Self-Defense, Militias, and Firearms with David Botkin from TRex Arms

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Welcome to another edition of the Conversation That Matters podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a special guest with us today,

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David Botkin from T -Rex Arms. You can find out more about him at t -rex -arms .com

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or go to YouTube and type in T -Rex Arms. And there's several viral videos that he's made about guns and self -defense and Second Amendment and the

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NRA and that kind of world. And I realize for some of you who listen to this podcast, you're politically conservative, you understand the founding.

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Others I'm pretty certain are just listening to me because I talk about social justice and I provide a defense for Christians who don't want to be swept away in that kind of milieu.

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But we have a situation now where people are asking a lot of questions they did not ask before about whether or not they should maybe look into joining a militia or should they even purchase a firearm?

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Is self -defense okay for a Christian? At what point should we use force? Was it okay that we seceded from Great Britain originally?

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And then where does that put us now with Biden taking the oath of office? So I just want to welcome

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David Botkin, who I'm sure you're not going to answer all those questions for us, but we can at least start. So thank you for joining me.

01:14

Sure. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I've been studying biblical self -defense for like 15 years or something.

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I've observed a lot of people that don't really know how to argue the case systematically.

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And so they kind of end up in these weird places where they're arguing saying it's not strictly biblical and it doesn't give them a good foundation to go on and actually lay out the full biblical understanding of what's going on in self -defense or the death penalty or whatever.

01:45

So yeah, you want to just go back to Genesis 9 and kick it off from there. Let's start at the beginning. So yeah, go ahead, read it.

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Yeah, so basically Genesis 9 is where I would argue God created the family with Adam and Eve.

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And in Genesis 9, He's giving to man a new responsibility, and that responsibility is to do justice.

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Previously, when Cain killed Abel, God said, nobody touch him. But in Genesis 9, it's changing.

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And in verse 5, it says, And surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will

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I require it and at the hand of man. That's the new part. At the hand of every man's brother will

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I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed.

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For in the image of God made he man. And so we have this framework given to us that God is transferring a new responsibility to all of mankind to do justice in cases of murder and to protect innocent life.

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This isn't just something God will take care of. There's actually a transfer of responsibility and there's an authority being given here.

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However, and this is not Mosaic law. This is way, obviously, way pre -Moses. This is Noah. But it lacks specificity as to how you go about doing this.

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We don't have the rules here about witnesses. We don't have any information here on when it's lawful to use force to stop violence from happening.

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And to get that, you do have to jump forward. There's smatterings of it throughout Genesis. But then when you get up into Exodus, specifically

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Exodus 22, the Ten Commandments have been given. Moses comes down.

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He's talking to the people. The people are terrified. They say, Moses, you talk to us and we will listen to you. But this is too scary, essentially.

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And so then right after the Ten Commandments are given, Moses starts expounding the law and he's laying it out.

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And in that context, they've just gotten the Ten Commandments, we have

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Exodus 22 verses one through four. And this is the quintessential passage that people go to for arguing self -defense.

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And for years, I heard people discussing it and they're always talking about, this is for someone breaking into your home.

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And that framework is, I think, defective and it messes up the interpretation.

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If you back up and you just read it plainly, I'm going to read the passage. If a man shall steal an ox or a sheep and kill it or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.

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Restitution. That's all we're talking about here. Theft of animals, restitution. If a thief be found breaking up and be smitten that he die, there shall be no blood shed for him.

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If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him, for he should make full restitution. If you have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.

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If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive, whether it be ox or ass or sheep, he shall restore double.

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Okay. So first off, and this is what's so crucial. So when people take this and they say, this is about a home invasion.

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And they're like, well, what if the home invaders in your house in the day and all whatever, like that's where it starts to get broken. But if you understand, this is talking about nothing more than a thief.

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All that's going on here is animals getting stolen. If there's a guy breaking in to steal animals, and this would probably not be your house.

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This would be like your barn. Now there were cultures that had animals in the house with them and stuff. I know that. You know, if it's dark and you don't know what's going on, and the guy is not even committing a capital crime, because stealing animals is not a capital crime.

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That's the point of verse three. You can't kill them in the day for just stealing animals. But if at night, he's just stealing a sheep and you kill him, there is no blood guilt.

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And that concept, that's I think the new American or ESV translation. I think this is King James here that I'm looking at.

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That no blood guilt is actually really, really important. That's a technical legal concept that explains, you know, like if you, when you build a house, put a parapet around it in case someone falls off and bring blood guilt on you, like even if you're not guilty of a capital crime, you can still get blood guilt when you shed innocent blood.

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And what this is saying is, even if a person is not committing a capital crime, if you have reasonable suspicion, and we can unpack that more, but I don't think we need to at this point, he could be smitten and there is no blood guilt.

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But this also puts a limit on there. You can't just use violence anytime you want or for any purpose you want.

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If someone's in your backyard stealing your tomatoes, you can't snipe him from your kitchen window.

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That's not self -defense. That's not tomato defense. That's murder. The correct punishment in that case would be restitution.

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So once you start understanding what's here, you can start recognizing like, wow, God values innocent life so much that in a case where a person's in the dark and he doesn't know what's going on, all he knows is there's an intruder here, he's justified in using lethal force to defend his life.

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And if it turns out after the fact that that guy was just, that's just Bob the sheep thief.

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He just steals a sheep now and then to feed his family. It was just Bob the sheep thief. Nope. Steve, who defended his family has no blood guilt.

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He's completely innocent. So if that's the case, then how much more if you had a home invader or a mugger or one of these other situations or a mob of rioters coming with molotovs and how much more would you be morally justified in using lethal force?

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And I think that this concept, I can lay out my understanding, but any person that wants to go buy a gun, get trained and get prepared to use it, they need to go do some serious soul searching on this because I think a bunch of issues that militaries run into and police departments and things like that around reluctance to use lethal force in the moment, because you've probably heard about this, you know, people that can't quite pull the trigger, they're threatened, they can't pull the trigger.

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I don't think they've sorted through this, you know, or they pull the trigger and they kill someone and they're racked with like PTSD and guilt and nightmares.

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I read a very interesting firsthand account of an officer that shot and killed a man. It was a good shoot and he was racked with guilt and the chaplain came in and was talking to him and he was explaining and the guy was like, yeah, but God says no killing.

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And he's like, no, but look, look what it says here. There's a time and a place for killing. And you did right. You did not violate

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God's law. And he said, just like that, the burden of guilt that he felt was lifted.

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The problem was he had a conscience that was incorrectly informed. He did not fully understand the word of God.

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He had a, like a cliche of God's word that had gotten embedded in his conscience through the teaching that he'd heard and, you know, don't kill that's broadly correct, you know, but he didn't have the entire word of God in his understanding.

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And once that was illuminated to him, he was freed from that guilt. The truth set him free. Anyone that wants to prepare themselves to use lethal force, needs to study this out.

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They need to set their conscience completely at ease with the prospect that they might do this because it's a, my theory is it's a terrifying thing in that moment in and of itself, but the additional component of I'm about to pull the trigger and send someone to eternity.

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And I might in this exchange also die and end up in eternity. Am I willing to stand before the throne of God and explain me pulling the trigger?

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Am I ready to do that? Am I confident to do that? And if you don't have that, that assurance that you are doing the right thing, the righteous thing, you're going to run into problems.

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You may not be able to pull that trigger. That gun may be of no good to you, or it may even be a negative if the bad guy then turns it on you somehow or something.

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So you've got to study this out. You know, I can kind of put some of these passages out there, but people have to go study them themselves.

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Yeah, no, that's good. I think that's a good start. I've been thinking about this myself and especially the last few months of what if there, you know, turns into a situation of civil unrest as we've seen in many cities over the summer.

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And there were people, especially the last incident, I forget what month that was,

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October or maybe it was September in Wisconsin, right? Where you guys are literally holding on to their

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AR -15s, guarding their houses, guarding their businesses. I think that woke a lot of people up and they thought,

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I need to think through this. And so I think I've wrestled through all that. I've kind of come to the conclusion that, yeah, there are situations in which

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I would pull the trigger. And even if there was a little residual guilt or just, man,

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I'm not, I just, I mean, anyone who does that, especially for the first time is probably going to think, man,

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I wish that didn't happen, at least have some kind of regret. I would be willing to do it in defense of the things that are important that God values.

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How do we get from that though, if you would, and maybe you don't want to take this turn. So if you don't, that's fine. But to, you know, the second amendment itself in our constitution reflected in many state constitutions is not necessarily about this specifically, you know, defending yourself, right?

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It's about actually having a, to defend from tyranny from the government, having a militia. Could you talk to us a little bit about that and how that fits in?

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Yeah. Yeah. So biblically, you know, if you, if you go back to Numbers chapter one and you read through Numbers chapter one, it goes through and it numbers all the tribes of Israel and you know let me pull it up real quick.

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So Numbers one, cause I just want to get this, this exactly literally what said.

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So Numbers chapter one, verse 20, I just picked one at random. The people of Reuben, Israel's firstborn, their generations by their clans, by their father's houses, according to the number of names, head by head, every male from 20 years old and upward, all who were able to go to war.

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And it goes through and this is what's counting. It's count. This census is not just the population. It's not just the men.

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It's the military age men. It's the, it's the men able to go out to war. When we go to Deuteronomy 20 and we look at that, it talks about all the people being together, gathered together.

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Deuteronomy 20 is the chapter on war. You know, like there's, there's many chapters in the Bible on this topic and that topic, and there's overlap, but sometimes there's one specific chapter like Genesis chapter nine.

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That's explaining a lot of the post -blood world and how everything's going to work. This is explaining war.

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And it's talking about a model where the people have this responsibility. There's not a standing military over here on the side.

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The people have this responsibility. One of the problems with the people in the time of Samuel then transitioned to Saul was they wanted a king to go fight their battles.

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They didn't want this responsibility anymore. In world military history, this idea of the people having military responsibilities is actually the historic norm.

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You know, to the ancient world or, you know, the medieval world or whatever. And you, you find this as the vast majority of the time, this concept that every individual has a duty to be military ready, you know, and go out and fight and, and, you know, not the slaves or whatever, but the freemen, they had military duties.

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You know, Rome started on this, you know, the, the word we know as legion is what it, what it means literally is like levy and a levy was like when you call the people that are eligible to serve, the people form into their levy and they go out and they fight and then they come back.

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So originally Rome only ever had one legion because they could only have one levy of people to go fight. It wasn't until they went to a professional standing army that they started having all these different legions.

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But literally it was basically like volunteer conscripts going out to fight, but they're not quite conscripts because they have this military duty.

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The Greek city States, they did this, like this is the norm. It's hard for people to probably understand, but there was sort of a social obligation that was more organic, not from the top, but every, it was an expectation growing up that this is my responsibility to the community.

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And some countries in Europe still have this Switzerland does Finland does in a different sort of way.

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Some of the other Scandinavian countries do where there's this, you know, compulsory military participation, like in Switzerland, everyone's got to go and join the militia for two years.

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And the militia, you know, a lot of people hear that word and they think, oh, it's some sort of dark anti -government thing. It's like, no, it's not any more anti -government than the fire department or the police department or anything else.

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It's an institution that society creates that I think is founded in the word of God, whereby the entire body of people have these responsibilities to provide for the national defense against threats, foreign and domestic.

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And that's what the founding fathers originally wanted. That's what they wrote in the second amendment. That was clearly their understanding prior to the war for independence.

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That's clearly their understanding after the war for independence. It's what's in the dictionaries. It's there all throughout.

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And they lived in a very interesting time where Europe had been transitioning away from this idea of every man has responsibilities to a professional standing military controlled by the state very tightly.

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That transition had been starting in the 1750s in Europe with Frederick the Great. And America hadn't gotten on board with that idea and did not want any part of that idea.

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They wanted to keep it independent. And interestingly, let me see if I can pull up the relevant piece of U .S.

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Well, we're there now. Yeah. Well, so what happened was when people are discussing, what does the second amendment mean?

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It's so complicated. It's like, no, it's not. You look at what happened right before the war. You look at the laws they passed immediately after ratifying the second amendment.

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And you have the first and the second militia acts. And with those two acts, they were passed like six months later.

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What they required was every person between ages, I want to say it was 18, 17, and like 55,

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I think, had to join a militia. And they had to provide a weapon. And they had to provide flints and a knapsack and a bayonet.

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And it lists off. It's a mandate that they have to go by and provide. This was the law that was on the books from,

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I want to say it was 1792, until I want to say 1905. And it got amended along the way to change things like after the

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Civil War, blacks were included. And then in 1905, what they did is they took the militia, and they split it into two pieces, they split it into the organized militia, which was the

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National Guard, and the unorganized militia, which was basically everyone else. And that part is still there.

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So I've heard, you know, people in various states, for instance, from friends of mine in South Carolina that have said, you know, by law in that state,

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I think Virginia is also the same. You know, every eligible man is technically part of the militia.

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Yes, you know, whether they know it or not, they are, you know, congratulations, you know, you moved here, now you're part of the militia.

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And if the governor wanted to call upon them, he could do that. Yeah. He just read about this.

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Yeah. So it's interesting. In 1910, the governor and the legislature combined have the power to call up the militia.

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California is interesting because the governor can unilaterally, he just all by himself call up the militia. And if you have been called, and you don't show, that's desertion.

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Like that's literally what's written in the law. Wow. You can't not come. And most states have very similar laws that define, you know, this is the body of the unorganized militia, you can be called on, etc.

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And nobody uses it. And the law, I think most people don't even know the law is still there. But it is.

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And it just it harkens back to, you know, 6000 years of military history, the way

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America was founded. Yeah, so that's, that's all it is. So let me ask you kind of like a direct question that, you know,

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I think is on some people's minds right now. People who feel like their country is being stolen away in a sense that, you know, they, their concerns about election integrity being just one of those things, but of all the changes that are going to be taking place in the next few years, should you know, is it okay to join the militia?

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Number one, is it Christian? Because then I think you've already explained some of this, but is it okay to use force?

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And then, you know, number two, you know, is this sometimes seditious? Or is it wrong to be part of and I'm not talking about the militia that we're all part of, you know, as a member of a state, but you know, the these extra militias that are forming that, you know, are they don't trust maybe local law enforcement, etc.

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So could you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, so I have mixed feelings.

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So in America, in 1770s, their militia system was revived because of the encroachments of the crown.

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And individuals in communities banded together, and they, it appears from my research, they generally use a covenant to join themselves into a militia.

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But they were working, it appears, I can't say across the board, but it appears they were generally working with their local governments to create these militias.

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Or committees of correspondence that... Yeah, yeah. But but the local governments were involved as it appears as a general rule,

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I'm not going to say across the board. So that it wasn't, it wasn't anarchists or rebels in the sense that they wanted to throw off all order, you know, like the, the, some of the

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Antifa activists, they want to destroy the entire social order. They want to leave none of it and rebuild a new glorious communist type government, you know.

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So they weren't total revolutionaries in that sense. And the problem is when we look at biblical law, you have to trace authority for actions.

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So self -defense, individuals are granted the right of self -defense in biblical law.

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But if you want to go and use like magisterial force, like the civil government to execute people or wage war, you kind of need to be in that category of entity.

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And so I'm a little torn over the totally independent autonomous militias that are forming up that, that have no checks and balances.

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I get why the liberals call them like, you know, you know, warlords or whatever.

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Like they don't really use that term, but it's that same sort of concept. Like this is a totally autonomous, no checks and balances, no accountability.

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Like there's no reason, like, let's say America devolved into Somalia overnight, you know, and militias were the only organized force left that would,

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I have no reason to actually trust that those guys would handle themselves properly. They're not part of that system.

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And so this is where I do have a legit conflict because I hate the idea of the government having a total monopoly on violence and power.

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But at the same time, a lot of the militias that are organized are fraught with all kinds of problems because they're trying, with some of them, they're trying to give themselves powers that rightly belong to the civil magistrate, and they don't have.

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Now, if all they were doing is getting together to train and, you know, shoot together and stuff,

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I'd say more power to you. Awesome. You get, you know, train, get to know your neighbors, learn about medicine, learn about, you know, land nav and do all that stuff.

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So that's, that's kind of where I'm, where I'm at. So, so to be a little more, to be practical here, that was really good.

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I'm new to the whole, I mean, I shouldn't even say new. I'm not in a militia. I'm not in that world. I'm new to even really thinking in deep terms about it.

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But so there's two that I know of that are fairly close to where I live. One, and I don't even know if they're fully formed.

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I think they're, they've probably been the last couple of years, I'm assuming that they've even started to gain traction.

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But one, I think is maybe a little bit more what you're saying. I don't, you know, guy,

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I don't know, exactly. I think they're still trying to figure out kind of what they're going to do.

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And there's another one that's sort of associated with a county. And, and there's probably more that I'm just not even aware of.

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But what I've tried to impress upon, like the people who listen to this podcast is to think local, to try to act local, to be involved in local politics.

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And if they're using Dominion machines and stealing it all to form your own, like committee of correspondence equivalent, but because government comes from the consent of the government, in theory, in our context, then you want to make sure that your local community is in support of what you're doing.

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And that there's some legitimate kind of authority there. Because without that, then you are just pretty much a disorganized mob.

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And so, so that's kind of what I've encouraged is to try to, to let your local, you know, government know even what you're doing, if possible.

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And that way be a legitimate, you know, militia in that sense. And I'm not sure exactly where those lines are.

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And maybe they're blurry for a reason. But when when all else fails, like, and I think back to like, the war for independence, when you have illegitimate government, and you have, you know, these, like, if I was in Virginia, it's a royal colony, and the king is essentially, you know, making war on on the legislature and stuff.

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Yeah, then then you have to kind of scramble and form a legitimate government.

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So I guess my advice to people is to try to try to be as legitimate as possible, and local as possible.

24:00

And it sounds like you're saying some of the same kind of thing. And I have serious concerns, because when you read military history, and I've got a couple books over here, in case we need to turn to them, you know, a lot of these organizations that get created to fight against tyranny, or even a government they just don't like, end up going sideways and doing stuff that they never should have done in the first place and committing outright murder, maybe under the color of revolutionary law, but it's murder.

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And, and, you know, God is not a partisan in the sense that he, you know, turns a blind eye to, well,

24:34

Faction A did it, so it was bad, but Faction B did it, it's fine. No, God has one righteous standard that applies to everybody.

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And we all must comply with that, we almost must be obedient. And the prag, you know, the pragmatics of the situation don't really change what

24:49

God has allowed in terms of using lethal force. And he has allowed lethal force. But it's got to be done right.

24:58

You know, when governments, when governments enter into unjust wars, I would argue they're committing murder in that unjust war, just because their government doesn't justify it.

25:06

They have to follow the rules, we have to follow the rules, we object that they're not following the rules right now. We have to be ultra conscious of the rules and careful to obey them.

25:16

And that's good. Yeah, I've heard, I've heard some people saying like, oh, we need militias to go, you know, stop

25:21

Antifa from burning down their town. I was like, no, actually you don't. I love the idea of organization, but you can use your right of self -defense to defend your own property and your family.

25:32

There's nothing that prevents you from going to your neighbor's house or your neighbor's business, you know, your friend's business and saying, hey, would you like me to come and be at your business with you?

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Would you like me to bring a couple of my buddies from our neighborhood and we'll come and we'll be with you? There's nothing that stops them from using their

25:46

God -given right of self -defense to defend that location. Gotcha. So if you had, let's say, in theory, it's just a group of friends, organic, call it a militia if you want, but yeah, we just get together, we train and hey, if one of us is threatened, then we're going to go show up and help.

26:02

That's not bad. That's actually a really good thing. But if you're armed mercenaries that are completely autonomous and no accountability, that's bad.

26:12

That's probably going to be bad. Probably going to be really bad. So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't even call it a militia at that point, partly because it's just the word is so badly understood and misused.

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Also, there's other historic words that have been used. There's the concept of a training band.

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And like, it's an entity that's organized as I understand it for the purposes of training. And like, this was a big thing in England.

26:37

You know, they had their archery laws and stuff like that, that mandated the statute of Winchester, that mandated weapons ownership, the size of arms, 1285, 1185,

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I think it's 1285. It mandated arms ownership, like you should go read about these. The archery acts, they mandated owning bows and going out and practicing with them.

27:00

And I bet you almost every person has at some point heard portions of these laws quoted to them, because these laws included in them bans on sports on Sunday, like no soccer on Sunday.

27:12

That's a capital crime. And the reason that's there is these people should be training for war. Like this was part of the, they just hear the pure, you know, the puritanical, the government doesn't like fun.

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And I was like, no, they wanted people to be training for war. Like it gets misquoted. They were taken out of context.

27:27

But the point is they had these laws for people to go train, but they weren't a militia in the sense that they were a military entity organized to go do stuff.

27:35

They organized for the purposes of training. Understand? Yeah, I didn't,

27:40

I didn't know all that. So I got to ask you, this is just for my own curiosity. You live in Tennessee, Battle of Athens.

27:46

What do you think about that? You familiar? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, so, so go ahead.

27:51

Your viewers probably haven't heard about it. So 1946, a whole bunch of veterans come home from World War Two, come back to their little tiny rural town of Athens, Tennessee, and there's an election and there's an establishment cabal of a mayor and a sheriff that are both highly corrupt.

28:11

And the GIs put together a GI party. This was actually, as I understand it, kind of common around the

28:18

US to form these GI parties. It was a GI platform and these were all returned vets. And so they formed a party and stood for election.

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And the election night comes around and the establishment, the sheriff and the mayor, they started building up the sheriff's office in a huge way, just gathering like all the men they could get to deputize and form a little private army.

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And election night comes and they won't allow people to witness the vote.

28:48

They shoot a man in the back. And it was when they shot the man in the back and they seized all the votes that the

28:58

GIs and some of the other people basically besieged the jail because they took the ballots back to the jail and they were holding them there.

29:06

And the GIs raided the local armory and they got all the guns and they surrounded it and it was a firefight of sorts.

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Interestingly, I don't think anybody died, but the siege ended when they threw dynamite at the front of the jail and blew up the deck or something.

29:24

And the sheriff's office at that point, they surrendered. The GIs went in, they recovered the ballots and they counted them.

29:34

Ultimately, the sheriff and the mayor lost. The Tennessee government did not send in troops to shut this thing down.

29:44

Once the shooting part was over and the ballots were captured, there was no further violence. The guns that were seized from the armory were returned.

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And basically, as I understand it, the governor of Tennessee didn't want to send in the National Guard because they would probably sympathize with the

30:01

GIs. That's the last instance, that's the last really clear instance of armed resistance to tyranny in the

30:12

U .S. And I would argue that that was at least mostly justified.

30:20

If all they had done was seized the ballots, I would have been opposed to using lethal force.

30:28

I would argue that there's other recourses that can be made use of to pursue that. But the part where they were using, the government was now unjustly using lethal force on people that were no threat at all.

30:39

Right. That's where it arguably crossed the line and they were just. No one ever got prosecuted for that.

30:45

It just happened and became a footnote in American history. So yeah,

30:51

Battle of Athens, most people don't know about it. And everybody sort of an application of authority at that point that this was a government that was not actually following the law of God and they were doing the opposite of what their job was.

31:07

Yes. This is one of the things I had said, and I don't know why I didn't hear more conservative radio hosts, et cetera, saying this, but during this whole ordeal we just had with these various swing states and the ballot issue and stuff, why weren't local sheriffs getting involved with this?

31:21

Why weren't local governments trying to go, hey, we know where the ballots are, let's go seize the machines.

31:28

There was really none of that. And I don't know if that's because Christians and Americans in general have now bought into this modern state assumption that everything, all decisions must be made from DC, but that's not true.

31:42

It's not true. And even at the local level, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't get run that way.

31:49

And so I'm confused. I've done, I don't know, a dozen hours of research trying to research this whole election thing.

31:57

And I'm honestly still confused by a number of things. I think there's a huge amount of disinformation on the part of the left.

32:07

And I think there's a good portion of confusion on the part of the right, that I'm just, when

32:14

I try to research something, I try to go back to original sources and read not like military history, like I'm a military historian or an amateur one.

32:24

And you got to understand when people try to repeat what happened, they often do a bad job of it.

32:31

Most military history books are garbage and are full of mistakes and problems.

32:37

And I don't just mean they have a slant. I mean, the guys are doing a bad job of logically taking the facts that are available and articulating them in the book.

32:46

And I see a lot of that going on right now, the left does it, the right does it. I just,

32:52

I yearn for a time when people value truth and they don't want to violate, you know, thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.

33:01

Because there's so much of that going on on both sides right now. That's my take. Let me switch gears and ask you just a very practical question here.

33:09

So someone listening, hopefully at the very least, they're starting to realize two things.

33:15

They have a responsibility to be involved with their local community and government. And number two, they need to think through the whether or not they could in defense, take that shot.

33:26

And those are those are really good things to start thinking about. Now, if they've jumped through those hoops, and they say,

33:32

All right, you know, I need to go invest in some gear, I'm not, you know, involved with any of this, give me give me some give me like a rifle, a handgun, whatever gear you recommend for someone just starting out with shooting.

33:47

Sure. So I've been into into shooting and guns and stuff for a long time.

33:54

But we do have people that like they, they're totally brand new to this, and they need to be spun up.

34:00

Okay, the first thing that I think people should understand is, you're not buying a magic talisman.

34:07

Jeff Cooper had a great quote, he's like, you know, a man is no more a musician, because he owns a piano that he's ready to fight because he owns a gun.

34:15

Right? It's the exact same thing. Like you can't just buy a gun and be done. There's a lot of training that goes with that.

34:22

This is why they, you know, in England, they have these training bands and why they had mandated training. This is why the

34:27

Militia Act required two annual musters. There's going to be ongoing costs with this.

34:34

If you think this is I'm going to make one or two purchases, and I'm done for my life. You're wrong, you're not really building any capability.

34:42

The United States government spends about two and a half percent of our GDP on defense.

34:48

And I would suggest that people should think about spending something like that, their family

34:53

GDP. So you know, if they make, you know, $50 ,000 a year, they should plan to spend, you know, 1200 bucks every year on their defense.

35:05

So with that understanding, like this is not cheap, you're not going to go spend 200 bucks and be done.

35:11

I would say the best rifle in America right now is probably in the world, the best rifle in the world is the

35:18

AR -15 platform that Eugene Stoner developed in the 1960s. It's had more development on it than any other weapons platform in the world.

35:28

The refinements that have been made to it are just phenomenal. The price point that it's at now is equally, when

35:36

I say price point now, not counting the surge in demand, what you can get for like 800 bucks, 600 bucks, even 400 bucks is amazing.

35:46

You just can't beat that with any other platform, in my opinion. And as a company, we own

35:52

SCARs and, you know, all kinds of exotic firearms. And you know, we have a belt bed saw and, you know, we have all kinds of stuff.

36:00

And I'm telling you, you know, that's just that is the platform. The AK is also cool, has a lot of development time on it.

36:10

But it, I don't think it can stand a chance against the technical features, modularity, reliability of the

36:17

AR -15 platform, one that's good quality and properly built out. For handguns, I think you can kind of go with, you know, a

36:26

Glock, a Smith & Wesson, a SIG, an HK, an FN, a

36:31

CZ, you know, these are all reputable brands that mostly produce really high quality guns. And you should be happy with that.

36:40

I would, I would strongly caution first time buyers away from revolvers and shotguns.

36:47

Interesting. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They get pushed as a like, these are easy guns for novices to use, you know, they're, they're low tech.

36:55

I reject that notion completely. You know, a revolver, a five shot revolver, you know, the most common concealed carry revolver that you could buy will hold five shots.

37:04

And you know, to reload that you need to push the open the latch to open the cylinder, then you need to dump the cart the spent brass, then you need to load five shots either individually, or maybe you have a speed loader, or maybe you have a speed strip that can do a couple rounds at a time.

37:22

But there's a lot of operations there to get that thing back up and running. Whereas, you know, a semi auto, drop the magazine, put in a new magazine, drop the slide, you're done.

37:32

In one, basically gross motor skill, you put in 15 new bullets, 17 new bullets, and you're ready to go.

37:39

Similarly, the shotgun, every action, if it's a pump shotgun, it holds five rounds, most typically tons of recoil, it's a huge gun.

37:50

Between every shot, you have to manually function and you have to pump that slide. You know, if you short stroke it, you can actually induce a malfunction.

37:59

I would just you know, like my wife, she does not like shotguns. But she's fine shooting an

38:05

AR. Neither does mine. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say, you know what, there's all these good semi auto handguns out there.

38:11

We have the world's best semi automatic rifle in America. The choices are pretty simple.

38:19

And then from that point, the next logical question is like, do I accessorize these or you know, whatever.

38:24

And, and if you don't know what you're doing, I would I would tell people

38:29

No, don't, don't spend a lot of time on accessories. You know, I've seen so many novices buy a gun, and they just, they encrust it with all these improvements.

38:39

And words. I'm not going to say I'm wise here, but a word from the wise.

38:45

Those are not improvements. You're just encrusting your gun with weight, and things that will snag and stuff like that.

38:53

You know, a red dot on a rifle and a weapon light and a sling are all you need. You don't need a bunch of other tactical furniture or whatever.

39:01

Sure. Yeah. And you should you should avoid making upgrades.

39:08

Other than those, unless you really know what you're doing, and you have a really good reason for it. But as a general rule, a lot, and I was there when

39:15

I was a novice shooter. You know, I didn't shoot as well as I as I wanted to.

39:21

And so I blamed my gear. I was like, Oh, I just I have this big fat grouping of holes in my target.

39:28

And it's not even on the bullseye. It's the sights, it's got to be the sights, like not the sights, totally not the sights like I have here.

39:38

You know, I have here this ancient Glock, I think I paid 300 bucks for this.

39:43

You know, it's got sites that are worn out and dented. And dang, this is an ex law enforcement gun. I've hit steel 100 yards with this.

39:50

It took a number of shots because the sites were mechanically off, but it's capable of doing it. A lot of people blame their gear when honestly, they are the problem they need to they need to put more time in at the range.

40:04

All right, how much time how much time for a week or month? So that's hard to give an answer on, but I'll give some some context.

40:14

So the average cop shoots 50 to 250 rounds a year, not counting SWAT, that's a little different.

40:20

And that is not enough, I would argue, not remotely. Federal law enforcement shoots 1000 rounds a year, basically, they shoot 250 rounds once a quarter.

40:32

And that's training and quals all in one. And federal le is, my understanding, decent and respectable.

40:42

Competition shooters will shoot 1000s and 1000s of rounds a year up to like 50 ,000 60 70 ,000 rounds a year.

40:50

Most people can't do that. But I would suggest that you should be thinking in terms of I need to burn about 1000 rounds a year.

40:57

Now that's really hard right now because ammo is really, really hard to get. So you can you can offset that by spending time doing dry fire.

41:06

I have a this is a laser pistol. So it shoots a green laser.

41:15

Interesting. This thing. I mean, this is the best gun money I ever spent. Now it's expensive. I think

41:20

I paid like 350 bucks for it. That's like a gun. Yeah. But I've given myself

41:25

RSI and my trigger finger using this thing. Um, I've had it for like, eight years.

41:34

You just see where you go to the range and you see where it lines up and that's it? Or Yeah, so like, so like,

41:41

I'm going to shoot the corner. You know, I practice. I practice all my fundamentals. I get my grip. I make my grip

41:47

I present. I line my sights and put my finger on the trigger. I break the shot. You know, I reset back to wherever I'm going to be.

41:54

And I and you can do this. Because it's safe. You can do it indoors. What I like to do is

41:59

I like to go running with this. We live way out rural, I can go running, I never see anybody. And I'll run and I will shoot trees with it as I go.

42:07

Interesting. Yeah. And, and there's debates over whether laser trainers are any good.

42:13

But my opinion, having put a lot of time on them is this is the way to go. And the cool thing is, you know, you buy once, yes, it's expensive.

42:20

But this is less than 1000 rounds of nine mil right now. And I can put in some good time on it and give it to my wife, she can put in some good time on it.

42:29

It's not scary, because there's no way you can have a bad accident with it. And you can discover like, yeah,

42:34

I can hit what I want. You know, I can put that laser right where I want it every time. Well, practically every time or, oh,

42:40

I flubbed that one. I missed. Why did I miss? Okay. This is what I did wrong. corrective action.

42:47

So there's a lot of ways you can get good without spending time at the range. airsoft is another one, most airsoft pistols are accurate enough that you could practice some rough marksmanship stuff or speed stuff, you know, transitioning from target

43:01

A to target B. And it would work. I have an airsoft pistol, it fits perfectly in one of our holsters, because it's like a carbon copy of the real gun.

43:11

And you can you can practice with that. So awesome. The main thing is you're gonna need to put time in just like someone playing piano puts time and you know, it's less complicated than the piano.

43:22

It's about as complicated as learning to drive a car. You know, everybody that's ever learned how to drive knows that initially, they're uncomfortable and awkward, and they don't know where the buttons are.

43:32

And it's a mess. But after they've been driving for a year or so, they've smoothed out a lot.

43:38

Everything is is, you know, you don't even have to think about you know, dropping the mag, you know, racking the slide or whatever.

43:43

It's just natural. The batteries fit in that? Or is that just a fake magazine? magazine with with just lead weights in it?

43:50

Oh, gotcha. And then battery is up here. You have to replace the battery every couple years, because you know, when you fire it, you're just pulsing a laser for a moment.

44:00

And it uses barely any power. But you know, the goal is to become totally natural with the gun.

44:05

You know, you don't even have to think about it. You never violate any safety rules. You know, the biggest safety rule is finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot, you know, you pick up a gun, your finger just automatically goes there.

44:15

It doesn't touch the trigger until you're coming up on your sights, you know. So safety 100 % natural, no thought needed.

44:24

You know, weapon functions, totally natural, no thought needed. You can get there. But it'll take hours of training and practice and like driving.

44:33

But that's excellent. Let me let you plug your business here. So you built up T -Rex arms.

44:38

And you know, what kinds of things do you specialize in? And you know, what are your best selling products, that kind of thing.

44:44

So we started off as a holster company. We make kydex holsters, I'm going to show you a magazine carrier.

44:51

So this is a plastic magazine carrier made with a CNC machine. kydex is what's called a thermal plastic, it comes in sheets, you heat it up, it becomes very pliable, like American cheese.

45:02

And at that point, you can you can form it into shapes, complex shapes. And when it cools, it holds that shape. It's great for low volume manufacture, you know, whereas injection molding, you know, like, if you go buy a mold to injection mold apart, 10 grand minimum 2050, even 100 for more large complex parts.

45:20

But you know that tooling to make this is not as expensive. That's why it's wonderful for holsters, because there's so many different guns, there's no way to injection mold all those parts.

45:29

But this just holds a magazine, you know, I carry this on my belt, I carry a Glock on the other side,

45:34

I carry this on this side. So we started off making holsters. And then a few years ago, we started reselling other products, weapon lights, red dots for rifles, other firearm accessories, no firearms, just accessories.

45:52

We didn't feel the need to sell firearms, because there's so many good companies out there already doing that.

45:58

And the margins are thin. It's hard to compete there. But basically, we push accessories.

46:05

And what the way that started was we were doing all these holsters. We had a large social media presence. We do a lot of shooting or more specifically, my brother

46:13

Luke does a lot of shooting. He's one of those guys that will shoot 50 to 70 ,000 rounds a year. He will train special American special forces.

46:24

He's done a number of training gigs for them where they bring him in not as a combat guy, but as a performance shooter guy.

46:29

He knows how to run a handgun like they can't. And so they recognize his skill in this one area, and they bring him in to supplement their training for this one area.

46:41

Because a lot of them are do have been or were doing low viz work overseas. They're carrying a handgun, not a rifle.

46:48

It's concealed, not in a big duty holster. And so a lot of what we've geared our business around, they want to benefit from.

46:57

So I don't get to shoot as much. But anyway, we had all this social media, people saw it, and they started asking, what do you run? What do you put on your your rifle?

47:04

Oh, we like this red dot. Well, then they go buy that red dot from someone else. And at some point, we just realized, we're doing all this advertising for these products, because people see them and we love them.

47:13

Let's just start selling what we love. You know, if we think it's the best product on the market, let's just sell it. So that's where it started.

47:19

That's where it's kind of developed. We've added more products on. Awesome. Well, I'm gonna be looking at your website, then

47:26

I because I actually have to get some holsters for my wife and myself. So I'll check out why T -Rex out of curiosity, just like T -Rex name?

47:34

Yeah, Jurassic Park fan or? No, well, so it's kind of a joke. I figured it firearms industry.

47:42

So there's all these companies are like dynamic arms and first tactical arms, whatever. Yeah, they're very, they have a lexicon of about 20 words.

47:51

And they just jumble them up to make a company name. And so they're highly forgettable. Because you hear one you're like, wait, is that dynamic response?

47:58

Or tactical dynamics? Like I can't I can't remember because so T -Rex arms is kind of a joke because it's got that arms word in it.

48:08

T -Rex arms are small, very small. Yeah. We specialize in small arms. That's the joke.

48:13

Okay, no, that's good. That's good. I like it. Hey, I appreciate it very much. I think this is for my audience and hearing someone who's a

48:22

Christian, I think you correct me if I'm wrong. I think the person who introduced us said you were also you were a homeschooler, your family was and you kind of started this.

48:30

I don't know in your I don't know if it was your teens or 20s. But you kind of you were you were young when you started doing this.

48:36

Yeah. So which is an inspirational thing. My younger brother was 20. So he got he started the company,

48:43

Lucas started the company. And I came on very shortly after that. I've been counting, you know, talking to him and advising him.

48:49

I was into guns before he was and got him started. But he started the company. He's he's way more of a go getter than I am.

48:57

Just a super driven guy. And also, that's kind of where it started. But yeah, we were all homeschooled 100%.

49:04

I've got four kids. My wife is homeschooling them. I would say we're homeschooling them.

49:09

But that's not really representative of what's going on for sure. homeschooling them. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

49:17

That's great. That's inspirational. I think to the people listening, very helpful. You know, both topics that we discussed and if you want to support, you know,

49:25

David's business and his brother, you can go to T -Rex arms, T -Rex dash arms .com

49:32

or, you know, Google it. As you said, I duck duck go things now used to Google like duck duck, go it and come up.

49:40

So yeah, no, I'm with you. I if I had this one parting thing to say to people, a lot of people overthink the gun thing when they get into it.

49:49

Well, they either underthink it. They're like, I bought a gun, I'm done, or they overthink it. You know, violence is nothing new.

49:58

It's been going on for about 6000 years. You know, if you if you Yeah, it's been going on for about 6000 years.

50:06

I'm with you. And, you know, the technology has changed, but it's it's really not that complicated.

50:15

There's a lot of stuff that within it that is complicated, but don't overthink it. You know, ideally, you get a good couple guns, you set aside the money to start training once ammo comes available.

50:27

Get to know that gun, you know, whatever guns you buy, get get to know them intimately, like be able to you should be able to do every single thing on that gun blindfolded, not because you are going to want to do it blindfolded, but because you want to know it that intimately.

50:39

And if you ever need to use it in the dark, you need to be able to in the pitch dark without any light assist, be able to make that gun do whatever it is you want it to do.

50:50

So you know, if you start there, and you just work and you build up, you've got a good platform to start with.

50:56

Like I'd say, I'd agree with you that you need to get with your neighbors, get to know your neighbors, talk to them.

51:04

I think that that's that's what we need to be working on. Awesome. All right. Well, God bless. Thank you so much.