Shownotes
State of the Second sits down with Jason, the CEO of Watchtower Firearms, to answer a simple question with a complicated answer: does American made still matter? Jason traces his path from small-town Moss Bluff, Louisiana, through the Marines and a recon battalion, to work in Washington on foreign military sales and the Pentagon, then an executive role at Raytheon. When what he calls the wokeness of corporate America crept in, he walked away and went looking for a way back into firearms. His research turned up a hard truth. Browning, Winchester, Colt and other names he grew up calling American had been sold off to European conglomerates. He saw sadness in that, and a business opportunity.
That search led him to F1 Firearms in Spring, Texas, a maker of high-tolerance competition ARs running at about 10 percent capacity. Jason's group acquired the company last May and rebranded it Watchtower, named after Operation Watchtower, the World War II invasion of Guadalcanal. Every product carries a touch point in American history: serial numbers start at 1775, the Jedburgh suppressor honors OSS commandos, and the Apache double stack 1911 nods to Operation Apache Snow. Jason walks through what makes the Apache different, including a fully PVD-coated build, why everything is made in America, and a roadmap that runs from a full AR refresh to a fall bolt gun, then concealed carry. Brand ambassadors include Nick Johnson (PewView), Nina Johnson, Rob O'Neill and Mark D'Ambrosio.
The back half turns to culture. Jason and hosts Kaylee and John argue the Second Amendment is fundamentally about stopping a tyrannical government, not hunting, and that a lack of education has let the anti-gun left erode gun culture. They cover blaming inanimate objects for crime, the role of mainstream media and Hollywood in pushing victimhood, and the growth of constitutional carry. Kaylee ties it back to college outreach through 2A Defenders and the 340-woman National Women's Range Day in Dallas. Jason closes on his goal: build something lasting for Americans, by Americans, and never sell off to a European conglomerate. The episode ends with a tour of the Watchtower factory floor philosophy and a lighter run through firearm-naming ideas.
Links
Questions this episode answers
Who is Jason and how did he get into the firearms business after the Marines, the Pentagon, and Raytheon?
Jason is the CEO of Watchtower Firearms. He grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana, served in the Marines and a recon battalion, then worked on foreign military sales and at the Pentagon before an executive role at Raytheon. He left over the wokeness he saw in corporate America and looked for a way back into firearms.
How did Watchtower Firearms come about, and what company did it acquire and rebrand?
Jason's group acquired F1 Firearms, a maker of high-tolerance competition ARs in Spring, Texas, last May while it was running at about 10 percent capacity. They rebranded it Watchtower.
Where does the name Watchtower come from, and how does American history show up in the products?
Watchtower is named after Operation Watchtower, the World War II invasion of Guadalcanal. Every product carries a touch point in American history, with serial numbers starting at 1775, the Jedburgh suppressor honoring OSS commandos, and the Apache double stack 1911 nodding to Operation Apache Snow.
What makes the Apache double stack 1911 different, and why is it priced as a premium product?
The Apache is a double stack 1911 built with a fully PVD-coated finish and made entirely in America, which Jason points to as what sets it apart and justifies its premium positioning.
How much of a Watchtower firearm is made in house, and is anything sourced from overseas?
Jason says every single thing Watchtower does is made in America, in house, with nothing sourced from overseas. Building domestically is central to the brand's identity and its pitch on why American made still matters.
What is on Watchtower's product roadmap, including the bolt gun and concealed carry?
Watchtower's roadmap runs from a full AR refresh to a fall bolt gun and then into concealed carry, alongside its move into 1911s like the Apache.
Who are Watchtower's brand ambassadors?
Watchtower's brand ambassadors include Nick Johnson of PewView, Nina Johnson, Rob O'Neill, and Mark D'Ambrosio.
What do the hosts and Jason say the Second Amendment is really about?
Jason and the hosts argue the Second Amendment is fundamentally about stopping a tyrannical government, not hunting, and that a lack of education has let the anti-gun left erode gun culture. They frame the right as constitutionally protected rather than government granted.
Chapters
- 00:00 — Welcome and meeting Jason of Watchtower
- 00:33 — From Moss Bluff to the Marines, Pentagon, and Raytheon
- 02:14 — Great American gun names sold to European owners
- 03:24 — Finding and acquiring F1 Firearms
- 06:10 — Where the name Watchtower comes from
- 07:46 — The brand ambassadors
- 09:10 — Building the board and leadership team
- 11:23 — Reception of the rebrand from F1
- 13:50 — Diversifying into 1911s and a bolt gun
- 15:47 — The Apache, PVD coating, and pricing
- 20:08 — Made in America, in house
- 23:37 — Culture, the Second Amendment, and education
- 30:38 — Armed communities, the militia clause, and Billy the Kid
- 42:49 — Range days, new gun owners, and victimhood
- 49:53 — A lighter run through firearm-naming ideas
- 52:56 — Legacy, the factory floor, and your dollar as a vote
About the guest
Jason is the CEO of Watchtower Firearms. He grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana, served in the Marines and spent years in a recon battalion, then worked in Washington, D.C. on foreign military sales and at the Pentagon, where he ran two major geographical divisions. He was later recruited by Raytheon and moved to Texas to run one of its business units. He left over what he describes as the wokeness creeping into corporate America and set out to acquire a mid-tier firearms company, which led to the purchase and rebrand of F1 Firearms into Watchtower. His last name is not stated in this episode.
Key quotes
"So everything we do at Watchtower has a touch point in American history." — Jason
"It's to become the next great American firearms company." — Jason
"Every single thing we do is made in America." — Jason
"It's fundamentally about stopping a tyrannical government." — Jason
"Our rights are constitutionally protected. They're not government granted." — Kaylee
"The aspirational goal is to build something lasting for Americans, by Americans." — Jason
Transcripts
Welcome to Gun Owners of America State of the second podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kayleigh.
Speaker B:And I'm John.
Speaker B:And today we're here with Jason, the CEO of Watchtower Firearms.
Speaker B:How are you today, Jason?
Speaker C:I'm great, man.
Speaker C:Glad to be down here in Myrtle beach where it's nice and warm and got out of the cold weather.
Speaker C:So this is good.
Speaker C:Thanks for having me.
Speaker B:Well, thank you.
Speaker B:For me on, let's start off from the beginning.
Speaker B:How did Watchtower Firearms come about?
Speaker C:So Watchtower Firearms came about through a host of different things.
Speaker C:And I think to kind of get into that, I have to kind of tell you a little bit about myself.
Speaker C:So I always joke I grew up in one swamp and I moved to another for about 25 years.
Speaker C:I grew up in small town Moss Bluff, Louisiana, and you know, ended up going in the Marines, spent a number of years in the recon battalion, then went on to work in Washington D.C. and I was involved in foreign military sales.
Speaker C:I worked at Pentagon for a number of years, ran two of their major geographical divisions and then ended up getting recruited by Raytheon, ran their or was part of their Washington ops office, which then led me to move down to Texas and I took over one of the business units down there.
Speaker C:But kind of what happened along the way was the wokeness of corporate America started creeping into Raytheon.
Speaker C:And, you know, I mentioned I was a Recon Marine, so I was, I'm very morally pliable.
Speaker C:You know, you learn to put up with a lot of things and put yourself through a lot of, you know, mental gymnastics.
Speaker C:But it was, it was one of the few times where I just couldn't participate.
Speaker C:It was like, you know, explain to us, you know, talk to a group of people about your privilege.
Speaker C:Well, reaching back to small town Moss Bluff, Louisiana, I grew up cleaning bathrooms in a state park, picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road to make a few pennies.
Speaker C:So, you know, I didn't feel like I was qualified to talk about my white privilege.
Speaker C:They just had the wrong guy.
Speaker C:So it was one of those moments in life like I just, I can't do this.
Speaker C:So I literally had a moment sitting out on the side of a mountain hunting, just what am I going to do?
Speaker C:Because I'm a highly compensated executive.
Speaker C:But this is not, this is not for me.
Speaker C:So I'd always grew up with a love of firearms, growing up hunting, always from an academic standpoint, loved all things about the second Amendment and kind of that historical context and getting into those type of conversations and that kind of Led me into, well, maybe I'll go work for Browning.
Speaker C:Great American company.
Speaker C:So I started doing a little research and come to find out it's a great Belgian company.
Speaker C:And I said, well, maybe Winchester.
Speaker C:Come to find out that was also a great Belgian company, cult, great Czechoslovakian company.
Speaker C:And just the list goes on and on and on of all these companies that were titans when I was growing up, but have since that point in time just have been sold off to European conglomerates.
Speaker C:It always struck me as a little strange that you'd always have the guy with the truck with the American flag and a six hour sticker next to it.
Speaker C:It's like these two things don't go together.
Speaker C:So after kind of coming to the realization that, you know, on one hand this is incredibly sad as an American, this realization, but on the other hand, I took it as there may be a business opportunity here.
Speaker C:So started looking for mid tier firearms company that we could acquire.
Speaker C:That took me in a number of different directions and finally landed us in Houston, North Houston, Spring, Texas to be precise.
Speaker C:And there was a company called F1 Firearms.
Speaker C:And outwardly the way they went to market was not really my cup of tea.
Speaker C:But once I got into the nuts and bolts and got under the hood and started seeing like the key things that matter.
Speaker C:Quality.
Speaker C:Do they make a quality product?
Speaker C:Yes, amazingly good product.
Speaker C:Super tight tolerances.
Speaker C:The pedigree for these guns, for these AR specifically, were competition guns.
Speaker C:So tolerances are incredibly tight.
Speaker C:If you shake one of our guns, it doesn't move as compared to, you know, a lot of other guns that are lower price points.
Speaker C:No problem with that.
Speaker C:But it sounds like a tambourine going through the woods.
Speaker C:They just shake so much.
Speaker C:So these are incredibly tight.
Speaker C:So from a quality standpoint, I liked what we were going to acquire from a capability standpoint.
Speaker C:You know, often in manufacturing, the thing that costs the most is getting up on the other side of the learning curve.
Speaker C:When you're going up that curve, you're just burning cash, you're just throwing money out the window until people can build what you need to build.
Speaker C:Once you get on the other side, then you're profitable.
Speaker C:Well, the business that we were buying was not only on the other side of the learning curve, but it was about a mile down the road.
Speaker C:So from that standpoint, incredible.
Speaker C:And they were only about, they were only running about 10% capacity on any given day.
Speaker C:So huge amount of open capacity to build more, do more.
Speaker C:So we went through about a year of back and forth, ended up acquiring the company last May and then we immediately rebranded it.
Speaker C:We're not really done with the rebranding yet.
Speaker C: Ars and now the double stack: Speaker C:And we're looking to up the amount of capacity we're putting out, drive the cost down further than it is, and get some, you know, competition level quality firearms into blue collar hands.
Speaker C:Now, of course, there's, there's a range there.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:What you define as competition quality and what you define as blue collar prices varies wildly, but that's where we're at.
Speaker C:And we're looking from a rebranding standpoint, it really is.
Speaker C:It's, it's our vision statement.
Speaker C:It's to become the next great American firearms company.
Speaker C:And that came from kind of this disappointment that I felt when I've realized so many of these great American companies have just gone away.
Speaker C:And so that's, that's who we are.
Speaker C:That's where we're heading.
Speaker B:So you, you guys bought F1, you rebranded Watchtower.
Speaker B:Where did Watchtower come from?
Speaker C:Great question.
Speaker C:So everything we do at Watchtower has a touch point in American history.
Speaker C:So Operation Watchtower was the invasion of Guadalcanal, turning point in the Pacific during World War II.
Speaker C:And the final resting place is 7,100American souls.
Speaker C: our serial numbers start with: Speaker C:Our newest suppressor is called the Jedbird.
Speaker C:It is an homage.
Speaker C:It is a direct titling from the oss, the Office of Strategic Service, the forerunners for the Special Forces, the commandos that they trained in Scotland.
Speaker C:Jedburgh, Scotland.
Speaker C:So the list goes on and on, but that's the Apache.
Speaker C:Our double stack.
Speaker C:1911, I guess ultimately is an homage to the American Indians, but it was named after Operation Apache Snow in Vietnam, which was also better known as Hamburger Hill.
Speaker C:So everything we do has some touch point into American history.
Speaker A:That's really wonderful.
Speaker A:Like, to see like the stories and show that you are honoring the history of our country.
Speaker A:And I think that that really shows when you're choosing the brand ambassadors that you have and who you've chosen to work with to kind of carry on those legacy as well.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:Yeah, we have some great brand ambassadors.
Speaker C:Thanks for bringing that up.
Speaker C:So the four we chose to help take out some of our products.
Speaker C:Nick Johnson, better known as pewview.
Speaker C:Just great, great American.
Speaker C:Love him to death Again.
Speaker C:I'm a former recon Marine and I wish I could shoot like that guy does.
Speaker C:He's just phenomenal.
Speaker C:There's nothing you can ever say bad about Nick.
Speaker C:And in the same vein, Nina Johnson, she is, she is a lot of fun.
Speaker C:She is somebody that we really love having on the team and just loads and loads of fun.
Speaker C:Rob o', Neill, no stranger to anybody, the guy who killed bin Laden.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Pretty easy pick for a gun company's brand ambassador.
Speaker C:Now, people, I know everybody in the comments, as soon as I say that's going to quibble, you know, whether he did it or not.
Speaker C:And, and if any of them were at, you know, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, I'd love to hear from them.
Speaker C:But until then, you know, we, we love having Rob on the team.
Speaker C:And then Mark d', Ambrosio, he's kind of from my tribe.
Speaker C:It's a Force Recon Scout sniper.
Speaker C:He's going to be taking out our new bolt gun which is going to be coming out this fall.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C:If, if people are impressed with the Apache, I think they're going to be blown away with our, our bolt gun.
Speaker C:We're going to do it in six.
Speaker C:I'm sorry, six, seven PRC and 301 Mag.
Speaker C:And it's, it's going to be something special.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You also built a good team behind you too.
Speaker B:I mean, you guys got a solid name on the, on your website of all the people who are under you, who are there to help build the company up.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So that both from a board standpoint and from an executive leadership team.
Speaker C:What I wanted to do from a leadership team is kind of, and there's days that this is not easy, but we wanted to have a group of folks that were tried and trued professionals in both defense and aerospace and the firearms industry and folks who are operators, people who've been downrange and have dealt with the business end of our products and understand the importance of them.
Speaker C:So, you know, a couple names.
Speaker C:Ray Kashkir, former Navy seal.
Speaker C:Two words that go hand in glove.
Speaker C:Every time it comes out of his mouth.
Speaker C:Love him to death.
Speaker C:He's our chief communications officer and has been responsible for a vast majority of our branding.
Speaker C:He's done a phenomenal, phenomenal job.
Speaker C:We just brought on one of the senior executives from Beretta to take over our, as our chief operations officer.
Speaker C:And Graham is really helping us get the throughput up is one of the problems we have right now.
Speaker C:One of the challenges, one of the first world challenges we have is we have so much backlog that we're trying to get as much product out the door as possible.
Speaker C:The rebranding campaign has gone incredibly, incredibly well.
Speaker C:And so we're just seeing a demand that we're just trying to keep up with.
Speaker C:We're running as fast as we can.
Speaker C:We have a great board.
Speaker C:Lt. Gen. Rich Simcock, former Marine Forces Pacific, is on our board.
Speaker C:He's probably going to help us with some of diversification and getting into the international space, along with a former Deputy Assistant Secretary, Keith Webster, and the list goes on.
Speaker C:So we.
Speaker C:What we've managed so far is getting that operational type of individual involved while at the same time having the folks with enough executive acclimate to pull the company forward.
Speaker B:Now, as a company, what has been the reception of the rebranding?
Speaker B:Because a lot of people knew of the F1 brand, and you said yourself their marketing was kind of out there.
Speaker B:I mean, from race teams to everything in between.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:How's that been?
Speaker B:From the former clientele of F1 to the people who are now seeing you guys grow as Watchtower.
Speaker C:So from my standpoint, it's gone exceptionally well.
Speaker C:I think what F1 experienced was a lot of eyeballs, but they didn't necessarily equate to sales.
Speaker C:It was very much a niche of a niche brand.
Speaker C:While they made exceptional competition rifles.
Speaker C:Can't take that away from whatsoever and wouldn't want to.
Speaker C:I'm not sure the branding really drove sales.
Speaker C:And also there was a lot of rifles that had a lot of different colors.
Speaker C:And the.
Speaker C:It really wasn't.
Speaker C:There were.
Speaker C:The branding was simply shock branding.
Speaker C:And I think during the COVID years, you could have painted anything, any color, and it would have gone off the shelves.
Speaker C:But I don't think that's the case any longer.
Speaker C:And so we have to adjust to that market.
Speaker C:So we have a lot of folks that were from the F1 years, and we see them on social and they're.
Speaker C:They're very pleased with the rebranding.
Speaker C:We know a lot of them, their personal relationships.
Speaker C:I will.
Speaker C:I will oftentimes get on social and comment.
Speaker C:I don't.
Speaker C:I can't do it on a regular basis.
Speaker C:There's just.
Speaker C:It'd be.
Speaker C:It would be all consuming that Dre's job.
Speaker C:But I will get in there.
Speaker C:We will reach out to people.
Speaker C:They're often surprised we were late on some particular products, and I've sent a specific email to somebody.
Speaker C:I think they responded because they didn't really believe it was me on the other side of it.
Speaker C:So I just picked the phone and called them, had a great conversation.
Speaker C:And so we're trying to create long standing relationships with all of our customers.
Speaker C:And yeah, so it's going well.
Speaker C:You're always going to have, again I just made the comment about Rob.
Speaker C:You know, you're always going to have controls, you're always going to have the people that know everything in the comments section.
Speaker C:And I don't spend a lot of time focused on that.
Speaker C:I spend no time focused on that.
Speaker C:But we, we have seen a lot, a lot, a lot of positive results.
Speaker B:Now you, you said that they were running at about 10 output.
Speaker B:You guys are ramping that up and you guys clearly, because it started off they were an AR company, you've started making ars.
Speaker B: versify into the double stack: Speaker C:Yeah, so that was part of our roadmap all along when we're just executing according to our roadmap.
Speaker C:So it's hard to be the next great American firearms company if all you do is build ars, right?
Speaker C:That's, that's one product offering.
Speaker C:So our roadmap is to take the capacity we have that we, we acquired with the company, continue to build that out and refine that and put out better products.
Speaker C:Some of the designs are somewhat aged I would say.
Speaker C:So right now we're going over an entire product refresh from our, our AR line or what we call our type 15 and our type 10s.
Speaker C: But double stack: Speaker C: Love: Speaker C:It's, it's the quintessential American handgun.
Speaker C:They're beautiful.
Speaker C: own, John Browning's original: Speaker C:So bolt actions are next.
Speaker C:We're going to move into concealed carry probably next year everyday carry handguns and then at that point we're probably going to take a measure or take a look at what we've done, what's worked, what hasn't and then either move into striker fire handguns and different type of, I don't want to say AR platforms but other military style platforms.
Speaker C:We're looking at getting a couple of different patents to bring on some different type of rifles but again it's building out the entirety of what that next great American firearms company should look like.
Speaker B:Yeah, and you know, I've shot the Apache, very impressed.
Speaker B:I mean I, we were at Trigger Con, I got to shoot it with Nick and Mike Mills and it's Amazing.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:With it being at the price point it is, you know, what do you, what do you think is the roadmap for that?
Speaker B:Are you looking at trying to see where.
Speaker B:Because a lot of people look at it and go wow, that's expensive from the get go.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:But a lot of people don't know what R and D and things that you had to put into it.
Speaker B:So can you kind of break that down on like hey, we had to spend this or don't have to give dollar figures but we had to go this much in R and D. This is a lot of tool changing and as time goes on there's a possibility of either another model with lower price or working on that.
Speaker C: another amazing double stack: Speaker C:It'll be supported and I'm not going to tell you who the brand ambassador is.
Speaker C:I told you off camera who it's going to be.
Speaker C:And yeah, I think we're going to do quite well with it.
Speaker C:But no.
Speaker C: ut a Competition double stack: Speaker C:So first off it's different tooling, it's different machines.
Speaker C:So your, your, your frame is traditionally steel at a minimum.
Speaker C:So all the machines that cut aluminum, you can't really use it or you'll burn up your tools.
Speaker C:We started out by doing some of that.
Speaker C:So different tooling, different machines.
Speaker C:And then one of the unique things about the Apache over just about anybody else in the market, there's a few niche models from, I think Taren may have a couple trying to think who else might, I think Atlas might do a DLC.
Speaker C: there's most of the high end: Speaker C:So our entire Apache is PVD coated.
Speaker C:So when you rack it as you know it feels like you're racking on a piece of glass or butter.
Speaker C:It's just smooth as can be.
Speaker C:It's also when it's PVD coated, you're embedding chromium into the actual substrate of the metal so it's corrosion resistant.
Speaker C:You can have that in salt water all day long.
Speaker C:Why you would have it in salt water all day long I don't know.
Speaker C:But sounds like a nice talking point.
Speaker C:But it's.
Speaker C:The other thing that it does is any carbon buildup you literally wipe clean.
Speaker C:And the first time somebody told me about I didn't believe them.
Speaker C:I was like, I'M getting lied to again.
Speaker C:But after you actually see what happens with the metal, how it's embedded and you can put thousands of rounds through a bolt carrier group that is PVD coated.
Speaker C:Most of our, it's another upgrade on all of our rifles.
Speaker C:They're all PVD coated bolt carrier groups.
Speaker C:So you literally take it apart, wipe it off, put it back together and of course you should put CLP on it, but you don't need to, it's just smooth.
Speaker C:So those are some of the things.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C:As we build up more capacity, our goal is to bring the price point down.
Speaker C:But to be perfectly honest, and I think it was a great interview you guys had with the gentleman from Palmetto State right down the road where, you know, he's like, look, this is who we are.
Speaker C:We're at this price point.
Speaker C:That's what I know how people talk about our guns, but they're quality and we're putting out as much freedom as possible.
Speaker C:Like, I love that.
Speaker C:That's, that's just not the part of the market we're in.
Speaker C:We're in a more premium part of the market.
Speaker C:So will we be able to bring that price point down?
Speaker C:Yes, because again we're guys, we're, we're 10 months into this, we haven't even scratched the surface.
Speaker C:So the price points on those guns will be coming down as we can do that.
Speaker C:But in the here and now, you look at our competitors in this space, which again would be Atlas or Terran or something like, like that, those price points are way north of where we're at.
Speaker C:We're not from a price point standpoint.
Speaker C:We look really, really, really good for, for, for something that is equal to that quality, if not better.
Speaker C:So I'm pretty pleased with where we're at right now.
Speaker B:Do you do that coating in house or is that.
Speaker C:We do, we do.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:We're at the point where our, our orders have outstripped our internal capacity.
Speaker C:So we're in the process of bringing in more PVD coating machines and we're outsourcing some of it just, just so we can keep up with the demand.
Speaker B:And how much, if I may ask, how much of their guns are made in house?
Speaker C:Oh, by, by and large, except for those like exceptions where it's just the orders are our ARs are 95% all in house.
Speaker C:The only thing we don't do in house for the RARS are our barrels.
Speaker C:That's it.
Speaker C:Everything else is in house.
Speaker C:For the Apache, word about say 70% is in house.
Speaker C:And then the little pins and springs and stuff like that, like, it's not economical for us.
Speaker C:And it's.
Speaker C:It's not a.
Speaker C:It's not a big lift just to outsource that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:Ideally, though, we will be buying up a barrel manufacturing facility probably in the next year or so.
Speaker C:Everything we do are the.
Speaker C:The goal will be to be in house, and we're, you know, we're almost there across the board.
Speaker C:But when we introduce new products, let's.
Speaker C:Like the bolt action.
Speaker C:We will.
Speaker C:We will do the action in house, and we'll have to outsource the rest.
Speaker C:And depending on how successful that model is, then we'll slowly bring each of those piece parts in house and continue to build from there.
Speaker B:Are your.
Speaker B:What kind of rifling are you using your barrels button or is it.
Speaker C:Go ahead.
Speaker B:Is it button or cut rifle?
Speaker C:It'll be button.
Speaker B:A button, yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:That's the way to go.
Speaker B:I used to work for a barrel manufacturer.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:I know that part of the game.
Speaker B:Who was.
Speaker B:I own with it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I'm gonna hurt some, break some hearts, guys.
Speaker B:The small parts are not made in house.
Speaker B:I'm sorry.
Speaker B:It's just cheaper to get them out.
Speaker B:Out.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:If everybody had the ability to make those springs in house, it's just not effective.
Speaker C:No, I mean, making springs, I'm not sure makes that big of a difference as long as quality parts.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And that's the other thing we do.
Speaker C:Going back to the made in America piece of it.
Speaker C:There's nothing that we outsource that's from overseas.
Speaker C:Every single thing we do is made in America.
Speaker C:And it.
Speaker C:It goes back to why I started, part of why I started doing this.
Speaker C:I just.
Speaker C:I feel like we're at a moment in the firearms industry.
Speaker C:It's very similar to the early 80s with Lee Iacocca.
Speaker C:When the pride is back.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:There's a lot of folks.
Speaker C:You look at Colt, Browning, the list goes on, and what are they advertising?
Speaker C:America.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:But those companies haven't belonged here for years.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And so I think it's a little disingenuous.
Speaker C:If you're a Czechoslovakian company that just happened to buy the name Colt, then maybe you should be advertising Czechoslovakia.
Speaker C:Everything we do is made in America.
Speaker C:And there's a touch point back into American history, and I think that's important.
Speaker C:I don't think the folks in the firearm industry have been given the opportunity to have a quality American product that they can hold up and say, yeah, I'd rather buy that as opposed to that foreign made one.
Speaker C:So it's kind of like the early 80s.
Speaker C:You buy Toyota, nothing wrong with Toyota, but they never tried to be American.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So it's something we're, we're very, very passionate about.
Speaker C:It's, it goes into every single thing we do.
Speaker A:Obviously this has a huge play on the culture of where we are now in America.
Speaker A:There's a lot of cultural attacks on the second Amendment and then there are a lot of things that are changing in gun culture.
Speaker A:And so I think it's important when we are speaking with a company like yours that is founded in America with a base on American values and the team that you surrounded yourself with is that America first mentality?
Speaker A:I think that speaks to a broader cultural issue that we're seeing.
Speaker A:And people want to know where they're spending their money.
Speaker A:What is it going to, how is this moving forward our cause?
Speaker A:Because I think people are tired of feeling attacked and victimized in everyday life.
Speaker A:And so I commend you for making hard choices because there's definitely ways that you can, you know, cut costs and there are definitely ways that you can market yourself without it being genuine.
Speaker A:But it sounds like you would rather be genuine in how not only your firearms are made, but in how your firearms fill in that broader picture.
Speaker C:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker C:I mean, there are so many cultural attacks in the country.
Speaker C:And like I mentioned a minute ago, that was part of that wokeism that drove me into this space.
Speaker C:I think the second Amendment has been under attack for a long time.
Speaker C:I think it's kind of sad.
Speaker C:I think it's also partially because there's just not a lot of education anymore around the second Amendment.
Speaker C:Actually.
Speaker C:I'm not sure really what the education is, what education is taking place in our schools anymore anyway.
Speaker C:But yeah, we lean in hard on all of those issues.
Speaker C:There's not much that I can imagine that we do not.
Speaker C:A matter of fact, there's nothing I can imagine when we don't support, as it pertains to the second Amendment into, you know, pushing firearms as hard and as much as we can.
Speaker C:There's a lot of.
Speaker C:I just think the narrative in the country is wrong.
Speaker C:And when I say that's, that's, that's.
Speaker C:I don't, I don't.
Speaker C:What's a better way to say that?
Speaker C:I think there is a narrative in media that is wrong.
Speaker C:I think in the country we're actually in a pretty good place.
Speaker C:You and I were talking about that off camera.
Speaker C:You know, when you have 60% of the country.
Speaker C:And great work in South Carolina, guys.
Speaker C:When you have 60% of the country is now in a constitutional carry posture, that's a good thing.
Speaker C:25 Years ago that wasn't the case.
Speaker C:Now did we have to deal with a bunch of anti gunners in order to get there?
Speaker C:Yeah, we did.
Speaker C:I think these things ebb and flow and I think we're in a better place than we have been in a very long time.
Speaker C:But if you listen to the mainstream media, you're not going to get that.
Speaker C:All you're going to get is every shooting that fits into a certain narrative.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:There's certain, certain shootings you don't hear anything about, which is the preponderance of them every day in the inner city.
Speaker C:Because that's not, that's not the narrative they want to push.
Speaker C:So any rate, I just, I think anything we can do from a firearms company standpoint, we're willing to really lean forward and put it out there.
Speaker A:Yeah, and I commend you on that.
Speaker A:And the thing that is always, you know, something that we have to fight is this idea that murder isn't illegal and that it's the firearms fault.
Speaker A:It's so just ridiculous.
Speaker A:Because every law abiding gun owner, every responsible gun owner, whatever tag you want to put in front of the word owner, we understand that we're taking personal responsibility for our firearms.
Speaker A:We take personal responsibility when we train, when we clean, when we purchase.
Speaker A:Everything is always coming back to that personal responsibility.
Speaker A:And for the victimization to fall on an inanimate object and not the person who is committing a crime is just baffling.
Speaker A:It does not compute with anyone that has logic on their side because it's someone doing a bad action and they would unfortunately do that bad action regardless of the tool that was used.
Speaker A:And so it's, it's.
Speaker A:There I go on my soapbox again.
Speaker A:But like it's just, it's so frustrating.
Speaker C:It is, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So it's an illogical argument.
Speaker C:We do not blame inanimate objects for anything else in our society.
Speaker C:Like this is it like there's no other area where we blame inanimate objects.
Speaker C:There's no other.
Speaker C:Well, maybe the first amendment I guess you could argue, but there's never been a.
Speaker C:So many of our rights have been expanded in the country, while conversely there's only been retractions on the first and second, which is a very strange thing when you think about it, especially from an historical context.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So it seems like every anti gunner is One Google search, deep in their argument, right?
Speaker C:So there's no way you can say Jon Stewart is an uneducated or stupid person.
Speaker C:The guy is wicked smart, incredibly quick.
Speaker C:But he did a interview with a congressman, and that congressman, I believe it was from Ohio.
Speaker C:No, no, no, it was Oklahoma maybe.
Speaker C:I don't remember.
Speaker C:But his staff should be fired because the poor guy wasn't prepped.
Speaker C:But Stewart just started beating on him about the idea of.
Speaker C:Of the terminology in the Second Amendment, and he just didn't understand where it was going.
Speaker C:He didn't understand what was happening, and he just got beat to death.
Speaker C:Again, we don't teach the meaning of what the second is.
Speaker C:And it's not about hunting and fishing.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It's fundamentally about stopping a tyrannical government.
Speaker C:And I think when people look at that and they say, okay, that's what it really means.
Speaker C:That's why we have it.
Speaker C:Hopefully we never, ever, ever have to use it.
Speaker C:But that's what it's about.
Speaker C:And be adult enough to deal with that and understand it.
Speaker B:We're starting to see that.
Speaker B:I mean, a lot of cities, big cities, have now stopped sending their police to certain crimes.
Speaker B:We've seen that.
Speaker B:And I'm sorry, I can't remember this.
Speaker B:I want to say it was Detroit.
Speaker B:There's a group of armed people taking back their neighborhood.
Speaker B:And they are walking through and they're going through the neighborhood, armed, all African American in the inner city.
Speaker B:They're taking back.
Speaker B:They're standing strong, and they've seen a 40% drop in crime.
Speaker C:Isn't that interesting?
Speaker B:It shows that the good guys with the guns, even though they haven't.
Speaker B:They're not doing anything.
Speaker B:They're just walking the streets and they're doing it in broad daylight and they're cleaning up and they're announcing that they're armed.
Speaker B:And I have the video clip.
Speaker B:It's a great clip if you guys want to watch it later.
Speaker B:But it's these.
Speaker B:They're going through and they're taking back their neighborhoods from the gangs, from the violence, from everything.
Speaker B:And they're showing that the community is building back stronger and building back together.
Speaker B:And I think that's a big thing that we heard.
Speaker B:Like, we just had Ken Ross from Primary Arms on.
Speaker B:Ken Ross said a very strong statement about how the second protects all the rights.
Speaker B:And specifically for him, it protects the 13th.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:And that is a very, very strong statement.
Speaker B:I recommend people who haven't seen that episode go see it.
Speaker B:But the.
Speaker B:Without the second, what's next?
Speaker C:The rest of them fall apart.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:The rest of them fall apart.
Speaker C:And it's, it's inescapable.
Speaker C:The, the piece that always gets me from an education standpoint, I lost my train of thought a second ago.
Speaker C:But it's about a well regulated militia.
Speaker C:And regulated was the word that was debated and Jon Stewart would use it as well regulated, like the Internal Revenue Service.
Speaker C:Like it's a government regulation.
Speaker C:No, that's not what it was ever meant for.
Speaker C:It was to be proficient.
Speaker C:It was the everyday citizen is proficient.
Speaker C:That's what the second is asking you to do.
Speaker C:And if you're unwilling to do that, well, then you're not living up to what the founders intended you to be doing as an American citizen.
Speaker C:So I just think there's a lot of history that's not being taught.
Speaker C:It's all, again, the one Google search deep type of attitude you don't have people digging into.
Speaker C:When the left says, well, listen, it really doesn't mean what you think it means.
Speaker C:Well, you know, when they had the constitutional conventions, they took notes.
Speaker C:I mean, they did.
Speaker C:There's a whole book from the Eliot debates that has James Madison and George Mason going back and forth.
Speaker C:They use the militia.
Speaker C:I think it's 127 different times.
Speaker C:Again, this is debating.
Speaker C:Somebody's taking notes.
Speaker C:Maybe it was with a quill pen, I don't know.
Speaker C:But they use the word militia interchangeably, consistently through that.
Speaker C:Now you have to go 2 to 3 Google searches to figure this out, but it's all there.
Speaker C:Like congressional scholars have ended this conversation.
Speaker C:So to continue to pretend that that's not what they mean is a silly, silly, silly notion.
Speaker C:And the good work that you all are doing by getting those messages out and pushing out the educational component at goa.
Speaker C:I think my hat's off to you and thank you for what you're doing because we need more of it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I appreciate you saying that.
Speaker A:One of the things that we spend a lot of time in our sister organization GOF does, is with college students.
Speaker A:So we have two A defenders, which is our college coalition, it's our college outreach.
Speaker A:And it's not that college students are not interested in protecting themselves.
Speaker A:I think if you were to go on any college campus in this country and, you know, survey, you know, how do you feel about, you know, rape on campus and should you be able to defend yourself, you're going to come back with, yes, you should be able to defend yourself.
Speaker A:I would say that the numbers would be staggering and.
Speaker A:But it's.
Speaker A:No one's had that conversation with them.
Speaker A:And I think it comes back to a few critical points that we have allowed to happen in the country.
Speaker A:One, firearms education is non existent.
Speaker A:You know, you just had the Biden administration try to end Hunter safety, which was totally ridiculous.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Which was the only thing that was left in schools.
Speaker A:And then he wanted to remove that.
Speaker A:But because we've allowed the cultural attacks on the right to kind of become unmatched because, oh well, you know, we need to worry about this or worried about that.
Speaker A:Everyone's concerned about the campaign and not concerned about the culture.
Speaker A:What has happened is we've allowed the anti gun left to erode that, that culture.
Speaker A:And so when they encounter us on a college campus, if you grew up in a blue state or if you grew up in a anti gun household or maybe a second amendment neutral household, you don't have enough educational resources to make an argument one way or another.
Speaker A:And so you kind of have to go forget the, the basics.
Speaker A:We're having to start at, you know, like the, the concept of being able to defend yourself, the concept of being able to protect yourself and your family because they can't.
Speaker A:You have to get that before you can even start the basics of firearms.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:But those aren't conversations that have been had.
Speaker A:And if we want to win, if our goal is to win, we have to start working on a cultural level because if we let Hollywood dictate everything that the, that the general population knows about firearms, we are in a world of hurt.
Speaker C:Well, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Speaker C:And you know, it's, it's so funny.
Speaker C:We want to, or certain folks in government want to go after the firearms industry for advertising, but nobody wants to go after John Wick for making hundreds of millions of dollars, which is nothing more than gunplay choreographed.
Speaker C:That's okay.
Speaker C:That's perfectly fine because it happens to be the line, the party's pockets.
Speaker C:So yeah, it's a strange, we're in a strange cultural moment.
Speaker C:But I fundamentally believe we're in a better place as more states become constitutional carry and as folks like you continue to get the message out, continue to push it.
Speaker C:And you know, it's, I don't think it's any coincidence that most of the states do have constitutional carriers.
Speaker C:So some form they're not media driven states.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So you see the states around New York, you see the, or the, the municipalities around New York City, you see the same thing around Los Angeles and up and down the west coast.
Speaker C:And there they don't really have a Foundation in firearms.
Speaker C:I remember growing up have somebody coming to school with a rifle and a gun rack was not unusual.
Speaker C:They probably were deer hunting that morning or out duck hunting that morning.
Speaker C:No one said a word about it.
Speaker C:There were no school shootings.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:But there's been the same people that complain Hollywood, the same people that feed money into the left leaning causes.
Speaker C:Hollywood are the same people who've never been around guns.
Speaker C:And that's a tough nut to crack when you've been to your point, brought up in a home where this is bad, but we're gonna profit off of it from some of these action movies.
Speaker C:It's a dichotomy that I can't really get my arms around.
Speaker C:But yet they cannot seem to get their arms around.
Speaker C:Criminals will always have guns.
Speaker C:They will always have the weapons they're not supposed to.
Speaker C:If it's not guns, it'll be machetes.
Speaker C:If it's not machetes, it'll be knives.
Speaker C:That's why they're criminals.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So if you don't have a good guy with an equal amount of force, how.
Speaker C:I don't understand how this plays out.
Speaker C:Wait for the police, like response times are terrible.
Speaker C:And most police departments that are being honest will tell you that.
Speaker C:And most police departments that are being honest will want you to concealed carry or just open carry.
Speaker C:So it's a, it's a strange moment.
Speaker C:It definitely is.
Speaker C:And again, so that's why I'm glad I'm, I'm doing my part and the company's doing what we can do to arm as many citizens as we can with some pretty nice firearms.
Speaker B:So I want to circle back real quick.
Speaker B:You brought up regulated and I'm going to do a little history real quick.
Speaker B:Think about it.
Speaker B: S,: Speaker B:There was a man named William Bonney and a group of the regulators.
Speaker C:I can hear Bon Jovi in the background.
Speaker C:As you're, as you're telling this story.
Speaker C:This is getting.
Speaker B:What did the regulators do?
Speaker B:They regulated the corrupt government that was going on at the time in that territory.
Speaker B:And William Bonney was deemed a criminal.
Speaker B:And if you don't know who William Bonney is, he's Billy the Kid.
Speaker B:But what is it?
Speaker B:What was their name?
Speaker B:The Regulators?
Speaker B:Well regulated militia, you know.
Speaker B:But we also saw this again in another time in history where the second amendment came across to drive out a corrupt government.
Speaker B:And your home state of Tennessee, right?
Speaker B:Right after World War II, World War II vets came back.
Speaker B:There was a sheriff who was running and he kept Controlling the government was controlling everything.
Speaker B:And there was a shootout.
Speaker A:What was.
Speaker B:Do you remember what town that was?
Speaker B:You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker A:Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker A:I don't remember the town failing as a, as a Tennessee history,.
Speaker B:But the vets came back from World War II and they took the sheriff's office and there was a night long firefight.
Speaker B:Now one, I think one person was hit in this entire firefighter, but it was all night long.
Speaker C:So those must have been guys from the Air Force.
Speaker C:It wasn't from my tribe, but anyway.
Speaker B:But they kicked out the corrupt government.
Speaker B:And that's part of what the second amendment is about, is to fight a tyrannical government.
Speaker B:We've seen it before where a group of people who literally call themselves the regulators and we've seen it again with These World War II vets coming back and fighting against corrupt government.
Speaker B:And that's like, we gotta figure that out.
Speaker B:Like, come on.
Speaker B:I don't know where I was finishing that point.
Speaker A:I don't know what this is either.
Speaker B:I need someone to tie in something.
Speaker B:But yeah, I mean that's what the second is.
Speaker B:And like we said, if the second falls, as does everything else, we lose everything else.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think it's important that regardless of where you feel like we are in history, if you think that we are a rising sun or a setting sun when it comes to our rights, our rights are not given or dictated by a government right.
Speaker A:They cannot be bestowed upon us by a government.
Speaker A:Our rights are constitutionally protected.
Speaker A:They're not government granted.
Speaker A:And it's important that we say that as often as we can and as loudly as we can.
Speaker A:Because when you understand that these are your rights, whether you choose to exercise them or not, you're still losing, you're still losing that ability to defend yourself and your family.
Speaker A:And I think that's why we're seeing so many new gun owners.
Speaker A:And I think that's why you're seeing so many people wake up and realize, wait just a second.
Speaker A:I, I don't want to be a victim.
Speaker A:I don't want to have a victim mentality.
Speaker A:I, I have kids to protect.
Speaker A:I have a family to protect.
Speaker A:I have a home, I have a life that mat that that's worth something, that that matters.
Speaker A:And I think it's, it's that on ramp that we're seeing being built that is ushering this new wave of gun owners.
Speaker A:Because people want to know that they matter.
Speaker B:Proof is in the pudding.
Speaker B:Look at what we just did.
Speaker B:In Dallas, at the National Women's Range Day in Dallas that we hosted with our 2 empowerment group, 340 women showed up.
Speaker B:Many of them had never fired a gun before.
Speaker B:And they showed up because they wanted to take this into their own, their self protection in their own hands.
Speaker B:And I mean that's a great right there.
Speaker B:That's a great example of a lot of them were oh my friend brought me or you know, I heard about this event and I need to show up.
Speaker B:But for us to bring in 340 women to many of who haven't shot before and help them out, I mean that's just bringing, as you like to say, the on ramp and bringing these new gun owners into our community to show that it's time to take your self protection into your own hands.
Speaker C:Yeah, we, another one of our board members, Allen west, put on one of those range events for women.
Speaker C:We provided all the firearms for it.
Speaker C:And yeah, I think it's, I think it's phenomenal.
Speaker C:There's, I mean you touched on another point, this victim mentality in America.
Speaker C:And again, I don't mean to beat a dead drum, but most of our social evils I believe are brought to you by the mainstream media.
Speaker C:I don't think that is the vast majority of Americans.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Because I can remember very clearly before 9 11, the popular narrative was folks of my generation were the Pepsi generation.
Speaker C:They were coddled, they were this, they were that.
Speaker C:And then 20 years of war later, not bad, you know, that that generation did okay.
Speaker C:So I don't like, I don't like the mainstream narrative because it's, it's so tactical, it's so of the moment, it's so every five minutes.
Speaker C:But what is what we've seen for so long in this, every five minute kind of gyration in the media is a victimhood.
Speaker C:You don't control your destiny, you don't control your fate.
Speaker C:And that's fundamentally anyone in the firearms industry, anyone in the gun community, if you will, doesn't believe that.
Speaker C:And you can't believe it by the very nature of your caring because you're putting yourself out there and you're exercising your rights.
Speaker C:And to your point, those are God given rights, those are inalienable rights.
Speaker C:It's not rights bestowed upon us by the government.
Speaker C:Those are natural rights and they've just been enshrined in our constitution.
Speaker C:And so the more people that understand that, the more people that participate, I think the less victimhood you see in the country.
Speaker C:Now will that change what mainstream media is Feeding everybody day in and day out.
Speaker C:It's always this happened to somebody, right?
Speaker C:Oh, it happened to me.
Speaker C:Like, you don't have a choice in what happens to you.
Speaker C:You don't have a way to.
Speaker C:Maybe it's not even fight back, but just stand on your own two feet.
Speaker C:It's a very strange thing, and I think it's counterintuitive for anyone who grows up in an environment where you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you have to go get a job, you have to work and take care of your family.
Speaker C:You have responsibilities.
Speaker C:I think it's counterintuitive to the heart and soul of what our country is.
Speaker C:I don't like it in anything we can do as a community to push back against it.
Speaker C:We should.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I think that there's two key things that I want to kind of pull out of that, what you just said.
Speaker A:And the first one is you have the power.
Speaker A:There is nothing greater than as an individual for you to have the power to take your own story and do with it what you wish.
Speaker A:And that includes hitting the power button on your tv.
Speaker A:If you think what you're watching is toxic, I highly recommend you turn it off.
Speaker C:Stop watching it.
Speaker A:Stop watching it, and stop, you know, educating your kids on it.
Speaker A:Stop feeding that narrative.
Speaker A:Because guess what, guys?
Speaker A:Shocker.
Speaker A:But when their ratings go down and there's a mass exodus of people not tuning in and not being controlled by them, our country is going to be in a lot better shape.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah, and you saw it with the NFL, right?
Speaker C:This is the most patriotic sport in America all of a sudden.
Speaker C:I mean, veteran this and veteran that.
Speaker C:Boy, I wonder how we got there.
Speaker C:You know, because they lost some money, because they just decided for all their millionaires to take a knee during the national anthem, which is disgusting.
Speaker C:But, yeah, there's.
Speaker C:That's a perfect example.
Speaker C:All of a sudden, it's all veteran, all military, all the time.
Speaker C:Hmm, interesting.
Speaker A:And then the second thing is, is you're in the driver's seat.
Speaker A:Everyone listening to this podcast, whether you're listening to it or not, you are in the driver's seat of everything that you do.
Speaker A:So if you don't like how the Second amendment is being trampled, if you don't like what is happening politically, culturally, you have the ability to call your congressman, you have the ability to write a letter, you have the ability to send an email, you have the ability to turn your phone off, turn your TV off.
Speaker A:Apathy is the worst position that.
Speaker A:That you can be in because if you're in a state of.
Speaker A:Of apathy, then you're not helping.
Speaker A:You're just complaining.
Speaker A:And, you know, there's all of this talk, you know, 80, 20 rules, and, you know, we only need, you know, just to move the needle a little bit.
Speaker A:And every election it's 20, 24.
Speaker A:And how many times have you listened to the radio or you've seen something on Facebook where it's like, you know, if we could just.
Speaker A:If every person just takes one person to the polls and we hear the whole song and dance.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But there's so much truth in that statement of what happens when you become an active participant in making a difference.
Speaker A:If you want a chain reaction, if you want to see the Second Amendment get restored, which is something that not a lot of people are even willing to talk about, how many times are we, like, we just need to protect the Second Amendment?
Speaker A:Okay, well, I agree we need to protect it, but let's talk about what really needs to happen is some restoration of these rights.
Speaker A:I'm not here to just protect the status quo.
Speaker A:I want to move the needle so that my kids and my grandkids and my great grandkids will experience a level of freedom that I might not get to experience in my life, but I'm going to pave the way for it.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:All right, second time on my soapbox.
Speaker A:I'll get off of it now.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:My ADHD really kicked in when you said, we have the power, and I just wanted to be.
Speaker B:I have the power.
Speaker B:Like, he man.
Speaker B:That's all I could think about for the last three minutes.
Speaker C:You're on a popular, like, culture kick.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:Like, we.
Speaker C:We've done, like, the Regulators and Billy the Kid, and now we're moving to he man.
Speaker C:Yeah, man.
Speaker C:This is.
Speaker C:I didn't think it was going to be as exciting coming on here, but this is.
Speaker C:This is pretty awesome.
Speaker B:Next thing, we're going to talk about Scooby Doo.
Speaker C:Well, no, but we're looking for new, you know, names that are steeped in American history.
Speaker C:Maybe it's the regulators.
Speaker C:The next, you know, firearm we develop.
Speaker B:Please.
Speaker C:It'll be all you, man.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:It's almost as the.
Speaker B:The sec.
Speaker B:That would be the second greatest gun name I've ever come up with.
Speaker B:I was on a phone call.
Speaker B:This A brief backstory.
Speaker B:I was on a phone call or on a podcast with my buddy Kyle, who works at Anderson Manufacturing, and we're talking about shotguns and stuff.
Speaker B:And I paused the conversation and go, kyle, if Anderson doesn't come out with a side by side shotgun and call it the pony express.
Speaker B:You've missed the greatest marketing opportunity you've ever had.
Speaker B:And he's like, wow.
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker B:I said, I want number three.
Speaker B:Anderson's gonna have the first two.
Speaker B:I want number three for that one.
Speaker C:You may be onto something.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Okay, we're going off.
Speaker C:We're going off the reservation here.
Speaker C:You're so off the reservation.
Speaker A:No, but I, I, I do.
Speaker A:I think that, you know, you have a marketing mind.
Speaker A:You've been doing firearms marketing for a minute.
Speaker A:I won't give away your age, but a minute.
Speaker A:And I don't know, I always think that the best ideas come up in conversations like this.
Speaker A:I very rarely find that the best ideas come when you're actually needing an idea with a whiteboard and expo marker and you got all of the meeting things ready and you're like, all right, guys.
Speaker A:And it's like crazy crickets.
Speaker A:But, you know, oh, you should have.
Speaker B:Heard the names that I came up with when I was at Faxon.
Speaker B:I was like, we should call it the Resolute.
Speaker B:And he's like, Kurt's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker B:I'm like, like the desk.
Speaker B:Like the ship.
Speaker C:We've moved on to National Treasure.
Speaker C:This is the GLA movie review.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker C:On this episode, we're going to be reviewing National Treasure, Blaze of Glory, and.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:Well, let's see.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The new trend in the firearms industry is naming everything after wrestlers like Smith and Wesson.
Speaker B:The Equalizer, that's a wrestler.
Speaker B:The un.
Speaker B:The Disruptor, the Untouchable.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I'm like, this is Wrestling names.
Speaker B: What, what is this, like,: Speaker B:Is Goldberg gonna walk out?
Speaker B:Stone Cold Steve Austin comes in, smashes two beers at shot show.
Speaker A:When it comes to Watchtower, you've laid out the roadmap of where you're going.
Speaker A:You have a phenomenal foundation when it comes to your philosophical beliefs on the Second Amendment.
Speaker A:And pay an homage to our history.
Speaker A:When you hand this company off to whoever it is when you retire, what do you want to be that lasting impact moment for you?
Speaker C:Wow, that is a really good question.
Speaker C:So, barring something incredibly bad happening, which I can't foresee, this is kind of my forever job, getting to run a firearms company.
Speaker C:I mean, it's kind of my Carson Daly, MTV, VJ job.
Speaker C:To be perfectly honest, I can't.
Speaker C:At my particular station in life, this is about as cool as it gets.
Speaker C:So I don't see having to make that decision anytime soon.
Speaker C:My young lieutenant Marine son Would love nothing better than to roll in and take over for dad.
Speaker C:The bad news is, as I've already told him, he'll be starting on the factory floor and he'll be there for a hot second.
Speaker C:But no, it would be wonderful to actually create a family business that I can hand down.
Speaker C:And it can be what again, I've referenced in some of the other comments that those great American firearm companies, whether that be Ben Oliver Winchester or you know, any of the other greats, but we'll see.
Speaker C:I mean, we're a long ways from that.
Speaker C:I can tell you the one thing I'm not going to do and there's no amount of money that is, can be put on the table and that sell off to a European conglomerate.
Speaker C:So that will not be happening.
Speaker C:And whatever we do, it's the hope, the aspirational goal is to build something lasting for Americans, by Americans.
Speaker A:That's fantastic.
Speaker A:And I love the fact that there is, you know, obviously no rush on retirement, but also like you're looking into the future that far ahead and that, you know, you are blessed with a son that is interested and even if he does have to start on the factory floor, which I'm sure a lot of people in the comments will appreciate because I think that there's a love of the business that comes from that.
Speaker C:Well, let me, let me say something else about the factory floor.
Speaker C:I don't mean that in a disparaging way at all.
Speaker C:I mean actually I, every single chance I get, I am back there.
Speaker C:You know, we build our Apaches, they go through a two step process.
Speaker C:They're, they're, they come off the machines, they're put together and we shoot them before we even put them through the coding process.
Speaker C:They're all stone finished.
Speaker C:And so this is one of the things that always find funny when other manufacturers, you take the gun out of the box, you shoot it and there's a stovepipe, a double feed and you call them and they say, well it's, you just need to shoot it another 500,000 times and it'll be fine.
Speaker C:Well, you're finishing the gun for them.
Speaker C:That's what you're doing.
Speaker C:By just sending the slide back and forth, you're doing the work they should have done.
Speaker C:So we're, you know, the process is very interesting.
Speaker C:And while my job is clearly not to stone frames, I go back there and I do it.
Speaker C:I'm intrigued with the precision that these guys have got to do the hand finishing on these guns.
Speaker C:And I spent as much time back there as possible.
Speaker C:So if, If.
Speaker C:If my son was interested in something like that, my.
Speaker C:My point in saying it was to understand exactly the precision and the quality that has to go into every single one of these before you put it out and before you put your name behind it.
Speaker C:I think there's honor and.
Speaker C:And something very noble about that, and I don't get to do that every day, so I try and do it as often as I possibly can, but that's.
Speaker C:That's where he would start if.
Speaker C:If that was.
Speaker C:If we were to ever do anything like that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, what I love about that is you have an intimate knowledge of.
Speaker A:Of the firearm manufacturing process.
Speaker A:And, and it's part of why, you know, we.
Speaker A:We spend a lot of time on the podcast talking about.
Speaker A:We want people to be intimately aware of the process of bringing a firearm to market, of going and putting your entire livelihood behind something that people are actively trying to take away.
Speaker A:Because it's more than just your family involved.
Speaker A:You know, you have people on the payroll, and many families depend on the work.
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker A:And so I think that it's exciting when people get to go in and see and understand because you take more pride in it.
Speaker A:And I think it makes people appreciate the end product more.
Speaker A:And I hope that it encourages people to not only listen to our podcast Shameless Plug, but to understand the philosophy and the process of the brands that they choose to purchase.
Speaker A:Your dollar is.
Speaker A:Is your second vote where you choose to spend your money, how you choose to spend your money has more of an impact than I think any anyone gives it credit for.
Speaker A:And so I think that's a piece of the puzzle that hopefully people are really getting to understand and take responsibility for.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And I hope we're providing a way for them to reinvest in America.
Speaker C:At the end of the day, I don't think the firearms industry, with so many companies being bought up by European conglomerates, have had the opportunity to really invest and buy American products because the quality hasn't been there necessarily.
Speaker C:And that's.
Speaker C:That's no way to diminish from the quality brands that are out there.
Speaker C:I know there are plenty of them, but the brands of yesteryear, just, they're not what they used to be.
Speaker C:And we were looking forward to being able to give Americans a choice in that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Talk about a humbling experience.
Speaker B:I worked sales, and part of my job of working sales was going in and building guns and helping out.
Speaker B:Building guns and hand filing and cleaning up things.
Speaker B:And I'm sorry for whoever got the guns That I built.
Speaker B:My bad.
Speaker B:No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker B:But it's a very humbling thing because you know, you're sitting there and you don't understand it and you're sitting there and you figuring out the craftsmanship.
Speaker B:And yes, most of my things were cookie cutter pieced together because it was either AR or stuff, but going in and, and fine filing in or making sure things are cleaned out and make sure everything is hand tight.
Speaker B:And it's just a very humbling experience.
Speaker B:And the big thing that we see have we saw a generation, we'll say a generation that was told college, college, college, the trades are bad.
Speaker B:And now we've lost the trades.
Speaker B:Now it's trade, trade, trades.
Speaker B:And just to have that experience of going in and working that and helping them and honing and cleaning up barrels and helping them in QC and doing that and you know, learning every bit of the, the industry and every bit of the process, you know, going through the other humbling, very humbling experience and Kaylee brought it up, you know, or maybe in a roundabout way is if, if we call it the dungeon at Shot show the basement.
Speaker B:You see all the new companies come in and they're A lot of those people are.
Speaker B:That's their, that's, that's their shot.
Speaker B:That's their American dream to own a firearms company.
Speaker B:And a lot of them have put their mortgages on the line.
Speaker B:A lot of them have put their, their livelihood on the line.
Speaker B:And they may now be that.
Speaker B:We've saw a great example Hudson, they, they showed up, they had this great product everyone was talking about and then two years later, poof.
Speaker B:Yeah, but they live their American dream.
Speaker B:And that's the big thing that we, we like to talk about.
Speaker B:Shot shows that dungeon, which is not as prevalent this year as it has been in the past.
Speaker B:It was a lot of different companies down there.
Speaker B:There was this one upand cominging company that we had at the women's event who's great down there, but a lot of people have moved over Caesars.
Speaker B:But yeah, there's a lot of people who put their livelihood on the line for the to be in the 2A space.
Speaker B:And just like you have the same thing, you know, you put your livelihood on the line in the two way space and you've built in 10 months this outstanding company which it sounds, it's humbling, but it's just great company and great, you know, the marketing and everything and the rebranding has been great.
Speaker B:So I applaud you for that.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:To put Everything on the line to take the American dream and build an American firearms company.
Speaker B:True.
Speaker B:Truly American firearms.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker C:So thank you and thanks for having me on the.
Speaker C:I've never heard it called the Dungeon before.
Speaker C:No, I haven't heard that.
Speaker C:I have a little bit different take.
Speaker C:So when I've gone down there, they actually have some.
Speaker C:It's a mishmash of stuff.
Speaker C:But there's a lot of innovation down there.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It's these little one off things.
Speaker C:You're like, if you can take that to market, that'll make a difference.
Speaker C:So there's a lot of innovation down there on I guess the third floor or the dungeon.
Speaker C:But it's, you know, there's companies we spoke with during shot show that we're following up with because they have some little nuance thing that we never considered and we're trying to incorporate that into our brand.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it was nicknamed the Dungeon in years past because it used to be you had no cell phone reception down there, so you just went dark.
Speaker B:Yeah, there was no cell phone reception.
Speaker B:It's gloomy.
Speaker B:Well, it's not.
Speaker B:It used to be.
Speaker B:This year it seemed brighter down there.
Speaker A:Yeah, they definitely got new, they got new lights.
Speaker A:But it used to be like, it's not.
Speaker B:It used to be.
Speaker B:The funny part is we, I have brought that like we were talking to somebody from Shot show and we're like, oh, in the dungeon.
Speaker B:They're like, what's the dungeon?
Speaker B:And we're like, oh, the basement.
Speaker B:They're like, that's called the basement.
Speaker B:I go, no, that's the dungeon.
Speaker B:The terminology that we've to call it now.
Speaker A:But it's definitely improved over the years of shot Shows.
Speaker A:You can actually get a call now, so, you know, makes meetings a lot easier.
Speaker A:Anyway, thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing everything about your company.
Speaker A:Is there any place plug your socials, websites, all of the things for people to find you?
Speaker C:Yeah, sure.
Speaker C:You can find [email protected] Same thing with all social media, whether It's Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker C:It's all watchtowerfirearms.com and we'd love for people to take a look at us.
Speaker C:We'd like to earn everyone's business and again, give them an option to buy, you know, real.
Speaker C:No kidding.
Speaker C:American firearms that are, that are premium products.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:So go ahead and make sure to like share and subscribe.
Speaker B:Hit the little bell for notification.
Speaker B:Leave us five star review on all the podcasting apps.
Speaker B:And as always, have a great rest of your day.
