TREX TALK: How Weapon Technology Affects Culture

all right welcome to another t-rex live uh t-rex talk now this one is weird because it's just me it's gonna be odd doing a t-rex talk with just me uh sitting by myself uh talking to myself uh i know lucas has done some by himself and so this is my first try inside this beautiful set that the uh the video guys have made we're actually hoping to do an interview which i think we're still going to be able to do and i'm looking forward to that one uh i think that you're going to like that one but for today we're going to be talking about weapons technology in light of some stuff that people are saying about gun confiscations and future gun laws and the way that gun control groups and and pro-gun groups generally talk about firearms in general i think it is worth going back and talking about a little bit of weapons technology and how weapons technology affects culture but also how different cultures adopt different types of technology so that is how this stream is going to go one of the things that that is really fascinating to me is the way that technology is really affected by culture speaking of technology let us stand by camera two take camera two beautiful excellent switching i feel bad that the video guys set up this awesome set and we're not even doing any cool gun stuff in it but part of that is because if you recall a couple weeks ago lucas was holding guns on screen which is verboten uh inside of the youtube live streaming rules uh handling weapons is for boat so we're not even going to hold any weapons we're not going to show any weapons we're just going to talk about firearms firearms are one of the most important pieces of technological development whether you're looking at the way that manufacturing was developed firearms are key to that if you're looking at the way that certain ideological regimes were put into effect firearms instrumental in that if you're looking at the way that certain cultures responded to new ideas and new technologies coming onto the scene again firearms are an excellent example or a litmus test of that so one of the things that i think i want to do is go back to the discovery of gunpowder and the discovery of gunpowder happened in china and it happened way before people in europe ever heard about gunpowder and the chinese people were making gunpowder and they were primarily making fireworks with the gunpowder although there is evidence that there were gun emplacements from very very very excuse me very very early on like 1300s or earlier there there seem to be fortresses with gun emplacements on them but by the time that european um by the time that we find european explorers in china looking at fireworks looking at various other things that gunpowder's being used for there are some cool rockets but there aren't any cannons but as soon as gunpowder gets back to europe people start building cannons the first thing that they build are cannons and the first thing the cannons are used for is siege warfare against castles and this is kind of the end of the medieval period where you have giant castles and you do siege warfare and you trebuchet rocks into them and you dig under them and you try to get into the castle so your knights can fight the other nights and wipe out all the peasants the cannons change all of that and cannons also change hand-to-hand warfare because people start to build hand cannons they're very small cannons that you hold in one hand and then you touch with a torch with the other hand so what i'm doing is okay for those of you watching on youtube because i'm miming an invisible thing that that you can't see so it's perfectly acceptable so these hand cannons were superior to a number of pre-existing weaponry they were more devastating than crossbows and they could be fired with considerably less strength and considerably less training than longbows but they were still pretty horrible weapons you couldn't really use them in the rain because the rain would put out your torch and get your gunpowder wet it was very difficult to actually aim and manage recoil because you had to do that with one hand because your other hand had do the fuse and the torch thing so the um the hand cannon was very effective in many ways but it was also a pretty terrible weapon and so it didn't take long before somebody came up with the idea of the match lock where a little lever held the match and when you pulled the trigger it actually tilted it and swung the match into the touch hole setting off the thing and this was way better because now you could hold it with both hands you could aim better you could manage recoil better and you could just use one finger to set it off and this was something that happened in the early 1500s i forgot to mention dates 1400s you see gunpowder you see cannons you see hand cannons and then match locks you see the 1500 so now you have something that is much safer to use and it's much more accurate because you can actually use both hands and maybe a cheek weld not actually sure if they did cheek welds the same way that we do with the match locks a lot of the weapons of that time you would fire it but then you'd kind of have to turn your head away because you were dealing with a lot of spark and explosion right at the breach of the weapon even though they were muzzleloaded there was a lot of pyrotechnical stuff happening close to your face so you'd line up your shot you get a cheek weld then you'd kind of turn your head away so that you wouldn't get your eyes burned out so the match lock is not a super safe weapon but it's better than the hand cannon and as soon as the match lock came onto the scene people stopped making hand cannons and this is one of the themes that i want to talk about for this particular talk as weapons technology progresses the obsolete technology people stop using it because it no longer gives you the same advantages and no longer has any type of fire superiority now the only time that you see obsolete technology hanging around is when militaries have bought a whole bunch of the old stuff and they just keep it for a while and an example of that is match locks there were a bunch there were a bunch of match locks that were purchased by some large european militaries in the late 1500s maybe early 1600s some of these large professional militaries in europe had bought large stockpiles of match locks for the purpose of national warfare and unfortunately for these governments the flintlock was invented in the 1600s and the flintlock was a far superior weapon because instead of a burning match that you had to light ahead of time and hold and wait for you to get your target set up it just was a piece of flint you could it back it could stay cocked back and it could stay ready to shoot even in rain or misty weather you could store it ready to fire for long periods of time it was so much better than the match lock that everybody stopped carrying match locks everybody stopped using match locks except for those large militaries that had just put in the huge stockpile there's an idea that is talked about today by modern politicians this idea that there is weapons technology that is designed for the military and it is too powerful for civilians to own and that there's a difference between civilian firearms and military firearms and this is kind of a crazy idea because throughout history we've always seen civilians developing military technology and it's being adopted by militaries or they're they're developing firearm technology that is adopted by the militaries because it's just better technology if it's better for hunting if it's better for shooting in the rain if it's better for accuracy if it's better for safety that's going to be better for civilians but it's also going to be better for the military and what we generally see throughout history is weapons technology advances first in the civilian sector and then the military catches up usually because they bought a bunch of stuff and have it sitting in armories so every civilian in the civilized world and the uncivilized world switched over to flintlock sometime in the 1600s because the superiority of the weapon was just undeniable and one of the things that's fascinating to me about the flintlock is it actually is the standard it is the premier weapons technology for almost 200 years which is a record for firearms technology there are certain types of sword manufacturer that were that were they that had market superiority for for centuries but it's very interesting to me that if you look at other types of weapon technology they're around for decades but the flintlock is the best that you can get for centuries and every gun is a flintlock every rifle has a flintlock every pistol has a flintlock every shotgun has a flintlock most cannons had flint locks this is just the way that guns work for almost two centuries and nobody does anything prior to that except for those few giant militaries that gradually got rid of their match locks and replaced them with flintlocks we see civilians owning the exact same weapon as the military using the exact same technology as the military when it comes to small arms and the exact same technology is attached to cannons so we have fled locks for a couple hundred years and generally speaking the civilian versions of flintlocks are better made and more accurate than the military versions because they're being purchased by the free market and they're being purchased by people who care about their weapons and so this idea that the military has superior technology is not something that we see for these centuries uh the other thing that's interesting about the flintlocks is something that happens in the late or rather early 1800s when eli whitney begins to develop interchangeable parts and when he is developing interchangeable parts he completely changes the world of manufacturing the world of machining tolerances measurement it has a groundbreaking earth-shattering effect on the way that things are engineered and things are made and he does that while working on guns and he does that while working on i believe flintlocks that are not substantially different than the flintlocks from 200 years prior and flintlocks are of course the main weapon that is used by the american or rather the british colonists that live here in north america during the war for american independence we have the british military large standing power for military bringing over their flintlock rifles and muskets fighting against american farmers armed with flintlock rifles and muskets they have exactly the same technology as civilians and military guys the only real difference is that again a lot of those civilians have the superior technology just because they have better craftsmanship and they're willing to put more money into their personal firearm than whoever was in charge of acquisitions for this particular regiment of the british regulars uh at that time uh most the military flintlocks were smoothbore someone points out yes um and smoothbores were less accurate but they were quicker to load so they had a military advantage in when you do the giant regimental uh firing lines and your whole purpose is rate of fire as opposed to aim fire smoothbores has an advantage if you're a civilian and you're hunting and accuracy is your advantage then you go with rifled barrels and that changed some of the fighting styles of the different forces the militias and um colonial armies versus the british regulars and this is this is something that comes back to some of the original the original idea that i was talking about which is the way that cultures uh are affected by technology and the way the technology is affected by by different cultures if you go back to the way that weapons technology developed prior to gunpowder in europe you'll see a very interesting thing you'll see certain nations and certain cultures valuing freedom so england is a good example of this the way that england expanded its military power prior to gunpowder was through archery they were giving people um they were expecting their people their citizenry to be skilled at arms and to be particularly focused on skill at longbows because this is something that they understood and valued had military great military power and they were able to use it because they had an armed citizenry that they could trust to be armed and they could trust to practice and they had legislation that actually required that the people uh not only be in possession of those arms but also practice with them so that if the need would ever arise to go to war to defend against invaders the people of england would actually be the ones the people of england would actually be the ones uh who are equipped to defend the nation not a standing army it's nice to see that things are getting back to normal around here so this is something that is throughout british culture and there are other nations that do things a little bit differently they have uh standing armies or they have professional armies or they hire professional mercenaries to do their fighting for them and they do not trust their citizenry to be armed they do not expect the peasants to have any weapons and they actually want to stop the peasants for having weapons and the differences between the different cultures that have these different ideas of how they do national defense becomes amplified when gun gun powder comes along because gunpowder changes things so that um well let me go back to longboats for a minute so the longbow is an immensely powerful weapon and it proves itself in a very important battle the battle of agincourt where a bunch of british farmers with long bows managed to kill a ton of highly trained french nobility in armor who are on horses they get them stuck in the mud and they just mow them down with arrows arrow after arrow they just slaughter so much of the french nobility that day while they're standing in the mud with their longbows it really cements this idea that a free english people um who are trained in the use of their own privately owned longbows are able to stand up to professional militaries and so this idea of the british archer becomes a really important part of british culture and so they managed to hang on to this for a long time even though the longbow was really really hard to to get good at we're talking about an immensely strong piece of you that just takes a huge amount of muscle power to pull so the saying was if you wanted to train a british archer or a longbowman you had to start with his grandfather because the amount of physical training and practice necessary to build up to where you're even capable of using the weapon let alone holding it at full draw and waiting until you actually have the shot that's just a huge amount of time not so with firearms with firearms you just need to be able to reload it you just need to be able to hold it you just need to be able to carry enough gunpowder and shot that you can keep fighting for the duration of the battle it's easy it takes practice but it doesn't take years and years and years of conditioning and so when gunpowder comes onto the scene people start building firearms the two different cultures in europe the two different feudal styles the style that relies upon large powerful statist control that basically squeezes enough money and and resources out of the peasants so that they can afford a standing army well they're worried about the peasants having firearms but they want those firearms for their standing army and so they build stronger and more powerful armies and more totalitarian systems by having firearms on the other side of the english channel inside of britain you have the feudal system that relies upon the the peasants being a free people with privately owned weapons they now embrace the idea of them having privately owned firearms because there's less training that is involved to make them a very capable fighting force and so you see the the nations that are free with the um with the adoption of firearms get more free and the state the nations that are less free with the adoption of firearms get less free these are these are really important concepts that come across and these were things that were understood by by the americans the colonists that lived in america had this british tradition of the citizenry being armed the citizenry having a responsibility for national defense the citizenry being allowed to have certain freedoms these are all things that really motivated the people to declare independence from england and parliament and the crown and then to fight back with those private weapons against the crown so that's that's flintlocks flintlocks are a very important part of firearm development history and it's always uh again it's always civilians that have access to them as well as the military there is no special magic super powerful flintlock rifle that only the military is allowed to have in most of human history there's a few exceptions in those really totalitarian countries but that's just weapons this is weapons in general that are banned then in the 1800s we have eli whitney developing his interchangeable parts so weapons become cheaper to manufacture they become much easier to mass produce and so they become even more prevalent and then people begin to tinker with things like cased cartridges they start to experiment with with the improvements in manufacturing technology and and milling and accuracy they start to make uh breach loading devices they start to make percussion cap stuff and this is going throughout the early 1800s but again all of these advancements are things that are developed by civilians sometimes they get sold to the military but they're always available to civilians and then we have the um the war between the states and we see a new type of combat right as repeating rifles sort of come into the equation and again a lot of the repeating rifles that are used by soldiers on both sides of the civil war or the uncivil war um most of those repeating rifles were privately owned the people in the military both militaries wanted repeating rifles badly enough that they spent their own money to get them because what the military owned and the military was issuing were breach loading single shot rifles or worse and so once again we see that privately owned weapons privately developed weapon technology is where the cutting edge is and it's where people want to be as civilians and the military follows the military doesn't lead the weapons development the military follows what civilians are inventing and what civilians are buying and what civilians are using and even in that case you have guys that are not civilians they're in the military they're being issued this kind of rifle but as soon as it's obsolete they're spending their own money to get a superior rifle i'm not doing a great job of keeping up with questions uh someone here wants a 50 cal flintlock rifle with suppressor yeah that's totally a thing that you can do i think silencerco actually made one of those for a while it was an interesting uh it's an interesting thing it got every town and mom's demand action really up in arms like these new silenced flintlocks uh it was kind of hilarious caplock was only around for a few decades yes with all of the development that eli whitney brought along all the new machining and milling machines that people were able to build now we start to see weapons technology develop very quickly you're not going to see anything that is the best way to do guns for 200 years again you have various ways like needle fire and percussion cap fire and stuff like that that's just years or maybe decades before it's replaced by repeating rifles and different ways of doing repeating rifles tubular magazines and uh lever action stuff is something that is extremely common here in the states but in europe uh most of the development goes into bolt action rifles and there's a bunch of people who are sort of messing around with bolt action rifles but then there's um there's a bolt action um that is so clearly the winner so clearly superior so clearly the way to go for firearm development that all rifles from there on out are basically mauser action bolt rifles um this is 1890s there's several different versions of it and the the 98 version of that mauser bolt action is basically ubiquitous there are so many different countries that adopt that action either buying it directly from mauser or buying copies of it that are licensed or buying counterfeits of it that are not or possibly capturing rifles from other nations and updating them to work on the ammunition that they have it's really interesting to see how incredibly widely that was and once that happened once people switched over to this bolt action rifle because of its accuracy the reliability the safety it beat all the other platforms in almost every single way and nobody went back nobody wanted to go back to flint locks or match locks or percussion cap nobody wanted to go back to those earlier things because this rifle offered a clear superiority and not just in the military application of whatever battlefield stuff is no on every level did you want a rifle that was safer it was cheaper to make that works with better cartridges that was more accurate this was the rifle it was lighter it had less recoil everything about it was better in every possible way and so it was universally adopted and there were millions and millions and millions of them made and even though the mauser bolt action doesn't turn out to be something that is the top dog action for multiple centuries it is the gun there are millions and millions of them made they're used by every military they're used in every war up until world war ii now in world war ii you end up with a whole bunch of different things you end up with a bunch of different sides and they're pioneering different stuff we've got all kinds of submachine guns and belt fed machine guns light machine guns and heavy machine guns there are a bunch of different experimental things in different platforms but we're really honing in on a couple of things things like box magazines there's a couple of different cartridge experiments that really hone in on maximum cartridge performance people really have a better understanding of ballistics and a better understanding of smokeless powders and a bunch of stuff really gets formalized and we arrive at kind of the best ways of doing certain things pistol grips on rifles and carbines become incredibly prevalent and that brings us to 1947. so 1947 is when the ak-47 is finalized and built obviously it builds on top of a whole bunch of stuff that was happening during world war ii it builds on top of a whole bunch of stuff that the germans were doing it builds on everything that has come before it and basically it has several things that all rifles are going to have going forward it has a pistol grip it has removable box magazines it has much simpler operation it's it's very easy to mass produce and it's very easy to train people how to use and it's very manageable and easy to to you theoretically it's easy to clean but mostly it's easy to use when it's not cleaned that's kind of the that's kind of the secret of the kalashnikov um and this is uh this is the most successful mass production um it's definitely the most successful mass production firearm ever it might actually be the most successful mass production thing ever um there's theoretically over 100 million of them that that were made in the 20th century so that is that's kind of a fascinating thing but again now we're in a weird area in in a free world the ak-47 would have been the people's rifle and it's described as being the people's rifle but because of certain ideas that exist in the 20th century we have one of these totalitarian states building the ak-47 theoretically it is the people's rifle it's being made in vast quantities it's being made for the common man but in the soviet union the common man cannot own it um there's hundreds of millions of them out there and they spread all around the world but the the nation that is developing them has an ideology has a culture that wants to prevent private weapon ownership so now is one of the first times that we're actually seeing military development of technology actually come before civilian development of technology or civilian adoption of technology but it's not because the free market has decided that it'd be so it's because that market was decidedly not free um the lord of war speech is perfect for the ak-47 yes yeah the lord of war speech can't remember exactly how it goes the number of people who have bought ak-47s the only question is how to arm the other 11 uh yeah so so the ak-47 is is a really fascinating thing and it's a platform that i like but just a few years later in 1960 along comes a new platform the ar-15 and i'm sure that you all know a lot of the history of this and i'm not a great weapons historian you should really be watching more forgotten weapons uh to know more about this but we have the american answer to the ak-47 and it's not exactly the exact answer to the ak-47 but all the ideas that led to and shaped the soviets from building ak into building the ak-47 those same ideas are what pushed and built and shaped america into building and leaning towards the ar-15 the same kind of ideas pistol grips on rifles and carbines are good they're very helpful they're the sort of thing that you want for control of the rifle removable box magazines are the way that you want to feed a rifle accuracy is something that we really want the rifle to be capable of because the ammunition is capable of it now there's a whole bunch of things that we've learned over the centuries that you see in both of these rifles and going backwards going back to previous design features or previous technological features is not something that either militaries or civilians need to be particularly interested in because they are obsolete now obviously there are some exceptions so for example if you want to go duck hunting you want a shotgun the development of the ar-15 doesn't change the fact that you want a shotgun to go duck hunting civilians still want to buy shotguns for duck hunting although there is the saiga 12 so so there's that and here's a very interesting thing about the ar-15 it's the perfect blend of accuracy and usability you can see the culture of the totalitarian state emphasizing certain features over others in the ak-47 and you can see the culture of the united states emphasizing certain features and strengths over others in the manufacture and production and just the design of the ar-15 but they are very very different rifles because of how they're going to be made and remember because america is a free country the ar-15 is being developed by private citizens and it's being developed for private sale but it is also available for the government to buy and that is the way that stoner and sullivan actually managed to get the rifle produced is they designed it they worked on it and they managed to sell it to the air force and then later to the larger government in time for the vietnam war and there are several things that are very interesting about the ak-47 and air 15 rifle comparison they get they get very um very much compared with each other in uh vietnam context when you have really early ar-15s that are more expensive to make than ak-47s and the magazines aren't quite worked out and they're designed for a more professional soldier but we're experimenting with the draft and so not all the soldiers that are fielded with m16s actually have the character of the discipline or the training or even the cleaning kits to actually maintain the rifle the way that it needs to be our military is in some ways in many ways superior to the opposing force but it still buys the wrong magazines and the wrong ammunition several times it leads to some significant issues with the weapon platform that aren't entirely the weapon platform's fault but at the end of the day we have a weapon that is built around precision and is expensive to produce being made by the americans and we have a weapon that is much more fault tolerant and is really cheap for gigantic factories manned by essentially slave labor to make over on the other side the rifles represent cultural elements of the two nations that they come from and they represent the priorities and ideologies of both so it's very interesting but let's flash forward to today a lot of the issues that the ar-15 platform had have really been solved we've got better magazines now we've got better ammo now we've got better training now and one thing that is really fascinating is once we actually let the free market equalize things it turns out the ak-47 is actually pretty expensive to build because you need a giant metal stamping factory and there aren't too many of those and there have been further advancements in metal milling technology so that an ar-15 milled out of aluminum which was a pretty space-age thing back in the 60s is now a thing that basically any machine shop in america can make so even though it started out as a more precision more difficult rifle to build it is now a far better emblem of the people's rifle because the people can build it in their garages with a lot of the technology that we have today so i'm i'm really appreciative of so many aspects of the ar-15 would it have been my favorite rifle in the 1960s i really doubt it is it my favorite rifle now it is it has been perfected and matured over the years but so of a lot of the technology that's come alongside it the ammunition is better the way that we make them is better the tools that are available to make them are better the modularity that existed in the 60s but there wasn't really a whole lot of advantage in that modularity well now there's unlimited things that you can buy for your ar-15 and can do with your ar-15 so it is a far more flexible rifle platform than even the ak-47 which was well i mean it was just awesome back in the day and it's still very cool but the ar-15 is the clear winner and it's currently being made by a lot of the countries that used to make a case and it's currently being adopted militarily by a lot of the countries that used to field aks and aks only although a lot of that is a cultural thing it's not entirely a manufacturing thing and a bunch of guys here are throwing out other alternative rifles that they'd like me to talk about g36s the mcx is quite nice there have been a lot of experimental next generation rifle platforms that have been tested and developed and some of these things are extremely cool i actually actually really wish that i had bought an mcx back when i had the chance but one of the things that that i really want to get back to is this idea that so many people that talk about gun control mention they have this idea that the ar-15 or the ak-47 are military rifles they were designed and built for the military technically that's true of the ak-47 but only because it was designed and built in a country that didn't allow private ownership of weapons and in the 90s any time there was fear-mongering in the media it was the the ak-47 that was being talked about now that's changed and they they talk primarily about the ar-15 but the ar-15 is not a military weapon it was not designed by the military it was not even designed for the military and the reasons that the military wanted to adopt it are exactly the same reasons that i personally want one and not just for me i want people who have a rifle for home defense to have something with the features of the air 15. i'm not even going to say it has to be in air 15. it could be a celtic uh similar thing it could be an mcx it could be a bunch of things but the features that so many people on the left are afraid of are features that i want everybody to have in a home defense situation a pistol grip is so much better than our old-fashioned rifle stock for controllability and for ergonomics and for accuracy a removable box magazine is so much better for feeding the rifle you can have larger magazine capacities and reloading is easier it's just better all the way around and i think that part of the reason that pro-gun people and anti-gun people disagree on things is because we're actually talking past each other when the left often stands up and complains about the ar-15 and says why on earth do you want one why can't you just have a nice old-fashioned wooden bolt action gun like grandpappa used to why can't you just be content with that they think a lot of times i believe they're asking you why do you have to have a red car why can't you just have a green car what they don't realize is what they're actually asking is why do you want a car why can't you just be content with a horse-drawn wagon because the technical superiorities of one weapon platform over the other are pretty vast and regardless of the way the weapon is going to be used it is superior to the older generation of weapons i mean the car and wagon comparison is maybe a little bit extreme but there's a reason that i like a car with an electric starter and electric fuel injection and an automatic transmission and power windows that work at least 50 of the time and air condition that works 10 of the time uh i could easily drive an ancient clunker car that doesn't have any of those things but i prefer the modern one and so when we talk about gun control i think it's worth going back over some of these basics when you're having a discussion with people that don't understand why it is that we want some of the features that are on modern military style rifles it's because those features that are helpful in a military combat situation are exactly the same features that are helpful in a home defense situation and it's not just for me it's for almost anybody so my wife who has very little experience um in combat if she has to defend her home i want her to do it with the air 15 because the lack of recoil and the ease of use and the good ergonomics and the safety and the power of the cartridge are exactly what she needs in that situation just like in combat hey do you want to come join the conversation oh we're just having a very laid-back thing oh yeah someone here is saying we need to ban fully auto automatic transmissions yeah we're at the point now where there are some leftists who genuinely do want me to get rid of my car and go back to a horse-drawn carriage because of emissions and stuff um oh howdy oh hi where's the best place for you to sit i will sit right here do you want to have a presidential debate uh a presidential debate debate tonight i just got out of two of those for the past two hours marvelous so i'm talking about weapons technology and the way that the way that people talk about um the way that people talk about weapons of war now there's another aspect to this which i really appreciate and that is the second amendment the second amendment defends weapons of war very specifically so the government was going to say hey look that shotgun for hunting ducks is just a toy you don't need to hunt ducks anymore you don't need a shotgun anymore just stick to belt fed weapons and useful warfare implements we're going to crack down on shotguns i wouldn't be fine with that but i would be a lot more fine with that than when they say you're not allowed to have combat weapons so you can only have shotguns because second amendment is only for sports that would be amazing if my government ever said that i just don't ever see that ever happening well now it is a thing that did happen in england england used to say no soccer on sundays because it gets in the way a valuable archery practice that is necessary for the defense of the nation no archery practice no fun on sundays it's for getting ready to fight when britain was more like america yeah 1500s and one of one of the things that that i keep coming back to is a lot of people who talk about the war for american independence it's like well it was a bunch of rabble rouser they decided to split off from england in many ways no what happened in 1776 was a whole bunch of british colonies who said hey we want to stick to what we were doing we want to stick to the system that worked which is freedoms and responsibilities for people this new parliament this new king want to go in a different direction you go in that direction by yourself we're sticking the course yeah they're actually more traditionally faithful yeah and it's i keep hearing the whole thing come up where people are like we just want to be left alone and it's the people who want to be left alone who end up being the most fierce and we have seen that time and time again and that's more or less what happened with our war for independence where the founding fathers and the you know the citizens of the 13 colonies were like no we want to be left alone to do you know run our businesses and have our trade and farm and go about our lives and that's when you know king george and everything started kicking off and getting a little a little wild and um but that's almost always how it is and i think that's what's going on right now i mean i know for me i want to be left alone you know and i think the majority of people in here on this live are thinking the same thing we want to be left alone we don't want the government prying into our lives taking all of our money uh demanding things of us we just want to go about you know running our businesses having families being normal people and um that's really what it's a what it's about having the tools to properly defend yeah so one of the other things i was talking about before you came in is the folks that say don't have weapons of war have sporting arms right go back to bolt actions and wooden furniture because it's less scary and the idea is silly because actually here's another point that mauser bolt action rifle that is the most military rifle ever made there is no military rifle that is more military than the k-98 it is used by more militaries in more wars than any other weapons platform by a huge margin so i can hardly think of any weapon that is more military and the funny thing is i honestly didn't even know what you were doing live on until about five minutes ago when i walked past cs and saw it on the screen um i know funny right but uh it's kind of funny to think that because you're talking about technology right the saw over there for example could become a hunting weapon in say a hundred years let's say because we have more sophisticated weapons and an old weapon like that 249 belt fed could be used for maybe safaris or hunting unique experiences and then it's a hunting weapon even though right now it's very militaristic but in 100 years that thing could be actually quite redundant and that could turn into a hunting weapon so i don't know it's interesting to think about it's i think too many people also focus are kind of narcissistic they're like our time that i live in is the only time that matters the best time that matters and it's like well no things are going to change in 50 years 100 years things were better and or worse previously in history um politics were worse or better in history than they are now i think it's actually hilarious how many people now i'm rambling but i think it's hilarious how many people think that like the end times is right now and i'm like well you obviously haven't studied history because yeah things are not great right now but they were way worse exponentially worse back in the year 1000 uh world war ii um like we have it pretty easy right now i mean we're sitting in this room you know we're not being bombed right now we're talking about guns we're talking to you and we're not kicking it now you guys who are probably like sitting at home not getting bombed not getting persecuted and it's like yeah times are not great right now but let's not kid ourselves we've got pretty easy you know you can get on the internet you can watch a movie you can learn anything you can watch an open heart surgery um you can do pretty much whatever you want and more or less not you can buy cnc machines to cut your own air 15 lower for a few thousand dollars learn the software for free 3d print things it's pretty it's pretty sweet um but yeah it's it's it's one of those things where this conversation about this is a weapon of war and this is a sporting arm is just not only historically ignorant but also technically ignorant if it's okay for me to defend myself it's okay for my wife to defend herself and our kids and our house man an ar-15 is just totally the way to go like yes somebody pointed out an m1 with a bayonet mounted is a scary weapon but i don't know that my wife can fully control or reload an m1 as fast as an air 15 or like our mom she's not practicing her reloads so a 30 round box magazine is exactly what i want her to have for home defense but she probably can't use a saw effectively either with a 100 round belt and i personally i mean i don't want to say it publicly but i i i have had a little trouble as i've gotten older with those belt fed grenade launchers like i can't just sling them around like i used to it's true the minigun is really hard to get on and you know and terminator it yeah it's unfortunate but all of those things the the pistol grips that make it easier to operate the weapon safer to manipulate the weapon the lack of recoil the greater accuracy the extra safety all of these things are things that anyone with a weapon should have and should want the ability to make a weapon like that cheaply is another thing that's really helpful going back and forcing people to buy ridiculously expensive reproductions for some cockamamie political motivation uh is is bad news so when we talk about these things i don't want us to shy away from the idea that weapons that firearms are weapons and one of the things that i have appreciated and i think we talked about this at shaw show this the idea that people are actually getting on board with this idea they're no longer talking about supporting arms they're no longer talking about hobbies as much they're actually talking about defense personal defense home and defense national defense they're actually calling firearms weapons i think it's i think it's a good test it's getting a lot better and obviously we're seeing right now with the huge influx and armor sales um like back when uh sandy hook happened and we had other stuff going on as well we didn't see people buying body armor um not in the droves we're seeing right now we saw people buying guns and we saw people buying ammo uh but we didn't see body armor sales and that's what we're seeing with what's going on right now it's probably the biggest difference with what's going on right now plus obviously the influx of three million gun owners if not more um it's in i'm thinking i'm trying to think what the next thing's going to be you know let's say we get past this the election's over uh ammo comes back in a year things are kind of back to normal because that's what happened after sandy hook right some people would say never never back to normal but let's just say for the sake of argument back to normal and then we have another crisis so another election another pandemic or another something another thing that is definitely tax yeah something right what's the next item that people are going to be adding to their arsenal that is going to just get run on um i don't know if it's going to be night vision i don't know if it's going to be some new technology uh but right now it's armor you know this time it's armor and next time what is it gonna be and that's i'm thinking a lot about that obviously as far as what we need to be prepared for as a company to provide people you know in four years when that happens but yeah i think it is interesting how much culture is changing and i just spent uh this weekend with uh crims who's a pro league cod player he's my age he's got like 36 wins something like that world record professional call of duty player and he's got a plate carrier now set him up with some hescos uh he's got night vision helped him out with that as well and he's getting comments from other gamers like you know why do you have that stuff and his response is well don't want to be prepared his response could be ah it's cool bro like don't you want to look like a call of duty person but he's literally saying well don't you want to be prepared and he's kind of putting them on the spot and a couple of them said no i'm not prepared so when we start having video gamers who are in you know the mainstream entertainment world start saying hey this stuff is actually like potentially you know really important and we should start having it um that's a win in my opinion yeah and it was great hanging out with him he stayed at my house and we talked about a lot of different things talked about the gaming arena and we talked about you know how many pro gun secretly pro gun people are how many anti-gun people there are and he was texting uh some anti-guns uh gamers pictures of like our saw and stuff it was a lot of fun but um i think things are getting better in that regard as far as uh you know on the cultural side and i think in some ways kovid and uh the election and of course the the memos police departments have been putting out saying hey we're not going to respond yeah you guys are on your own that stuff is going to make it a lot harder for any sort of gun ban in the future now what they'll do is go after like ammo or certain fringe items like bump stocks but a straight up assault weapons ban pistol van is a lot harder after 2020 so on the flip side 2020 has sucked yes i know but on the flip side on the silver lining 2020 i think has actually been a very good year as far as solidifying some firearms freedoms some expectations some cultural change so yeah i don't know i think i think 2020 has been really good for that i think i think it has i think a lot of the a lot of the false securities and narratives are kind of falling apart and i think that the point that you made about armor is really important because we've seen runs on guns before and a lot of people run out buy a gun put it in the closet and be like i'm safe i'm covered now like it's a magical amulet that will protect their home but if you're buying body armor you probably don't think that you you're probably thinking through more stuff than just if i have a gun i'm covered you're probably thinking much more practically about stuff and that is very interesting um are you are you any questions uh i i was kind of trying to do i don't want to sabotage what you're talking about well i do have one interesting thought so i was talking to our engineer yesterday and we were talking about eli whitney because eli whitney invented the idea of interchangeable parts and manufacturing which completely revolutionized the way that mass manufacturing is done because it's never been done before so that's pretty easy to revolutionize but it also revolutionized the way that machines are built and machines are made and just the expectation that just the whole world of engineering and manufacturing utterly and completely changed by eli whitney while he was working on guns and uh we were just sort of talking about how many amazing technological world changing inventions happen around the building of devices for killing people and the left looks at that and they're like oh my goodness how shocking how terrible the people back then were so focused on killing people that all their technological development revolved around killing people but there's another way to look at it and this is i think a better way to look at it yes a lot of those technological developments revolved around tools that are 100 built for killing people because if you're in a situation where it is life and death and the decision to kill somebody has to be made whether it's in a warfare context or whether you're being attacked you have to defend yourself that is a that is a very important piece of kit once things are life and death that tool is the most important thing that you could have and so spending a lot of time and effort in improving tools that will preserve life in preserving preserving culture preserving your nation protecting yourself from invasion that is incredibly important and i don't i think that it's actually to the credit of that culture of those cultures that have spent a huge amount of energy on weapons technology uh when it's when it's civilians now when governments do it when the soviet union was building ak-47s they weren't necessarily about the preservation of life in general but when you have someone like eli whitney trying to make guns better trying to make guns cheaper it's not because his culture loved death it's because his culture loved life and loved freedom they understood that when life and death issues come up but not just dangerous stuff but when life and death issues come up where lethal force needs to be applied the tool is gonna make a big difference and it's really worth putting a lot of time and energy and money into having the tool that can save life in that moment yeah people are saying um in here they're saying food is more important than weapons and the discussion you know food or weapons right because that's you need food to live obviously anyone here plays uh all the the you know the new rage in video games are the ones that are trying to be like real life and i'm like well you could just live life and scratch for food instead whatever i already scrounge for food you know there's no granola i play minecraft in the armory with guns like it's minecraft right um so you need food to live obviously um but if all you have is food then you can't really protect yourself because food is not always a very good weapon so but if you only have guns well that's not necessarily a good way of surviving either so you do have to have both um the nice thing with weapons though is if there are animals you can use weapons to create food and they didn't have food yes from animals um did you know animals often have a lot of meat with them and if you have a gun you can just kind of go check it that's convenient most animals walk around with a fair amount of meat just on their person now the funny thing is uh it's funny it's there's certain weapons and nowadays i'm sure there's obviously some weapons that are optimized for hunting certain animals like shotguns are great for birds a rifle is not as good but for the most part military weapons nowadays happen to be pretty good for hunting so we're not really having to have you know different weapons or different types of weapons you can literally have one you know an ar-15 and that will actually deal with most animals with the exception of like birds and fish and i would say you live in alaska you're going to run into some animals that need a desert persuasion yes desert eagle uh long barrel monolithic suppressor and uh sleight of hand of course that's for grizzly i know you'll be fine but yeah it's uh the food gun debate is uh it's not really a debate chicken before the it's kind of uh chicken before the egg or egg before the chicken they both go together but i would say weapons are i don't want to say the most important but as far as preserving freedom and liberty and then also getting food with them yeah i they they are very important yeah and i know i also say there's a lot of people on the internet can only think about or do one thing at a time you actually need more than food and guns you also need water you also honor shelter uh you need to be able to think about more epithelia you know dying yeah so i will say that one of the main reasons that people had firearms was uh for hunting when they came came and started this country but self-defense was also a pretty big one so let's let's not let's not get too caught up in which is for what and the second amendment is clearly not about hunting but having the ability to protect yourself having the ability to have uh to have a militia for the defense of the people i do think it's funny that whenever we say guns are for you know tyranny they're not for hunting people are like well how dare you say they can't be used for hunting and it's like no no we didn't exactly say that like hunt all the deer you want that's fine but in the grand scheme of things it's not that important compared to especially right now genocide and tyranny like yeah hunting and food to me is kind of a no-brainer like not even up for discussion you're going to be doing that the discussion have you not played oregon trail yeah like hunting that's why i'm like hunting like whatever like of course that's a thing over here we're discussing the thing over here which is literally the elephant in the room a massive elephant in the room so i do think it's funny how many people get upset like no but my hunting and i'm like no that's fine hunt and get food and provide for your family we're not saying don't do that but tyranny's kind of the bigger issue right now and potentially in five years ten years who knows maybe nothing will happen this election i certainly hope nothing happens but in order to keep things from ever happening there's things we have to be doing now and that's why we talk about these things it's not because we think something's going to happen tomorrow or next week it's because i would prefer for things to never happen in the first place and the only way to prevent that is if we do our jobs all of us all all you guys listening to this and us as well in having weapons and being a deterrent and also upholding morals that's how we prevent stuff from happening and hanging on to the truth if you if you allow if you hang on to your guns but you let uh you let people get away with this idea that guns are developed by the military for the military and civilians can have the old ones when the military is done with them if you if you let that narrative get out and be accepted when it is not the truth um you're undermining your position even if you're talking about the second amendment hang on hanging on to stuff you've got to really protect the truth and you've really got to attack some of these really faulty problematic positions with the truth so this is kind of a small one this idea that militaries have always had guns and people have never personally had guns and never personally developed guns that is something that we need to fight back against we need to we need to have a historical record that we're familiar with and and learn the lessons from it because one of the fascinating lessons is how much amazing civilian how much private ownership of weapons increased freedom in countries where there was a little bit of freedom to expand upon and how much government owned weapons decreased freedom in those countries where they have the monopoly of violence and looking at the development of the ar-15 the ak-47 is fun and fascinating from a technological perspective but looking at the cultural reasons that those rifles are the way that they are and looking at how they were made and who they were made for and who they had access to who had access to them and what the cultural ramifications of those two weapons platforms were over the next 60 70 years is really fascinating and i think that if you know that history the argument for privately owned weapons is just a no-brainer so yeah amen brother thank you for joining my uh my monologue i'm glad that it didn't have to be a monologue all the way around are you taking questions well actually questions froze i don't think the live stream is frozen but the questions are frozen so uh hopefully the live stream didn't phrase why would the chat die uh it could be youtube doing a youtube thing hey fun fact i can start streaming on instagram today wednesday i think i can start streaming again tonight on instagram that'll be nice it's amazing i got banned for two weeks now if this video goes away on youtube uh join the podcast you can find the podcast if you search t-rex talks and all the podcasty things join our newsletter go to t-rex dashaarms.com scroll down a little bit you can sign up for our newsletter we'll keep you posted on stuff that we're doing because this could go away off of youtube at some point oh by the way you need to push the podcast more and you've been pushing the newsletter really well but you should put the podcast i haven't found the podcast yeah this this was a good this was a good uh a really good sort of experiment for us to to get into a little bit of youtube hot water and a little bit of instagram hot water and let us focus on some stuff but look at how good we'll be yeah no guns in sight no guns anywhere yeah yeah well thank you so much for watching thank you so much lucas for joining me for the last the last little fun part it's great i needed to sit down yes thank you so much the video team for setting up these nice these nice seating accommodations last minute lighting kicked them out of the armory they came in here it was great fantastic and uh next week we're gonna do another live stream i'm not sure exactly what it is i have something planned um and it may not be a completely live live stream but it will be an interesting piece of content i kind of i kind of like this setup it feels really relaxed i feel like we should do maybe a two hour bring in someone else and i can sit here you can keep going for another hour i uh we won't do that i won't do that but yeah that's a nice little setup i like this yeah very good well thank you so much again for watching if you watch the youtube thank you so much for listening if you listen to the podcast keep fighting for second amendment rights keep learning your history and we will see you next week you

Channel: T.REX ARMS

Views: 39,148

Rating: 4.9400749 out of 5

Keywords: Trex arms, t-rex arms, isaac botkin, david botkin, business management, business training, free market, free market economics, resource management

Id: Bl-VnP7rtIo

Length: 60min 40sec (3640 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020