Tactical Headlines with John McCoy – FEB. 15, 2024

About This Episode

Join host Wade Skalsky on The Tactical Business Show as he covers the latest firearm industry headlines. Discover OLIGHT’s innovation and customer service at SHOT Show 2024, BYRNA NATION’s welcome to Judge Jeanine Pirro, Rock Island Auction Company’s record-breaking $102 million in sales, Morphy’s impressive firearms auction, and Olin’s commitment to ammunition safety and performance. Stay informed on these industry highlights!

Insights In This Episode

• Exploring OLIGHT’s Innovation and Superb Customer Service at SHOT Show 2024. (OLight.com)
• BYRNA NATION Extends a Warm Welcome to Judge Jeanine Pirro for BYRNA Nation and the close but not quite lethal firearms. (Byrna.com)
• Rock Island Auction Company Dominates the Firearms Auction Industry with Record-Breaking $102 Million in Sales. (RockIslandAuction.com)
• Bidders Flock to Morphy’s $6.8M Firearms & Militaria Auction: Antique Colts and Class 3 Weapons Steal the Show. (MorphyAuctions.com)
• Olin’s Vital Contribution: Ensuring Safety and Performance in Ammunition Production. (Olin.com)

About Tactical Business

Tactical Business is the weekly business show for the firearms industry. The podcast features in-depth interviews with the entrepreneurs, professionals and technologists who are enabling the next generation of firearms businesses to innovate and grow.

Episode Transcript

Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business Show. I’m your host, Virginia Beach based firearms entrepreneur and copywriter Wade Skalsky. Each episode will be exploring what it takes to thrive as a business owner in the firearms industry. We’ll speak with successful firearms industry entrepreneurs about their experiences building their companies, leaders and legislators who are shaping the industry, and tech executives whose innovations will reshape the future of the firearms industry. Let’s get after it. Welcome to the Tactical Business Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking news and current events with my co-host John McCoy. John, your beard is still on fire as always.

John: Thank you I appreciate that. And it is.

Wade: I have beard envy. I can’t ever get past the itchy phase.

John: Oh, dude, you just gotta push through it. I’m at seven years and counting now. I don’t even think about that anymore.

Wade: I’m mentally weak, so that’s why I can’t do the beard so well. Good man. So we got a few things to talk about today. Everyone is talking about SHOT show, and I’m actually excited. We’ve been talking about SHOT show because there is a 95% possibility that you and I are going to be there together next year.

John: Yeah, that’s pretty awesome.

Wade: Yeah, I’m fired up about it. I was looking at the 2025 registration already. It’s one of those things, man. I think I’m gonna pull the trigger this year, so I’ll probably be there.

John: But I appreciate the pun. That was excellent.

Wade: You like that you replaced every once in a while? I’ll start with the pun, but we were looking at basically, oh, light and light because I just bought one of their products. We’ve done an interview with FDO industries on the podcast previously, and they have a bundle where you can buy a holster with the light so, you know, the light fits perfectly. Right? So I got it for my for my Glock 17. So I’m excited to try it out. What is your thought process here on SHOT Show and OLight and all that good stuff?

John: First off, I think that’s a genius move by the holster manufacturer because you’re definitely rolling the dice every time you already own the pistol and a light and it says, hey, it’ll fit the stream light, but you don’t really know.

John: But you’re you have a higher chance. That’s probably actually going to work when you buy it as a bundle. So that’s a very smooth move from them. I have only owned stream lights, but I’ve heard a lot of people in particularly like the gun Twitter world talking about, oh, lights. And they seem to be really positive reviews on the company. I was checking out their stuff. They have a couple of like mega spotlights, handheld cannon spotlights. Those look cool, probably fairly limited applications for real life.

Wade: Those are the check the chickens lights, man. That’s when you need to go out because I’m telling you like that. Kind of like when you live out in the boonies, they have one of those gigantic spotlights is awesome because that’s when you need to look far away.It’s like, gotta check out what’s going on on the chickens and coyotes and stuff they don’t like. They don’t like that light.

John: I do actually have one. It was like a $40 one that used my Ryobi batteries that my drill uses. And it is pretty awesome because I have 20 acres here. And yes, I do go shine for coyotes and shoot them on sight. So yeah, if but if you lived in the suburbs, you might just piss off your neighbors. But I guess we all live with that possibility. But overall they seem to have really glowing reviews, like as a really legitimate light manufacturer.

John: So down the line they are probably going to be something that goes on one of my builds eventually.

Wade: Well, two things 100%. I’m going to go see them at shot show next year in 2025 when I go. And then number two though, also is that I’m interested in checking out the lasers that they got. Because here’s the thing is, I was talking with somebody. There’s a big debate because again, I’m coming from a perspective of someone who is I don’t come from a tactical background. I come from a basically growing up in a hunting background. And so, like, lasers are I’m trying to decide if they’re Gucci or not because obviously they have tactical applications. But do you really need one for sure? I’m not sure you need one on a handgun, but I don’t know. What are your thoughts on the laser man? What do you come down on that?

John: Hey, I think that if you get a good one, it could be a real benefit. That’s been a standard issue item on Infantry m4’s for, well, really since Iraq War 2 in 2003, they’ve been equipping them with those for years. So basically anything that the government the DoD procures eventually trickles down into the private sector. It’s always been that you think about the trijicon sights. No one was using those in 2003. Now they’re definitely Gucci optics. Sorry. And but you know, everyone uses them now if they can afford them.

John: Really short range optics weren’t even a thing before we invaded Iraq and most people’s most m4’s and they were still using m16a2 when they invaded were iron sights. So war changes everything that’s made, looping back around to say, if you want to go with the laser, go with the laser. But I’m with you. I think for pistols, that’s just you’re adding another, another failure linkage right there.

Wade: Well, and they’ve been around for a long time. I was not to date myself, but in, in the 1990s I was playing, I would had a poker game that I used to play in with a bunch of pizza delivery boys. Right. And so the pizza delivery boys, none of them went to college and they all had money. So they had cash, right? So they so they basically they would make a bunch of cash and then they would all go play poker. And I got into that game. And for what? They all got into a gun phase. Right. And so like they would like have their guns on the table. It was like so bad and so and but I didn’t I wasn’t, I wasn’t into handguns then at all. So I was like oh that’s normal. And one of them had a laser on it. I was like, what does that do? And I remember and this was like a long time ago.

John: We went outside and he pointed laser all the way down the street, and you could see it on a light on a house down the street. So obviously they’ve been around for a long time. And that was my that was the only introduction I ever had to a laser. I was like, oh, that’s pretty cool. And then but now that I actually, I don’t know, like you said, is I think it’s just a, a failure rate. Issue.

John: So one thing about lasers on handguns is that they were really hard to boresight before Picatinny rails existed. So they would have they’d use like a couple of set screws and you would clamp them onto the trigger guard and it wouldn’t work in a holster. And if all you have to do is brush them against something and it’ll go out of zero. So but with Picatinny rails, though, and a lot of them are mounted in the same housing as the flashlight, they maintain zero. And usually you’re just hitting a toggle switch on your flashlight to key on the laser. So with that, maybe it’s cool to have. To me, I still think just a good set of night sights. The statistics are like less than seven feet. Engagement in handgun self-defense applications. Like what else do you really need? You know,

Wade: I guess if you were going to do, like, a hip draw because but at that point, if you’re going to do a hip draw, you just do it. You’re not that close to do that.

John: You don’t really need it, but you don’t need anything. If they’re three feet away and you’re pushing them away with your left arm while you draw with your right, you don’t need a sight.

Wade: Well, like I said, is. And so, like, I look, I’m not bad mouthing lasers. I think because I think they’re cool in terms of like, people want to do them. But for me, where I’m at, I just graduated to a light, right? Like I just bought an old light, right? So I’m like, let me just get used to the light. And because I just, I want to get good on iron, the only thing I have an optic on is obviously my AR, right? But other than that, it’s like everything else is like just want to get good with iron sights and everything. And then I don’t feel that I’m at a level now where I can go past the iron sights. Right. And so because like you said, is if you’re not good at the iron sights and then the laser fails or your optic fails or whatever, it’s going to be problematic, right? So once you get that level of iron sights, I like to run my Glock like an old timey battleship. Yes. And anyway, so but yeah, that’s interesting. So I definitely want to check them out.

John: But I just think that if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, you should obviously buy one just because.

Wade: Yeah. Well, and if you’re a gun enthusiast, like they’re like I say this every week, they’re like tattoos. I just bought a PSA dagger. I wasn’t planning on buying a PSA dagger. And then they had a sale on them and I was like, oh, okay, well that’s cool. And then I got so I was just so I’m sure I will buy a laser eventually and we’ll check out. And especially if I like the lights. If lights cool, I’ll check out their lasers. Definitely. All right. What else is catching your eye this week. All right.

John: So this one was actually did kind of interest me Berna. They make exclusively less than lethal stuff. And they hired on Judge Jeanine. So I was like skeptical. I was like, okay, whatever. They’re bringing on a Fox News influencer, whatever. But I actually watched a little short video and she had some really good points about if you live in a extremely firearms unfriendly state, which I know you’re very familiar with.

Wade: Yeah, I did escape from the People’s Republic of California, though, so. Correct. I’m all right.

John: Yeah. Particularly if you live in LA, San Francisco, New York City, any of those extremely unfriendly places. It is at least some sort of equalizer to give you a fighting chance, because she actually makes the point of how the justice system will go after you because you were trying to preserve your own life. So the less than lethal generally have are less stigmatic, and it still gives you a fighting chance. So I actually thought that her take and her selling points were pretty solid on that. The price points are actually they’re about the price of the handgun version is like 380 bucks. It has standard fixed iron sights. They look like Glock sights to me. The pistols also have a rail on them, so you can put an O light if you were so inclined, or a laser. So I was actually pleasantly surprised. Usually the less than lethal stuff. I’m like, all right, that’s, you know, stupid. But I actually thought these were cool. And again, if you are stuck in one of those places, then it can at least be a force multiplier. So I don’t know. Thought that was cool.

Wade: Another thing I think about it too. So so my wife, she’s an she’s a former actress and she’s a full time mom. And she when I started buying guns and all of that, it took it was a long process for her to have her okay with me buying guns and all that. And so I’m bringing her up to speed on guns and all that. And I think she’s fine with rifles. Right? She’s my overall overwatch with the AR 15. Right. But she doesn’t like handguns. So I think this would be a really awesome transition for her. That’s like more than an airsoft gun but less than obviously a real gun. And it would help her bridge that gap so where she could get comfortable on it. The stakes are lower and but still have a simulated situation where she could get good with it. And then as well as I do, once she starts getting good with it, she’s going to want to go to the real thing, right? Because then she’s like, okay, I feel good with this now. I really want to be able to defend myself, right? So right from that perspective, I think two is you could look at it as a bridge to an actual gun and to go from there. So thankfully I live in Virginia. So Virginia is but also two could be a good way to teach your children to like. Yes, definitely. Because so for example, my son is an age is behind where my daughter is. So I would when my daughter turns 11, 12, 13, she could probably handle a real firearm. When my son turns 10, 11, 12, 13, he’s a little swirly. So maybe we start him out with a non-lethal and see what he does.

John: Probably not a terrible idea. I took my kids out shooting a few nights ago in the backyard and yeah, the boys. I’m like, yeah, maybe you should stick with BB guns a little longer. Now the good thing is I use a savage, the rascal. So it’s a single shot. So I can stand there and hold the foregrip. And I know once they’ve shot that one bullet, that’s it. They can’t. If they swing the muzzle or something like there’s, it’s already out. So. Yeah. But yeah, I’m with you on that. I think anything you can use, particularly with boys to get them used to handling a gun without having lethal consequences, is a good idea.

Wade: Yeah. And I understand why they brought it in. Judge Jeanine, you’ve got a one like we said. Maybe it does. Judge, uh, bridge the gap with the ladies, right? Who may be like my wife, who were a little hesitant, but also, too, is that she’s probably more affordable than Tucker. Probably. Right. You got to be Zen. You got to be making.

John: What is the deal with Zen like? I’m a former smoker, so I don’t use any nicotine. I haven’t for years because I know that’ll just bridge straight to cigarettes for me. Where did it come from?

Wade: Well, it’s just like dip, right? Except for it’s just in a pouch and it’s more of. So it’s funny because I wanted to try it because I don’t smoke. I will smoke a pipe like a tobacco pipe because it helps with my writing every three weeks. Right. And so I was like, oh, well, I’ll try. I see what the big deal is. And I can’t remember what the numbers are like. One’s like a six and one’s like a three or whatever. And I thought that had to do with the number of packets in there. It’s not. It’s the actual strength of the nicotine, the potency. Yeah. So I went to 7-Eleven and I was like, okay, well, I’ll take the wintergreen. And and he said, well, we only have the six. So I was like, oh, that’s fine. I don’t mind if it has more of the actual packet off of your. Oh, it was awful. It was like it was not awful. It was like it was fine. But then I had to take it out because I was I haven’t dipped in. I’ve dipped like two times in my life. 25 years ago when I was teaching horseback riding. And it was pretty tough, right? But if you’re a smoker or if you’re if you like dipping and stuff like that, it’s like a cleaner alternative. So I’m like, listen, I’m pro freedom. Let people do whatever they want. So it’s just the reason why the government is trying to make it rumblings about tamping down on it is because they’re becoming so successful, and Big Tobacco is not liking it. Ah, that makes sense. That does make sense. That’s my totally unresearched layman’s opinion on the issue.

John: No, I think you’re on anything that Chuck Schumer is against. I think I have a vested interest in learning more about. So yeah. Well, yeah, just it’s so easy. Just be like, okay, I’m for the opposite of whatever he says. So yeah, exactly. That’s the issue with the Zen. But did you see the one with Tucker where they brought a gigantic helicopter helicopter came in and had some giant Zen canister, right. Yeah,

John: I was I was going through a phase on Twitter’s weird algorithms where all I was getting was that and Mr. Beast videos, I’m like, all right, I need to mute these. This is stupid. But yeah, I didn’t see that.

Wade: I was getting plane crash videos for a while because I mistakenly clicked on some plane landing and some ridiculous looking thing. And then once I did that, all I got was pilot videos for like, forever. But but that’s what the marketing is. I think the gun industry, they have a really hard job in marketing this from the SEO side, and I know this from the writing side. So it’s like in order to keep compliance, in order not to get total shadowbanned or whatever, it’s like, you have to be very careful about how you write for the gun industry, even gun adjacent, like accessories, like holsters, even if you’re doing a holster for like a multi-tool, you can still get flagged. So yeah. So I think Berna is really smart to bring in, to get really creative with their marketing.

John: They are, they are. And I like I said, I guess they also make less than lethal 12 gauge rounds. So that’s pretty. Oh man, those look brutal.

Wade: That’s called birdshot. I was explaining that last night to my wife because for whatever reason, I was organizing all my ammunition. Because that’s what you do sometimes at night, right? Yes. So my wife came in and I was like, okay, well, she doesn’t like the shotgun. So I was going through the different rounds. It’s like, this is a slug, this is birdshot. And then this one here, this box here is, this is when everything hits the fan. You grab this one, right? This big flag on it. This one is the one that you use if you have to break glass in case of emergency. Yeah, exactly. This one box like this is the. This is all you need, right. And anyway, so it was a fun conversation with her about birdshot. So anyways. All right. Cool. Well let’s get on to another topic that I love is the auction topic. Right. Because we had I learned a lot about auctions. We had some previous guests that they had an auction house in Arizona, and I swear I’m going to go visit my brother. I’m going to go visit them because they were so cool. And they’re in a previous episode of the podcast.

Wade: But I learned a lot about gun auctions and how they do it. But I guess there was some specific auction you saw that you really thought was cool.

John: There were actually a bunch of them, so they had an M240b. So it’s the FN, the one that replaced the M60. Is this the Rock Island auction.com? I’m on the Rock Island one, I think. Before we move on to let’s make sure we do the website for Byrna. So Byrna.com and then oh and then the OLight so and then Olight.com and Byrna is B Y R N A and OLight is O L I G H T .com.

John: So. Yep. And so we’re talking Rock Island auctions. They’ve got a Colt 1883 Gatling gun sold for $352,000. And they said that doubled its high estimate. So there was a us they do class three firearms. Also there is an FN M240b sold for almost 382. Thousand dollars for a belt fed 7.62 machine gun.

Wade: Did you see that Han Solo’s blaster sold for more than a million.

John: Are you serious? Yeah. I didn’t get there yet. I was still stuck on the engraved Walther PPK that sold for $94,000.

Wade: It’s the launch of the Guinness World Records for after more than a million.

John: Oh, I did look at the Tom Selleck collection. Sold for $100,000. And that’s this Magnum Pi 45, which is rad, as it should.

Wade: I remember when everyone was buying them the Magnum Pi Ferrari, right where it wasn’t that expensive. Actually, I think you could get one because he was in the 80s. I think like in the 90s and early 2000, you could get one relatively inexpensively. But the problem with Ferraris is the maintenance man is like, you have to get them. Oh, brutal service every 2000 miles every time you drive it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But I, I want to blastech DL 44 heavy blaster. It was the only. It was if you go to Rock Island. Auction.com. Yep. And you go to news. Mhm. It’s right there in the middle. Gotcha. Right next to the gold plated Colt Single Action Army revolver inscribed to Pancho Villa. That’s cool. Was that the one you were talking about? Maybe it was. Look at that. What a beautiful dog.

John: There’s a lot of cool stuff. The Luger carbines, the one that has the attachable carbine. You can take it off and put it on the carbine buttstock. $411,000.

Wade: Yeah. This one says that they will offer Francisco Pancho Villa’s gold plated Colt Single Action Army revolver.

John: So I will say we were talking before the show started, that you were talking about how hard assets are becoming very desirable, gold, silvers and all that stuff. But guns have traditionally always been a good investment tool. They basically always appreciate. So they are a good way to go.

Wade: Yeah. Well, and and if you think about because they don’t expire, you know what I’m saying. It’s not like for like food or whatever. And they don’t go bad. And like the our betters, they like to do art, the elites like to do art, right? They put all their money to art. And it’s the same. Guns are the exact same concept. Right. So it’s the regular people’s art, right? Yes, it is, because it’s never going to go down. There’s always going to be a market for oh, I’m going to cough. Let me mute myself here. So far, I’ve dodged the Mujtaba that my five year old and seven year old have brought home from their two different schools, and my wife subs from time to time in preschool. So I have like three different vectors of sickness that I have resisted with my 15 supplements. I take it every day. And that’s the thing, is that there’s always going to be a market for guns. Always. Even if there’s like societal breakdown, people aren’t going to give you more value. Your art pieces and stuff like that. Like, I don’t know, the gold plated Pancho Villa. If you’re in a mad Max Beyond Thunderdome situation might not be the exact gun you want, since it’s 100 years old. Still shoots, but looks cool. But yeah, so like you said, there’s they always appreciate, always.

John: Yes. These are the most costly. You don’t have to be setting aside $100,000 for collectible guns. You can start much lower with. Like a friend of mine, he has long been collecting vintage, not vintage, but even just 70s and 80s Smith and Wesson revolvers. So K frames, L frames and just he’s I don’t even know how many he’s got, but he’s been picking them up for years because those are appreciating like colts Colt pythons, those and those you can get still around the high hundreds to a thousand. And you can build up a good portfolio of those in one grand. If you join the Civilian Marksmanship program, those will actually ship to your door. You don’t have to go through an FFL and they still have them. And I’m a total hypocrite because I still have not done that. But he was buying those from the CMP back when they were only like 4 to 500 a piece. Now they’re like 7 to 800.

Wade: When you join the what what do I got to do?

John: That civilian marksmanship program there out of Ohio. It’s a yeah, it’s legit. So they still have a big stores of M1 Garands and you can buy them and they do not have to go through an FFL. It’s weird the way they do it. Just look it up. It is not legal.

Wade: This is not legal advice just in case John’s wrong. But he’s almost never wrong about this. So I’m gonna I’m gonna put this in my I’m gonna get that right there. This episode is brought to you by TacticalPay.com. Every few years, it seems large banks and national credit card processors suddenly decide that they no longer want to process payments for firearms and firearms related businesses, and so they drop these businesses with almost no notice, freezing tens of thousands of dollars in payments for months on end. If you want to ensure your partner with a payments provider that is dedicated to supporting the firearms industry, or you just want to find out if you could be paying less for your ACH, debit and credit card processing, visit TacticalPay.com. Again, that’s TacticalPay.com. Well. So with the M1 Garands that they’re shipping to you, are they new or are they used?

John: They have multiple grades. Know their World War two surplus?

Wade: Yeah, that’s what I said. They’re not like making clones or replicas, right?

John: No, these are the real deal.

Wade: Well, that’s. Yeah, I just should. So I have my list. Right. So I’ve got like, it’s like in row. So that’s going to go above the flamethrower. So the Palmetto Armory flamethrower it’s going to go above that. So I’d rather have a Garand than a plant a flamethrower.

John: Now make sure and I’m going to tell you this. You have to use M1 Garand ammunition unless you change out the gas. Oh, there’s a piece. You can find it aftermarket so you can use modern 36 ammo. Otherwise you have to use World War two surplus or it’ll blow it apart. So make sure you do your research on that. Don’t just go grab some 36 from Academy or whatever your sporting goods store is and throw it in there. You’ll have problems. But yeah, you have to join the CMP and then be part of one of their local clubs. And I think that’s how they circumvent the FFL thing because there’s a vetting process. By joining the club, you’re in a major metro area. I’m sure there’s one close to you.

John: Well, and that’s a good idea for a club for like minded individuals, right? Yes. So it’s like you’re not joining the marksmanship club if you’re going to want to ban Zin. No. And you’re also going to go there and have the old timers. They’ve spent the last 50 years becoming marksmen. You’ll actually learn marksmanship. It is a good deal. CMP is a legit organization and the M1’s are legit.

Wade: Awesome, dude. And then so we were looking at the RockIslandAuction.com and then what was the other auction site

John: Morphyauctions.com Morphy. And they also sell class three weapons. And this one particular auction brought in almost $7 million. This was in December. That was a three day event, 6.8 million.

Wade: That’s cool. And they had the those the Pearl handled Colt 45 seconds,

John: The General Patton esque. Those are very slick.

Wade: That’s a big gun.

John: It is. I have a Ruger Blackhawk and I will. It was my dad, so I’ll never get rid of it. But there is just something so cool about a big single action, big frame, single action revolver. It’s just cool to hold it and it’s cool to shoot it. And if you shoot it at night with that 357 Magnum flame is like 30ft long. It’s awesome. It’s fun, it’s fun.

Wade: Yeah, well, it scares everybody.

John: Oh yeah. 357 the Magnum is scary. Like it is really. It is loud. It’s like shooting thunder.

Wade: Well, and that’s what I think. What are people always laugh or are like, oh, you buy a shotgun for home defense because they’re racking the round. It’s going to scare most people. It’s like, ah,

John: It doesn’t work that way. That’s been debunked thoroughly.

Wade: If someone’s breaking into your house, they’re gonna they’re coming into your house. Regardless of what Clickety-clack sounds you’re making. You got to make sure that you got to make some few sounds.

John: I’m sure that you, given your history, are well aware of the stupidity of criminals. So they’re not scared off by things like that, especially when they’re under the influence. Correct. I had friends that were cops, and they’re like, criminals are so stupid. They’re just so dumb.

Wade: Well, yeah, because the smart ones, you never hear of them.

John: No, because they don’t get caught and they don’t break into houses.

Wade: Right. Exactly. So when we’re offline, I’ll tell you about the time that I woke up with someone in my house in California. That’s a oh my God. Yeah.

John: All right. These ones were not as big. They sold him some of these sales. They sold an M60 for 82,000, which I mean like obviously I’m not buying that, but, you know, compared to 400,000, that’s quite a bit less. Yeah.

Wade: Well and I think that like the Thompson machine guns, those are cool looking too.

John: Oh can’t. Absolutely.

Wade: 90,000. Yeah.

John: You can buy a modern knockoff. It’s not a class three. But you know you can buy those for like 1200 bucks. Yeah.

Wade: The problem with these, if you were to buy something like this, is I would be so nervous to shoot it.

John: Oh, I would never shoot it. That’s the thing.

Wade: But you gotta shoot it at least once, right?

John: You think so? And you gotta be careful with those with modern ammo. You got to really be selective because you’d hate your $80,000 investment to get blown apart because you’re an idiot and put modern ammo. That was way too high pressure for it.

Wade: Yeah, exactly. So what? I think what you could do is like some of those blades that they have, like the Bowie knives and stuff like that, because I’m on a fixed blade phase right now. Oh yeah. That’s also a rabbit hole for EDC. I almost feel like a fixed blade. Edc is more complicated in some ways than just a gun.

John: Well, you have to start learning about different types of steel and you’re like, man, I didn’t. I just wanted a knife.

Wade: Yeah, well, but also in terms, I don’t know, maybe I’m sound stupid, but in terms of like, well, how am I going to wear it? Like, how am I going to conceal it? Like it’s in some ways, to me it’s harder to conceal.

John: Yeah, it is, unless you wear a boot knife and you’re in Texas and wear jeans and boots every day.

Wade: Well, that’s the nice thing about Virginia is your concealed carry permit covers everything so nice. You can carry a machete if you want. It’s like a sword. You could carry on it. It’s like, why are you walking so stiffly? I don’t know, just having katana. Katana in my pants. Yeah. And also too, they were selling these. Wore powder horns. I thought that was cool. I’d never seen that on sale anywhere before. That’s like The Last of the Mohicans, right? Where they’re running through the. Keeping your powder dry,

John: It says, as well as images of Native Americans holding war clubs and. Yeah. Gross.

Wade: That’s a bad day. Yeah. And I think the one I think the one thing that’s cool too, about like these auction houses. So this is MorphyAuctions.Com Morphy obviously auctions.com is like consignment. Normal people can consign things over there. You know that if you put your gun on an auction house like this. And this is the sense that I got from the great couple in Arizona that I interviewed for a previous episode, is that everyone down the line hears about your gun? If it’s an estate sale and you’re like, oh my God, I’m like, you don’t know what to do with your guns. And so you’re going to you’re going to give your guns away. Some people are going to give them away. Some people take them to a pawn shop and sell them like, I don’t know, I really wouldn’t want to sell them to a pawn. Any gun I ever owned to a pawn shop, because I’d be worried about who’s buying it, and are they going to treat it the same way that I treat it? But if you sell to if you can sign it to an auction house, like the auction house is going to take care of it, that whoever’s going to buy from an auction house typically is going to be a different type of person in the firearms community, then I’m just going to sell it some pawn shop down the street. Right.

John: It’s so funny you should mention that. My wife is going through an antiquing phase, and she’s on the local auction houses that do a estate sale auctions, and she actually sent me some pictures a couple days ago. She’s like, are you interested in any of these guns? Because I guess they can actually auction firearms. And one of them was a British 303 Enfield. I’m like, yeah. And the other was a Winchester 1894. It was like from 1960s. And then the third one was a Remington 594, I think it was in five millimeter Magnum rimfire. So very unusual. And I was like, Holy crap, I’ve never even seen one of those in the wild. That very unusual. So it was I thought that was actually funny. You brought that up because you actually can find those if you’re crafty locally through estate sale companies. But I have to wonder if maybe if they put that 303 and that 1894 on like Morphy Auctions, if maybe it would have brought more.

Wade: Right. Oh yeah. Well, and that’s the thing is like there’s the gap of information. So people I was writing for a client and I did a newsletter for a client where we talked about there’s a guy that’s found the violin from the band and the Titanic in his attic. Right. So that the musicians that were playing. Yeah, Titanic went down. They died. But the guy before he died put the end of the violin in the case he strapped into his body. So when they, you know, recovered his body and because he had electrics or whatever, so they recovered his body. You had the violin, and there was this long sequence of events that the violin through, like a bunch of different people, and it ended up in some dude’s attic and nobody, just some random attic. And they got like almost a million. Or maybe it was some ridiculous amount somewhere between like one and 3 million. And that’s crazy. But it’s just like people don’t know, like they just think it’s an old violin. They just think it’s all this old gun. What do I do with it? And that’s why I think firearms, you can go as deep as you want. With firearms, there is no end to it.

John: You think about firearms and they are like part of the architecture of America. Every time Americans pushed farther west, Davy Crockett and I can’t remember the ones that that did the Oregon Trail. Anyway, Lewis and Clark, there we go. For very real, valid reasons. America was built with a rifle in hand.

Wade: You had a lot of different problems. Obviously, you had the nation state problem. So Mexico back then, they didn’t really like the fact that we were going out there. So that was okay. Traditional war. Yes. Then you had the Native Americans, right, which is more of a guerrilla war, which is a totally different set of problems then you had. Wouldn’t even count Canada. That was just a bunch of drunk fur traders up there. We don’t count them. And then you had also like survival itself, like, what are we going to eat until we figure this out? That’s why it’s so deeply ingrained in our culture, which is I don’t care if you are not into guns yourself as an American, if you have any history here. Your ancestors were. Exactly. That’s exactly it. So like, you are here because of firearms, basically

John: America is so soft that we have these discussions about the evils of them. And they didn’t have that luxury. They had to eat, and they had people trying to scalp them, trying to take their hair so that they were having these philosophical, theoretical discussions about whether or not firearms should be allowed and what the Second Amendment means that didn’t exist because people were it was all about self-preservation. And as we push farther west, there are very hostile tribes and they’re very hostile animals. So the firearm is just part of our ethos.

Wade: You want to talk about criminals, right? Where it’s like people would get so desperate they’d be cattle rustlers or horse rustlers. And the problem is, though, is that if they rustle your cattle or your horse, you died. Yeah, exactly. That was it. You were done, you know? Yeah. You didn’t have a horse. You’re out. Yeah. And that’s why there was. They hanged people that did that. Right. It was like the death penalty. And now everyone’s like, oh, it’s just a lack of connection to our history because we are so like you said, we’re so soft and disconnected. And that’s also the other thing too, is I said, however you find firearms, there’s a lot of different ways to it. Like maybe you don’t even like to fire, but you’re an art collector, okay? And you’re like, oh, I’m gonna get like these auction houses, right? Like I’m gonna oh, I want to. An ancient piece of history. And that’s how you get into firearms, right? You just have that gun sitting there in your library or whatever you’ve decided yourself. Oh, I’m going to go shoot a gun, right? Like there’s so many different. It’s so deep. There’s so many different ways you can get into it. So that’s why I just think that’s cool.

John: It is. It is way more than just my carry for self-defense. If that’s all you want it to be, that’s you can definitely it can just be that. But it goes so much deeper. So I’m absolutely with you on that. And that’s what makes the collecting so very cool for sure.

Wade: All right. Let’s see one more and then we’ll nerd out with some numbers and then Olin okay.

John: So I had to look up who Olin was to figure out why it mattered. So they make gunpowder and blasting powder. So basically they make explosives and they make gunpowder. And this goes back to what we talked about two weeks ago, how ammunition is really the metric to determine what the firearms industry is doing. And Olin makes gunpowder and you don’t have ammunition without Olin. So when they’re posting 52 million in profit, that’s all you need to know about where the direction that it’s actually going.

Wade: Well, and I’m sure some of that has to do with all the conflicts in the world, too, and all of the armed conflict. And again, that goes back to our point. My point, because it was from me. So it has to be good, is that you can go as deep as you want in this stuff. Like you can go macro manufacturing, right. Oh, okay. And being soft people don’t realize what it takes to produce a bullet, how complicated it is to be able to mass produce basically a mini bomb so that it doesn’t explode while you’re making it. It doesn’t explode while you’re transporting it. It doesn’t explode when you’re loading it, and it does shoot every single time with a very like, like failures can’t happen because if you have a failure when you need it, that’s bad. And people like to demonize the gun industry and the manufacturing industry or whatever. But name me another job that you have. Maybe other than making medicine or growing food, where people and even the growing food is so much food that doesn’t really count right now, right? But all the farmers are going to send the hate mail. So let’s conclude the fun part. I come from farmers and ranchers. So yeah, I’m not bad mouthing them, but name me another industry where more is on the line than making ammunition or guns. I can’t think of anything because it has to go off. You don’t get to pick the ones that don’t because that’s a problem.

John: That’s very high stakes. And I have mad respect for a particularly the small batch and the smaller companies like Phoenix. I love them because he is just absolutely crushing it. And I know that their margins are nothing because the cost of materials is really expensive. So that he still keeps his stuff actually affordable is amazing.

Wade: I reached out to him. I’m going to reach out to him again to get him on the show. But it’s funny. It’s like we’ve talked about this before is that people in the firearms industry are generally mistrustful, so it takes a while to get them on board with things. I’m going to reach out to him again.

John: Well, and they have every right to be because everyone is gunning for them. Yeah. First off, the competitors in the industry are gunning for them, and everyone that is left of center is gunning for them. And he’s not catering to law enforcement agencies because he refused. He refuses to ship to places that limit two way rights and he doesn’t do government contracts. That alone is remarkable that he’s doing so well because he doesn’t do those, which is where the big money is.

Wade: Well, and that’s a lot of the business model for some of these. And again I’m pro everybody. So everybody can pick whatever business model they want right. Is they’ll have okay. So what we’re going to do is we want to get the military contract and then we’ll go retail civilian with whatever we have left over. Like yes, our excess manufacturing capacity will go civilian, right. And mark it up more than we well I don’t know, probably mark it up to the government.

John: But if they’re smart, they do.

Wade: And like take Olin for example. Right. Like we need Olin producing as much gunpowder as humanly possible. We need them to quadruple what they do just from a self-defense perspective. Because logistically, because they’re in the United States.

John: Yeah, they’re in Illinois or Missouri.

Wade: Yeah, exactly. So, like, we need as much manufacturing in the United States as humanly possible, because the way that everything is trending is everything. We offshore is not going to be built or available either very slowly or not at all. Yeah. And so like companies like Olin, even though people might bohoo them because they’re huge, because they’re a publicly traded company I don’t like, I’m grateful for them because just like Palmetto State Armory, right. Like they did an amicus brief to the Supreme Court that costs a lot of money, like I’ve done a writ of search in Supreme Court. It’s a gigantic pain in the ass and incredibly expensive in my prior life. So you want a mix of everything? You want small guys like Phoenix, right? Real crotchety people like that, right? You want some more of the like, the bigger the bigger companies that have giant amounts of buckets of cash so that that if they need to start doing fighting the lawfare that they can get in there and mix it up. Right. All under one big tent. And that’s why I like it’s cool. I’m glad to see that, that that is doing well because it’s not a zero sum game just because they’re doing well. It doesn’t mean that people like Phoenix can’t do well or Phoenix Ammunition and other people. So. Yeah. So all right. And you can look up that Olin information at Olin.Com. All right. Well, we chopped it up a lot. Any closing thoughts? What’s going on in your world? Anything exciting on the gun side, other than the fact that I need to persuade your wife to let you come to shot show with me next year.

John: Not too much. I’m working with a person you had. Okay, well, someone that you led me to that is in the outdoor space is working with me. And they’re looking for funding now, so that’s good.

John: I like to help those people, and I like to open their eyes to the fact that if you’re relying on strictly social media, you’re going to spend a whole lot of money and probably get nothing out of it. So I’m going to hopefully be helping this organization grow their actual website and actually have consistent monthly clicks, because I think they have a worthy cause. It’s a good cause. Yeah, it is. It is a good cause. And and without saying any specifics, it is in the conservation space. And really that’s what we’re all the sportsmen in America are the conservationists because we actually are at ground level understanding what actually impacts food, what actually impacts the land. It’s funny when people in Ivory tower trapped, locked in a 15 minute city have the gall to talk about what happens out in the 80% of America that no one lives in. Like you have no idea. You know what it’s like when it’s easy to love a coyote when it’s not eating your chickens. I actually have said that a few times recently, that I used to be sympathetic to coyotes until I got chickens and barn cats, and now I’m not sympathetic at all to coyotes because they’re cats.

Wade: Just take a little picture of like, little puppy or a little kitten cat, like a little barn kitten, and just be like, coyotes, kill this kitten and then get people on your side. Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, and that’s the big thing is I think is a lot of it is the in the gun industry is educating them on, on on just content and how it can help them. Because my dad had a construction company for he was in concrete for a long time and he was a Luddite like he did everything on a legal pad for his entire 50 years that he worked. And so I know manufacturing companies that do stuff, that same thing. They just have like an Excel spreadsheet and that’s their software. It’s just educating the industry to be able to take advantage of things that everyone else is taking advantage. That’s all. So on the content side, or what I do with the SEO side and what you do. So but anyway, let’s plug your Twitter, let’s plug your what’s your Twitter handle.

John: John McCoy rights. And then same on LinkedIn. I’m a little more tame on LinkedIn. Yeah. Got to play the game. Yeah. And and then just JustEnoughSEO.com is my website. So yeah.

Wade: Well if you’re looking for John you can find him there. And if you’re looking for me, just ask John. He knows how to find me. So. Exactly. All right man. Well great. Well it was awesome to chat today. And we’ll see you in a couple weeks.

John: Sounds good.

Wade: You’ve been listening to the Tactical Business Show by TacticalPay.com. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the firearms industry.