TAC TUESDAY SPECIAL! Keith from Kiloton Tactical - Fighting the ATF, Suppressors, and Gunsmithing

PBN family, when's the last time you thought about reparedness? Not preparedness, but reparedness. That's what YouFixedIt.ai is all about. Reparedness. What can you repair when you need to save some cash or no one's coming to repair it? The other day, my thermostat went black. My HVAC turned off. Talking $ 100 just to bring a tech out. I plugged the information into YouFixedIt.ai, and it told me that my condensation outflow pipe was clogged. It was triggering an automatic shutoff. In about 10 minutes, my system was back on and working. I canceled my $ 100 appointment. Bingo! It gave me easy-to-follow instructions, a whole section on safety so I didn't electrocute myself, and then a list of tools that I might need to get the job done. Check it out for yourself and make it a part of your preparedness plans. That's Y-O-U-F-I-X-E-D-I-T dot A-I. And if you put slash prepper on the end, you get 10% off. And they'll know we sent you. Like Wish.com, where they were selling these little hubs, and you can put oil filters or fuel filters on your gun and thread it to your gun and use it as a suppressor, but it was very illegal. So I have an 0207 manufacturer's license. So why don't I just register like a hundred of these things, scratch a serial number and a model into it, meet the legal requirements, fill out a form too. And now we can just over the counter, like if you're here buying a gun, let's say you're buying a, you know, a $ 300 gun and say, Hey, look, you want a suppressor? It's over the counter. I could put it on this form right now and hand it to you. 40 bucks. I mean, Oh, yeah, I'll take two of them. Sure, okay, here you go. Yeah, that's going to stay. I'll take two sounds like probably the appropriate answer on that one. Yeah. Just so you know, man, that was such a great intro that I just... I knew it was going to be great that I just recorded it, so I hope that's okay. Oh, yeah, that's fine. So that's the impromptu intro, folks. We got Keith here from Kill a Ton Tactical, and we're talking... Well, I think I'd like to talk about some of the work that you do in the modification world and the repair world with guns, that kind of stuff, because we don't often talk about that that much. But before we get into kind of what you do, you've got a serious background. And I think it's important that we give everybody the heads up on kind of what you got going on and, uh, what you've done in the past to get you to this point. Well, yeah. Um, You know, you tell the story to so many customers, you start to like, did I really do all that stuff? I don't remember. That was 20 years ago. I don't know. So I started life. I dropped out of college after 9-11 happened and I joined up and I wanted to be the best. So I signed up for special operations. I joined the Air Force, got into special operations and I went straight into AC-130 gunships. So I was an AC-130 gunner. on the U model spookies for six years. And then I swapped over to the H models. It's a 16 special operations. Um, those are the specter gunships. And I did that for four years and then became a helicopter flight engineer. Um, and then I went over to, I volunteered for the CB 22 program. So I became a new, some new career field. They called it special mission aviator. And you basically had five different jobs. You were like a gunner and a flight engineer and a load master and navigator and everything else. And, um, So I did CV-22s for my last years, and then I was one of those unfortunate victims of the abomination where everyone with combat injuries– because I had several combat injuries. I did 14 combat deployments, and I had some injuries, crushed ribs, damaged neck, damaged knees, some kind of piece of– I still don't know what that is to this day. It's some kind of piece of metal shrapnel or something in my back. I don't know. lot of things you know and they what they did was and and i i kind of figured this out put two and two together i went to police academy immediately after i got out because i needed a job and they fired all the contractors obama fired all the military contractors on base so there was nobody um so i went to police academy became a cop i only did that for a couple years um but uh I was in a class with a bunch of guys who were in the same boat as I was. Combat injuries, you get railroaded out, you get as little VA percentage as possible, you get no benefits, you lose your retirement. All those guys had the same story. There was nine of us in that academy class. It actually took me about five years until I found some guys, like a legal team, made up of ex-VA guys, which was awesome. It's referral only. And they will go attack for you and try to get, you know, the benefits that you earn. Um, and it, you know, it worked and I have like, I don't have like TRICARE, I don't have a retirement or anything, but they, they at the very least got me the VA that you, by God I earned, you know? Um, uh, so after all that I did about how many years is that in air force special operations? Like 2002 to 2016. So about 14 years. Um, And then I was a cop for a couple of years, deputy sheriff. I actually started gunsmithing and opened my own store while I was still active duty. So I'm on year, geez, I don't know, somewhere in the realm of about 20 years of gunsmithing and professional work. I finished three degrees and certifications for weapons and gunsmithing and various things like that. So I went to Northwest Florida State College. I went to the Air Force College. uh, modern gun school for their advanced gunsmithing program. And, um, a couple of my customers convinced me like, Oh, you got benefits left over, go to the Sonoran desert Institute and get under. So I'm, I'm currently getting a fourth AAS degree in, in gunsmithing from the Sonoran desert Institute. And, uh, God, I wish I wouldn't have done that. I'm not saying that Institute is bad. I'm just saying, why did I take on this extra trouble right now? You know, there was no reason for that, but I'm doing it. Um, it's interesting. You know, some classes are good. Some classes are bad, Um, so I have a, you know, for, for the pedigree, for the gunsmithing, you know, I've got my own store, I've got my own range, you've got my own brand. Um, and I do have a patent. I have a full us utility patent on a machine gun design that I designed in 2010. Uh, I scratched it onto a piece of paper while I was in the left scanner window, waiting to shoot some people on a specter gunship in Afghanistan, just came to me and I wrote it down and I, I, you know, I, I, Immediately called my father who was alive back then. He was a lawyer. And I said, how do I do this? And he said, you know, he walked me through it and I sent him the diagrams and he helped me out. And now I have a patent for it. And that patent has lost me. Forty to fifty thousand dollars at this point. So, like, I even had this attorney, this great attorney, fantastic guy. He he was kind of working on a commission and. And he helped me to contact all of these different companies. And, you know, if you listened, if you view guys like Ian McCollum, who I absolutely adore, I have learned so much from Ian McCollum watching all of his videos. He has, oh God, what is it? Forgotten Weapons, sorry. My apologies to Ian. He he's had his own channel for the longest time. And he talks about in great detail how hard it is and how rough, you know, you have a brilliant design, a design that could revolutionize the firearms industry. But getting that made and getting that to market is so difficult. You know, so many brilliant guns have been designed and are out there right now. that will never see the light of day. It's not the fault of any one individual. I guess you could put the blame on government inefficiency, I suppose. Take, for instance, the weapons trials that they did years ago. There's two different sets of weapons trials wherein different companies developed brand new, fantastic, state-of-the-art weapons and millions of dollars in research and development and multiple levels of of government testing over years. And the government and the military finally gets to the end and they say, okay, we like this one, we like this one, we like this one. And over time, hey, we want you to do this, we want you to change that, we want you to add this. And they get to the end, the finish line, they think they've got a product and the government and the military goes, we'll take none of these, thanks. And that's it. And you've spent $ 10 million developing something and it never gets made. So as a result of multiple iterations of this over decades, Uh, even though I've got this fantastic lawyer and this fantastic patent and I'm comfortable with the design and I can help you. And I, I, I, you know, I would go fly wherever you needed it, whatever manufacturer and sit down and say, okay, this, this, this, and I want this. And you can adapt this to this platform or make it individually or, you know, whatever you want to do. Um, it is a design in which very similar. We actually got the patents at about the same time, myself and the, the Aries, uh, Shrike. If you've seen that it's a belt fed, uh, Um, uh, my design is different and that's why we both got the patents in that the lower is very much redesigned or the entire platform, depending on how you're doing it in such a way that there's a, there's an additional lever and you can have a magazine and a side mounted polymer box full of belted ammunition on the gun at the same time. And you can switch between the two at any time. And there's three separate linkages that stop any debris. There's a Paul that stops the belt from feeding, for instance, through the top cover. There's a plate that stops any debris from getting into the magazine should you have a magazine at low time. So, you know. and because, you know, all those deployments over the years, you see so many different guys in so many different fields with so many different jobs with different guns. For instance, you know, just the security forces, folks. the guarding the gate at one time, they're patrolling the perimeter. They might be in a firefight. You've got something heavy, like a two 40 mounted on a vehicle. You've got to take that two 40 off. Every time you go into the administrative building, every time you go in for chow, you know, why not have something lighter that you can have a belt and then just pop it off the pintle mount and put the magazine in. And you've got your gun loaded, ready to go, but it weighs, you know, eight pounds less now. And you pop it right back on there with an attachment, you know? Um, So that was the idea, and to be more adaptable, hell, you could have the same exact platform on, let's say, a special operations team, have one with a long barrel and just a magazine for a DMR type of situation, have several riflemen, maybe a grenadier with the same type of setup, and a squad gunner with a belt on there. But any one of them, you could put the belt on the sniper platform if you wanted to. It doesn't matter. You could just swap between the two at any time. So I had this great attorney, and we sat down, and I signed all these nondisclosure agreements with all these companies, and they looked at it, and some of them were like, no, it's too complicated. Some of them said, oh, hey, this is great, but we want you to do everything and design the thing and make the thing and have fully working prototypes, and then we'll just figure out exactly that. I said, if I could do all that, why would I talk to you? Right. Just sell it myself to the government, I mean, to the army directly or the military at large. I'd have to get some big manufacturing capability, which we do not have at this time, which is a good segue into the court case. So why I don't have machining equipment back here. One, you can see piled behind me right now. Those are all my household goods, and that's from one wall to the other in my 600 square foot workshop. Household goods is a good way to put it. I'm renovating my house. So that literally is all my household goods, all the stuff that we couldn't put in a container sitting there. So that's blocked. But why I don't have the machining equipment. What was that? Three and a half, four years ago, somewhere in the three and a half. The ATF under Biden was starting to enforce what they call their zero tolerance policy. Love that, by the way. They would go. And they walk it now up to that point. I was about I was in business for, let's say, 13 years at that point. Wow. In 13 years, I had had three location inspections and two regular inspections by the ATF. You know, a lot of dealers will say I've only ever had like one inspection in 15 years or whatever. But because I moved several times because I was in the military, I had several inspections and regular like full inspections as well. And up to that point, zero violations. In fact, the inspection prior to that was at the location I had in Navarre, Florida, out of my house. And the inspector was so cool about it. He was like, hey, you've got all your stuff in one sock. This is great. If you want, I will sign off on a manufacturer's license now for your inspection for that if you want. And that's when I got my, I said, yeah, let's do it. And I applied for my 0207 manufacturer's license because I planned on buying some property like this, shooting range, manufacturing, everything, have a standalone store. And he was cool, and he said, yeah, you've got it going on. And then this guy comes in years later with an agenda. Before we went to– well, we never actually had a day in court, but we filed in state court. We filed in federal court. Before I went to the federal hearing, I did go to a federal hearing during this zero-tolerance policy. This particular inspector had posted some very inflammatory things online, such as that his favorite things in the world were Frisbee golf and shutting down gun stores. Like a bad candidate for the position. Right. This is a federal government agency inspector for the firearms industry. Now, the ATF, I believe, did four or five studies they paid for in the years before and after that to show that this incredible zero-tolerance enforcement policy to go after law-abiding gun owners and law-abiding gun dealers who do their due diligence constitutes less than 1% of the gun crime. And they were spending something like 75% of their multi-billion dollar budget going after law-abiding gun owners and gun sellers and gun makers that attribute to less than 1% of the gun crime. Sounds like the government to me, man. Right. So, you know, absolute nonsense. It was accomplishing nothing. Under Biden, like shortly after that, they got the biggest budget cut the agency had ever seen. under somebody who empowered them to do all this stuff. But anyway, this guy came in here and he went through every single thing in this store and he wrote me up for 155 violations. What? He was here for a week. I mean, I'm talking about everything from Oh, this guy was a he was a handwriting expert because we were using paper forms at that time. He would say, oh, this signature does not match this handwriting. And he said, you know, like like I'm going to. Oh, yeah, I remember that guy. And he had he had somebody come in in a trench coat and signed for him. What are you talking about? You were doomed before he walked in. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This was it. Find me the man and I'll find you the crime situation. Exactly. Now, this guy, two things happened at the end of that. One, he took the stack of 4473s and walked out with, I said, hey, you can't do that. This is on camera, on audio. I said, hey, you can't do that. What are 4473s? These 4473s is the form you fill out to buy your gun. That's got all of your personally identifiable information on it that we have to keep locked up and we're responsible as a dealer to keep for life now. uh you know your social security number your address your driver's license number what guns you're buying what caliber all these things you know race ethnicity birth date all these things are on that form he took a stack of something like and we were doing a lot of business back then we've lost like 75 of our revenue since then thanks to this wonderful economy we've got going on but um we had a lot of business and he took those 500 forms something like 500 forms And just walked out with it to my protest and just claimed that the regulation said he could do that. Well, turns out he didn't say that at all. And he left and he didn't come back for he didn't drop those forms off for several weeks. I think it was once a month. And God knows where he had them or what he was doing with them or whatever. But, you know, as a former deputy, if I'm collecting evidence for a crime, which is what he claimed to be doing, and I just take the evidence of that crime and break the chain of custody and just walk off with it and say, I was in my apartment. For four weeks. Sometimes I was there with it. Sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes I brought it somewhere. Do you think that's going to stand up in court? Yeah, no. So he did this. And now the other part of this is that I pride myself in record keeping. I pride myself in decades of honesty and integrity. I don't lie to people. I don't take advantage. I keep good track of things. I don't bend the rules for anybody. You know, if I feel like, hey, this guy doesn't need to, you know, like hell. Before that, I had actually reported several guys that were trafficking guns. Like a major one actually came to my store. This dude that they were actually had a federal investigation on came to the store. I had no idea. He just bought one gun. But then he came back and tried to attempt to buy another and they denied it. And I said, oh, no. And I contacted the ATF and I said, what's up with this? And they said, oh, that guy, we're looking for that guy. And he came from New York and he came down and he was buying up all these guns because he had a clean record for, I don't know, some gang or something. And he was bringing all these guns that he had bought up to the point where they would cut him off up to put them into distributions. So, you know, it's only ill-begotten guns. So I stopped the sale. I cut it off. I submitted evidence and everything. But most of the time when you report a crime, the ATF does nothing because the ATF doesn't go after criminals. The ATF has nothing to do with law or crime. They don't care. They only enforce these rules that they make up. And if you ever are so brave as to look at this regulation that they write, you know, having been in the military, having worked for the federal government as a contractor for years, that was what I did after the, I was a cop, I was doing the store, but I was also doing military contracting and government contracting for years. The gunsmith, armory work, training, that sort of thing. I was the weapons and tactics guy for the 492nd Special Operations Group, stuff like that. And, you know, regulations are, are very, what's the word I'm looking for? You know, very. But regimented. Regimented. It's, Oh, that's it, regimented. I knew it was an R word. I'm sorry. It's just like writings of a madman that each individual ATF agent, inspector and administrator can kind of enforce as they define it. Oh, wonderful. Day to day, you know, even going so far as to how we saw up in that that poor guy who worked at that airport, they busted down his door and shot him in the head at like four o'clock in the morning for a miscarriage. what are we doing uh you know stuff like that it's well how far do they want to take it well they can take it as far as up to killing you i suppose for breaking the rules we don't know um just absolute nonsense and and they you know they broke their we saw here they broke their policy a couple times and that place in milton near me big store unfortunately it closed down recently a lot of stores closed down because of that zero tolerance nonsense uh and just you know we've all suffered a 75 loss in revenue i i've got friends uh and associates that own several stores around here that i i deal with and we're very friendly with even though we're in competition but i you know um enforcement firearms in in crestview we uh we like them They actually were supportive. There's one in Floralla. There's one Howell's Outdoor over there by Samson, Alabama. A friend of mine owns a store by Hartford, Alabama. And we all say the same. Where's all the customers? I didn't steal them from you. They're just gone. So it's bad. But back to the zero tolerance. The guy walks out. Now, the most egregious thing wasn't a crime. It was that he was so evil and arrogant about it, that he turned around, looked at me as he was at the door and said something to the effect of, oh, we're definitely shutting you down and laughed. And I said, I've, I've paid this off. I've, I've worked for 15 years almost to, to build this and, and, and follow the rules. And, you know, I've been in constant communication with you guys in order to follow the rules. Anytime I had a question, I would contact you And he laughed and he walked out the door. And then they were so cowardly about it because I think they knew that I would resist that they didn't actually answer the inspection or say anything for like seven months. So I'm just sitting there wondering, you know, when are they going to show up? Worrying to death. Yeah. And my wife is crying at night. These evil people are going to destroy my livelihood. You know, you just soldier on. And then one day I had sent it. I was I was up for renewal that year. So, you know, I renew. There's two licenses. There's there's your SOT license for your manufacturing and transfer the NFA stuff, the suppressors and whatnot. And then your regular firearms license that you renew every three years. And I was up for renewal for both, you know, and I submitted those. And they sat on it for a while, which, oh, here we go. You know, they're not going to renew it. And lo and behold, what they did was the most cowardly thing possible. They waited until like the week it was up for renewal. No, it was actually two weeks late. And then they said to me, oh, we're denying your renewal. We're not revoking your license. We're denying your renewal. I said, okay. Now, prior to that, I had an insurance policy. I call. I cash in insurance policy. I find one of the best lawyers in the country. I lawyer up, and I call every agency in the country, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the NRA, the NRA ILA, and, of course, the biggest one, the Gun Owners Association of America. Those guys are a godsend. The others were kind of supportive except for the NRA. The NRA and the NRA ILA were like, yeah, you're on your own. Dang. I thought this was like the ILA was I'm an NRA business Alliance member. I have to be from our insurance. Like, aren't you guys supposed to protect? That's what this thing is. That's what the membership is. You're supposed to legally protect us. And we're like, yeah, no, no, we're not doing it. We're not even, we're not even supporting you verbally. Just send your membership money. Yeah. So yeah. You know? Okay, great. Now the GOA, um, again, the other ones were supportive and cool and they have done great things for us recently. Great, great lawsuits, great policy, uh, Um, and, and kudos to them, but the gun owners association of America, uh, stands alone and they don't pay me anything. In fact, I pay them, but they stand alone as, as standing up for me and everyone else. And this whole, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this, but this whole, the NFA stuff, and how you don't even have to register it anymore or transfer it or anything. That was mostly them. You know, other people were part of that lawsuit, but that movement, that money, that time, that effort was, was mostly them. And for me, they came in and they said, let's, let's take a look. They had their lawyers. Like, let's take a look at what you got. Cause this sounds, you know, but we want to verify that you're actually being honest and you have all your stuff together. Let's take a look here. And they took a look and they said, wow, this is egregious. You know, you really do. Like I had a hundred percent accountability of all serialized items and, One of the biggest things they're looking at is for these inspections, particularly the serialized items. Did you lose track of any serialized items? Is there any paperwork errors that would stop law enforcement from locating or identifying this gun? That's the main thing here. The rest is just, you know, people making mistakes. In fact, my lawyer, which was fantastic, he pointed out, I mean, I've never seen a lawyer so put together. He came in with indexed itemized binders of information from everything that they had prepared um absolutely fantastic and their error rate just my information so them intaking and processing my information and the information for the for the case against me their error rate was 60 percent my rate. Was five more than half yeah more than. Half yeah that's my error rate was 5% and it was only just nonsense paperwork errors you know hey they checked that box that's kind of irrelevant but you know you could glean okay but nothing nothing major so so just absolutely ridiculous but we we they the GOA came in and they didn't you know they didn't pay for my the state side they didn't pay for that attorney my insurance thank God did that and they dropped all charges the one the one they were like well we'll keep in these they kept like six violations or whatever. And the six violations were a policy that an ATF inspector told me to do at my, the inspection prior to the last one. Nice. Recommended by you guys. You keep that one. We're being recorded in there. And I, you know, I spoke out of turn a couple of times because I couldn't hold my tongue, but I'm sitting in this hearing with, you know, the director of industry operations and the inspector and the ATF attorney and my attorney and this big federal attorney for the ATF on, on screen, which they weren't supposed to do, but they did anyway. Um, and I'm like, You know, just stuff like that. Like, you mean those violations that you told me to do it that way? OK, sure. So we never had court. They dropped all charges and it was ridiculous. And again, my attorney, bless his heart, was part of that. You know, he was talking to the other attorneys. He's like he announced in the federal hearing. Oh, yeah, we filed a federal suit against you. Now, that suit was Keyleth on tactical versus the ATF, the federal case. And there's another case. So I can't I can't claim. but I'm the only one who participated in this and helped this to get done. Obviously, the GOA and the GOF were the big ones behind the movement, but it was my case and the case of a store in North Dakota, I believe. I hope I'm not incorrect about that, but the same type of thing. And these cases went on for several years, and we never had a day in court, just paperwork filing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And of course, federal judges at that time, especially under Biden, are scared. You don't want to say something because you're going to be in the national news by dinner time, you know, as this judge, and they're going to politicize you and vilify you and make you cry. So, you know, I can't blame the woman. She was the federal judge for the Southeast District here for Florida, Alabama, Georgia. And so, you know, no decisions were made for the longest time. Then Trump gets reelected. And shortly thereafter, he releases a letter talking about gun control. If you recall that, he said, hey, we're going to look at gun control because gun control is obviously not working. So we're just hurting law-abiding citizens. We're not actually making a dent in gun crime. So obviously this isn't that effective. Whether you're right-leaning or left-leaning, I think it's obvious things aren't working. And you've got tons of gun control in the highest gun crime areas. So let's think about this. Let's apply some logic. On this goes, and he releases this letter, and I believe we were number four. He mentioned five lawsuits, and we were number four. And then another year goes by, and the president himself comes out and says, okay, I am officially, through executive action, getting rid of the zero tolerance policy. And by that action, he kind of null and voided the lawsuits. Now, unfortunately, that's an executive policy change. So the next president that comes in can just do that same thing again. He can put the same or worse. And I can't go back to court for it. That's double jeopardy. So we didn't get the real big case law win on it. You know, I guess we had a victory. You know, people like, oh, my God, you saved the gun industry. Not not really. You know. It's like fighting an army that vastly outnumbers you, and they decide, you know what, we're going to go get some lunch. We'll just screw up. And you're like, yes, victory! Take it while you get it, man. Hey. I guess. Yeah, we, yay us, we won. It's hard to believe that you guys have to go through this kind of shit just to sell weapons lately. Literally sell the number two thing on the Bill of Rights. You have to jump these kind of hoops and live this kind of life. And then, you know, you're probably over there like many gun store owners who are like, yeah, we're in, I guess, you know, with the economy being what it is, it's not great. But on, but on top of that, you're probably thinking what happens in two more years, right? What happens next election when some guy or some gal sits in that chair and has a stack of executive orders over their head and is just signing them. And one of them is going to be my death rattle or what, you know, you don't know. So we appreciate it, man, because it's not an easy thing. Yeah. And the money is, there's no like, there's no money in this. you know, I, I, I am very passionate about this and I am so lucky to have, you know, we only have three employees here. Um, and we had four, you know, um, but we only have three employees and I am so thankful for these guys. They're, they're all veterans. We got a Marine and Army and myself Air Force. Um, and they are devoted. They are passionate about it. Um, they, they helped me out. Like that hurricane just hit us the other day and he's got out here helping me. They don't like on days or not, he was supposed to be here. They're out here helping me, you know, clean everything up, put everything like, you know, cause we had all this construction debris. Uh, my friend down the road comes here. He's got two farms to worry about just up the road. And he comes here and helps us knock down some dead trees. Just these guys are fantastic. And some of our customers are fantastic. Um, and, and the support that you get, but this is, This is a work of, of passion. You got to love this because a lot of the stores that, you know, came in 10 years ago, 15 years ago that were in this boom, like everybody had an AR manufacturer and, you know, and we were just selling left and right during the Obama days and have a million dollar store within a couple of years where all those guys are gone because you can't even pay the rent. Um, I'm lucky enough in that I own this property. I own my shooting range. Everything in here is paid off. I slowly, like I basically, instead of paying myself over the 15 years, I just paid for the store, the equipment. The inventory. So everything's paid off. You know, I have a retirement. I have another source of income. So, you know, that pays the bills and we can just go on. But even then, this past year, so like I said, we had about, I think it was, I want to say it was like $ 880, 000 was the highest year we'd ever had in sales. And that was 2020 or 2021. Since then, I think we're on course to do like 400K this year. And we've got more customers than ever. So less than half with estimated triple the amount of customers and exposure. And all the other stores nearby and big ones have closed up. There's no money. No one can afford it. It costs you $ 2, 000. More customers? So they're buying what? Less expensive things? Or nothing at all. Or we'll have somebody, you know, we've had people drive from Tallahassee to buy a $ 300 gun. Or we'll have people drive 45 minutes to buy one box of ammo. And we'll get into this, but, you know, one of our specialties is the actual gunsmithing. We are actual, certified, trained, educated, insured gunsmiths. We do real work. We do real modification. And we are licensed to do that. So people trust us to fix and repair and refinish and do all these things and modify these things. And you'll take guns that are sent to you via mail, just so the listeners understand. You've got a problem. It's a shame that people don't take advantage of that more often. Now, two problems with that. One, people don't trust shipping their gun to someone that they have not met and spoke to and seen the operation. It is a gun, after all. And the second is that, you know, and again, the economy makes this even worse, but even when things were good, people treat gunsmithing like a last resort. They try to fix it themselves. They get on YouTube, which is now, you know, they, how can I do that? That would cross my mind. So half the time we get a gun that needs a serious repair job, it's, it's been screwed with. Sometimes they're honest about it. Sometimes they're not, you know, they're like, Oh yeah, it's doing this. And you open and you're like, you clearly put these parts in backwards, you know, like, I know you messed with it. Just be honest with me. It makes my job easier. I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not going to charge you. But we also don't like, and why you should ship us these guns, because if you're in like a major city or something that has, you know, like one gunsmith in the whole city and he's charging city prices, you know, and he's charging table fee, disassembly fee, storage fee, all of these things. And we just charge by the hour. You know, we have fixed prices for certain jobs and we charge by the hour. It's 40 bucks an hour. We're in a low income area and, you know, we're very qualified for this stuff. And again, this is more of a passion project. I am not going to get rich from this. I know I'm not going to get rich from this. I would have seen something by now in 16 years of business. But, you know, we can fix it. We are expanding capability when I get rid of all this junk. Oh, I never did finish the thought, but. I had in my cart at the time that ATF inspector walked in the door, a CNC mill drill combo lathe gunsmithing. It's like 20 grand. We had the space for it. We had the electrical hooked up. We have the high pressure concrete already installed. Like we were ready to go to advanced machining. Like we already know some, you know, we could do the welding and the machining and all that type of stuff. And we were going to get that. It was in the cart. And then we lose, I think we lost somewhere in the realm from lost business, from fees, you know, it's like 50 grand or something. You know, you barely survive. And this past year, I was going to mention that, even though we have those customers and even though the stuff's paid off, we're going to pay the employees and, you know, the taxes went up somehow, even though we're making nothing. I had to empty my savings account and max out my credit card just to keep everything as it was this year. And I'm going to have to, I'm now going to have to sell in order to pay off the debt that we accrued, I'm selling two of my rarest transferable machine guns. Like, I'm not heartbroken over that, but like, man, what is going on, you know? Yeah, man. Well, you know, I hope he wasn't right. Right? I mean, he's clearly up against a fighter, so he probably will lose because he sounds like a bum anyway, but. I hope he wasn't right. And it's a, it's a long, you know, a long and terrible end, but sounds like you, uh, have died. You're good at diagnosing a problem and fixing it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, we, we handle things mechanically, methodically. Um, so yeah, you know, to, to your, to your question, to your point there, um, I wish people would be more confident to save the money and the time and send it to somebody who's qualified, who will not charge an arm and a leg and, you know, call us, email us. Email is probably better because I can go into more detail, show you pictures, links, everything like that. And, you know, even send you the policy, the website, all that stuff. We have a website, kiloton tactical.com. You know, it's, there's things I don't like about it. So we have this deal with this, um, uh, process. So they do payment processing, point of sale software. They do, uh, uh, manufacturer and distributor integration, web hosting, it's all in one. And they're like just firearms type stuff. And, you know, so I can't really cut one part of that off if I don't like something about the website, you know what I'm saying? We get calls all the time, especially from the older crowd who have trouble checking out because it's kind of a complicated checkout. You know, the younger crowd is probably gonna have no issue whatsoever. But we try to walk people through. We'll take a phone order if you don't want to do it, you know, if we're not so busy talking to people. But you can order whatever on there and you can talk to us and say, hey, listen. And now the other thing is we're not afraid to touch those things that a lot of people are afraid to touch. NFA items. I am an NFA manufacturer. If you're having trouble with the timing on your gun with a suppressor, you could send us the gun and the suppressor, even if it's short-barreled. Even if you didn't register it as a short-barreled, you don't need to register it anymore. You don't need to register anything except for machine guns and destructive devices. Furthermore, even when it was required to be registered, or if you're in a state that still requires it to be registered, you can send it to a licensed gunsmith who's licensed to work on this, particularly an 0207 NFA manufacturer like us. Even if it's a machine gun, you can send it to us and we can fix it, work on it, find the problem, whatever, and mail it right back to you. As long as you include the tax stamp in there, we can have it, work on it, and ship it right back to you. It's your gun. We're not checking it into the bound book to sell it or transfer it or something. It's just a gunsmithing for you. And And shipping is expensive. If you want to contact us and have us do the shipping label and then you pay our rate for the shipping, that's fine. We'll work it out. It's a small business. It's not some set policy for everyone. We can take a case-by-case basis here. I'm sure I'm not going to be flooded with business tomorrow, but hell, maybe. I don't know. We'll figure it out. I'll hire somebody else. Well, we're scrolling through the site as we speak, just getting a look at some of the things you have. I hope you guys got a lot of You clearly got a lot of inventory. Now, other than the gunsmithing... Oh, another thing we're not scared of, because a lot of people seem to think that the state of Florida... has a restriction on the special triggers, the force resets, the safeties, the things that reset the trigger for you that meet the legal definition of a semi-automatic firearm. The ATF defined this and we are following the rules. Everyone's following the rules. These things have now become, their major distribution. The biggest distributors in the country are selling these things to dealers and it's legal. It's fine. Example, We had some of those triggers sitting here when that inspector was here writing up every not dotted I or cross T on the forms 155 times. And he didn't mention those triggers. He didn't touch it because they knew they weren't, that court case wasn't going anywhere and now it's done. And it's, you know, it was silly to begin with. Uh, so I'm perfectly comfortable working on those, uh, cause they are tricky. Um, The force reset triggers, the force reset safety, these things. People, yeah, I could put together an AR, but do you understand the timing? Do you understand how timing works? Do you understand how to adjust weights, what you can do, what you can change, the gas blocks, the weights of the bolt, these things and the buffers, or the tolerances? Why won't this work? The lower's cut for this, but it won't work. Well, what's the tolerance on your bulk carrier group? Is it full auto cut? Is it too thick? All of these things have to be taken into account, and we do this every day. So if you need it fixed, if you need it timed, another thing we do is if you send it to us, and let's say I tell you, hey, you're going to need a new lower. You're going to need a new bulk carrier. You're going to need an H3 buffer. You know how much an H3 buffer is now? It's like $ 95 for that little piece of metal in the back of your ARC. Um, because they, you know, they're so popular now and, and it's, it's three little tungsten blocks in there. That's a bunch of tungsten. So yeah, these things are up to H2 is like 80 something. And that's our, we have lower prices and the H3s are, I believe 95 or something like that now. Um, it's, it's wild. And, and, and I tell you, Hey, it's going to be this much money to do. And you're like, Hey, you know what? Nevermind. I'll take it out. I'll ship it back to you. Just pay for the shipping. You know, we don't, or you send me a gun and I say, Hey, this is, We tried and tried and tried, and I bought parts of this thing, and we reshaped it, but everything is so worn out in this thing, I'd have to completely rebuild it. What we do is we close it out for a dollar, and we send it back to you. Yeah, we spent some time, but hey, I can't fix your gun. What a service. I mean, really. What a service opportunity that is for somebody. I would say we have a 98% success rate, and that's including things like We've had a customer bring us a family, it's a Stevens Drop Block 22 from 1870s, I believe. And it was missing half the parts and everything else was worn to heck. And even after we custom cut parts for it and rebuilt this thing from 50%, we fire it and we discover that the chamber's so worn out it fires... gunpowder at you in the back um finding old school gunsmithing stuff is so hard these days it took me like two months and i finally find like the the the drill bits that are this long and the tubes to rebarrel a 22 you can only find them in rimfires because the pressure is too great to put a liner in a barrel that's a high-pressure round. But. 22s, you can get away with it. It was chamber cut, and we cut it, we crowned it, we put it in there, we drilled it, we heat-treated it, and we rebuilt that gun for them. We rebuilt the 1902 pump last year, same type of thing. We even re-browned it. Bluing is a pain, but browning? Ugh. I don't want to do that, but we'll do it for you. Well, hey, man. Like I said, I always tell the audience this because it pertains to preparedness as much as it does to what you're talking about. It's not a matter of if you can watch a YouTube video and figure out how to do it. It depends on whether or not you're going to do it or not. So if you're sitting on that project and you think like, oh, one day I'll figure out how to fix it, just send it off to an expert because they'll get it done and then you can check it off the list. I see that a lot. If you want to know, just email me. And for God's sake, be honest. I'm not going to judge you. Like, hey, I tried to do this. I don't, you know, it went sideways. I think I broke this. I lost this. Whatever. I'll tell you the God's honest truth about, okay, here's how this is going to go. Whatever. So just email us. I think the email is on the website. It's on our cards and stuff. But it's kilaton.tactical at gmail.com. And you can just, you know, I might not get to it in a day because there's like 100 emails every day and I'm trying to do everything. Uh, but you know, we'll, we'll, we'll take a look now. Caveat to that for the next month or two, again, can't get this crap out of here. We've got a lathe on the way. Uh, one of the great benefits to me going to this fourth degree that I don't need is that they give you a lathe. So I was like, okay, well that's, that's a great deal. So let's do that. So the lathe coming, which we'll be able to thread the barrels with, um, You know, we have a drill press, we have wheels, we have a hydraulic press, we have all the tooling to do small stuff. So threading rifle barrels right now, we have to wait a month or two. Same with coatings. The corner on the opposite side here is a spray booth that's not done, that we can't... We'll get back to the coating. We were doing coatings before, we'll get back to doing coatings. So coatings, rifle threading. Now, also keep in mind that for rimfire guns and AR platforms, common stuff like that, it's almost always going to be way more cost effective to get a new barrel if you want a threaded barrel on something you don't have a threaded barrel on if it's one of those platforms. There are occasions where it's not, but for the most part, if you have a sort of common rimfire or an AR platform, it's a little bit cheaper and easier to just get a threaded barrel. And we can do that for you. And we can put the suppressor on there for you and ship the suppressor to your dealer. If you want to buy from us or don't buy from them and get it and just send it to us and we'll time it. We'll time the gun. We'll put the shims on there. We'll rock set it for you. We'll get it timed perfectly. We'll re-zero it for you. If you want, we got a range here. We only charge $ 25 to re-zero a gun to whichever, you know, 15 yards, a hundred yards, 200 yards, whatever you want. How many of you are sitting on an un-zeroed rifle at home? Be honest. Or a new optic that you haven't zeroed it yet. Yeah. Be honest. Guys, When you went to the store and got it four-sided, that's not a zero. That's not a zero. That'll get you within this at 50 yards, but that's going to be this at 200 yards. So get it zeroed. Zero it yourself or have us do it. I remember it was so cool because when I first moved out here, I had brown hair and no beard, all these old heads. Did not trust this young man, this Yankee, because I'm out in the woods in South Alabama, northern Florida. These guys did not trust me. And, you know, who's this kid, this Yankee? How's he going to? And I started like they would sit in the store and they'd sit in the back corner and wait for everybody to leave. They'd be like, hey, can you zero my rifle? Sure. Perfect. And our standard is at 100 yards. So within so sub MOA is what we're going to hand you. Unless your gun is not capable of that. But most are. You'd be surprised. Um, and I give, and then people talk and now every year people, you know, 40 people, Hey, can you resume my gun? You know, know that we do it and we do it well, and we're going to hand you a gun. And if you, Hey, keep in mind that a zero at sea level is not a zero at 6,000 feet in Colorado. You got to tell us that stuff. Um, you know, if you've got really, we also do those really complex scopes, like the six new Sierra series of threes and sixes, um, where we can program it or you can program it, uh, you know, and, and it comes with either the binoculars or a range finder. And once it's programmed, you use a particular type of bullet and you get the zero set and you get all the data in there. Yeah. hit the button and it's, Oh yeah, I'm at this pressure altitude. I'm at this distance. That's the elevation difference. This is the wind I'm detecting right here. It can't detect wind, you know, 300 yards in front of you in a Valley. Like you've got to be able to do that. Talk to your outfitter about that or your guide. Uh, but you know, we can set it up to where, Oh, okay. We can get you darn close for those parameters. You know what I mean? We don't know what you're doing with the gun and what you want to accomplish. So we have most of the capability here. I actually just bought some very expensive tooling I've been putting out for years where we can put choke tubes in your gun that doesn't have– your shotgun that doesn't have choke tubes. We can cut it for– I chose the most common one that you see in basically every Turkish shotgun nowadays or Beretta's is the Beretta Mobile choke. And I bought the tooling for that for 12-gauge to cut it. We've already had crowning. Also, keep in mind, you're in the Renaissance now. You're in the non-NFA, NFA Renaissance. If you want a sawed-off, we can make it a sawed-off. The NFA still exists. It has to be sent to an NFA manufacturer, and I'm making it into an NFA item. If you're in a state that requires an NFA registration, you have to transfer it back. You're allowed to modify your gun to an NFA item. And now, you know, it's, it's an NFA item. So if I chop the barrel and I chop the stock and I make a sawed off shotgun, um, you're not going to get Ruby ridged at least for the next two years. Um, but you know, executive situation. Yeah. But yeah, you can just do that. The second I saw the first policy letter come across my email that day, the day of the hurricane, by the way, I bought a bunch of short barrels, buffer tubes, buffers, springs, stocks, rail stocks, folders. I said, this is going to be necessary. So let's get all this stuff ready to go. So if people want to change their stupid pistol braces into something a little more utilitarian, by all means, you can. Um, I suppose I can ship these. These aren't going to be available on the website. But if you want to, you can contact us and get one of these shipped to your dealer. But these are my hubs. And you can see here that it is a serialized registered item. I scratched it in there. It looks horrible. $ 40, right? it's 40 bucks and this is your legal suppressor go to the store buy an oil filter uh i would recommend drilling a hole in the end of the oil filter a little bit larger than the caliber that you're using try to center it up as best you can don't try to shoot the hole through it uh and look in the oil filter with a flashlight because some of the oil filters have a little steel plate on the end or a little spring so um it'd be fun yeah it'll work but your bullets are gonna go all over so it's just But it's a cool thing. We can do so many new things now, and you're going to see all these new products on the market because of these policy changes, these huge policy changes. The market is changing so rapidly. Heck, what was it? Just yesterday, I saw that Smith & Wesson bought Savage. I didn't even know Savage was selling. Remington Ammo changed hands again. That's owned by a Czechoslovakian company. Thompson Center, after Smith & Wesson bought them a couple of years ago, they're now coming back and being different. Everything is changing so rapidly. And, you know, I can't tell you to buy the thing that you wanted because I know nobody can afford the darn stuff. But things just disappear lately. Like so many, last year we lost, gosh, what did we lose? Like five major companies, companies I had been stocking since day one. Good point, yeah. Anderson, Arrow. Anderson is crazy. That's actually my first AR ever was Anderson. I know, I know. And what was the other brand we were selling for years and years? Oh God, I can't believe it. I'm so sorry to that brand. I can't remember the name of it. Um, but it was another, like very affordable, good quality. And they just, all of a sudden you just see, Oh, they're gone now. Oh my God. You know? And, and that's it. And these companies just go away. Ruger just announced their base, all the nice Ruger's like the fans, like the, the M 77 is the Hawkeyes, the revolvers, GP 100 SP one-on-ones, all the fancy cool stuff. Your number one, right? We always wanted a number one rifle. Now I'm not going to get one. Um, They are discontinuing these things. Really? I'm not saying that I heard these things. I'm not going to give anybody away. I'm not going to say anything. But Beretta bought the majority shareholder value of Ruger. And by no coincidence, all of a sudden they're discontinuing all these things because it's not cost effective and we want shareholder value. That's what destroys everything you love in this country. That is the truth, man. Bleed it dry. Cut its throat. Get the blood now and don't worry about tomorrow. So.... But if you think about it, we discontinue it now. We increase the popularity to sell because of scarcity. Then as people are like, I want that, I want that, you slowly bring back one thing. That sounds about right. Yeah, definitely. So don't panic. It might be back, and there's going to be a ton of used ones out there. Keith, you need a podcast. Yeah. You're a natural dude. I have been for years now. I, we were doing videos. I was doing videos where I just, you talked about stuff, you know, cause I guess I'm a, I'm supposed to be an expert gunsmith and, uh, you know, a firearms expert. And that's what I did for the military and stuff. And got this range here. And, I had always romanticized the idea of doing videos and kind of fitting the niche of like just the expert, not the history guy like Ian McCollum, not the cool, fancy product review stuff like all these other guys, you know, that have cool videos and they do dangerous, crazy stuff. Just to show you or show you the stuff that nobody else will show you. Like I bought all these competition rounds and I want to show you like this is what YouTubers shoot to look like. They're really good at shooting. It's like 700 feet per second. It barely recalls the gun. And I'm going to put a plate like right in front of me that you can't quite see, but the angle makes it look like it's further away. Oh, my God. Such an expert. How about that? I didn't know that. That's news to me. You know, show you what timing is showing. Like, I have so many customers come in and go, oh, yeah, you know, all these YouTubers told me that I had to buy this $ 80, $ 100 choke tube in order to shoot this gun and, you know, hit a turkey at 80 yards. And I'm like, no. No, that's the opposite. I'll pattern 14 different papers with different choke tubes, different rounds. I'll show them, here's what this looks like, here's what this looks like, and just put the factory choke one size smaller, or wider rather, and put your tungsten rounds through it and hit better than the $ 100 choke tube. I'm not trying to destroy anybody's business here, but don't be dishonest, for goodness sake. Let's just show everybody. this is what this is. So I've been considering that for years, but God, the YouTube rules and everything else. And, you know, you've got your own platform here that you guys are on. That's great. You know, um, I, I don't even know where to start for this stuff. We'll talk, man. We'll definitely talk. I think you, uh, you, you, you got one in the chamber. Let's go with that. But, uh, Keith from kill a ton tactical, ladies and gentlemen, kill a ton tactical.com is the website, right? Give us that email one more time for people who, uh, want to reach out to you with questions and you know all that kind of fun stuff. Kiloton so k-i-l-o-t-o-n dot tactical at gmail.com. You were amazing man you blew through 50 minutes like it was nothing. Yeah i tend to do that i go on rants in here it's like uh you know people talk they come in here and don't buy anything they just ask me political opinions and what's going on out. There dude yeah you got it you got it all right folks we'll look Full inventory on the website, right? Go peruse the goods. I looked at some guns while we were sitting here. Your prices are great. I was looking at a Ruger, actually. Yeah, grab it while it's hot. The website actually shows thousands of products that we don't have in the store. So please keep that in mind. If it says available in store, that means it's in this building. If it says available to ship, that means it's drop shipping from the distributor's warehouse. And any of those items can– some of them are restricted, and I'll just ship it myself. If it says restricted, I'll just get it in here, then ship it for them. But you can just drop ship it straight to your dealer or straight to your door for whatever you need. And Florida is only year-round for shipping out of state. So keep that in mind. Okay. I have a feeling this won't be the last we hear of you, Keith. I appreciate you for coming on today, man, and giving us the rundown. The ATF story is amazing. It is an amazing one. I wish it didn't exist. I wish it didn't exist, right? No, I get it. It happened, and we have to deal with this nonsense all the time. All right, folks. We'll see you soon. Spread the word. Share the episode. Tell the people about Keith from Killaton, man. He's one of the good guys. Talk to you soon, folks. See you.