Oh, and did you see the gold plated, um, um, um, oh, what's the word I'm looking for?
The Barrett?
RPG.
No, I did not see that.
Oh, the RPG.
Yeah.
With, with all gold and the rounds were gold plated.
Because everyone needs that.
No, you don't.
I guess.
Welcome to episode 14, number 14 of the frugal firearms podcast.
The podcast designed to help you get the most for your shooting dollar.
And today's going to be a different kind of show because we spent an awful lot of time
trying to find you guys the best values out there.
So welcome to the show.
My cohost, Ken, Ken, say hello to our guests and tell them what we're talking about today.
Welcome.
I appreciate you all tuning in.
Uh, we're going to be talking about our experiences at shot show 20, 25 Las Vegas, Nevada, or
some might say lost wages, Nevada.
This episode brought to you by Mantis, uh, people who make in our opinion, the best training
device in the world.
It gives you better feedback, more feedback types of feedback.
You're not going to get from any other source, including by the way, human instructors.
Ken, do you think probably the best investment you could make in training?
Absolutely.
And actually, uh, we can talk about it now or later, but basically I had already talked
about Mantis with a trainee I had at the range this morning.
At this morning.
So you went shooting this morning.
What did you do this morning?
Uh, I, one of the things I do is I'm a, uh, an instructor or a mentor.
I guess you might call us, uh, for San Diego County gun owners.
We go out and, uh, on Saturdays they have a shooting socials and on Sundays they have
guns and Moses, which pretty much focuses on the Jewish community, uh, here in San Diego,
who, uh, since October 7th, 2023 has been an uptick in the number of, uh, individuals
who are interested in learning how to, uh, defend themselves.
And I can imagine why, particularly in that community, I suppose.
Sadly, sadly, sadly.
So we had a pretty much a full house for every guns and Moses, uh, get together that we
have.
So today we had, I believe it was 18 people, which is pretty much takes up all the lanes,
uh, at the 50 yard shooting, uh, Poway weapons and gear, which is a phenomenal, uh, shooting
center here in San Diego.
And at least when they opened, I don't know if this is still the case.
They claimed to have been the second largest indoor range in the country.
I believe that is, was the claim.
They have a hundred yards indoors.
I know how many places have that.
I know.
And we were on the 50 yard range and we were having a great time.
I mean, granted, we were typically speaking, shooting, uh, you know, three to 10 yards,
uh, because of just the level of training that the individual had, but, uh, the person
was doing really, really well.
Part of that getting back to Mantis.
I tell them, you know, going to the range can be expensive.
I mean, the ammunition is a pricey can be pricey.
The range time can be pricey.
So I had exposed him to the fact that Mantis X 10 product, uh, he was unaware of it and
he's a new shooter.
He's just really getting, getting into this, into the sport and really into it for self-defense.
And he was very interested in it.
So we pulled the great thing about smartphone with a, with an internet connection is we
pulled up that, uh, showed it to him.
He was very impressed.
He's going to do a lot of reading and told him to go back and watch some YouTube videos
on it.
Uh, I hadn't mentioned this show because they didn't know we'd be talking about it,
but we really should have been having tuned into this show as well.
Absolutely.
And, uh, you know, for those who aren't familiar with it, we did do an episode, um, just a
couple of episodes ago with Mantis, $250, uh, we'll give you feedback on not only how
you shoot well and what you do wrong, but it'll document each and every event in a visual
way so that you can see whether you're healing the gun or whether you are anticipating recoil,
what your draw stroke looks like.
And the cool thing is that they come up with new drills regularly.
I've had a couple updates, um, just in the last month of the Mantis app and what are
those updates?
They're not just bug fixes.
Those are actually new drills that are built into it.
And this for $250 MSRP, I believe it's about 250.
And you know, what are you going to spend on, you know, that's a thousand rounds of
ammunition at 25 cents a round.
If you can even find it at 25 cents a round.
No, no.
I mean, you see you add up range time and, and, and nine millimeter box of 50 or a couple
of boxes of 50, it doesn't take long to consume $250.
Exactly.
So anyway, well, the other reason we wanted to mention Mantis was they were gracious enough
to get us into what industry day now, you know, so, so when I mentioned up
front that, uh, you know, we're doing the work to help you guys find the best values.
We really did the work because, you know, going to shot show isn't free guys.
Um, you know, there's, uh, at least for us, we're not buying plane fare.
We're driving.
Um, but it's still a bunch of miles, um, still hotel, all the food and everything else.
And is it fun?
Yes, it's fun.
But our walking, I did 26 and a half miles in four days.
And, uh, and the first day though, um, was industry day that not everyone gets to go
to.
So the gracious people at Mantis invited us to be able to go join them as part of a range
day where we got to see not only their new product, what's interesting for them is that
Mantis a company that builds training products is now importing rifles.
And do you remember what the spec on that rifle was?
Yeah.
One eighth.
MOA.
One eighth.
One eighth minute of angle, which is basically one eighth of an inch at a hundred yards with
premium ammunition.
Which means by the way, if you, yeah, if you run the numbers on this very quickly, let's
just say you were shooting a 22 caliber variant of that gun.
And by the way, I don't think that that gun comes into 22 variant, but let's just say
it did.
That would still mean that if the gun isn't moving that you're punching a single hole
because the bullet diameter is wider, larger than the spec on the gun.
I don't ever have to worry about that because I'm happy to get with three MOA and I'm perfectly
happy.
Three inches at a hundred yards.
And sometimes not that.
Range day was phenomenal, but I would like to say we stepped off the bus because we took
the bus, which was provided for us.
Very nice.
It kept nice luxury bus.
It's about 35 minutes outside of Vegas is the range that hosted.
Boulder rifle and pistol club.
Boulder city rifle and pistol club.
So it's halfway between Vegas and Boulder dam or Hoover dam, depends on which one you
call it.
But a phenomenal shooting facility with lots of different ranges.
Beautiful.
We just stepped off the bus and I believe it was 37 degrees.
It was 37 degrees with.
We were, we were ready for the temperature.
What we weren't ready for was the wind.
Wind chill.
Yeah.
Oh my.
Yeah.
It, because well, it's the desert and it's winter and we were told we got lucky.
It wasn't raining because I guess in past years it's rained a lot on range day, which
would be a complete drag.
But I think it was about 25 mile.
I'm looking at a video right now.
I did post this to our social media earlier, about 25 mile an hour is worth a wind.
Worth wind.
It was cold.
Right in our face.
Like right down the right at us.
It was brutally cold.
And I had gloves, but I'm telling you, I needed warmer gloves.
I needed those battery powered gloves.
It was cold.
I know I appreciate those of you who listened to us from the Northern plains of the United
States and Canada, perhaps.
37 is not bad.
We're probably laughing at us, but it's like, we're from San Diego, you know?
So it was cold.
And we don't generally go to the range on days that are like that because 10 months
of the year we don't have to.
So what were some of the things that we saw at industry day that we really liked besides
the New Mantis?
Oh, absolutely.
There were several things.
I mean, we had the opportunity of shooting some ammunition, which was interesting.
That was that plastic core ammunition.
I forgot the manufacturer of it.
But it was incredibly lightweight ammunition.
It was nine millimeter, but it was like 20 grain ammunition.
It was incredibly lightweight.
It was like a jacket around a plastic core.
And we were shooting that.
And the reliability and the velocities that were getting out of this were ridiculous.
They were well over 2,000, 2,500 feet per second.
Yeah, out of like a Glock 19.
Yeah, like a Glock 19.
And yet when you're firing it, you couldn't really tell that much difference in it.
So anyway, this is specialty ammunition.
It was an opportunity for us to kind of go outside of our frugal aspect of it.
But I'm telling you, it was very interesting to see the technological improvements of some
of the things that they were doing at the show.
Now, what was interesting about that ammunition, and this may be a company that we feature
in the future on the show, their perspective was dump all the energy very quickly, which
is not.
Correct.
And then when you come right into it, what's the FBI standard?
12 inches, 12, 14 inches.
Because if you have an oblique target and you're not squared up to them or something
like that, targets can be thicker.
People are wearing clothes and so on.
But the antithesis of that, of course, is over penetration makes you responsible for
things behind it.
Absolutely.
When you fire around ammunition, you are responsible for that bullet wherever it goes.
And what was also interesting about that ammunition was the way they did this, folks, is they
put a couple of regular rounds into the magazine first.
And then they followed it with their rounds.
And the sudden drop in recoil was so dramatic.
It was way more than I thought.
I thought, yeah, there's going to be a difference in recoil.
But how much difference in recoil was kind of hard to express, at least you have to feel
it.
You have to feel it, yeah.
And then you're not, if you train with that, expensive as that might be, you would not
develop as much recoil anticipation response.
True, true.
But I think it definitely has its place.
Obviously, the kickback, hitting it against steel targets, I mean, the recoil of the splash
back was basically none.
So those of you who ever go to range and shoot steel targets, that's a concern.
You always have to be a proper distance away, shooting the proper ammunition.
But yeah, I think it had its place, particularly in a handgun.
And I'd like to see some additional tests made on your typical two by four drywall construction
type of thing, because it really was fast.
Good idea.
But as soon as it hits something, it immediately dumps its energy and should not over-penetrate
at all.
So I'd like to see some additional tests on that type of ammunition.
Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Anyway, that was one of the things that I thought was fascinating.
So the other things that we saw there, at least until we gave up because our limbs were
going numb and came back to warm up.
Four hours we were there.
Yeah, four and a half hours or something like that.
I got to shoot for the first time.
I'd seen it at the show before, but I got to shoot for the very first time.
The Laugo Alien, which is an interesting gun because it has a negative bore axis.
In other words, the...
Very low in the hand.
Yeah, the bore is actually lower than the web of your hand.
And they had a limited run of 500 of one particular gun that does not recoil the red dot sight,
the red dot mount.
And now what's interesting is you can rack the gun if you want with the red dot sight.
But when the gun fires, it disengages that part and then only recoils the slide, but
not the red dot, which is better for target reacquisition to an extent, but it also doesn't
beat up on the red dot side as much.
And it lowers the amount of reciprocating mass, which then helps again with recoil.
It's also a $6,500 gun now.
Yeah, again, we're kind of breaking.
It's really fun to go shows like this because you see the high end stuff and you're like,
this is great.
Maybe some of this technology will spill down to us in a few years.
But no, that alien pistol was literally was not a frugal.
Unfortunately not.
So, what else did we see at Range Day?
I had an opportunity to fire for the first time a Ruger 1022 with a Franklin Arms binary
trigger.
Now, binary triggers are something that are not permitted in the state of California.
And maybe some other states and localities I'm not aware.
But basically, I have fired in the past when I used to be a competition trap shooting.
They have these things called a fire on release.
What that means is when in a trap range where the clay disk is flying up out of the ground
up and away from you, you actually pull the trigger on the gun, on the shotgun, and the
gun will not fire.
The gun fires when you release the trigger.
Now on a binary trigger, and that's a target trigger on certain shotguns that had this
technology.
Oh, you're saying this isn't binary.
No, no.
You're pre-staging?
No, this is what my experience was with release triggers.
I'll call it the trigger on release, which is interesting.
I've seen those before, but not often.
But you occasionally see them at trap ranges.
You have to explain it and the person who owned it had to explain exactly how it worked
and stuff.
And it's supposed to make you a little bit more accurate on a trap range, trap or skeet
range.
Okay.
But the Franklin Arms binary trigger, and they have them for several different firearms,
but I did it on the Ruger 1022, was you had a standard trigger.
You had the safety, then you turned the knob 90 degrees, and it was just like your standard
Ruger 1022, you pull the trigger and it had a nice trigger break and it goes bang in one
time.
So it's bang on one pull.
And then just standard let go of the trigger, no second shot.
You rotated it an additional 90 degrees and it goes into binary mode, which means the
gun will fire when you pull the trigger and when you release the trigger.
So it was very interesting to go bang bang and really just pull release, pull release,
pull release.
And if you decide you don't want that to happen, then what do you do?
If you were halfway through, if you decide you don't want that second shot during a
binary trigger, you pull, you get your first bang and you go, oh gee, I don't want the
second shot.
So you then have to, before releasing the trigger, you have to go to the safety and
rotate it back either to the single position or all the way to the safe position.
And then you can release your finger without a second shot.
I'm just saying it's fun.
It's fun, but I can almost see the lawyers lining up on this one.
Well, maybe, but they've been selling the trigger now for quite a while and I know Plinkster
22 on YouTube and several others have demoed it.
It's a lot of fun for plinking on things.
And I think there's a use for it.
Yeah.
And a couple of other things we got to see were, even though they're not available in
California, Pepperball guns.
Oh yeah, Berna.
Right.
I think they might be available here.
I thought that they were.
No, no, actually I saw the Berna's for sale this morning at the range.
Did you really?
I thought that they weren't a California item.
Oh, no, you might not.
They might have been, because they sell, okay.
Oh, those are the kinetic ones?
The kinetic ones.
Not the ones that actually contain the Pepperbow, OC or whatever.
Chris Pepper's, oh, the old Capsicam or whatever.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So basically the Berna is a air pistol.
It looks kind of like an oversized 1911 and it fires a, I guess the equivalent would be
like a, I don't know the diameter, but it's like a 50 or 60 caliber, what appears to be
a marble, like a marble size thing.
Kinetic ones are, it is a marble.
It literally is a marble.
It's plastic marble.
And it comes out and you get about 10 or 15 shots before you have to recharge the compressed
air.
So what's the use for, what would you use this thing for?
The fact is it's available, I think in almost all jurisdictions across the United States
as a handgun.
Basically it's not really, it's not a firearm.
First off, it's not a firearm.
It is basically an air pistol, an air gun.
I think there are a few things like your typical locations like Manhattan and other places
like that who'll probably outlaw them, but it was available for sale here in San Diego.
It's out at the range.
And it basically fires a marble, which will raise a welt and is very painful.
But it's really a second, I mean, it's a, pay attention to me.
It's a non-lethal, it is a non-lethal thing.
I mean, if you were, I would, if I were out on the trail and walking around and I came
across somebody being attacked by a dog or something like that, I think it would be a
fantastic way of getting the dog's attention.
So let me tell you about another item that falls along the same lines.
It was by a company called Alternative Ballistics.
And actually there, some of their manufacturing occurs actually right near the Poway weapons
and gear range.
They make a, it's something I'd never seen before.
It's a large ball, steel ball that has a cavity in it that is the size of a, roughly the size
of a nine millimeter bullet.
And then it has a plastic cage, if you will, that attaches to the front of a gun, nominally
a Glock, let's say.
And there's other form factors that comes in.
The idea is this is really a law enforcement focused item, but it can be used by civilians.
When you fire the bullet, it is, you just load the gun normally with whatever rounds
you normally have.
The bullet comes out of the barrel and is immediately captured and swedges itself into
the steel ball.
Right.
This much larger, much larger, heavier steel ball, which then of course is ejected off
the end of the gun, because the whole thing's being held in place by this cage.
The entire assembly comes off and then hits whoever you're pointing it at with non-lethal
force because the energy's been transferred to something that now-
Much larger mass.
So what's conservation of momentum, it's an engineering term, so it's simply mass times
velocity.
The mass times velocity of the bullet is now the mass times velocity of something much
heavier, so the velocity is much lower and the surface area is much larger.
So it creates a, you better pay attention to me type of moment.
And that might change someone's OODA loop and make them start thinking about maybe this
isn't a good person to deal with.
The next round-
Is this your standard nine?
Is this your standard round?
So this is something that we hope to test actually at the range.
I want to put it to my clear ballistics and kind of see-
It would be interesting.
Yeah, what kind of penetration you get on clear ballistics gel.
It'll probably bounce off.
It probably will and that's really the goal, right?
That's the goal.
You don't really want it penetrating that.
There are videos online, but we have a couple cards from those guys.
We'll be reaching out to them and maybe featuring them.
So then once we got back and warmed up the next day of the show-
Warmed up.
Goodness gracious.
Ken and I, we usually divide and conquer, we sort of split our forces.
I go to very fast pace and Ken is more of a deliberate paced person.
I did 16 miles.
You did 16?
Well, that's a lot.
Yeah.
That's a hell of a lot.
That's 16 miles of walking and you did 27?
Just under 27.
Yeah, 26 and a half basically across those days.
Now that's if the phone, if the app is right.
But you know what?
True.
I brought my Bushnell, by the way, another quality product.
It had a good price.
I brought my Bushnell rangefinder to the shop.
Why would I do that?
Measure the size of the floor.
I want to measure the size of the building to see, could I actually figure out, like,
am I really walking that far?
The inside dimension on that building, it's not square, it's not round.
It's kind of a strangely shaped building, but the long axis is roughly square in places.
Sure.
So it's 375 yards down one aisle.
One aisle.
It's 375 yards.
And then I went to some other rooms that were 116 by 97 yards and there were three of those.
And then some other rooms.
And you put a standard table or two, so you're talking about maybe a seven foot or maybe
15 foot.
10 by 10 I think is the smallest they sell.
10 by 10?
10 by 10 is the smallest they sell.
So it's a 10 foot.
And a lot of people were in 10 by 10s.
Oh yeah.
First floor.
First floor all 10 by 10 type of things.
Mostly 10 by 10s or a multiple, like a 20 by 10.
Yeah, 20 by 10, exactly.
So you can pack a lot of different people to talk to.
Well, it was over 2,800 exhibitors.
Yeah.
2,800.
Okay, so dear listeners, when we're trying to figure out what the best values are across
2,800 exhibitors, you come home with a lot of cards.
You do.
I left a couple of things in the hotel room like I accidentally did.
What did you leave in the hotel room?
A couple of things that I was really wanting.
One of the things was...
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, I know.
Some of the...there were freebie things that came off.
They were sample things that came off the desk.
I put them all into a bag and then promptly left it in the hotel room.
Ken is all about the swag.
Maybe so.
Yeah.
And the other thing that...you know, once we got rolling into this and started passing
out cards and sharing information and things like that, there was a lot of enthusiasm for
people joining the show.
One company that I came across, Vantage Point Armory and Vantage Point Archery, under the
same parent company, of course, makes a rail-mounted compensator.
Now, it's only available kind of in a prototype right now.
And the idea though, which this is one of two items that were why didn't I think of
that type of items, was that you don't have to get a threaded barrel.
You don't have to port your slide.
You don't have to change barrels.
You simply go with what you've got already.
And as long as you're using a holster that is an open bottom holster, because it wouldn't...you'd
have to either custom the holster or modify the holster otherwise.
But if your muzzle sticks out of the bottom of your holster, you've got a little extra
distance that you could add to the gun around...it looked roughly a half an inch depending
on the size of...on what gun it was going on.
But you get a one or a two port compensator on the front of the gun that you simply attach
to the rail.
Great.
Rail-mounted compensator.
It's so obvious.
And then there's also versions that will hold your weapon-mounted light.
So if you're using one of the...a couple popular ones, Surefire, things like that, you can
get your weapon-mounted light on there and not sacrifice anything.
Now, does it add some thickness?
Yes, it does.
Does that mean you might need to change holsters?
It probably does.
But the fact that you can get a comp on the gun for about 150 bucks without changing anything
else, that was a great product.
Yeah.
And you mentioned something there just as part of your description for that.
You might have to modify your holster.
And as a frugal firearms thing, I have modified countless holsters, web gear, all different
sorts of things.
So just because to keep costs down when we are trying to do frugal things, to keep costs
down, if you have something that's pretty close to what you want and you kind of know
what you want to do to it to make it do something else, if you need to sew it or sew leather,
buying a little leather punch kit to put some additional stitching here or open something
up, whatever you want to try, it's not that hard.
Same thing with your typical web gear.
You can hand stitch things that was done for centuries before machine stitching came out.
It's not that difficult.
So it's just kind of a frugal thing.
I encourage you to step up and try it.
Well, you can do it too.
Now, disclaimer, folks, you may ruin your equipment doing this.
But you can do it.
You can do it.
Well, no, I haven't.
I've been very careful.
You can do this with Kydex.
Because Kydex is a thermo-molded plastic and you can reheat it.
If all you're trying to do is accommodate, I wouldn't say going from a Kydex holster
that was never meant to have a weapon light and then you want to put a weapon light because
there's probably not enough plastic there to deal with and the attachment points and
where they've riveted it and things, that was never going to work.
But if you're talking about a holster that already pretty much works and you just need
to modify it, yes, you can do this with a heat gun.
Get a heat gun.
And just locally, very carefully go about this and you can modify that thing.
And I've actually taken holsters that were factory holsters.
And let's say, for example, I didn't like how well it gripped.
I wanted more grip.
And I modified them to just be a little bit more positive on locking in.
And it's completely doable.
But you practice on some Kydex that you don't care about first.
Because otherwise, you'll probably, well, you'll have a, most of our listeners probably
have a box of holsters already.
Oh, absolutely.
Most people in the guns.
And it may just bend to be.
Yeah, you end up buying one that doesn't work exactly what you want it to.
But I have, I found some wonderful solutions there too.
So there was another product that I saw also on the first floor that was the other I mentioned.
There was a, why didn't I think of that product?
This product was made, it's in prototype form right now, and it is a weapon mounted light.
Started life as a handheld light.
Now it's a weapon mounted version of that.
And this is a company that we're talking to and will likely also at least help in product
development if not actually feature on the show.
That is a 180 degree illumination field.
Did you see that one down there?
No, I did not.
But it must have had a fairly interesting lens on the front of it.
It actually uses multiple LEDs.
It does have, it is patented and not saying that multiple LEDs is particularly unusual,
but it throws a, it throws a wide wide.
It's almost like imagine your regular flashlight having, you know, people have differences
in how much they want that central dot to be.
Sure.
How bright the splash that goes outside of it, how bright that is.
And there's varying opinions about, I want it to be more of an even field of light or
I want it to be very concentrated.
Well, this is not concentrated.
At least the version that I saw, it throws an equal field of light across 180 degrees.
Now why would that be an advantage?
Because now it allows you to see, you know, maybe a bad person doing something and maybe
a bad person's buddies, or you get to see a child coming into the scene or other things
that are out there.
If you're the person looking at this light on the other side of the gun, it's going to
still be bright, still going to blind you if it's a dark circumstance.
It's still going to definitely get your attention, but it was a, gosh, why hasn't anyone else
done this already?
And the company president who I talked to actually quite a long time yesterday has a
very interesting backstory that we'll share when we get to that episode.
What else did you see?
Um, I saw the Ruger.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
I meant to mention the name of that company is, is a full spectrum of lighting.
Oh, very good.
Full spectrum lighting and they have a website for their product, which is zoom 180.com.
So we'll throw that out there.
If people want to go take a look at zoom 180.com.
Like I said, the weapon mounted light is not in production yet, but, but look for that
when it comes out.
I also saw I was stopped off with the, I believe it was a, one of the major distributors and
Ruger has a, another variant of 10 22.
One of the things that I always recommend people oftentimes for their first rifle is
a Ruger 10 22.
They're just phenomenal.
And we can talk about the, there are some interesting options here.
Yes.
About that.
One of my favorites.
Yes.
We will talk.
We absolutely could talk about that.
But anyway, one of the ones that Ruger is coming out with is they had a Ruger 10 22
with, I believe a mag pull, a gray plastic stock, which is great.
And also it came with the, the fiber barrel.
I can't think of the name of a carbon fiber.
Thank you.
Carbon fiber.
Welcome to this century.
Yeah.
Well, carbon fiber barrel, most likely have car parts and carbon fiber now a carbon fiber
barrel.
And the neat thing about that was the overall weight of the, of the little Ruger 10 22 was
just typical Ruger 10 22 took your standard 10, 10 round rotary magazines or 15s or 25s,
whatever you're able to have.
But the weight of it was so ridiculously light.
It was like a little over three pounds.
And it was just almost like you thought he had a couple of helium balloons.
It would lift the rifle right up and fly off with it.
It was really nice, really, really nice.
And I could see using that to help a young shooter to get involved in the shooting sports
for maybe a person of smaller stature who is interested and it's, it's not at all scary.
And that's something I would like to focus on some future shows is to talk a little bit
more about bringing more young people into the shooting sports.
I've got some ideas on that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
We can talk about it.
Cause I mean, yeah, it's all, it's all your, like Reagan said, you're only one generation
away from, I'll let, you know, you can now fill in the blank after that.
And, and in this case, you could be one generation away from losing, you know, this entire sport
or this entire right.
If things, if things change too much, you know, going back to a range day, I did get
to try that rifle on the range because Ruger was present there.
And a lot of the other things that we, we got to see at range day, I really have to
give a shout out to, to all the companies there because they were very generous with
their ammunition.
I mean, they spent a lot of money to be able to have people line up and shoot lots and
lots and lots of rounds.
I didn't wait in line to shoot the Barrett, but no Barrett light 50 people were doing
that too.
Yeah.
The Barrett is probably what?
Eight to $10 a shot.
Oh, I imagine in bulk they're probably doing it for $5 a shot, but even so I'm not frugal,
not frugal at all.
No, not, not, not a bit.
And California is not a thing.
So for me, you know, the, the 10 22 very nothing against Ruger.
I own Ruger products.
I'm not saying anything bad, but I like the Winchester Wildcat.
And now the Winchester Wildcat is basically using much of the same design because of why
it will use this.
I guess maybe we've mentioned this before on the show, but I think that Ruger's patent
on the rotary magazine has run out.
Yeah.
So the 10 22 has been the Ruger 10 22 rifle has been out since I think 1963 or 64, some
really long time.
And in fact, now Winchester has picked up on that and makes a rotary magazine 22 that
accommodates the Ruger mag.
So you can just go out and get any plain vanilla Ruger 10 22 mag.
And now you can put it in the Wildcat.
To me, the Wildcat is, I prefer its ergonomics, its design.
It's a composite stock, comes in lots of different finishes, price point.
And that's the key, the price point.
Yeah.
And the price point I've seen is as low as $179.
I know, I know.
And this is definitely in our wheelhouse.
Yeah.
Because you have a phenomenal rifle, which is to be honest with you, I think everybody
should own a semi-automatic 22 caliber rifle of some type.
10 22 is a fine choice, but this Wildcat, absolutely.
This is also another fine choice.
And we didn't even get to the other pistol, which...
You mean the Diamondback?
No, no.
Because those are there too, and those Diamondbacks are nice.
Yeah, exactly.
They're not available in California, but true.
The Diamondbacks are another, for example, they have a Diamondback revolver.
And semis.
And semis, but I'm a revolver guy, old school.
And I'm a semi-guy.
Old school, you know, wheel gun guy.
They have a nice swing out cylinder revolver, which I really fell in love with, thought
it was fantastic.
Wish they would sell it in California.
Unfortunately, they don't.
But no, I was thinking of the, I think it's the RX...
But things are getting better.
I mean, you saw what President Trump did yesterday with his executive order to...
I mean, he didn't...
He took a measured approach to it.
And rather than just broad brush, say something that I think a lot of people in the audience
would wish he would do, but he directed Biden era anti-2A laws be reviewed.
Yeah, executive orders.
And a lot of them are going to vanish probably in short order.
Very short.
I think the problem there...
I'm not making an argument one way or the other, a 10th Amendment argument here, but
it seems that there's going to be a lot of states' rights questions that come into this,
because anything that was induced at the federal level can be undone at the federal level,
but that doesn't mean that it's going to necessarily trickle into the states as evenly as we'd
like to see.
Right.
So yeah, how that is going to be interpreted and how Pam Bondi, who are our new attorney
general, is going to implement those or look into those things.
Those are all very interesting topics.
It's kind of outside of our frugal firearms purview, but nonetheless, there could be a
lot of really good and positive things happening for those of us in the shooting sports over
the next four years or eight years or 12 years if we get JD Vance or something.
So you brought up law.
Probably our next show will be CCW Safe.
And we also met some other organizations that do, if you will, carry insurance.
And I'm using the term loosely because some of these are not technically insurance companies.
Companies, no.
Right.
So we've got to talk to Mr. William Kirk.
Washington Gun Law.
Exactly.
Mr. Kirk seemed very interested in coming on the show at some point.
He may or may not represent the company that he's associated with when he comes on the
show.
I don't want to say one way or the other what company that is just at this moment because
we haven't initiated that conversation with Mr. Kirk yet.
But I mean, I think a lot of people know Washington Gun Law, don't they?
Oh, absolutely.
He has a YouTube channel.
Highly recommend subscribing to it.
He comes out.
He does not do just Washington State.
He does the whole country and how it impacts you and your Second Amendment rights and how
you need to behave in every situation.
So he's a phenomenal guy and very pleased to have been able to meet him firsthand.
Who else did we meet?
Well, I had a nice talk with Lena Michalik, Jerry's daughter.
Jerry Michalik's daughter.
About getting her on the show at some point to talk about women's perspectives on guns
and things like that.
She's been very involved in the Rose Line of firearms with Sig Sauer, which is a woman's
focused set of firearms.
I think specifically the P365, I believe.
And who else did we get to meet?
I got to meet Doug Marcaida.
So if you're a knife fan, if you're a forged in fire devotee as I am, if you're into metallurgy,
which I am, all those things, you know, for me, it's kind of a perfect storm of interest
in knives.
And Mr. Marcaida, at least in principle, agreed to come talk on the show at some point about
edged and impact weapons as an alternative to firearms in places where, you know, maybe
you don't have the opportunity to carry a gun, it's less permissive or a pocket knife
is socially acceptable.
So we'll be having hopefully that conversation because we've already covered with Joe Dremisi.
We covered the OC spray option.
And this kind of sits in the knife and in impact weapons.
I think, would you agree it kind of sits in middle ground?
Because a knife is certainly a lethal weapon, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And an impact weapon could be construed as a lethal weapon where you're going from the
decidedly non-lethal pepper spray up through the increase in, let's say, violence of action
between then edged weapons and then up to firearms.
And I think we've left that middle part has been kind of empty.
Kind of supporting that, did you stop by any knife booths that you like?
Because I went to two that I really like.
Well, I've always liked Spyderco.
I've had them for, I've carried a Spyderco in my pocket for probably 35 years.
You know, you didn't go, I will tell you this, you did not go to TacCon last year with me.
No.
And I did.
And I took a knife fighting class at TacCon because they, you know, again, it's part of
the continuum of self-defense.
And the instructor's favorite knife was the Spyderco Delica.
And the reason is that it can, it can not only be opened multiple ways, but it's extremely
positive in the way you open it.
And the idea being that you don't want a knife that if you're already into a tussle with
someone at a close engaged distance, you know, not a Hollywood sort of arm's length, you
know, boxing distance, but really engaged with someone, trying to get your folding knife
out and getting it into action is a very tenuous thing.
And you very well might drop the knife in the process of just trying to open it.
And he thought that the Spyderco design was really the best for getting the knife open
in a secure way and getting it into action.
Yeah.
I've always, I've always liked my Spyderco.
And then Topps knives.
Did you stop by their booth?
Oh my gosh.
There were a large number of knife people represented there to the point of my eyes
were glazing over.
What you want.
Yeah.
But eyes glazing over.
Let's just say, for example, you are a person who was into, I'm putting quotes around this
word innovation.
If you were looking for innovation in the AR-15 platform.
Again, you, your mind, you're just, you're glass over everything.
You can't, you just.
You couldn't do, well, you couldn't do the show in four days.
You'd need four weeks to do the show because every third booth had something to do with
the AR-15.
I'm not, is that a, that's not a bad thing.
And the number of gold plated AR-15s.
Oh yeah.
Gold plated.
Styrogg.
Gold plated.
This, that, the other.
Because they're interesting.
AKs that are gold plated.
AKs.
Oh, and did you see the gold plated?
Oh, what's the word I'm looking for?
The Barrett?
RPG.
No, I did not see that.
Oh, the RPG.
Yeah.
With, oh, it had ivory and or it was cloisonne or something that made it look like ivory
with all gold and the rounds were gold plated.
Because everyone needs that.
No, we don't.
I guess.
I mean, it was, it was overkill to the max, but it's fun to see, fun to see all of these
things to look at them and go, wow, that's interesting.
Even if I won the lottery, I probably wouldn't buy that, but it was fun to see.
And I enjoyed it.
And we spent well over a thousand dollars doing it.
Indeed.
By the time you gas and food and all the others.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, for a week.
Yeah.
So, oh, by the way, you know what we forgot to mention upfront?
What's that?
Well, I'm glad you're here, Ken, and that you're not dead.
Oh yeah, this is interesting.
We actually attempted to record a similar show to this.
This show, we were going to do this show.
Basically this show where we didn't actually have a specific guest.
And we were doing it on the five hour drive back to San Diego from Vegas.
So we figured how bad could this be?
We'll just get a show out really quick.
I'm glad I was able to go at the last minute to the show.
And anyway, so Craig and I are in his rather fancy car, beautiful car.
It had heated seats.
It's an Audi.
And you like the massage seats too.
I like the heated and massage seats.
They were lovely.
They were really nice and very enjoyable, very relaxing.
Anyway during this time, and I have no idea how many microphones that your car has embedded
into the various...
It would have to be, I think, at least four in order to do what it was doing.
At least four.
So we decided to effectively record this.
And Craig's driving and I'm in the passenger seat.
So just technologically what we're doing is we're recording it on my phone, but the...
Phone is Bluetooth too.
The phone is Bluetooth to the car's carplay system.
So it's using the internal microphones in my Audi.
In the Audi, yeah, exactly.
And you were sitting shotgun.
You weren't sitting three rows away from me into that.
We were sitting three and a half feet apart.
Oh, less than that.
Less than that probably, yeah.
We're sitting there and I'm probably talking louder than you were talking.
The Audi system was astonishing in what it was able to do.
It basically picked up every word Craig said absolutely clear as a bell.
And it took every word that I said and it made it, I guess, noise canceled background
noise.
Yeah, you were noise canceled out of existence.
I was now noise canceled out of existence.
So we couldn't get a single word...
A syllable.
You said, nothing.
Nothing.
Not a syllable.
In fact, maybe this will be the place I'll put it in the show, just a short sample.
It was almost comical because when we had finished and over what, about an hour, hour
and 15 minutes where we were talking.
Yeah, it was long.
It was what for us would be considered a very long show.
A long show.
And we were talking away just about our experiences and everything, pretty much what we're doing
now.
And we said, well, yeah, let's go ahead and just listen to a couple of minutes of this
before we're still driving in the car.
And he plays it back and it's like, wait a minute.
You can't hear me at all.
I mean at all.
Yeah, so the Audi acoustic engineers really got it right, but we didn't know they...
We did not know.
I do acoustics for a living and I got to tell you that that's pretty challenging to be able
to exclude a person almost completely.
Like you couldn't even hear there was anyone else in the car.
In the car.
Who was under three feet.
I mean, the car just isn't...
I mean, what's the center of the position in a large sedan of two people?
I think it's under three feet.
So that one, well, like I said, maybe I'll stick in a little section of that in the show,
but that was a lot of wasted effort because we had a lot of good stuff to say.
We did.
Wait, is 50 state legal?
Is it really?
I didn't think that that stuff was legal in Cal.
I didn't think...
Is it really?
Oops.
So...
Anyway, let's talk about the Ruger RXM.
I think it is.
Yeah.
The RXM, the new...
Another case of expired patent and then a design patent, I guess, in this case for Glock.
For Glock.
Expiring.
And it's not that there aren't any shadow systems and other companies that make fantastic
stuff, but it's expensive.
Are based on Glock, not in prototype, the Glock form factor.
Right.
Form factor.
And this was a perfect example of, and it fits right into our wheelhouse, of frugal
firearms.
This was basically the Glock RXM, which I think stands for Ruger Cross Something with
Magpul.
So Magpul did...
Oh, is that what it meant?
I didn't even think of it.
Yeah, because Magpul made the...
It's Ruger...
Did the plastic pieces parts.
Yeah.
The plastic pieces, Magpul has been doing injection molded plastic for years.
They do all of these fantastic Magpul magazines for AR platform, for example, or many other
platforms.
Anyway, phenomenal ability in engineering as it relates to injection molded plastic.
Yeah, right.
So they teamed up with Ruger, who basically I think built the slide and the barrel and
all of the hard metal parts.
They're basically making a Gen 3 Glock clone.
Not exact clone, but pretty darn close.
Anyway, except...
There's differences in the trigger...
Yes.
And the fire control group is different.
Fire control group's a little bit different, but it accepts Glock magazines, which is great
because Glock magazines are ubiquitous on the earth.
They're probably the single most common magazine, pistol magazine you'll ever get.
They are now.
Yeah, and then 9mm.
So it'll accept...
And Magpul's been making Glock magazines for a long time.
So now you have an example.
And this is the key, why it is frugal.
It basically comes in at a list price of $399, under $400 for a Gen 3, bet your life reliable,
9mm pistol.
That has better texture than the Glock.
Better texture than the Glock.
And that is the value proposition.
There were two questions I had about that that I didn't get answered because of overload
and I forgot.
Does it take standard Glock sights?
And that's less important.
I don't know, but I can tell you this.
It had metal sights that were factory metal sights, which is nice because Glock factory
sights are polymer, plastic basically.
And the rail, is it a standard 1913 cut?
No, it's a standard Glock rail.
Is a Glock cut.
It's a Glock cut rail.
I'm surprised they did that.
I would think that they would have used the opportunity to go to the standard pick rail.
Picatinny 1913 rail?
Would have been the dimension they would have gone with because that's a little bit...
Are you sure about that?
No, no.
We need to check.
We'll have our listeners check the specs on it.
But what I would like to say is the RXM Ruger working with Magpul to produce a Glock, Gen
3 Glock clone that will accept Glock magazines, 9mm, for under $400, which is at a price point,
at least here in California, of probably a minimum of $150 less than what a Glock 3 would
cost you here in California.
You're looking at that much money for used police trade-ins.
Yeah, I know.
Sometimes.
Sometimes, yeah.
Was that your favorite price point item?
That was my favorite 9mm price point for several reasons.
Again, frugal.
No, I meant the whole show.
Price point item.
Probably.
But don't forget, I want to hear your rationale about it.
Really.
And the reason is it uses common parts.
It's kind of like buying a car.
Yeah, okay.
You can buy a Saab or something like that.
Saab probably makes a great car.
But the parts for it are going to cost you an arm and a leg, and they're uncommon, and
you have to order from a Saab dealer or whatever.
But this particular one, it's Ruger, which is American-made, basically Magpul American,
used in Glock magazines, ubiquitous, find them everywhere.
It fits Glock mags everywhere.
9mm, most common round in the world.
And it comes built in and ready to attach a whole host of red dot optics on the back
of the slide.
So it's already cut for the optics on it.
Now I am, I think we mentioned in earlier episodes, I'm still an iron sights guy, probably
because that's the way I started.
But for those of you getting into the sport.
Or you don't have a stigmatism, or you believe in front sight focus, which I'm not criticizing,
but I just, I have, we're going to talk about the high viz before we get out of this.
Yeah, we got to talk about that.
And the Meprolite.
And the Meprolite, yes.
These are sights that were at the show.
But anyway, from a value perspective, absolutely take a really good look at this Ruger RXM
Gen 3 clone.
For those in states who can actually get it.
Which you can get it, I think in most states.
I don't necessarily think, again California is not on ours yet, I don't think.
But if you have the opportunity to, it is a bet your life reliable 9mm.
Another one that I thought that was very interesting was the Kel-Tec.
I mean, I think a lot of people are suspicious of Kel-Tec.
They have some very innovative, and some would say unusual designs.
Their 5.7x28 pistol, the new one with the rotary barrel.
And if you look into this folks, the barrel, it looks, the front end of the barrel, the
muzzle end of the barrel looks like the locking lugs on an AR-15 bolt, because the barrel
actually rotates and locks into the slide.
And I got to try that at Industry Day.
Again, thanks very much to Mantis for inviting us in.
I've never shot a 5.7x28 before, and this is a featherweight light gun.
It's also insanely thin, and why is it so thin?
By the way, holds 21 rounds.
21 rounds.
With no magazine.
Right.
So you're thinking, well what?
What do you mean no magazine?
It's a stripper clip loaded on top, and the way they got it so thin was by getting rid
of the magazine altogether, and you load through the ejection port, almost like you would an
SKS for example, and you push the rounds in, and you think, well I can't change the mag.
Well yeah, except you're already carrying 20 rounds.
Exactly.
And you can put one in the pipe and get it to 21.
21.
And we start talking statistics of how many times you're going to get to over 20 rounds
in a gunfight.
No.
Almost never.
Yeah, pretty much not.
Almost zero.
Yeah.
And the 5.7x28 is a high speed round.
It sure is.
I haven't seen, like LuckyGunner.com for example, did a video on that, but they didn't put it
to their normal testing protocols, I don't think, that you would normally see them do
with a lot of other rounds to see how effective it is, but I mean I don't want to stand on
the receiving end of one, I'll tell you that.
No.
Secret Service uses the 5.7x28 round.
They do?
They do.
They have the P90, the personal defense.
Oh, they use that as their SMG basically?
Yeah, yeah.
So if you try to break into the White House or something like that.
Then you'll find out.
Yeah, Secret Service will shoot you with a 5.7.
Yeah.
At least the guy's walking around with it.
I did not.
With those P90 rifles, yeah.
I've never liked the ergonomics on the P90.
No, I didn't either.
Every other damn person I talk to loves it.
It's again, it's kind of one of those space age, huh, they actually built it, but again.
And just to talk about the frugality of it, I know 5.7 ammo is coming down.
I don't think it has gotten to the area where I would say, yeah, I'll go out and buy a 5.7
because it's a frugal choice.
No.
Well, neither has 30 super carry.
No, 30 super carry.
Another interesting round.
There are a lot of interesting rounds that come out almost every year from the ammo manufacturers
or the major guns, new chamberings and so forth.
And lots of times it's like, I don't know if you really need to do that.
I'm going to stick with the very tried and very true 9 millimeter, for example.
I think you can do pretty much anything with 9 millimeter.
And if you need to step up, I mean, if you want a bigger thing, you can go to 40 or 45.
You step down, you go to 380 or something like that.
But the ones that have been out for decades are the ones where you're going to find the
value.
They're going to be less expensive to shoot because ammo companies are going to chamber
for them or they're going to be loading for them because there are lots and lots of them
out there.
The 5.7, it's been out for a while and it's an interesting round.
Don't get me wrong.
But I think relatively speaking per shot, it's pretty pricey.
If you're going to practice with it, it's probably not.
No.
It's going to be a big bankroll to do that.
As a carry gun, I mean, I would think that now, again, I'm not going to...
We haven't tested it.
I mean, we did at the range.
By the way, it was another case of where's the recoil?
I mean, the recoil was minimal.
Right.
Caltech is very interesting.
Super flat gun, super easy to conceal.
And I can't get over the number of rounds that you're carrying without having to reload.
If you live in a state that would let you have such a thing.
That would let you have it.
Yeah.
I mean, I would certainly consider it, but the whole practice thing, thousands and thousands
and thousands of rounds to become genuinely proficient for something that statistically
will probably never happen in your life.
And most people who defend themselves with a gun hardly practice at all.
And they successfully defend themselves.
I'm not saying don't...
Well, I am making a case for mantas here, folks.
Once again, the Mantas X10 product, a phenomenal product.
But the balance of where good enough is in the beginner through proficient spectrum is
a hard one.
And like, for example, you were talking about...
I think this is going to play out interestingly, how ubiquitous a given round is.
Well, the new 6.8 by 51.
Oh yeah, the military round.
The military round.
Now, if that sticks around, is that going to become the next big thing in bulk ammo?
But is it going to be that round at 80,000 psi?
Or will it be the commercial variant of the 277 Fury?
Right.
Now, the rumor I've heard, and it might just be that, is that the military is going to
use the 277 Fury at 55,000 psi in order to practice.
And the combat issue will be the higher pressure 6.8 by 51.
They're the same round.
It's like saying 5.56 and 2.23.
I don't want to get people into the argument about how quote unquote different they are.
Yes, they're different rounds.
But they're almost the same.
But it's that kind of a difference.
And basically, you're talking about basically it's another new round, but it is being adopted
by the United States military.
Okay.
So if that's the case, then over time, there will be civilian variants that will put in
hunting rifles and maybe semi-alloy antics and other things that will be chambered for
it.
Okay, great.
And over time, it's going to come down in price.
And as part of that, we could go back to the show we did earlier, and definitely one I'd
like to talk more about is reloading back to the frugality.
How do you reduce your costs on a round that is great round, but okay, you know, it's going
to be a little expensive to purchase new.
So again, reloading and maybe we'll broach that subject again.
I spoke to Barry's bullets and Barry's, they make these copper plated, what they call total
metal jacket bullets.
They also make some...
Well, is it plated or is it cast?
I mean, because plating is very thin compared to a jacket.
No, they have you plated them.
Basically, most of the pistol round bullets and Barry's makes are limited to about 1,300
feet per second.
Keep it under 1,300.
Okay, so that is just plated.
It is plated.
Okay.
They're not an honest to goodness jacket.
They may have...
They've got a number of offerings.
One of the ones that they had was a hybrid hollow point bullet, which is an expanding
plated bullet in.38,.357 Magnum, which I got some of those for testing.
You're going to be able to reload your own ammunition safely and in a way that's probably
going to be better for your particular firearm or accurate.
It's something I love to do.
Definitely something to do when it's raining outside and you're not going outside to the
range or you don't want to go to the range.
Or snowing, but we don't get snow.
We don't get snow.
No, we do not.
Certain things like that.
So reloading is something that can definitely increase your enjoyment while reducing the
price and...
I'm still not going to get to 8th MOA.
No, no, you may not.
So what was your couple things just before we finish up here?
So we started the show when we walked in the door, the first thing we saw, because we always
walk in the same door first.
And the first display we come across is Meprolite.
Meprolite.
They're always in the same spot.
And they have a front sight that is a tritium tube that if...
Radioactive, literally.
Well, I mean, yeah, but not dangerous.
No, no, no.
Radio luminescent.
The only way to see the sight is to be lined up on the gun because if you're not, you don't
see a circle with a dot in the center.
So it's a long tube and it does that by...
And by the way, it replaces your rear sight.
You actually remove the rear sight in that.
They actually had a rear sight variant and a front sight variant.
Yeah, I think the front sight variant...
Much better.
Well, they even said that it's actually the better one because of people with the psychology
of front sight focus in the United States.
Absolutely.
And they've seen that too, as in the United States, they actually added that.
Do other countries not do that?
To me, it still seems that if you're under stress and without a ton of training, you're
still going to do target focus because subconsciously you're going to look at the thing that's threatening
you.
Sure.
And I think that front sight focus...
I'm not saying it's invalid.
I'm not saying that it isn't something to train to, but I still think that people's
tendency when under stress, when you're not...
How many times, for example, are there shooting incidents where people say they never saw
the front sight?
Right.
They never heard the gun go off.
They don't know how many rounds they shot.
And since it replaces the...
You take off the rear sight all together so you can see the front sight, and then the
front sight is very low profile and only provides a visual confirmation when you're aligned.
The one that I liked...
And they call it the Meprolite...
The Meprolite bullseye.
Okay.
And I'd have you all look it up because I thought it was really, really cool.
They make a Meprolite bullseye rear sight and a Meprolite bullseye front sight.
I love the front sight version.
Front sight version was really, really cool.
If you remove your rear sight on the slide of your pistol, for example, and they have
a little filler strip that'll fill in if you've got like a dovetail or something, it'll fill
that in.
And then it replaces the front sight.
And when you're looking down the slide, as soon as the...
If you got it perfectly lined up the way it should be, you have a dot inside a circle
and becomes just like a bullseye.
And it's illuminated and it's bright.
And I thought, wow, this is one of the best things I've seen.
They're not very expensive.
I think they're down around...
Listed around like a hundred...
About 150.
About 150, yeah.
But at the same price point is the thing that I thought was better.
And to me, the Hi-Viz, their new generation, which I did already post a video to our social
media.
I'm actually looking at a video of it right now, uses a red front and a green tritium
rear through a lens.
So what happens...
Again, this is hard on audio.
Go look at our social media and you'll see what it looks like.
I'll even post a second video I've got of this.
When you are not lined up on the gun, you'll see the front sight, which is red.
You will not see the rear sight at all.
When you line up on your target, the rear sight obscures the front sight deliberately
and all you see is the green.
Green dot.
Now, why did I like this?
Because again, with my target focus perspective, you don't have to focus on either sight.
You simply look at your target and when the gun is lined up, not in your peripheral vision
but in your line of vision but out of focus, you'll see the red very clearly and then you'll
see it go green.
And as soon as it's green, you're lined up and on target.
Correct.
And it's an interesting sensation.
I did think that was really cool technology.
Great.
So it goes from red to green just as soon as you get lined up on it.
But not for cross-dominant people.
Uh-huh.
Well, I'm not...
You're not cross-dominant.
I'm not cross-dominant.
I have...
What we're talking about is I said this is a great sight if you close one eye.
For me, I'm right eye dominant.
But if I close my left eye, it's a great sight.
It works perfectly.
I didn't need to.
I know.
Yeah.
But I look down that exact same sight and when it lines up, I have a green dot on the
left because that's my right eye looking down there and I see that.
And then my left eye, which is now at an angle, so it's looking at the same sight from the
side, it shows up as a red dot about two inches to the right in my peripheral vision or in
my vision, about two inches to the right.
And I went, no, I can't do this because my brain does not shut off the...
The left eye.
My left eye.
And in mine it does.
Yeah.
Because when I look down it, I see two dots.
A green dot and a red dot.
Yeah.
And my left eye is open, but I don't have to squint on this one.
And to me, this was like...
This is pretty much almost one of my favorite items in the entire show.
Yeah.
I mean, would I trade it for a new staccato of 2011?
Six thousand dollars.
Yeah.
Or logo alien.
Well, no.
No.
But I'm just saying as a value proposition, I thought it was just fantastic.
No, I thought the technology was great.
And for those people whose brains automagically, and I'll say that automagically...
Yeah, you did say that.
Turn off their left eye or their non-dominant eye when they're looking down the sights,
I think it'd be great.
Or if you want to close your non-dominant eye when you're looking down the sights, I
think it's a great idea.
But for me, it just did not work for me whatsoever because my both eyes are left on all the time.
I practice shooting with both eyes open and I tell people to shoot both eyes open because
sometimes one eye sees something, the other eye doesn't.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And yeah, other than getting some of the...
Civilian shooting scenario, you want to have the maximum field of vision, which gets back
to the idea of the 180 degree weapon mounted light.
Absolutely.
And people can debate the efficacy or desirability of weapon mounted light.
They do make a handheld, as I mentioned, but that's another subject probably for another
show.
Kind of wrapping up here, is there one more or two more things that you really thought
were, you went back to the booth multiple times or you really thought, man, I need to
really examine this in more detail or, oh my God, that was such a good price point.
I saw some 380s that were in the 1911 form factor that I thought were fantastic.
But there's one item in particular that I want to talk about, what you got.
Now, I'm going to go with the two firearms that we talked about here from a frugal perspective,
the RXM, the Ruger RXM.
I think that was a standout, an absolute standout of the show for frugal, for a bet your life
pistol at less than $400.
And the other one is for the Ruger 10 or the 1022 cloned Winchester Wildcat.
Again, from a frugal perspective with ubiquitous access to magazines and a quality product,
fantastic.
Those are my two.
So what do you got?
For me, well, we did get to meet our broadcast friends over at ATN who keeps pushing the
envelope further and further.
So I think that maybe perhaps we'll have to do another episode with them.
But Brian Moreno was there as was Shoeiler.
And we were able to have a nice conversation, get a couple of pictures with them.
And the quality of people you meet at SHOT is just incomparable because I mean, the gun
community is just full of great people.
They all seem to show up there, all 66,000 of them or whatever.
But I think that maybe on the higher end of things, the Christiansen Arms bolt action
guns, the Evoque series, which have a price point of about $900, they're building it on
a Remington 700 platform.
Fit and finish is ridiculous.
They're including a Trigger Tech trigger, which by the way, that's another upcoming
guest is Trigger Tech.
Trigger Tech triggers are from an engineering perspective are completely different than
other triggers.
And from a performance perspective are amazing.
Wonderful.
But the one that I kind of want to maybe close out with is the Monstrum Archangel.
So I own a Monstrum 3 to 9 scope that I've had on my Winchester Model 70 featherweight
for a long time.
But now the Archangel is an LPVO, which means low power variable optic, 1 to 6 power that
is appropriate for a lot of different things.
But it has a better reticle.
It's illuminated now.
It has a very large fast acquisition circle.
130 MOA.
I thought that was an interesting choice because when you think of it, let's talk about typically
you'll see like a 68 MOA and I don't, you know, maybe listeners, I don't know if you
know, Ken, you know, what the derivation, what's the derivation of the 68 MOA?
It actually has to do with a man size target at a hundred yards roughly fits in that.
So what, so what's a minute of angle is 1.047 inches at a hundred yards.
So call it an inch.
So it's, it's basically 5% more than an inch.
So most people will just accept it as an inch.
So 68 MOA at a hundred yards is, is an average sized man.
70 inches.
You know, it's just under six foot.
Right.
Yeah.
Roughly about a 70 inch person.
Yeah.
And that's where that came from.
They went, um, monster mode with 130.
So what's that?
It's around double the size, which why did they do that?
Because in a FFP scope where the reticle changes magnification with the zoom of the scope,
unlike a second focal plane scope where that does not happen, they had to kind of right
size this circle.
So when you're zoomed all the way out, it was still a good fast acquisition circle.
And then as you zoom in, it actually goes out of the picture altogether.
And then you end up with a Christmas tree for your wind holds and your range hold.
Interesting.
And it's available on MOA or in, um, or MRAD depending on, and just a quick tutorial.
People don't know this.
So minute of angle is what if you take a 360 degree circle, the standard is that you would
then divide that up into minutes and a minute is a sixtieth of a degree.
So that's what the translation that you would use.
People typically talk about a hundred yards, but it's a valid at any range.
Is it simply that distance times that horizontal offset?
Right.
So it subtends to a sixtieth of one degree.
When you think about latitude and longitude, longitude and longitude is degree often expressed.
It can be done as a decimal or it can be done as degrees, minutes and seconds.
And what seconds?
Sixth is the sixtieth of a minute.
In MRAD or, or, or mil scale, uh, people talk about it being a metric, um, measurement.
It's not, that's not really the right way to look at it.
It's simply looking at it, let's say you were talking about a hundred yards just to stay
in a common reference frame.
It actually has to do with when the arc of a circle or the part of an arc of a circle,
that length meets the hypotenuse distance or the radius, I'm sorry, uh, to that point.
But in practical terms, let's say that you're at a range, which is a hundred yards by a
hundred yards just to use a square field.
So if you stand in the middle of one of those sides, you're a hundred yards away from the
center of the opposite side.
Your field of view, this is to say hypothetically is a hundred yards wide.
So what does one mil translate to at a hundred yards?
It's 3.6 inches.
Well, why is that?
In a hundred yards, there's 3,600 inches.
Millet refers to a thousandth, so one thousandth of 3,600 is 3.6 inches.
So then you can take that and translate that at any range.
So the way to look at it in terms of mils is it is simply a thousandth of whatever distance
you are to the target.
So if you're 200 yards, then one mil laterally would be 7.2 inches and so on and so on.
So whichever you prefer.
We're geeking them out really good here.
Exactly.
But you can do that, but you can use either scale because they sell it both ways.
And what's the MSRP price point on this thing?
And by the way, optically flat, no distortion at the edges, which in cheap optics, I didn't
say frugal, I said cheap optics is often the case.
And by the way, expensive optics, and I'm not going to say what company, but some expensive
optics also have distortion at the edges as well.
And they shouldn't because they charge a lot for this glass.
But Monstrum with, by the way, a lifetime warranty, just to prove the fact they're serious
about this, 230 bucks for a first focal plane scope.
I've never seen a first focal plane scope that has quality glass come anywhere close
to that.
The Sony and the Hi-Viz site were probably the stars.
Were the standout items.
All right.
So anyway, good show, good review.
I apologize for making people jealous about not being able to go to SHOT Show, but that's
our job.
We do that for you.
Yeah.
If you can get to, well, Great American, I'm sorry, a Great American Outdoor Show just
ends today.
Actually, today is the last day of that.
Didn't get to go.
There's the Dallas, or is it Atlanta this year, NRA show?
I don't know.
I don't remember if it's Dallas or Atlanta.
I went to Dallas.
It was in Dallas last summer.
And there's a lot of other shows that are out there.
There is one that was, gosh, I can't remember what it's even called.
I have to look into this.
There's TriggerCon.
There's CanCon, which is an interesting one.
CanCon's in Arizona.
That's for suppressors.
Suppressors.
There's lots of different shows.
If you can get to any of those shows, guys, go do it because you'll get to see stuff
and maybe test drive the things you're thinking about behind you.
Unless it's fun to see stuff you know you're never going to get to own.
But yeah, it's fun to see.
Well, sometimes that's just frustrating.
Yeah, it is frustrating sometimes.
But it's fun to see.
It's fun to see the technology and it's fun to see what other people are able to enjoy.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
So coming up, the stack of cards, you can't see them, but I'm looking at them.
It's inches thick of contacts that we made.
And I've already reached out to a number of companies for some very good episodes coming
up.
Do not forget.
Listen to the past shows if you haven't heard them.
Lots of great content there.
Today, by the way, Ken is with me in studio in the Frugal Firearms podcast, Northern Command.
That's why it might sound a little different than normal because it's not over Zoom as
we typically do.
But if you want to be on the show, get ahold of us.
If you've got a product or a service you'd like to talk about.
Frugalfirearms.com is the website.
And Frugal Firearms, did I say FrugalFirearms.com?
You did.
Oh man, I got my own site wrong.
Damn.
FrugalFirearmsPodcast.com or you can reach out to us at FrugalFirearmsPodcast.gmail.com.
Very good.
All right.
That's all for this evening.
Good night, folks.
Thank you.
Good night.