do it too. Oh last, but not least, if you like shirts, if you like merch, Southern Galis links in the show description supports small business, supports us now. Ragle Fraggle said he got a shotgun, a chainsaw and spotting scope. Goddamn, dude, what shotgun? I'm curious. If the answer is not, Bretta, I'm a little ashamed of you. Well, Nick, I don't play with my emotions man spas twelve with the folder. I'll allow a Frankie for the memes. I'll allow a Frankie, but I would also allow that yet, but I'm not gonna lie. I'm very, very impressed with Bretta's very impressed as budget line as the A three hundred is. I have been running it now for over half a year, and it is surprised me with how good it is. I thought I was going to have a little bit of buyer's remorse going with that instead of the thirteen oh one, And I do not not at all. The only thing I was not happy about, which I have fixed with a rattail file, there was a wee bit of a burr underneath the back of the trigger guard that was rubbing that one of my fingers so raw that it was given to me a blister and I was bleeding in the middle of the truck's class because it blew the blister open. That seems very Unboretta right right here. It ended up. Yeah, Nic Raggle with the A three hundred, that's what I'm fantastic. That's a good one. Yeah, that seems very Unberetta. I haven't had any hotspots, rough spots or anything on mine. I mean, look, any I'm in manufacturing, you've worked in blue collar trades. Everybody has a bad day, man. Yeah, all it takes is missing it once. And you know what, I had a rattail file in the garage, just two little passes with that hasn't been a problem since. Yeah, I mean, everybody is familiar with the Monday morning and the Friday afternoon products that come out of the shop. Like it's just exactly, it's unavoidable. Everybody has a bad day now and then yeah, all right, so we got a couple of things to cover. First of all, is Nick went to talk about Rebels. Raider dropped gear for Christmas. I actually I did a little bit of promotion for Rebel on Christmas morning. Actually, yeah, I dropped on Christmas morning. If y'all don't subscribe to our Instagram, you probably should because it's goofy and lighthearted fun and occasionally you catch me in a mood where I'm ranting and raving about tankies, which can also be entertaining. But in this case, and even my daughter was surprised when she saw this because she was like, when did you shoot that? Because she so what I did. I had this this epiphany of like I have night vision and I have amount to like take my phone, you know, the phone camera and nested it up behind the PBS fourteen. So I turned off all the lights in the house and like film myself first person shooter like splinter cell, you know, sneaking through the house until I got to the bag of Rebels Raider underneath the Christmas tree and then set it to music and drop that. But Rebels Raiders orders finally went out, like they started going out the week before Christmas. I actually got my days before. And yeah, I think I got mine a day or two after you got yours. Yep. And I'm not gonna hold it up here for very long because this thing has a pair of level four plates in it. It's got some weight to it. You know. Rebel under sells this a little bit. He doesn't talk about a lot of the little features in here that I really am a big fan of. I mean, the dude went so far as velcrow for your hoses, for your camelback or your radio. Dude actually put a tail on the placard for throwing your cumber button on that you can actually get a hold of with more than one finger. The damn thing's almost as wide as my hand. And he put tails on the placard on the cumber bun straps that you can actually reasonably get a hold of, and aren't tiny little pieces of nylon. Dude, fantastic. So I have to I have to say I went into this expecting after having spoken with him, I went into this expecting good stitching. I went into this expecting like good quality. It's the little things I really wasn't expecting, Like, have you okay, you opened the play bag up and put your plates in right? Have you tried to take have you tried to take them back out? It's a motherfucker. He has the most tenacious goddamn bellcr I ever felt on a play carrier. Inside that play carrier, it is not coming apart without a fistfight. No, it's the material. The materials do not feel budget. No, nothing about this thing feels budget. If if you told me this was a three hundred and fifty dollars play carrier, I would not be shocked. It's I am. I went. I guess what I'm saying is like I went into this experience behind this play career expecting it to be three things. First of all, was an enormous upgrade over the last two play carriers I played with, one of which it was an old Condor and the other was the god forsaken thing I was issued in two thousand and three when I was in Iraq, so reasonable expectation. I went into this expecting it to be like well fought out way, you know, like a modern play carrier, and I think it is. Yeah, everything I've seen about it, everything I've handled so far, it is kind of what I went into this expecting. It is very modern, is very much. I don't want to say it's like it's like all the others because that kind of undersells it, but like, there's nothing here that makes me think to himself, Wow, he missed the ball, he missed an opportunity. The thing I was hoping for that I wasn't fully prepared for was just the the quality of materials used. It's not thin nylon, it's it's thick. It's very durable. The Velcrow is premium, was very well stitched to everything. Like nothing, nothing about this so far makes me think that I'm gonna be replacing this or taking it apart in the next several years. It's it's built like a brake shit house, and that's very impressive to me for a company that, like I understand that he kind of has. I understand the Rebel has the background from heavywere for can I before, but as a company, Rebels Raiders is not that old and this is their second gear drop and this is not the product you expect from a company this new. It's very well fought out, I would agree, Phil. You know, and I've mentioned on the podcast before my prior plate carrier that I've been using for the last ten years, and aries armored Derma. You guys can see how absolutely faded to crap and beat up this thing is. Yeah. Well, the the yes, that is an accurate term. The stitching on Rebel's carrier. It is all double line stitch at minimum, and just about everything on the Derma is all single line stitched, which, to be fair, this was not the most expensive plate carrier at the time when I bought it, but it was extremely highly recommended. I've had this plate carrier for, like I said, ten years, I've been running it an awful lot and it doesn't really show up on camera. But I've had to fishing line sow this thing back together about eight or nine different times. Now I'm going to hold my judgment on rebels stitching because I will beat the crap out of this for the next ten years and we'll see how it holds up. But the line that they used to stitch this looks thicker than what was on the derma originally, what little bit that is left of it, it's got more passes of stitching than the Derma had, which I was really happy to see. You know, I I've not found anything on it. I don't like. Hell, I was filled. Do you have trauma pads behind your plates? Mm hmm this thing? I can get it open? Good luck with that. Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to get it open on camera. The yuh? Now there it is so level four ceramics with trauma pads behind them. Yeah, is it a tight fit, little bet? That's kind of what you want. But instead of having a single pass of two inch velcrow holding your plates in, it's two passes a two inchvel crow and it's a fistfight to get it back open. Oh yeah, you're never gonna have that come open unless you're really working for it. No, it is a it is a two handed like bite your lip job, get that thing back open. I do have a couple of questions I have to go through Morgan, as is the prior military. He's a marine. Yep. It's a thing with marines where there is no prior marine. They're all marines, whether they're still active or not. And I love my jar heads, like love them to death. Of my favorite people, some of my favorite people are Uncle Samson's Guided children. Sir. Yeah, So, like I said, I am super impressed with the Viccarian so far, I've been I've been taking some time to like slowly put it together. I mean y'all can't see it, thankfully because I'm covering most of it. But like my entire office is a fucking disaster area. Like I've got a four x six game table that is covered with all my kid I'm moving around. Yeah, well, I mean between between Christmas and Christmas in Sanity and my daughter being sick and then me being sick, and then you know, just between all the stuff that's gone on lately, I have had a limited amount of time to like with this try to put it together that how we set these vacarians up probably dictates some good pictures. So we're not doing this in front of the camera, and like a more in depth discussion at a later date, because I haven't even like worned this thing more than three or four times to know if I like where everything is on it. Like like I told Nick, the what I do is when I put together, whether it's a war belt or a chest rig or a plate carrier, I put it together. I put it on. I run dry fire drills, and within about five reps I know if I'm gonna rip it apart, redo it or not. I haven't even gotten that far. I have done some dry fire drills with mine, I have done some reload drills with mine, and I did a weightlifting workout in mind just to feel how it moves on my body. Not that it really helps your workout at all. It kind of just gets in the way. But that's sort of the point, moving your body in different ways that you're not necessarily thinking about when you're putting everything together. And honestly, it is as comfortable as my derma was original, which is phenomenal because that was the most comfortable carrier I had tried up to that point, I had tried four or five. Yeah, well, shock and awe, this is by far more comfortable and more stable than the old Condor was. Well yeah, I mean did the Condor have a backpanel, a solid back panel. It did have a solid back panel. It did not have a cumber button. Okay, so there's part of your problem. Yeah. Now I will say I will say this much like comparing it to like, what is it the IOTV or whatever was the issues back in oh three, which was literally a freaking vest that had plate bags in the front back of it. Yeah, it's much more what's the word I'm looking for here, Nick, it's much less in the way than that was. I would agree with that. It is. It's much more ergonomic, yes, despite the fact more one, but not for as long as you I hated it. Oh yeah, there was nothing nice or comfortable about them. But I mean they were, to be fair, like the IOTV was early early g watt twas better than nobody armor. Yes, but needless say, even the guys that deployed in like five oh six were already swapping those things out for better stuff. So anyway, much better than that, much better than the condor. I am very impressed with it so far. I just need some time with it to really figure it out. And I haven't even the apothecary is still in the bag. I got mine out, it's not set up yet. I'm going through all my first aid kit deciding exactly what's going to go in that. And that's the next thing I need to do is I need to like take it out, really take a good look at it and figure out. Like, because you and I've had this conversation, I don't do I don't do this thing some people do, where like I have a new piece of I take all the kit out of the old equipment put in the new equipment. I don't do that. I already have a pack that is set up for hiking. It's got an ipack in it. It's gonna stay together because it's still a hiking pack. I'm gonna buy all new stuff for the apothecary, and if I decide to use this as a hiking kit, I'm just gonna have two of them. So every kit is preloaded and ready to go. And I need to take a good look at this and make some do some horse trading on like Okay, how much stuff do I fit in here? What kind of stuff do I fit in here? I mean, I kind of have mo own ideas. Morgan's got a good question. Do we run a dump pouch on my belt? Yes? I do. I have not up till now. But like I was telling Nick right before the show, I'm actually going to be a retooling my old war belt probably in the next few months, and I'm gonna put a dump pouch on it for the first time. You know, the reason why I got into a dump pouch was honestly Ipsick and three Gun because what I was doing was some of the guys running the IDPA and the Ipsick and the three Gun were very much sticklers about mag retention. If you if you did a tactical reload and you dropped that magazine and there was a round in it, you were docked points. Fair So every magazine, and this may be a bit of a training scar for me, every magazine, regardless of its status, out of the gun into the dump pouch, new magazine into the gun. I mean, here's the thing, though, from what I was doing at the time, made sense, and you know, outside of the realm of like Ipsick IDPA, USPSA and all that. Like, from a combat perspective, I can't disagree with that because, like, so here's my mu spiel about magazines. When you have a flag on your shoulder and you are under orders from the DoD, magazines are ostensibly basically disposable. Oh, absolutely they are. But that doesn't mean you throw that you leave the stupid things all over the ground if you can retain them, because it's still a magazine, it's still piece of fight equipment. It's still worth keeping. And magazines in a dump pouch or a pocket don't get stepped on and ruined or fill full of sand. So there's there's lots of well, okay say that until you're belly dragging through a sandy gravel pit and then all your mags are full of sand. Anyway, they're less likely, yeah, to get jacked up, So like, there's good I've definitely had mags lock up on me in a gravel pit. Yeah, there's definitely less I mean, there's definitely good incentive to have a dump pouch. I'd never got into them though, because like when I was in uniform, I had these great, big, old, huge cargo pockets on my legs and it wasn't anything to just drop a bag in there. I mean, I was carrying my dump pouches with me. I'm sure you're familiar with milk uniforms, lots of PILs, lots of big cargo pockets. I got away from those pants when I would run three gun for two reasons. One, I was always blowing out the crotch on those damn things. I can never keep a pair of them for more than they are also disposable they are, and number two, slightly stretchy, more athletic fitted pants surprisingly lets you move easier and they're more comfortable. It turns out lowest bitter military uniforms suck compared to modern athletic wear. Well, there's a reason why my day to day, even if I'm like out hiking or in the woods, my day to day wear is like the Wrangler, the work pants that have the zipper pockets up on the thighs, and I don't run around be to you pants anymore. There's a reason for that, but also the reason why I'm probably gonna wind up putting a dump pouch on my war belt, because, like you know, things change over time. They do. They do. And I found now that I've started taking doing more shotgun classes. The dump pouch works excellently for just throwing a shitload of shells on your belt. Fanny packs work really to work with. The fanti packs for shotguns work great. The class I ran with Andrew, I would dump a box of twenty five shells into my dump pouch. I would throw a shotgun card on the two velcrows on my shotgun, and then two in my belt, and I was able to shoot without having to step off the firing line for quite a long time. I mean that's so let's see seven, seven, seven and seven, So twenty eight plus twenty five plus the seven in the gun because we're ghost loading, because why would you not? Why would you not? Right, So that's a not inconsiderable amount of lead considering they're all three quarter ounces. Yeah, anyway, so we kind of beat ourselves with the punch on this. But upcoming projects, I mean, Vicarian's being played with apothcarry is being played with my war belts getting an overhaul. I might do a fill in. So my own hiking bag, I need a camelback ish style bag that is not the ultra skinny girl runner, no neck narrow shoulder straps. Yeah. I don't know if you ever notice on backpacks, Phil, but there their shoulder straps are always about that fucking far apart. Yeah, there may be. Yeah, it sounds to me. I gotta wear a collared shirt, or I gotta wear or I gotta deal with chafing on my neck, which sucks. Or you just get like an H harness like from an army surplus store in or the h harness that came with Rebels kit that we just got. I keeping that on standby in case I decide to run the apothecarry as a chest Rick Morgan. That's kind of the plan. I'm actually thinking. What I might do is rig the H harness that came with the medical pouch with this old shotgun scabbard that I used to run a not a shotgun in, but a water bladder, and I've modified it to hold my three liter water bladder. Thinking that plus H harness, plus maybe maybe a couple other things to get some medical on there, and a way to mount my trekking pulse to the outside, and we might be in very good shape. Well, I mean, you and I have had that conversation before about you know, playing tactical tailor because like I put this way years and years and years and years and years ago, when I was making almost a third of what I am now, in order to make sure that I could actually like make fear old gear that was minimum mission capable but fit my needs. I got an old Vietnam era like AK chest rig where you got the four cells up front of the two grenade pockets on the sides. Yeah, I know the exact rig you're talking about. Yeah, And after and afternoon of sewing, let's see her, I took all the wooden toggles off and replaced all that with velcrow. I made some little little spacers to go in the bottom of the mag pockets that would prop up an AR magazine just enough that it would like stand at the right level, because they were originally made for AK pockets, which for akaggs, which are a little bit taller. I took one of the two grenade pockets made into like a little admin pouch to hold some medical stuff. I took the other one so to row stitching down the center of it to make it into a twin pistol mag pouch, and you know, like tried to like ghetto ghetto modify this thing into somewhat of them or modern rig. Still I still have it, and I still have it like you know, hanging up in the closet with a whole bunch of other stuff. It still works. I could pull the spacers out through ak mags in it. I could leave the spacers in run ar mags. It's set up to run pistol mags for like Ustin. It's like a Glock nineteen size magazine. It's not gonna fit like a really tall boy like my CZPO nine will, but my carry gun, my seat, my cz comback, it's those perfect nice and it was I think like a fifteen dollars Vietnam era you know, canvas chest rig. And I want to say it for sewing. I want to say, at one point Sportsman's Choice had him for like thirteen ninety nine. If you bought anything else with them, they would they would send it to you. Yeah, moresaying it it's a militia handout. To me, it's just like it's the reason I did that. It's the reason I built, like you know, the the what Stewart calls the merse the man purse, which is the the bag for the cz beat for the sez scorpion and it's got four cz scorpion mags plus an a whole I fac and you know sitting in there. Like. The reason I build stuff like that and the reason I encourage other people to do it is because a it teaches you skills, yeah, like the ability to think through how to modify garment, how to sew, how to how to make things work. Because while I would love to say that there's always the ability to go out there on Amazon or eBay or you know, go on to the wilds of the internet and order exactly what you have in mind, the flat fact of the matter is one day we might be in a situation where you kind of need to make your own shit. It also makes you a little bit more diligent about your setup too, because you really don't have the opportunity to take it apart easily and put it back together like a molli rig. Yeah, Molly rig. You throw stuff on there. Okay, great, in twenty minutes you can reconfigure the whole thing, which is nice, But are you as diligent about the first time setup? Yeah? Well, it also teach you all the skills you need to modify a piece of gear or repair a piece of gear. Yeah. So yeah, so you and I have been talking about this. I did not set out to be a millserp collecting person, but whoops. So my father in law was breaking up his old gun collection and of the various firearms that were, you know, being like kind of floated to you know, the broad family, the three daughters and their families, you know, husbands, kids and everybody else, saying, hey, like all these are up for grabs. Who wants what? I told my wife, I'm like, I'm interested in like a couple of these things. And it was really like, you know, there's an old Marlin twenty two hay two semi auto tube fed, beautiful old twenty two, and it's like I told my wife, I'm like, I don't want anything he has that's modern, because I have all the modern guns. I want old old stuff. I can't go buy anymore like this or Marlin that looks on the face of it like it's from the eighties at the earliest or at the most recent. Got an old twenty two revolver from him, and I intend to use both those to like, you know, go planking with my wife and daughter teach my daughter's shoe. Absolutely. And one of the guns that came up was an old SKS that was not well liked, I having a good authority from multiple family members. It never really ran well, didn't feed well, didn't like sluggish gas system, all kinds of problems. And I have two guesses for why they'll beat me to the punchline. And basically the short version is everybody was kind of like not interested. So I told Gilly, and I'm like, okay, put my hand up, put put my name on it. I'll take it. And I promptly put it on my rifle, put it on my rifle rest, and ripped it apart. Figured it out really fast why I wasn't running right because it was stuffed with cosmoline every goddamn time out listen, but it's always cosmoline anything. Anybody you know that has bought a com block weapon, have you ever seen one that was not chalk full of fucking cosmoline? This is I mean, this is my second one. Ain't scrapers worth out of the stocks so previous to this I had I still have it, but I bought a SIGAM and God, that thing didn't that that thing had a little cosmolin in it, okay, like a little cause like it was enough cosmline. I was able to take a can of break cleaner and a can of ballistall and just you know, and blast most of it out. It was fine. It was it was fine, It was fine. It was really okay. This son of a bitch. I had to go get frigive pipe cleaners to get all the cosmolin out of every little nook and cranny that it was packed down in the fire control group, which thank god, it's easy. I mean on the on the Saiga, I literally just like took the whole fire control group out and just hosed down with carb pleator. That fixed that problem. We really don't want to disassemble the fire control group, but it pulls out fairly easily. The entire gas tube was filled with cosmolaid, The entire gas to the front side block that has a little bit pistic sedges that was also filled with cosbolead every time. Oh Jesus Christ, Phil, do you remember when Cabbella's ran the deal where if you bought a case of Moses, you got ten ten of the spam crates, not spam cans, ten of the spam crates with it. No, okay, this was like in the late two thousands, to say, two thousand and nine, maybe twenty ten. So me and my buddies were just getting into shooting at that point, and we were like ten guns and ten cases of ammo. Yes please, So we popped down to Cabela's and we bought. We bought it. When we walked in, like, I was like, you seriously, you want this? Yeah, they're still in the original packaging. It's like, that's the point. Yeah, we'll take it. Phil. You want to guess what weight in cosmoline we pulled off those rifles before we disassembled them. I don't know about a pound each, almost a pound and a half each of cosmolines just between just after unwrapping the paper off of it, it was painted on there like if you guys have ever been in an old, shitty college apartment, how they've painted over everything, switches, outlets, everything doesn't matter. They looked like that covered in cosmoline. You couldn't tell where the stock ended and the barrel began. Excellent. It was amazing. I've still got two of them. I gotta keep having to go back and catch these comments. So Morgan. The Marlin is a model nine ninety. Oh nice, not familiar with it. Haven't even had a chance to like take it out to the garage and dissemble it. Try to clean, you know, just clean it, verify. Everything looks well. But like from running the action and the fact that that's been shot fairly recently, it seems seems like a nice little twenty two. There's not a lot to go wrong with them, I mean not really. And what goes wrong is the magazine springing the tube goes bad. You pop a new one in your set. Yeah it felt pretty good good, but anyway, so yeah, this poor thing was packed with cosmoin it had been converted over to Duckbill magazines. Now listen to me for anybody out there that has has an SKS an original as as delivered condition, and you think to yourself, wow, this thing would look so much nicer, but it had to duck Bill mat like a big old thirty or twenty round magazine on it. Please please please pick the nearest wall and run face first into it at full speed. I don't know no, none, no, I will I will order no, no, I will hear hear no bull crap about this is a time honored pastime. But there's never been an SKS converted Duckbill magazines that ran worth a ship. They all have trouble feeding. They all have trouble freaking feeding. They all have trouble feeding. None stupid things work well. It aggregates the crap any mean, by the way, because an SKS is not exactly like a frontline com block weapon. But they're pretty freaking nice rifles like, they work well, they very accurately, they feed well, and these people screw them up. I am fine with modifying a firearm. I've done it plenty. But if you're gonna modify it, make it better, not worse. Okay, But I do have one point of one point of order there film and order that I will allow you to go for it. Which got those esque ks? Is that you have that that you know of that ran poorly with the duck Build magazine adapter. Have you checked them for cosmoline and the goddamn gas to because I bet you you put that duck Bill adapter on that on that SK that you've got now now that it's clean, I bet it runs better than it did with it. So let me tell you what the problem is mm hmmm. Do you see this right here? I see that this is not the magazine that was intended to be equipped on an SKS. It's true. This is some tapco bull crab. Now, magazine engineering is hard. Yes, Now, anybody who's never engineered your own firearm, and a lot of y'all haven't, but take them a word on it. The magazine is one of the more difficult things to engineer correctly, as as evidenced by the fact that most people that make make a new firearm use an existing magazine because that's the hard part. And if you have a good man magazine, most other things can be worked out. Like when like when cz came out with the Scorpion, all of a sudden, everybody wants to use scorpion mags. You know why. They're cheap and they work. They just function. Why do you why do you think so many homebrew guns out there use blockmags because they're cheap and they work. Yeah, this stupid thing was engineered by Bubba in a shed and it doesn't work. It doesn't lock up solidly, it doesn't feed correctly. It's junk. Stop putting these in sks's just stop it. I'm just saying that. I think a lot of the reason why you see modified skses suck is because the people that are modding the sks don't know to clean them as thoroughly as need to be cleaned when they first got it. So they got it, it ran like crap. They're like, I'm gonna mod it because the worst case it still runs like crap. They modit, it doesn't really get any worse, doesn't really get any better, and it's just a fun, safe gun, and then they go buy an ar or an AK. Yes, well, there's also the fact that it was in one of those it caught awful fiberglass folding stocks. Oh that doesn't help either, No, it doesn't. He those stocks were never good. No, Like, there are folding stocks out there that have nice solid lock up and don't jiggle around, and like those are okay. But Morgan, So, I live in South Louisiana, which isn't really red neck land, but it's kunas Land, and that's yeah, it's a little bit of differs. It's more swampy than red neck land. Yes, but I'm also like twenty minutes away from Mississippi, so I'm familiar with where redneck Land is true. And yes it could have been ProMag Ragle, but it wasn't. It was Tapco, which is just as bad. But anyway, all that bad. There are some Tapco bags that work, but sometimes, but none of these stop bubbying mill SERPs anyway. But you know what, I might convert that mos into to a UGO MG barrel just to mess with you, okay, but it slightly annoys me less to do it to a Moses because Mosones were pretty crappy rifles right out of the gate. Oh yeah, I mean especially mine. I mean mine's a late war so I'm not even sure the heat treats okay on it. Yeah, but after weeks of sourcing parts and frustration, oh it looks right again. It is right again. I am. I am short a crossbolt slash recoil lug, which is important. I am just waiting for it to get shipped. Other than that, when I got this thing, it was a barreled action. The that that that is the original gas tube and a cleaning rod and that was a so I sourced the stock. I sourced a period correct surplus canvas sling. I actually correctly sourced because with these canvas links for these Chinese s gases. There's actually two of them out there. One of them has leather tabs in the end, and one of them has these metal springs. This was typical of the later the later SKSS and this SKS based on the serial number was manufacturer like nineteen seventy six, so got the correct slingk for it. It is a Chinese stock, so I'm I'm trying not to mix it match Baron Moudel. These things were made in several different countries. Let's just say there's Chinese stocks and Chinese stocks, and I don't know if you have a picture for the fitment on that stock, so don't beat me to the punchline. We'll talk about the stock here in a second. And as of today, that Chinese spiker bayonet showed up in the mailbox and the surplus cleaning kit which is in the butt stock. So at this point I am sure across bolt recoil lug and that's it. This thing is like all together rate of rock and roll. I got converted back to a fixed box magaze magazine, and I haven't had a chance to get out to the range yet, but just running dummy rounds through it. It feeds perfectly. Now, good, well, the spring pressure is correct for the bolt for the bolt's return spring. Yeah, I don't know. My other gripe with like a lot of these a lot of these p old magazines is like, you know, the idea was that basically what you have to do to to what you have to do to replace them is you have to actually lock the bolt to the rear because the bolt on an SKS has these two rails that interface with the very top of the box magazine to where like to to remove the box magazine, you have to pull the bolt out of the weapon or at minimum lock it all the way to the rear. Otherwise it'll like the the two rails in the bottom of the bolt will hold onto the magazine. Does the same thing with all these replaceable Duckbill magazines. So technically you have to lock the bolt of the bolt to the rear in order to be able to drop the magazine out. But most of these magazines don't correctly hit the bolt hold open, so when the magazine runs dry, the bolt slams forward. You can't pull the mega. You can't. Yeah, you literally have to like hold the free of bolt to the rear and try to jimmy the magazine. It's the dumbest thing on earth versus the way an SCS was built to run, which is, you know, mags empty stripper clips. Yeah, bolt slabs to the rear and stops stripper clip through the top, pull the bolt let a rock and then ten more rounds. You're ready to go? Were you able to source stripper clips for it? I've got thirty of them, that's not a bad number. I actually found ten in my father in laws. He had a huge creative amo that I've been I've been parting out with the you know, because like, yeah, as the family has been saying, that's that's the gun I want, that's the gun I want. Whatever ammo went to the guns that went with those guns, Yeah, as it should be. What good is the gun without bullets? Yeah? But as I was going through all that, I found a pack of ten stripper clips and then I ordered twenty more. Nice and I have a type Fifi bandalier on order. You might as well. Now what you got to do is find the Stalingrad match near you, or come up and shoot the Stalingrad match with me next next year. And I'm just in February. I'm just guessing that an SKS runs a voul of absolutely zero of Illinois stupid laws. It's actually in Wisconsin where the match is that that I that I like to go to. But it's held in February regardless of the weather, because Stalingrad the battle was held regardless of the weather. You do know that I don't own any clothing warm enough for Wisconsin in February. You're not that much different size wise than me. Phil, I can. I can set you up. I've got some Carhart Gary. You'll be fine. This is this is a lar, but I'll take it into consideration. Anyway. The last match I shot there, it was minus twenty five and blowing snow, and so yeah, it was a good time. I me and Ragle lived like an hour away from each other, and he I think he and I are feeling the same thing about like oof negative twenty The guy organizing the match goed up in full original Russian surplus uniforms of the period, including the big heavy overcoat. He was sweating. He was too warm. Oh that that just makes my heart hurt. It was fun, but anyway, so yeah, that's been the that's been the project. I've been working on most recently is trying to bring this old SKS back to life, and it's it is coming along. And other than that is the thing that I and I have started. I did start working on fell off the wagon because the holiday isn't getting sick. And you've been working on and that's both of us fighting the battle of the bulge. Yes, sir, you've been really dedicated to it, and I'm proud of you for that. I've been hitting it pretty hard. We were able to take advantage of some of the sales online on a little bit of exercise equipment. I got myself a squat rack smith machine whatever you want to call it, one of the relatively cheap Amazon ones, Gouru or whatever it was like. It was on a deal for like I want to say, eight hundred bucks for almost three hundred pounds a weight. It's a bar, a bench, the rack and all that. And I find I am a lot more likely to use workout equipment if I don't have to go somewhere else to do so. Now. I know not everybody is blessed with as much space in my ranch house basement as I am, but I had enough room to stick that on the other side of my bar, because of course I live in Illinois. My basement has a bar. But I've been hitting that pretty hard, pretty much every day. I'm not seeing any weight loss, but I shouldn't be at this point, given that I'm focusing on strength training. Well you yeah, I told my wife the other day that the holidays are over, it is time to put down the snacks and get back to the walking. And really the only thing, like, I don't know if you can hear it, I am still fighting congestion. You do sound terrible. You sound like me in the fall. Yeah, well, I'll put jizue whatever I caught from my daughter the day after Christmas. That evening I started, I started feeling bad and the next morning, Now, like you and I might have talked about this, I don't nap during the day. Once I wake up in the morning, I am like, I am up and I'm moving until bedtime. I slept on and off most of that day. Couldn't stay awake. I mean, I'd be sitting in my requiner and just not off out of nowhere. So like whatever got a hold of me was viral and it just flattened me. And I'm still dealing with the cough and congestion, the phlam and it's but like it's on wife, I'm like, we got to get back at it, even if I got a cough and hack all the way through it. So yeah, but I I mean, I get it. I am closing. I am like, you know, between two fifty and two sixty, and that's just too freaking heavy for me being five foot eleven. So I am. I am fortunate in the fact that, like I don't have to work too hard to maintain my muscle mass, Like I just I have one of those bodies that does the opposite thing where it's like, it's not the it's not the holding on a muscle I have the problem with, it's all the fluff that comes with it. Sure, your body naturally wants to create calories. Yeah, and look, there are different body types and there are people that have weight more that are more predisposed to weight gain. I'll say that, yeah, but it all comes down to calories in calories out. And if you can't decrease because like of your hypoglycemia, you can't really decrease your calories in too much. You need to increase your calories out that's the only way to go. Yeah. And the truth of the matter is that, you know, like walking in the evenings and some basic exercise doesn't know a lot. I need it as much for the cardio as I do any other reason. Sure, So I mean, that's just going to be a thing. We got to get back on it. And it's a it's in both me and my wife's best interest. But during the holidays and with illness and with just crap, you know, with aall the wagon a little bit, so we got to get back at it. I I made a very deliberate decision when we got all the components finally in because it shipped in like twenty seven boxes. It was stupid nice the uh got it all in here. I made a very deliberate decision that I was not going to go as extreme as my personality wants to do. When I first took up weightlifting when I was in high school, I got into it pretty big because I like, I'm actually okay at this. I'm going to do just this, and Phil, I know you get those those temptations just as bad as I do. But I locked myself into thirty minutes of either cardio or weightlifting a day, I get as much don as I can in thirty minutes, not including warm up stretches and cool down stretches, because that shit is not optional, especially for guys like you and me who are over the age of thirty. Uh yeah, especially when you're over the age of forty. Hey. It stretching only gets more important the older you get because if it lowers your chance of injury, it lowers your late your late, your late and muscle soreness, and your muscle soreness the next day. You just feel better afterwards. But my wife is correct, Phil, you need to try some throat coat tea with honey. So I won't say no. I will say that in my experience, like throat coat works better if you have a dry tickle and I don't have a dry tickle type of cough I have. The honey helps. The honey might help, But all of my coffee is just one hund present post nasal drip down the back of the throat piles up in the brawl guilt tubes and I get a cough it out. It's you know what I found. The whole head is a mucous factory. The hot tea if you're if you breathe in the vapor off the hot tea, that helps that as well. Maybe it's an excuse to drink more hot coffee. Yes, it can, as long as you're inhaling the vapors. I would say, challenge except inhale the vapors of the hot teeth out of the hot coffee. Babe. It's medicinal. It is medicinal coffee. It's it's medicinal for your coworkers as well, because you're less likely to apply the Prentice motivation to your coworkers. Percussive maintenance. Yes, yeah, you know, Phil, I mean, I don't know how big. I don't know if you have room in your house for exercise devices, do you you're so then where you are looking at the audi weeight fitness. Yeah, and that is your key. And that's a lot of what I've done in the past. And I mean it it works. It's just it seems like when it comes to like us and us and our fitness routine, we do pretty good at for a while, and then we just crashed headfirst into a wall. And that wall is always somebody gets sick. Sure, kind of hell breaks loose, and you know, we're spending every frigging spare minute dealing with crap. It's just always something. Have you tried yoga? Uh? Yes, I actually used to do it with my daughter, because you can do that even when you're ill, and it actually does help because it gets everything moving in your body, gets your body moving around, gets the blood flowing better. Yeah. I'm not one to buy into all the hippie dippy bullshit, but I mean, just moving a little bit in controlled slow forms like yoga does I think it helps. Yeah, well I will say that, like I try to make it a point and it sounds like the low's hanging fruit and it really is. But I mean even low hanging fruit helps. But like I try to make a point of like park at further away from the door at work, so I have to walk across the whole park a lot to get to the office, go up and down the stairs instead of taking the elevator, like you know, I try, because you and I have had this conversation, like so much of my job involved sitting in a sitting in a computer chair in front of a computer, and it's either typing into a spreadsheet, building code in the freaking database. It's always something and I try to plan moments in my day where I'm gonna have to get up and walk around, even if it's just like I could call somebody on teams to have a conversation with them, or I could just go up or down a floor and talk to them in person. It's just it's any excuse to get it out of my desk and go walk. Hey, man, the the any study that's ever been done on desk based work and chair based work, We'll tell you it's absolutely horrible for you. And you need to get up and move around at least every half hour. And those those little habits, man, they add up a ton. They had up a ton. You know. Do you have a like an app on your phone that'll track your steps? I do, actually, I mean I wear an Apple Watch. But yeah, okay, okay, do an experiment for me. It's gonna suck. Do this experiment me. Do a week where you don't do that, and then a week where you do, and compare the physical activity difference. I bet you it's more than double. I hate to say it. I can't, like, I really cannot, because half the reason I get up and walk around isn't even for the exercise. It is purely because like my back and my hips start hurting after a while. If I sit you along so then don't bother, then don't bother because I can tell you right now it's I have had friends and coworkers that have done that experiment and they have found that their activity level is at least double when they make the excuse to go just that little bit farther instead of getting water in like the sink in the bathroom, they walk across the building to go to the break room to get water out of the sink, and that increase their activity a ton more than people would believe. Yeah, I don't know. It's just gotta make some good decisions and start getting the weight back under control. You gotta build the small healthy habits. And that's the key. If you can if you can do something, what is it habit building takes four weeks of consistency. I think it was sounds about ry. If you do something every day for four weeks, you've established a habit. So if you can establish that habit of just in extra twenty minutes of activity a day, fifteen twenty minutes, half hour, whatever whatever you have room for in your day, you build that healthy habit in, you're just going to default to doing it after a month or two. Heck, after three four months, you're not even gonna think about it. It's just gonna be the thing you do after whatever, after dinner, after work. I get home from work, and the first thing I do is I walk in, put my lunch box away, throw on my gym shorts, and go down and work out. Now, it's not a consideration in my head. Off, I'm gonna do it if I feel like doing it. It's just no after work we go work out at the same time every day. I think it needs to happen. It does. Do we want to tackle this last little topic or no, I don't think it's gonna take more than twenty minutes and a half hour. Let's go for it. Let's go for it, all right. So this has been making the rounds in like good the gun spaces recently, and FRTs and super safeties and for anybody does know those are like google it for god's sakes, Come on, guys, like catch up a little bit. It's simulated filado. Yeah, I don't even like calling it that. What it does is what a forced reset trigger literally does. Is that as the bolt slams, as the bolt slams backwards, it pushes the trigger forwards. Here's the thing. Most people out here that have shot really crab be ars have felt trigger slap. Yeah, it's it's kind of intentional trigger slap. It is intentional, very aggressive trigger slap. So it causes your it causes the trigger to push your finger forward, and then as the bolt comes back for it, it goes back into battery, it takes that pressure away. So this doesn't this is not full auto because if you just if you just pin that trigger to the rear and don't let it come forward, the gun kills right it. Yeah, what it does do is it means that if you get just the right amount of pressure on there, you can pull that trigger a whole heck of a lot faster than otherwise you can. Unless your last name is Mitchellak. Yeah, that guy's spooky fast, even with double action revolvers. Yes, but the question has been coming up recently of like is this like a slide fire or a you know, is this like another range toy, Is this another bump stock or is there a legitimate purpose for these things? For like the prepared citizen for the person's interest in home defense, for the for the people that are kind of in the same mindset we are. Phil. You were in the military, I was not. Briefly, Yes, what is the purpose of full auto fire in the military? So one of two almost like you read the banners, I did not. I'm reading the chats. Oh, so there there unprepared. There were two primary purposes for full auto. Whether you're talking or not not full of let's call it select fire. Sure, because whether you're talking about like three round burst on a two, or you're talking about full automatic on an A one or an A four, you're talking about full like bursts out of a an M two four nine or an M two forty GP medium machine gun. Like select fire, full auto has two pot primary purposes. One is, you're being assaulted. You need to contact. I need to put all the lead into the air right now and make you put your head down so that me and my guys can break contact and get at it, you know, get off the X, get out of the killbox. Yeah, absolutely, that's one. Two is to initiate an assault with overwhelming force. In other words, like we have five guys, we're about to assault a group bigger than so smaller than us, and for the initial kickoff of that firefight, I need again all the lead in the air to make you either put your head down so that we can advance on your position, or scatter or do something dumb. That's the entire purpose of select fire slash filato in the military. It serves no other purpose. You Like, even once you are into extremely close contact like CQB, you're still not going to be using select fire terribly often because it's an ammo hog. There's a third use what you got early modern Chinese wave attacks. Defense from such Okay, if you have a wildly target rich environment in an open area of engagement, say World War One style trench attacks, that's another. I would say justifiable use of fal auto or burst or select fire ye suppress and suppressing fire basically what it is. I mean, if you have a to bring it to video game terms, a zig rush style attack where you have a wall, a human wall, coming towards you and you need to put all of the bullets into them as fast as possible, that's what it's there for. But I agree with that with a couple of caveats. Sure that that only hmmm, so I'm gonna echo with Jeff Jagga is saying here, is that it's use case is limited because in the scenario you're talking about, it only works under two conditions, and that is either that you're dealing with a bipod or a tripod amounted weapon where you can like very tightly control the elevation and you can put all the lead into kind of a line chest height kneecap to nipple height, or you're at such a close range that even with the gun doing this, you're still gonna get kneecap to nipples. Because if you're talking about a human wave attack freehand or like shooting off your elbows from say one hundred and fifty two hundred yards out to foxhole position, you're right back in the situation where you're better off semi automatic fire. Yes, And so that's that's that's kind of my my my spiel. And like I told Nick, like I spent a brief stint as a sawgunner for my platoon, which, by anybody that's never played with an M two four nine, like, it sounds a lot cooler than it is. They jam a shocking amount, They jam a lot, They weigh a lot. They don't play very nice, and the that we're gonna get we're gonna we're gonna get to the downsides here, I had the good portion of shooting a two four and nine and a machine gun shoot pass in the future, I would pass on that. Yeah, if you gave me one, I would not say no because duh, but the RpK was more fun. Yeah, So like that. That's kind of my thing is that within the within those narrow confines. As far as usage, yes, full out of select fire is an enormous force multiplier in a fight. It is an enormous help. It is arguably the only way with any reasonable size force to be able to put enough lead into the air to break contact and get off out of the kill box. Sure, if you're ambushed, but there is a reason why, and I don't. There's at least a couple of guys in the chat right now that I know also served, so like they can back me up on this or telling me I'm full of it, But like, my experience is that other than those rare experiences, or other than those rare experiences in training where we use full auto, you almost never use it really in uniform it's got a narrow use case where it's really useful, and everything outside of the use case, you're either putting rounds out that you're accountable for that could hit, that could cause collateral damage, or you're wasting AMMO. So like to me, like there's there are downsides involved to the use of select fire, full auto or an FRT or super safety as well. You are getting more lead into the air. But for those reasons I just listed more air, more led into the air can be a problem. And here's the other big problem, Nick, what do you consider to be a combat load for an AR fifteen? How many? How many? How many mags? How many rounds? I usually ran six when I was six mags. Yeah, I ran six mags on my body and then one in the gun. So I was doing the competitions to two D rounds. Yeah, something like that. Two hundred and ten I've heard two hundred and forty not uncommon. The guys I know that served in active combat would would have about that same plus another five to six mags in their buddy pack on their back for everybody else to get mags from because you can't reach mags in your own backpack. Those mags are for your friends, and the mags and your friends backpacks are for you. Okay, but six mags on the front of your play carrier, right, two hundred and ten to well. Three on the play carrier, three on the belt, two, three on the belt, one in the gun. Okay, but stick with me on this. Sure. So magazines you know, they're they're they're they're they're about yeah big, They're fairly flat. You can put a bunch of them in a small space. They're fairly lightweight. Have you ever seen a friggin bucket of ammo for a saw? Mm hmm. It's a it's a lunch box full of ammo. It is. It weighs two hundred plus round belts, and it weighs a shipload and there is no convenient way to carry it. There's a reason why every single military that's used I said, carried, not not mounted. Mount is the only acceptable way to run the carry machine guns. In my opinion, heavy. There's a reason why every single military that has fielded an intermediate or a full power cartridge in a drum magazine has eventually reverted back to stickmags because the stupid things take up a ton of space and weight. They are not convening to carry. And this only makes even remotely decent sense if you can distribute the AMMO across an entire squad, Like I'm gonna carry a couple of these drums, but I'm gonna give you a drum in your buddy pack, and my buddy's gonna have a drum, and his buddy's gonna have a drum. Because in a firefight, I need all your AMMO and you really need me laid down the lead. Yeah, but when we're talking about a prepared citizen, a single person, you are not gonna have for of these freaking drums tied to your chest. Rick as shit is not going to happen. It is a stupid premise. I agreed now. I thought about this though. If if we wanted to have that discussion of like kind of the middle ground that makes some kind of sense, I would suggest this. Put an FRT in your weapon. I don't like the two positions say it super safeties. I don't really like the super safety at all. Like I I love Hoffmantactico, I love everything does. I don't like the design of this super safety for one reason, one reason only because the semi auto function is in the middle of If you get the three position super safetys, you got to slide that say super safety halfway over to get to the semi auto setting, and all the way over is full auto or there is an opportunity there for unintentional super safety. And I think that much like much like an M sixteen, much like most other weapons systems. As long as you have the option to go back to semi automatic as well as forced reset, now we're in a position where we can have that capability but not be forced to use it all the time. I think at that moment, if you wanted to tell me, like, hey, Phil, I think this has a use, I would say, Okay, get a magpull D sixty stuff into the weapon. When that is done, you drop it and you go back to regular thirty round max. Yeah, I could see that. Have you ever have you ever tried to wield an AR with a D sixty or worse, the the the one to fifty dual snail drums you're talking about, like the big beta the old school beta seamags. Yeah? I ever you ever try those? I have not, but I cannot imagine they are any heavier than an m two four nine with a with a lunch box on the bottom of it. They're not. But what they what they do is they make the weapon entirely unwieldy if you are not in a prone shooting position. In my opinion, now I'm a pretty big guy, Phil, I'm I'm six foot tall, like I'm two twenty five right now, I don't have a problem carrying the weight of an ar with a one point fifty mag in it. I've done it just at a range fucking around. It's not an issue. Where it becomes an issue is target acquisition and changing from target to target to target. M hm. We actually had a not a three gun match, but a carbing match, a jungle run that they did where you are walking through the path and you are shooting at targets as they pop up in the woods. The guys that were shooting the bigger mags almost all placed in the bottom half of believable because number one, the guys that were really good aren't running those, which should tell you something. And the guys that were okay normally that did try to run them were much slower due to the added weight and awkwardness of the magazine. So within engineering. There's a thing called the polar moment of inertia, yeah, which basically means like if you have a lever and you have ten pounds of weight and you put it way over here right by the pivot point, it does not have a huge impact on how fast that lever will pivot around pivot point. But if you put the ten pounds all the way out here on the edge, now it had a lot of impact. It's the same way, but because it's further away from the pivot point and has a higher moment of inertia. Absolutely, it's the reason why sports cars tend to have as light of crash bars and bumpers exhumely possible, because they try to centralize all the weight towards the middle of vehicle, which makes that vehicle much more nimble feeling, even if it weighs exactly the same, the weight is balanced more appropriately. Now, Phil standag maag it's about a pound right fully loaded rounder. I'll go with a pound that I would call it fifty four grams. It's about a pound. So your D sixty is two pounds and most of that is now located below your magwell and in a big round drum. The one fifty is not two pounds, it's like four pounds, five pounds. Yeah, it's plastics. The plastics not that much weight, but it's a lot of weight and lead in brass, and that's not located below your gun. That's now located off to either side of your gun. It changes the dynamics of the weight to the weapon quite a lot. Yeah, Like I said, not to be in any of that, just suggesting that like if we if we go through, if we go through this exercise kind of with and admitly like my kind of base principles that are baked in from carrying us all around twenty five years ago. You know, if we're primarily considering this something to deal with anti ambush, break contact and retreat or for dealing with this for like an initiation of an assault, then really and truly you only need force reset and a high capacity magazine once you get most of your benefit from that initial bur in the air, and after that, I agree, I think you can almost get the same benefit out of a light short reset competition style trigger. Hum, I'm thinking do a mag dump, Do a mag dump with a standard mill spec trigger, and then do a mag dump with a guysly SSAE short reset trigger. I guarantee you the mag dump with the short reset triggers faster once you're used to it. Yeah. I guess kind of my thought process though, is that, like I, in the name of full disclosure, I don't own anything with a forced reset trigger me either or super safety. Haven't really felt the need personally because my my my stump that I have always defended very vigorously whenever someone gets a discussion about like we should have A or we should have B and I had this exact same conversation with people years ago about like, well, you need to train for a faster reload because you know, less time on the gun and blah blah blah, And my point of view always was like, yeah, but in combat, they don't teach soldiers like how to have a sub half second magazine change. They teach you to be behind cover because that's more important. Now. They teach you to cover your buddy so that when he's reloading, you're laying down fire. Like there's there's all these different soldiering skills that are much more important than speed. And when we talk about when I look at FRTs and super safeties, I kind of fall back on the idea of like, Okay, but there's all these soldiering skills that most of which can be covered by fairly good rifle basics and a semi automatic trigger, and you can get most of the same bang for your buck without these things. And everything and everything I've talked about to this point has been kind of from the gift, kind of from the guys of like trying to trying to mimic a military capability which works in a squad, And I just I don't want to take the hardline stance and say like these don't work for civilians, or these aren't these are these don't provide a capability. I just don't see the capability being near as pertinent or as important as a whole bunch of other things. I would say that, in my opinion, if you are choosing between a forced reset trigger or a super safety or a trueful auto and any other core prep, your money is better spent elsewhere unless your fundamentals are locked down. And by that I mean your marksmanship, By that I mean your tactics, your communication, your food and your water, and your medical and by medical I mean your gear and your training. Are on lock, because look, anytime a study has been done, most civilian involved shootings do not involve a mag change. Nope, they don't. They flat out do not involve a mag change. The ones that do tend to involve a mag change due to a failure either of the gun, the ammal or the magazine. You've heard Clint Smith's his whole spiel on this right probably, but remind me he was quoting off. He was quoting off police shooting statistics and said that, you know, back when like all these departments carried like six shot K frames basically in l for the average gunfight lasted five point two rounds and it was at a distance of like it was at an average distance of like I think it was fifteen feet, okay, And then when all these departments upgraded to glock nineteen's guess what happened. The average range for the fight stayed exactly the same, and the average number rounds fired was like two rounds less than a glock nineteen carries in the magazine. In other words, and he said it flat out, He's like, so what happened is when they had six shot K frames, they shot till the gun ran dry and that's when they stopped. And when they when we gave them glock nineteens, they shot till the magazine ran dry, then they stopped. Like, well, you know, there there is something to be said for panic fire, which does occur with law enforcement, it occurs with the military. It will occur with civilians too well. And even if you don't call it panic fire, like, there's a look, if somebody's shooting at me, I'm gonna shoot until my mags empty and then I'm gonna reload. Well, if it's a two way range, it's no longer counting bullets. Yeah, if you shoot until the incoming rounds have stopped for a while, and that's the point. You shoot till the threat stops. So, whether I got six rounds in the gun or fifteen rounds in the gun, I'm going shooting until I run out and have to reload, or until you're not trying to hurt me anymore. Right, And if I have fifteen rounds in the gun versus six, the natural pause point is different. Yeah. Now you will be judged partially on that by people who know fuck all about defensive shoes. Unfortunately, you know they're I'm not ever going to tell someone to carry a gun with less rounds than it because there is a point of diminishing in returns for weight. In ergonomics, there is. There is also a point of diminishing returns for having too few bullets in your gun because targets don't stand there. Hostels don't stand there like a paper target on a seven yard pistol range. They don't. They're gonna move. You're gonna be moving. You're gonna need to apply judicious marksmanship when you can, and sometimes probably suppressing fire. Yeah, I mean, look at the videos that people break two three guys breaking into a house and the homeowner happens to be armed and happens to be somewhat ready for that, because what they shoot until everybody leaves the house, you know. I mean, I can, I can dump a fifteen round pistol mag extremely rapidly. I'm sure Phil can as well. And I don't know, man, Yeah, I mean, Jeff's kind of right on the target. Sounds like the moment you stop to check if the reds neutralized is right about the same time you stop to reload. You know that I have often wondered to myself, and I've talked to this with a few different firearms instructors. If doing those fun mag dumps at the range isn't creating a training scar. And I've often wondered if doing set double tap and triple tap drills isn't creating a training scar. I don't know what the right answer is to that, so I won't say the right answer, but the answer is everything you do can create a training scar if you continue to train the same thing over and over and over. Which is why my comment like laypersons, because I'm not a FIBs instructor, but it's what I take myself. My common device to everybody is is train something different every time you go. Don't train differently. So no wheres like you know, like if you reload a certain way, reload that certain way, if you do John handling a certain way properly, hopefully, but do it the same way every way. Nick and I were talking earlier about the fact that like I've got a chess rig and I've got a play carrier, They're both set up with the same things in the same spots. Yeah, as close as possible. Yeah, So, like I know I've fixed blaze right here. Coms are up here, magazines right here, Like I don't have to think about, oh I'm wearing the wrong rick. Everything's in a different place. Like you have to train with some consistency. But when it comes to drills, I don't recommend you train the same thing every time because repetition works both ways. Maybe what we what we should try, and I know a lot of guys that do this, is when you go to the range, go with the buddy and do say threat drills. Have your buddy called down or threat down or clear. After a semi random number of rounds, ooh, here's the thought shot timer, except don't wait for the beep to start shooting. Set the shot timer so that after like X amount of seconds at a random interval, it'll beep. So you hit the button, you start shooting on the target, and when you hear the beep, you stop, or you hit start, have a buddy call threat, and then at the beep you stop because perhaps you get halfway through presentation beep, all right, we gotta stop. Either that or I'll tell you a really fun drill. And it seems like just goofing around bull crap, but it's really fun and it's really useful. You and a buddy work a plate rack back and forth like one of the little pluck poppers where like when you shoot, it flips your buddy side. Yeah, race tree. I'm gonna tell you right now that is a hell of a thing because you are you are shooting targets in real time and when he pops one back to you. The way at least we do it is is that you have to shoot the highest, the top target. So when you get when when you're in, when you're focused on shoot the next target, and one it gets popped up above you, you have to stop the transition. We engage and then go back. And it's like it's this constant your oodle loop is constantly cycling through looking for I'm trying to hit this target, but I have to be aware of those up there because if that happens, I have to stop. I have to re engage up here. It's just my whole thing is is that train something different every time and try to find ways to force you to do stuff other than shoot. Yeah, force yourself to think along with the training. I mean, if you're a complete nerd like I am, try to try to do multiplication tables while you're shooting. You'd be shocked how fast you start pulling rounds left, right, and center, because you're not thinking about, oh, I gotta squeeze the trigger and I have to control my breathing. You know, you're thinking about like what's five times seven while you're trying to put rounds on target. Hey, if you can find a range that'll let you do it, do push ups or do a couple of berpies and then try to shoot your string. I don't recommend that. At the local public range, they'll bitch funny. And it depends on the range. My local public range, if you have their holster certification, you can do stuff like that. But they but you have to rent out three lanes when you do Oh Jesus, you gotta run to your left and wander. You write at you, But it's just their rules. My local range is run by fuds. Yeah, mostly nice people, but still fuds. Mine is run by mostly sandbox tactical timmys. So no, they're the fun kind of stuff like holster training and stuff like that. You know, they're they're guys that are trying to do modern training and less fuddly dudly stuff. But they're concealed carry instructors all carry nineteen eleven's and outside the waistband holsters weather Yeah, barbecue guns. Yeah there, Look they sure look pretty in half of them are Kimbers. Like you're judging my shooting, sir, My gun works through the entire twenty one round string. Yeah that that's just painful because my first gun is a nineteen eleven made by Kimber. Hey, look, if they are treated appropriately and if you break them inappropriately, they're fine. There, they're fine. But my m m P two point zero C. I pulled it out of the box and I ran five hundred rounds through it with zero malfunctions. I always say, like, I love my Kimber, but I would never on earth hang hang up one of my hang up one of my czs, and carry the Kimber. It is. It is. It is an accurate gun, It is fun to shoot. It is nowhere near as reliable or forgiving as my czs are nine milimeter, not even close. Jeff makes a good point when you win a gunfight because your opponent's gun is rusted shut. Oh, hey man, a win's a win. Or even if you run away or gunked up with cosmolin. Well that too. That's you know, that's just another point in that do your maintenance. Yeah, are you cleaning your guns on a regular schedule even if you haven't been out to the range lately. That might fighters build cobwebs. That might actually be a good topic for next week. Sure, gun maintenance, Just do your maintenance in general, probably be a good one. Yeah, I'm sure we can make some he out of that, but we do need to wrap this up. It is like eight fifty five at night, and it is Friday night, which means I had to stay up late to night and edit this thing. I'm going to bed in fifteen minutes. Have fun with that. I do appreciate you sticking with me to do this on a Friday night, though, because, like you know, yesterday was New Year's Day. I well, I was at a town visiting family, and I'm glad we're getting back on the horn. Though. I enjoy I enjoyed doing the podcast, but I'm not gonna do it too. I was. I was kind of glad. First of all, I was glad to take the time off with my family, but also with me catching the colder. Whatever god awful thing I did, I would you'd have had a hard time. Oh dude, I couldn't. I couldn't keep my stuff care for five minutes last week, so we would have been taking the week off regardless. M h, gotta take care of your health. First thought that you got nothing. I just don't like to be reminded of it anyway. Matter of facts, podcasts gonna go out the door. We might talk about general maintenance, vehicle maintenance, maybe weapons maintenance next week, or we'll figure out something completely different. Stuff just happens, uh ragle fraggle. Didn't we do general maintenance not that long ago. No, I think we did basic home maintenance. I think we probably did vehicle and home maintenance, so we're gonna might have done vehicle at the same time. We could do kit maintenance, kit and firearm maintenance. I like that for those of you that haven't changed your god damn smoke detector batteries or at least a month after daylight savings time. I need a beeping noise to play during this show now. No, don't that drives me fucking crazy. I got the three in the morning two days before daylight saving time because one of my smoke detectors did that. Are you gonna I cannot sleep through that. Are you gonna bub in your moses? I might. I've been thinking about it for a long time. I do have that black powder rifle from Eddie that I've been doing more playing around with. H Okay, then I might. I might play smoke detector beeB all right, that's fair for that episode. For when I finally get that done. I am waiting on some hardened nozzles for my three D printer so I can try some carbon fiber polymer. We might do a full synthetic plastic, fantastic job on that thing. We'll see. Sounds like fun, all right. Matter of facts, going out the door and her by, Stay out of trouble, stay in touch if you're gonna. If you're not gonna stay out of trouble, at least be good to getting back out of trouble. Talk y'all in a week. Bye night, Papers,