The striker
bear with me. Doing it a little bit
backwards.
Nice.
Gungo thing.
And we are
we're we're go.
Welcome everybody to to this
episode. This one's gonna be a little bit
different. We we are recording this one instead
of going live because we're gonna be touching
stuff in YouTube.
Doesn't like all that stuff while you're doing
the live, so we're we're recording it.
So if you're adding comments, we may or
may not respond to it like we normally
do.
But at any rate, we have a
a
a special guest,
for special on many levels. And
an actual gunmaker.
An actual gunmaker.
And this conversation, we we wanted to have
with an actual gunmaker, somebody who designed a
gun,
a long time ago, brought it to market,
what is it now, two years ago when
it actually hits the market.
Yeah. One and a half, two and a
half years. The gun's been on the market.
Yeah. How long has it been in, in
in product or not production, but in design?
Well, we were shooting
prototypes
in 02/2014.
So, you know, it was it was the
original discussion about, hey. It'd be fun if
we started a gun company. Rob, you could
design a gun.
That conversation
happened
in March
2013.
Okay.
And then within a year and a half,
we were shooting a prototype,
and then it, you know, for various reasons,
took almost another decade to get it to
market.
Yeah. We we've been seeing a lot of
people on the YouTubes and the internets talking
about the p three twenty. I, unfortunately, jumped
on the bag when bandwagon to yell at
people because I have a
a a thing about why the p three
twenty is is the way it is. We
can talk about it later.
But none of these people
have designed a gun, made a gun, worked
with the engineers directly to to make the
gun. So I think this this is the
the awesomeness of this conversation is to have
somebody who knows what the fuck they're talking
about. And one of the things that I
I I I respect it always seems like
we're kissing your ass, dude.
But one of the things that I highly
respect about
about Rob Pique is is that
he actually does the homework before he says
the words. Well, 99% of the time, you
do that.
And there's a lot of there's a lot
of knowledge and a lot of reading up
on like, if you have a question about
why the tap safety exists,
Pincus knows the guy that designed the tap
safety probably, and he's got them on text.
It usually goes like that. Oh, let me
text the guy right now. Let me text
the guy. Yeah.
That guy's a little that guy's too old
for text. But
Send him a fax?
Yeah. Fax Fax him. Fax him in his
car though because he made a lot of
money.
Yeah.
And so
at any rate, we wanna have this conversation
about, handgun engineering and the this whole idea
of of a smooth trigger press or any
other dumb shit,
that the doucher brings
out when it comes to a handgun for
self defense. And and and I do wanna
focus more on handguns for self defense. And
I think
too many humans forget that we're we're talking
about handguns that were
catered or at least marketed to the self
defense market that maybe shouldn't be marketed to
the self defense market like the p three
twenty.
Yeah. I I think that's a big part
of it. Right? That
and I you know, I've said this a
lot, especially recently,
but I've said it since the gun came
out. You know? It it the trigger
has always
see, in any version seem to me to
have too short a length of pull, and
I see no reason why it it doesn't
have a tab safety, which is common practice.
I'm not even crazy about the hinge version
of the tab safety that the m and
p's use. Like, I just
since Glock introduced that,
since we understand, especially when you have a
a striker fired gun that is, has a
striker that is held in significant amount of
rearward tension when everything's at rest waiting for
somebody to pull the trigger,
like, three twenty obviously is,
then I I I feel like it should
be obvious that you wanna tab safety on
there. And,
there was an incident.
Let's just jump right into it if I
with you with my three twenty thoughts. Yeah.
Go ahead. Incident shortly after the three twenty
came out, you know, I'm guessing it's like
a decade ago. I think Fence has been
out for eleven years now maybe.
One of the guys,
not not James Jaeger, but one of his
guys from tactical response was at a range,
I believe it was Sacramento.
And they had a they did a thing
where
for what I don't I don't pretend to
understand all the nuances about it. I back
in the day, I think I talked to
James about it. He explained it. I didn't
think it was a great idea, but I
I sort of understand their rationale. And what
they would do is they would take a
gun, take a take a Glock,
and they would,
have it chambered, apparently,
was the common practice, drop it on the
ground and like stomp on the gun and
kinda grind it into the ground a little
bit to show that you you have to
be willful, I think was the idea. You
have to willfully, like, pull the trigger. Like,
the gun just not gonna go bang.
And one of his guys apparently unfamiliar with
the three twenty
tried that demo in a gravel or dirt
parking lot in, outside of this range in
California
and stomped on the gun and and kicked
it ground on it whatever he did. But
in that little bit of twisting motion that
ostensibly this guy had done or seen done
repeatedly with a Glock with the three twenty,
a round went into somebody's car. That's I
remember that. And and so yeah. And they
were, you know, oh, they're banned from there.
And it's it was another one of those,
like, James' reckless things. And,
there are some things that James has done
that I was
that I would defend forever and just say
that's I don't do it, but I I
would defend it. That's not one I would
defend, but I under I understand why they
did it
and disagree with it. But with the three
twenty, it doesn't work. And one of the
reasons it doesn't work is and that wasn't
a drop safe issue. That was a crisp
relatively short length of pull, the length from
front to back from when you start engaging
the trigger until the gun goes bang,
and relatively light,
trigger press. And I think the distance is
far more important,
the crispness or the shortness of the travel
is far more important than the weight. And
I think a lot of people have found
that historically now that the three twenty even
through all its iterations and certainly,
there's definitely more weight to the break now,
apparently, the guns that are coming out nowadays,
and I don't have a current model with
me, but, like, the military guns. The break
is is at a higher level, maybe five,
six pounds, but
it's still a very short distance of travel.
And that is one thing that I think
hugely contributes to these incidents, and it takes
away a really easy plausible deniability thing that
SIG could say as well. It takes a
certain amount of travel to set the gun
off, and there's this little tab that if
you're not actually engaging fully on the front
of the trigger or something isn't engaging fully
on the front of trigger, then the trigger
can't move. Because I don't
think they're wrong to be saying that
to the best of their knowledge and to
their understanding, the gun won't go bang unless
the trigger is moved rearward. I just think
the the asterisk on that should be,
but it doesn't have to move much, and
it's pretty easy to move it. So was
Oh. Oh. Go ahead. I was gonna say,
was the purpose of that demonstration at tactical
response to to talk about carrying around in
the chamber on a striker fired gun, and
why I don't remember. Yeah. Like I said,
I I probably knew the details, you know,
eight, ten years ago, but I I don't
remember exactly what the what the thing was.
But it was something to that point that
these guns don't just go bang. You have
to willfully do it, like and it made
it might even have been, like, you know,
in my classes, I talk about dropping the
gun. Right? Like if fire ants are crawling
up your leg and you get hot brass
in your glasses or something and you just
can't safely control the gun, you gotta do
something with your body, just drop the gun.
And I tell people all the time, no.
I don't throw a gun down that got
a round chambered it just to make the
point. Right? But I but I tell people
all the time, like, if you haven't done
something to your gun to make it not
drop safe, then we're gonna move forward as
if all these modern guns in the class
are drop safe if we know them and
believe them to be so, which is why
I initially banned all of the non
updated,
with which, again, another problem with the three
twenty, the non upgraded guns, from the original
batches,
which I think that was the first indication
that SIG was not going to,
you know, handle the three twenty
the way I think a lot of other
gun companies would have when they didn't do
a mandatory recall on that original three twenty
problem, the drop the 45 degree drop angle
problem.
They had this trigger that that is now
the one that ships with it ready to
go, so they obviously knew
that, you know, you could make the trigger
more robust, let's say. And in that initial
batch, they chose, and this has been my
statement on it, I believe they chose to
market a target style gun with a target
shooting style trigger
to the market and ultimately to the military
and law enforcement as a duty or carry
type
home defense type firearm. And I think that
was a huge mistake, and I think it
continues to be a mistake. And I think
it's it's now, you know, definitely biting them
in the ass, to have chased
range performance type trigger
performance,
in in what ostensibly is being sold as
a duty or carry gun.
This was this was my my video that
I just did when I jumped on the
bag bandwagon to talk shit about the p
three twenty. I've always talked shit about the
SIG p three twenties.
It's just not a gun that that that
I was a a huge fan of for
a variety of reasons.
But my my complaint was
it's it's kinda with SIG and gun manufacturers,
but it's also the market. Right? Like, the
the market thinks they know what they want.
And, unfortunately, a lot of gun company gun
companies will just market to them. This is
how we ended up with subcompact firearms,
the forty twos and the forty threes. And
then all of a sudden,
we realized as a market, oh, shit. These
guns are not as awesome as we think
they are. And then now we're back to
the p three sixty five x macro. And
now they got back to,
the Glock 48 sizes and and Yeah. And
the fuse, I think, is out there now
is kind of the evolution. The three sixty
five fuse is basically a, you know, a
19 plus size gun.
Yeah. So it it it's the market saying,
on Reddit, we want these guns, and then
the gun manufacturers see it, and they're like,
well, shit. Let's make money. And and I
get it from a from a business business
perspective, but
it it's we we see that a lot.
People wanting
shit that they don't know about.
And then There's a cart there's a cart
and a horse thing there for sure. Yeah.
You know, look at look at what's happened
with twenty elevens. But, you know, double stack
nineteen elevens all of a sudden over the
last five years have become
super cool again.
Yeah. And and people were carrying. People are
showing up to the range with them. I
had somebody show up to a class last
week in New Mexico with one and, you
know, he had malfunctions
two minutes in, you know, and and it
was, like, shock shocking. The 1911 style gun
is the one that has the malfunctions.
And they were they had a big problem
with people finding out they were essentially series
seventies for people who know nineteen elevens. They
were an older version of a trigger style,
that was not drop safe,
and and they got into a lot of
heat for that. So now they're making them
drop safe.
But I think I think what part of
the problem and maybe this is where I
fall, like, the responsibilities on me as a
manufacturer
to put a gun out there that is
what it should be,
not,
you know, kinda give the people what they
want, so to speak. It's about educating the
consumers that that they get the best version
of what they want, you know, or maybe
the most practical version of what they want,
balancing out all the various balances that have
to go into a carry gun.
When
when it now I'm not making a lot
of money.
Right? Like Yeah. You know, so let's let's
be honest about that. Right? I mean, to
some extent, even these companies that are that
are
you know, people like, I I I kinda
half jokingly
really to push back on the America first.
Right? For years, I've I've taken shit for
having a
driving a Toyota. Right? And and it's like
because for years, I did. My FJ was
my primary vehicle for a long time, then
a four Runner.
It's kinda gone away because I I drive
other cars. I drove German cars, my primary
cars for a while. And,
I would always respond like, hey, when you
have an American made phone and computer you
can respond and criticize me from, let me
know.
You know?
And and then then it's like you could
go down the path of what most of
the Toyota is made in US or the
BMW x six is made in The US
at German or at BMW's largest factory on
the planet. You know, even though they were
German automaker.
So there are Americans being employed to do
it all. But then, ultimately, if you're really
gonna be this MAGA America first
guy,
why
do we have, like, the handgun market in
America
dominated
by people who are screaming America first
and MAGA and whatever else dominated by European
companies. They're like, well, they're in New Hampshire.
That money goes to Europe. And and, you
know, I've worked with a lot of these
companies, not SICK in particular, but but the
orders come from Europe too. And, you know,
the the the policies come from Europe, and
the approvals come from Europe, and the budgets
get set in Europe, and the money flows
back to Europe. And that's with SIG, and
that's with Glock, and that's with with, you
know, that you you know, all the companies
that are there. And now, like, I do
a lot of work with Canik now. Right?
Canik's a Turkish company. I caught caught flack
for a video I put up yesterday using
a Canik because he was like, I don't
use guns from Islamist nations that hate The
US.
And I was like,
what? Do you use Caracol? Like, I don't
know. Like, Islamic nations that like The US,
The Emirates? I don't I don't know. You
know, but that guy probably carries a Glock.
Right? And Yeah. Or, you know, well, that's
okay because it's made in Georgia.
Even though the money flows back to Austria.
So it's it's really
to me, there's a lot of
confusion in the marketplace
when people say this is what I like.
And you ask them why,
and they hit a wall that that runs
into a logic, you know, block real quick.
They they they say they want a gun
that's good for defense,
but they use metrics of range performance.
Correct. Right? And that's and that's the trigger.
That's the sites. That's the the you gotta
have a red dot if you're if you
wanna be able to protect yourself. You know,
red dots that didn't exist ten years ago.
Right? Forget about twenty years ago, thirty years
ago, the way they do now. I wonder
how they defended themselves in the nineties without
the red dots and Yeah. Urban So it's
it's,
you know, you gotta have 52 rounds. If
you don't carry 52 rounds, you know, or
whatever made up number,
Even even one of the organizations that normally
doesn't go so over the top put up
a weird video the other day, and it
was, like, a flash mob of looters,
like, with bags and masks going to rob
a store. And apparently, the the the scene
is out in the street, and they all
pull up and they all run-in, and then
the store owner apparently fires a shot, waves
a gun. The whole mob runs away, but
the lesson's supposed to be if you're not
prepared to shoot 52 people,
you're not ready. And it's like Yeah. Dude
wave the gun around and take a shot
maybe in the ground, and they all ran
away. Like so I don't know. There was
a lot of influencers and and companies making
that same point on that video.
Yeah. Completely missing the point of,
you know, one round did it. Now you
could say, like, well, what if it didn't?
Point to an example where something like that
escalated to the point where somebody did need
to take out all of those people. And,
again, even if you if you found one.
Right? It's like show me the show me
a video of somebody responding to an ambush
in the weaver position double tapping. Mhmm. Like,
even after officers were trained for, you know,
many, many years, some of them over a
decade practicing doing that all the time, they
don't do it. Once dash cameras started coming
out, you know. And and in '97, I
was looked at as really I was, you
know, told I was a dumb upstart kid
trying to be different just to be different
for saying standing sideways and double tapping is
stupid.
But,
you know, I don't see a lot of
people doing that in in 2025.
That aged well.
I think smooth
long trigger presses,
in the four to six pound range for
defensive carry, I think that'll age well too.
And I honestly, like, one of the benefits
of this conversation about the three twenty might
be that we get to it. Now, unfortunately,
we're already seeing the over correction now. Right?
You got people like, yeah. The Beretta p
x four storm is the best defensive gun
ever.
You don't because look at three twenties. They'll
kill you. Double action, single actions, where it's
at, bro.
And it's like they're wearing basket weave shoes,
you know,
pushing their sleeves up. You got the dippity
doo. Like, I don't know what's going on
with Checking their pagers. Eighties eighties retro
fax me in my car.
So so let's talk a little bit about,
the necessity of the
or or lack of necessity of a competition
trigger in a self defense
context from the point of view of that
kinesthetic and and,
how the body reacts to the stress and
what's important in that moment.
Well, what I look at is the numbers.
Right? Like, go to
you know, I say it all the time.
Like, Tom Gibbons at Rangemaster, he has the
best dataset, you know, the most objective dataset
that we're aware of as far as actual
defensive handgun uses.
But even if you look at broader
anecdotal stuff, just the videos we see all
the time, the dash camera videos. If you
go to law enforcement and look at their
numbers, what you usually need to do, and
by usually I mean, like, 85 plus percent
of the time, is hit a chest size
target. Well, usually, it's what you see in
that video is you shoot at the bad
guy and they run away. So take all
of those, which is the vast majority, like,
as soon as the good guy starts making
bang bang sounds, the bad guys all run
away. Take that out of the equation. The
bad guys that actually need to be shot,
right, that need a physical stop, which is
what we train for, what we carry for,
you're talking about multiple rounds multiple rounds delivered
quickly
into the high center chest. Right? Like like,
hit the torso
a a couple few times quickly,
and that seems to be what is required
to physically stop a threat when threats need
to be physically stopped. So
that is not and and at distances of
nine to 15 feet. Right? Around cars, from
a from the corner of a room to
a door, in a convenience store, from the
doorway to the counter, from the counter to
the last end of the aisle, you know,
that those kinds of distances. So
around a gas pump,
when
you're
shooting at those distances at an eight inch
circle or a 10 by eight square or
something,
it's just not that challenging. Right? It's not
the kind of thing you need a a
$2,000
SIG p two ten for. You don't need
a CZ shadow. You don't need a alien,
you know, Lugo or whatever that one's called
with the crazy awesome trigger from Czech Republic.
Like, you don't need those. No. You don't
need the the staccato.
You don't need,
anything
other than a relatively decent trigger press and
a good
kinesthetic extension. You need to have the gun
aligned, you know, out in front of your
eyes. You're gonna be looking at the threat.
Obviously, it's got your attention. If you have
a good platform behind the gun and and
just a relatively smooth trigger press, you're not
gonna be able to pull that gun to
so far that you're deviating off of that
chest. Now, what if you have to take
a headshot? What if you have to shoot
at 50 yards?
Yes. Those things could happen,
and we see people doing that with snub
nose revolvers, you know. Go go look at
the Internet. I'm not just talking about Jerry
Mitchell. Right? I'm talking about anybody that if
they carry a snub nose revolver and they
take one of the snub nose revolver
classes that are offered by guys like Claude
Werner and things. You know, you're you're gonna
you're gonna develop that skill. Double action, single
action, same thing. You're gonna learn to press
through that long, heavy, double action first shot.
So if we if we cut that in
half,
if we keep most of the distance of
a double action trigger, but we cut the
weight in half or or even more in
some cases, and we go down to that
five pound ish trigger,
that's moving
relatively
far compared to a 1911,
but not as far as a double action
revolver, you end up, I think, in what
is the sweet spot for defensive accuracy. You
know? And and that's really what it comes
down to for me is what is most
likely to be required?
What can be justified in terms of shooting
to defend yourself or others? And you're not
talking about headshots at a 100 yards.
Yeah. So one of the things that you
see a lot with the nineteen eleven on,
YouTube is when people wanna do their old
b roll, they're showing,
how incredibly fast they can shoot with the
nineteen eleven.
From a defensive point of view,
is there any value or trade off in
being able to
let's just ballpark double the speed of your
shooting based strictly on on the short distance
of the trigger press and the and the
relatively light trigger press. Well, I I didn't
I think it's a flawed premise, honestly, Isaac,
because in in my experience watching people shoot
at all levels. Right?
I don't know there there there aren't very
many students. I mean, like, less than 15
it's like 15% of the students that I
have on the line that can't shoot
reliably four to five shots per second into
the high center chest with a modern striker
fired gun. Right? If you so how much
faster
is that average person at the end of
their first day of training going to be
with a single action trigger?
And maybe they're gonna get to six shots
per second,
but six shots per second is still pretty
darn fast. Now now you're getting you get
beyond that. Now you're getting into trick shooting.
Right? You're getting into, like, Jerry Mitchell stuff.
Right? You can find guys who can shoot
six, seven shots per second out of 19
elevens pretty regularly into the high center chest
out of there 12 to 15 feet. But
those guys are also gonna be able to
shoot maybe one less shot per second with
any normal modern striker fired gun. Right? So
Yeah. Where do you lose? You ask about
the balances. Right? The trade offs are the
manual safety.
So for for the for the people that
I see that might go from four shots
to approaching six shots per second after they
reach extension,
but they flub turning the safety offer on
at the wrong time, and maybe they're getting
zero shots per second because their safety is
still on, that's a big problem. So we
wanna take that completely out of the equation.
You know? And, again, look at the numbers.
Right? The numbers say,
almost every time, good guy starts shooting at
the bad guy, hits or not, bad guy
retires.
So so engaging a target across your bedroom,
around your car, in that retail environment, in
that restaurant, in your workplace,
being able to put four or five shots
per second into the high center chest,
which is something, like I said, one day
of training, proper training, really focusing on developing
a good rhythm, balance of speed and precision.
I think just about anybody can do with
a modern striker fired gun.
And then at the higher end, that doesn't
mean you can't regularly hit target. I mean,
you know, talk about Jaeger. Like, Jaeger was
famous for his demos of using the big
dot sights with standard Glock 19 regular trigger
and being able to hit targets out at
a 100 yards. Right? Carl, from tactical rifleman
just posted a review using the p d
10 And even says there, he goes, I
don't think this is what Rob intended this
gun for, but sometimes I like to have
fun and, you know, do long distance pistol
shooting and he's dinging steel out of the
100 yards with it. You know, the p
d 10 is incredibly accurate
and does the trigger feel different than a
standard Glock or MMP or certainly different from
the three twenty? Yeah. But once you understand
smooth trigger press until the gun goes bang,
people are demonstrating all kinds of, you know,
cutting cards in half and shooting type groups
and all kinds of stuff with the p
d 10 trigger, which is extensively, like, the
opposite
of what I think SIG was trying to
do with the three twenty. And yet it's
fully capable as a gun of being very,
very accurate and certainly
defensively accurate in any anybody's hands, especially if
you have that one day of training.
So the question about speed is really kind
of a devil's advocate question because that is
the common refrain from people who are shooting
single action triggers,
and
watching it on YouTube and thinking, oh, I
could do that. I could shoot that fast.
I could shoot the bad guy that fast
when that's not really reflected
in reality. I think from my own observation,
and I might be wrong about this, but
my own observation is in self defense, people
tend not to shoot faster than they can
see and perceive,
especially when they're intentional about the self defense
shooting. They're not shooting, you know, point one
splits. They're shooting more closely point two, five
splits
in self defense shooting.
And I think
like, the conclusion I would draw from from
that, if it's true, is that is that
there is a there's a melding of of
the physical skill with what is necessary and
what is attainable in that moment,
as opposed to what you can do on
the range when you're choreographing and you're planning
and all that stuff. I I think that's
for trained people, for well practiced and well
trained people who are or kind of alert
to to what's going on that aren't in
a panic. I think that's true. I think
you see some people obviously who are just
pulling the trigger as fast as they can,
physically as fast as they can. And that's
why I think it's so important to get
out on the range and do that. Right?
That's why we do we spend more time
doing that than we do practicing head shots
at 21 feet for sure. Mhmm. Right? Let
people get a car's width, car's distance or
a bedroom distance from the target, drive the
gun out and fire the fastest three, four,
five, six shots they can so they understand
what they're capable of. And I think most
people are surprised, and that's why we have
drills like the push your limits drill. Right?
Like, we want people out there to push
themselves to see how fast they actually can
keep all those shots within a fist or
under a wide open hand for sure,
that nine, ten, twelve, fifteen feet,
even when they're pushing as fast as they
possibly can with their gun, which gets them
in that at five shots per second range
for most people.
I think people are capable more than they
think they are, but they have to practice
it. Because otherwise, if they're if they're always,
you know, standing sideways, push pull, right, if
they're always out there with one eye closed
just trying to shoot that one whole group
at 25 yards,
then that's all they're used to. And I
think that's the there's one of those tropes
of training. Right? Is that you can, you
know, shoot at three in circles if you
expect to be able to hit an eight
in circle because your skills are gonna degrade.
Well, I don't think what we saw when
we first started seeing dash camera videos, like
a lot of them, and and surveillance camera
videos of shooting in the late nineties and
through the February,
we weren't seeing skills degrade. We were seeing
the skills that were being practiced on the
range not being applied. We weren't seeing people
standing sideways double tapping. We were seeing people
lower their center of gravity, drive the gun
at the full extension, and pull the trigger
super fast, probably without regard for their sights.
And so it was a completely different thing.
It was completely improvised. And what, obviously, what
we try to do and what we're not
the only ones. A lot of people try
to do in their training now is refine
what the body does naturally and work well
with that squared off stance, full extension, lowered
center of gravity, head inside the triangle, get
behind the gun, get the gun to your
line of sight, don't move your line of
sight to the gun, you know, that kind
of stuff. And, and it works. It just
works really, really, really well as long as
the gun fits a person's hand. And, again,
they have a relatively smooth trigger press, which
can be really super fast or can be
super slow. And one of the things I
think is important to talk about too is
this idea of staging.
Right? I think that's where a lot of
people have gotten wrapped around the axle on
these demos with,
the three twenty can just go off with
very little trigger pressure.
I think there are really there are a
lot of people out there who apparently think,
like, staging the trigger isn't pulling the trigger
somehow. Yeah. Yeah. And and what they don't
understand is and, you know, I got one
of the FCUs here. Like, when you quote
unquote stage the trigger, right, this little flop
flapper here is gonna move. Right? So that
little flapper that moves, that's disengaging
the striker block safety. So what you think
of as taking up the slack or staging
or something other than pulling a trigger,
it's pulling the trigger. Right? And that's why
we talk about pulling all the way through,
right, until the gun goes bang
and learning to press a trigger properly. And
and I think that's incredibly important too. Like,
you talk about that headshot at 20 yards.
If you're trying to make that shot, the
person's probably not just standing still daring you
to do it. They're not giving you a
free one. Right? Like, they may be moving.
They have somebody, you know, knife point. They're
they're moving backwards or they're arguing or they're
holding a gun on somebody and you're gonna
try to shoot their head while it's moving.
You've gotta be able to maintain sight picture
throughout a smooth trigger press. Not try to,
you know, take up all the slack, which
again is still pulling the trigger, hold your
breath, make everything perfect, and then break the
shot against a piece of steel or a
piece of paper on the range. That works
works really well. You can get good at
it, but that's not the dynamic nature of
of a defensive shooting.
Yeah. It it's it's the I think
I mean, you you kind of already said
it, but, Isaac and I were having that
conversation is, like, seeing that p three twenty
without
doing what people say it does without any
real huge modifications.
And I think Isaac asked me, like, yeah.
But what are the modifications?
And my reply was sticking a fucking screw
in it.
Yeah.
If you stick a fucking screw,
in a gun to press the trigger back
a little bit and then you you fuck
with it, like,
that just
I mean, you made the guns.
Let let's We have Let's okay. So this
is this was a carry gun of mine.
This it says 43 l because before the
Glock,
48 had the,
shield magazines available, I would sometimes carry a
48 slide on a 43, right, giving me
a long slide 43. Because the difference between
the 40 three's capacity, especially with an extended
mag and the standard 10 plus one of
the Glock 48 wasn't much. Right?
So,
this gun's been retired for a while.
It's it's clear. You'll see I have modified
it. I I have opened up the back,
and this is congruent with what the FBI
test that was done on the Michigan State
Police
three twenty.
Opened the backup so that I can reach
the internals. Because it's important to remember that
when they had the gun go bang
theoretically without moving the trigger,
at all manipulating the trigger, they were sticking
a tool in the back and manipulating
the internal parts of the trigger mechanism.
And then and so and I've got a,
here it is. I've got a little prime
case.
Right? Because why not?
And, let's see if I can I crimp
the front in there a little bit?
Get it in there.
Look. This is the kind of thing you
can do at the office at night because
there's nobody else here.
Your cleaning lady's gonna freak out.
Oh, no. They they they don't even clean
my office.
Alright. Can I get that in there? No.
K.
So I've got the that in there. Now
the tab safety on here,
when tab safeties first came out, right, I
and I think the majority of the community
when we first started seeing a lot of
tab safeties on the Glocks in the late
eighties and then through the through the nineties
and the February, I think most people were
like me whereas they really thought of it
as a snag
safety. Right? So that if only the edge
of the trigger gets hit by something, the
trigger can't move. But the reality is, most
manufacturers
consider the tab safety being there for an
inertial
block
of if the gun drops, the weight of
the trigger shoe
might be enough to overcome as its momentum
continuing to move back because of inertia might
be enough to
overcome the the springs and the tension inside
the gun and actually discharge the gun when
it falls backwards. So not anything being jostled
inside, not the striker bouncing,
but the trigger actually being pressed by its
own weight. So the tab safety will defeat
that because the tab blocks it from moving
back. And that's where SIG says they don't
need a tab safety on the three twenty.
And,
that's where the hinged type,
safety, the hinge inertial safety on the M
and P still works. It still accomplishes a
safety goal even though it doesn't also have
what I think is an added benefit of
the tab type inertial safety, which is the
snag safety issue as well.
That makes sense? So Yeah. But you said
earlier, Greg, when we were talking, you said
that you you always knew of it as
an inertial safety.
Yeah. My my understanding of it was was
a drop safety. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Drop safety from inertia. So you have that
graphic of the three safeties. We're talking about
the Glock. People would say we're talking about,
the the nomenclature. People would say, oh, well,
Glock has three internal safeties. But I don't
think people could really describe the functions
of those three internal safeties.
Right? The three safeties on the Glock. And
that's where I I would say, like, I
care about
an external
manually operated safety that requires an action
that wouldn't otherwise be necessary. Right? So you've
got, like,
the grip safety on a on an XD
or a XDS. Right? I have to grip
the gun anyway. So I'm not worried about
that external safety that is manually operated. The
tab safety, I'm not worried about that external
safety that is manually operated because I have
to engage and press the trigger anyway.
Right? So if I have to do those
things anyway, I'm talking about buttons or levers
extra steps that have to be taken. So,
yeah, I I think people should have drop
safe guns. I think people should be secure
and comfortable in the knowledge that their guns
are designed so that they won't go bang
unless the trigger is actuated.
But I don't necessarily think everybody has to
be an engineer and really understand what's going
on in there.
Now, I'm even trying to The conversation was
was,
this everybody gets so focused on, like, I
need to choose the perfect gun, and like,
no. You just need to understand how they
operate a little bit.
And If you understand how how they basically
operate
Yeah. Inside,
then I think I think to me, your
use of the gun and your the way
you treat the gun as a tool becomes
much more educated. Correct. Right? And like you
don't start thinking about the idea that taking
up the slack is somehow different from pulling
the trigger.
Right? I've heard people even articulate the idea
that well, you wanna be able to take
up the slack and then make your decision
to shoot. No. I do not.
No. I think on the on the wall
or on the break or I don't wanna
beat no. It's not when I'm making a
decision to shoot. I'm making a decision to
shoot when my finger goes to the trigger.
Right? Like, I've made this issue. Now I'm
going now I'm gonna start pressing.
And, yeah, could I always change my mind?
Sure. Can I change my mind on nineteen
eleven? Not my time.
Can I change my mind on a on
a double action
single action like a p two two six
sig? Yeah. There's more time at especially if
it's a 25 yard headshot. I've got more
time as I slowly smoothly press that trigger.
You know, but I don't think we're we're
counting on that as a responsible use issue.
You know, my responsible use is finger stays
up here until I've decided to shoot. Once
I start pressing, I've made the decision to
shoot. Could I stop it? Sure. But that's
not part of my tactics. Right? Alright. So
this is a little different than the demo
you saw with the three twenty. We're gonna
talk about the height issue. We're gonna talk
about the striker fired gun on a hammer
fired gun frame issue, which I think is
really relevant and important.
But first,
we're gonna talk about the trigger only move
the millimeter kinda thing and what's happening when
that trigger moves. So I have to disable
the tab safety and I have to take
up some of the slack and then I'm
gonna try to jam this this screw in
there
without setting the gun off, obviously.
And give it a couple twists.
Okay. I think that's I think that's pretty
well set. So you can see the tab
safety is disengaged, but there's still that that
that is far beyond what I think a
lot of people think of when they go
to the wall or take out the slack.
Right? That I don't I didn't get my
calipers out, but
yeah. I could say that Internet millimeter.
The other thing that's happened here
is that I have
opened up the back plate, which is consistent
with those FBI tests,
of the Michigan State Police gun because then
they took a tool and stuck it in
there to
disconnect
the trigger mechanism, the back of the trigger
bar in this case with the Glock, with
the design in the SIG, it's a little
different. But to disconnect the internal parts that
are holding back what I call the toe
of the striker. The striker is under spring
pressure.
Moving this trigger
has just deactivated
the plunger safety.
Right? It has just pushed up. This isn't
air to the Glock. It is I got
one.
Oh, you got it. On that part of
the
gun, and by pushing up on that, because
the trigger bar has moved backwards even with
that little bit of movement remember I showed
you guys a little flapper on this one
that disconnects it the way it works in
the the sig fire control unit. So I
that's the the that's what I think people
need to understand is this is pulling the
trigger.
Right? So now when I jam this in
here, if I get the right angle
and can disconnect the internals from that toe
of
the striker
bear with me. Doing it a little bit
backwards.
Nice.
Gun goes bang.
So now it's like, oh my gosh, Rob.
The gun's gone bang, and it's a Glock.
Does that mean Glocks aren't safe? No. It
means don't cut a giant asshole in the
back of your backplate.
Jam a tool in there after you stuck
a screw in the trigger.
Right? So I think one of the things
This isn't a magic trick. You're like, oh,
the trigger is back now. Yeah. The trigger
is back now because once I stuck this
in there and removed it, that takes all
the spring tension off it and this is
where it ends up. Right? So now I've
got my,
great. It's it's jammed in there. But,
Can you show it? Because the Internet is
gonna say it's a lie. Try and show
it. Ah, the
Internet. Rob Ping has had a n d.
Oh, no.
They're
reckless
baskets.
So in the demonstrations
that we've seen online with people pressing the
trigger, they're making the point that the trigger
has barely moved. Right? Yeah. But will this
trigger barely move too? That's what I'm saying.
But that must mean
that that,
that must mean that the pulling of the
trigger moving that plunger is a very efficient
lever. Right? It barely has to move for
that plunger to move. Yeah. So let me
let me look at a p d 10
here. Like, so this we call this we
call it the bird's head internally.
Get something to point at it. That little
guy right there. Right? Mhmm. That thing
moves backwards
as we you can see it moves backwards
and it might even kinda come up a
little bit. Then you you got the angle.
Right? You'll see it come up a little
bit as it moves backward. What that's doing
is it's pressing upward on alright. Let me
take
this one.
K.
This one's clear. Show the Internet. Show you.
Convince myself. Okay. So now
what that's doing, when that bird's head moves
backwards,
it is pushing up
on
that plunger.
Right. Right?
The And that plunger's blocking the wide. That's
a pretty long,
surface area. There's a lot of engagement there.
Yeah. Now this is actually this is my
carrier pen.
What's that? What's that plunger doing for those
that don't know? I'm gonna show I'm gonna
show you here. So Okay. Got it. Let
me see how I can best demonstrate this.
I think right now, if I pull down
my little dental pick here, you see I
I the that's that toe I was talking
about of the striker. Right? Mhmm. So it
goes backwards
Yeah.
Against that spring, and then it gets sent
forward. Now right now, if you can see
where it is, it can only go if
I pull down on it, it can only
go so far forward. It can't, like, reach
all the way down to the,
that part of that channel in the slide.
It can't get to the bottom of it.
Right?
If I need an extra hand here,
if I push in
on that plunger
now I'm pushing in on that plunger, and
now
see how far down it can go? Mhmm.
So that extra little bit of space, it's
not a lot, but that extra little bit
of space is the difference between the striker
poking through the breach face.
Right. So that little slot,
I think you can see it there. Yep.
Yep. See Yeah. You can see it's sitting
pretty darn close to it. Right? If you
look in there, there. You can see that
striker
point in there. Right? Well, it can't poke
through that wall
unless I move
this out of the way. Maybe I can
do it for the camera. Move this out
of the way,
push in on the plunger, and then there
you see it protruding?
Yep. There we go. Yep. Yeah. So now
I'm pushing in on the plunger and pushing
down on that toe against the spring pressure.
And that's what's allowing
that to come through and pierce
or pop,
put enough pressure on the back of that
primer. It says an unfired one, and here's
the fired one we just used. Right?
So With the slide didn't go bad. This
I was gonna say, like, so this is
my actual carry gun. Right? This is the
original design
on that plunger somewhere. Here it is. I
also have,
we've we've improved that part just to get
a little bit more smoothness.
And if you can see let me,
get my fingers out of the way.
Show you this one
and oh, if I can do this left
handed,
this one.
If you look at these side by side,
you can see
that this one on the right here is
much more rounded. Mhmm. And that just give
us a little bit smoother trigger press, but
there's still a huge amount of engagement there
on the surface for that bird's head. But
the transition from being off the bird's head
to being on the bird's head is made
a little smoother by that domed nature. So
for like two years now, we've been shipping
the guns with this domed plunger.
And one of the things we've done internally
as we've improved certain parts and we've we've
smoothed out certain areas of friction, we changed
some coatings. We also sent the gun for
a whole another series of drop testing.
And of course, we've done all the weird
45 degree angles from the
SIG drop test, we call it,
because we wanna be sure. We we don't
wanna end up in court. Somebody says the
gun went off when we dropped it, and
we haven't test the latest version of the
part. So even a small change like that.
If you look at, I held up that
Glock earlier. Right? The Glock, this is a
19
plunger,
and you can see where it's like fully
round. It's got a little bit of a
chamfered edge to make that transition smoother.
If we look at, let's clear this.
Alright. If we look at the inside of
the 48, the way the 40 eight's made,
it's got the same kind of a bird's
head
concept there, pokey part on the trigger bar,
but this has a much steeper walled ramp
the way they designed the internals here. So
it's a much steeper
ramp up to push that plunger down in,
right, in this area. So there's there's less
surface area front to back and a much
steeper ramp as you come up onto it
with that steeper ramped bird's head. And this
is the gun you just did it on?
This is the guy I just did it
on. But that's the factory one. Now, the
other thing is you think about something like,
like the skimmer triggers or some of the
other triggers that are out there,
there there are ways to manipulate
how much movement you need of the trigger
to disengage that drop safety. And in fact,
I think there are some aftermarket triggers out
there that completely
take that block safety out of the equation,
so it's preloaded.
And I I think those are obviously, you
know, meant only for specific,
competition type applications, things like that. But if
you understand the point on that, right? Your
gun, then you have to understand
that you can change these things, you can
modify these things, and that hopefully, the company
that's engineered the gun has put everything in
an appropriate balance for the intended purpose. If
it's a target shooting gun, it's gonna be
more sensitive and more prone. It's kind of
a smaller window, let's say, for negligence
than, a duty gun should. And I think
this again comes back to part of the
mistake,
of what the three twenty is. So now
let's talk about the height because because obviously,
I combined two two
failure demos there. I showed you the FBI
sticking the thing in the back and the
Wyoming guy
barely moving the trigger thing. Right? Well, if
I stick the three twenty fire control unit
in here,
jam it down into this grip. I this
is a Wilson grip. I guess I should
have put it in a regular one.
But,
and it might matter. Some people have noted
that like the x five legions
have not had any of these type. The
x five carries and that legion, some of
the other guns out there, particularly with the
metal frames or maybe with better polymer, like
maybe Wilson's using better polymer than,
SIG is using, that that may be a
contributing factor. Is that as people are taking
this I I know I have a regular
SIG
hand up. There it is. As people are
taking this little metal tab in and out
of their guns for whatever reasons, maybe they
have other grip modules they like to use,
this is wearing
out
this back area of the grip module, right,
as you stick that in there, and that's
affecting the tolerance. So that's gonna affect the
in the connection between what's going on with
this part of the internals of the gun
and what's going on inside of the slide
with with both the the
plunger safety or in this case, they have
a different kind of setup. Their
their striker block safety there, that little lever
that's moving, and the toe of their striker.
So the interaction between what's going on in
the top part of the gun and the
bottom part of the gun may very well
be affected over time. That relationship can change
based on wear and tear in your plastic
grip module as you insert and remove and
and jiggle around your fire control unit. And
that that's something that is yet to be
determined as well that could be causing a
tolerance issue.
Ultimately, we have to go back to what
this is. Right? And and from this angle,
right, this could be a p two fifty
because the grip
module is specifically a p two fifty. You
guys might remember when when I still had
a place in Denver and Denver outlawed
private gun making. So I couldn't do any
more of my three d printing projects in
my place in Denver.
I printed
a p two fifty grip module,
and it looks like you're printing the frame.
If it were the Glock or something else,
it looks like you're printing an, an a
non serialized firearm. Right? An actual fire an
illegal firearm in Denver. But I printed out
that p two fifty almost like as a
as a,
oh, look at this.
I could get arrested because people don't understand
in Denver, maybe that the police officers, the
the city attorney, whoever that maybe the state
attorney general's office, they don't know the difference
in the gun laws. And that this this
grip module is not a firearm
with this type of design. Well, the p
two fifty grip modules will accept
the three twenty FCU.
And what SIG did was they just repurposed
a fire a hammer fired gun into a
striker fired gun. In a hammer fired gun,
everything that matters is happening down here in
the frame.
And with a hammer fired gun, because of
the the nature of the pivot of the
hammer,
in order to generate enough force,
you generally need the bore axis to be
higher
because you need a a greater distance between
what's happening with the trigger and what's happening
with the at the primer when that firing
pin or striker is hit by the hammer.
So So that pivot requires a certain amount
of height in most guns, and it it's
something that's I think, again, if you know
how guns work, you understand why you get
a lower bore axis potential
with a striker fired gun. But in this
case, Sig left a very,
in my opinion, a ridiculously
high bore axis
with this gun.
Can I get this all to go together?
Probably not in this configuration
because
I don't have this seated completely well.
Once again More hammer. Once again, more hammering.
Right? The,
now I think I can do it. More
cowbell. So I I this is what I
think is a ridiculously high borax. Right? So
over the the part of the gun that
interacts the top of my hand, and where
the bullet comes out. Right? I just think
is ridiculously high on this gun, but it's
necessarily
high because we're working from an original hammer
fired design. So in order to keep the
same proportions, and and keep the kind of
signature classic sig look, you end up with
with that kind of a situation. If I
find,
let's throw this on there. Now if you
look at look at look at the bore
axis here with a striker fired gun that
takes full advantage
with no substructures,
no no FCU chassis, no ABS plastic insert
for the ejector like the glocks use. This
is using the frame
to hold all the parts like a classic
metal gun would, that lets us be incredibly
thin and incredibly low with the bore axis
as opposed to, you know, incredibly high if
I
do it kinda that way.
And and I talk about this a,
quieter it's kind of, like,
loud. Yeah. It's ridiculous.
Yeah. I talk about this a lot When
a lot with a lot of people who
talk about smooth trigger presses, like, you should
probably look at the moment of inertia way
before you look at at the at a
smooth trigger press if you're worried about that
type of stuff.
And this is what we call bar axis
in the gun industry, but in science, they
call it the moment of inertia. And and
the energy is higher
proportional to the the point of pivot. So
the higher it is, the more angular momentum
you're going to have.
And and this is what people miss when
choosing a gun for self defense is small
shit like this
that can make you a better better shooter
or more efficient shooter is what we're looking
for for self defense. Right. Once again, understanding
what's actually happening with the physics and the
engineering. And that's why we stress for instructors
that they understand what's happening with the guns
too so they can explain to their students,
you know, why they're making good or bad
choices.
Well, in this particular case, we're not even
worried about that issue of Yeah. Of recoil
management or anything else. What we're worried about
here is the play
and the tolerance issue
that a wiggle gives you up here. If
we have a tolerance issue between the grip
module and more importantly the actual chassis and
the the the slide,
as that moves any degree, if it moves,
you know, half a degree.
Well, think about it. If if I'm
here and I'm engaged with
I don't know. Let's see if I can
get a different color. So I need this
to engage
with that part. Right? So let's go with
this way now. So if I got that
engaged with this part, if I move this
half a degree, I'm not off
of the surface. I still have some engagement.
But if I move it a full degree,
well, now I'm off. Now my striker slides
off. Right? That's the concern. That's what that
wiggling is doing. So that screw in the
trigger is deactivating
the striker block, and then the wiggling is
taking the engagement away. And there's a whole
bunch of of reasons why this engagement might
not be as perfect as Sig wants it.
One of them is chipping
mimed parts. Right? And we've seen some of
those close-up photos in the FBI examination where
they've shown where the entire bearing surface area
that's intended to be engaged isn't actually engaged.
Imagine I'd spin this around. Now, I've just
got that that little tip because this is
not an even flat surface. That rounded tip
is all I've got engaging with this. And
if this is rounded instead of flat or
chipped, now I've got maybe very little bearing
surface holding this all together.
And then I start wiggling the top of
the slide, and maybe
if I wiggle from up here, half a
degree is enough.
If I wiggle from down here, half a
degree wouldn't be enough. And that's the bore
axis issue. So the the longer these these
levers are, the longer that these parts have
to be to get them engaged because
the the bore axis is much higher in
this gun. Because that has to be longer,
that means it is going to be less
tolerant.
All other things being equal, it's gonna be
less tolerant of any given wiggle. So one
degree at
three millimeters only might, you know, move move
to the right or left enough to stay
engaged. But if you've got one degree at
a full centimeter, you know, 10 millimeters,
that might be enough to move it off
of engagement. And I think that's what you're
seeing with that wiggling motion.
But, again,
I think it's really important to keep restating
after
the primary striker block internal safety has been
deactivated by Not only that too, but wouldn't
pulling the trigger even a little bit reduce
that friction
in in that,
in that area? Because you're already starting to
move. So if if you can see what's
going on in this design, right,
when I when I move that trigger just
that little bit, I'm deactivating the internal safety,
but nothing else is moving. Nothing else is
moving. Okay. Taking up the slack. Then Right.
You can see from this side, probably, you
can see it best.
What you're looking at is this part
right here.
You're gonna see it move down.
See it moving down there? Yeah.
So there is a period thing that happens
with just the quote, unquote taking up the
slack is I deactivate
the internal safety.
Then when I continue to press, I move
that down. And by moving that down, that's
when I'm I'm moving it. Let's go back
to my horrible
Yeah. That's in here. When I when I
move that down, that lets this go forward.
And, of course,
this is is that toe that's attached to
the actual striker that moves forward like that.
So how many other major here. So how
many other major here blocking it,
the trigger press moves this down that lets
this whole thing move forward and that pokes
the back of the ammunition.
So on the Glock design, though, part of
that trigger press is not only
moving that block out of the way, but
is also pulling the striker mechanism back.
Yeah. So so let let's go back into
the p d 10.
I think you can you can see what's
going on here. So
this the equivalent piece
is right here.
Right? So that little piece right there
is holding on to
the that toe
right there.
Right?
So we're not, quote, unquote, fully cocked. Some
striker fired guns are fully cocked, some are
half cocked, whatever you wanna whatever you call
it. There's a certain amount of energy there
in it. So what's happening now when I
when I move the trigger, you can see
that is gonna go backwards
and down.
You can see all that movement backwards.
Mhmm. That's the final
movement of of the striker backwards against spring
tension to load it with more power.
And then the last piece of the puzzle,
which you can't really see very well in
here,
is
right there. Let me go let me get
one that's out of the gun. I probably
have one over here somewhere. So the three
twenty That's the beauty of being at the
factory where you make those guns is you
you you have the parts.
Well,
yeah. But I may I may not they
don't like it when I build the guns
on my desk. You know? It turns out,
like so
talk amongst yourselves. So correct me if I'm
wrong, Edgar, but the three twenty is fully
cocked.
That is my understanding. Yes. My understanding is
that it it is completely
100%. I mean, it might be 99.
But it has enough energy. Again, it might
be it's so close that a a manufacturing
tolerance issue could cause that that surface, the
bearing surface to be uneven,
and maybe it puts the striker under a
little more attention just because of that.
Yeah. So
the the argument could be for a safer
striker fire design would be that
it it doesn't make a lot of sense
to have a fully cocked striker,
if
what you're trying to accomplish there is is
a shorter trigger press.
Like, you're trying to keep
because you would think, like, the entire action
of the trigger going back would be partially
to pull the trigger or pull the, striker
backwards
before releasing it. But if we want a
shorter trigger press, then that means we need
more energy stored ready to go in the
spring. So it needs to move not at
all or barely at all Yeah. To get
that But not only shorter, but also lighter.
Right? Lighter. You're putting that energy in there.
So, again, if you if you look in
here,
we're we're looking specifically at
this post
right there. Yeah.
That piece that sticks up. That
is
this.
Right? So you can see that when I
have that perfectly vertical,
this angle is sloped downward.
So the way these parts connect,
this is a beat up old trigger bar.
This wing from that side of the trigger
bar lives just under there. Right?
You can see that. And when I pull
the trigger, remember it moved backwards
and and went down?
So the downward motion is caused by the
interaction with that slope.
So it's it's being pushed
down as I pull backwards, but it's being
pushed down by that slope. That's what pulls
this part down off that striker.
Is that I'm pulling the trigger. The trigger
bar would move straight back, but that slope
on this piece
is what actually causes that to disconnect
from
the striker and let let the striker go
forward. So it has to move, you know,
about that much. It's just at the very
front of that and it moves to the
back of that,
and that's what you're feeling when you press
the trigger. And it pivots. Right? The trigger
part pivots so that that little tab or
what you call the bird's head can fully
engage on the, the This is pivoting. So
as you can see that the bird's head
up here is ramped
so that it catches,
where did I put those little bits?
Here we go. So what it's doing is
it's catching
and this is if people were wondering, like,
wait a minute. That doesn't make any sense.
Well, here's how here's what happens. This is
sitting in the gun like this vertically. Right?
And, normally, this chunky metal bit up here
is what's blocking the striker from moving forward.
And as this presses up, that opens up
this channel and that channel lets the striker
go forward through that channel. So the striker
is blocked by the meaty part up the
top. The bottom engages with the bird's head.
It gets pushed up and then the striker
can go forward through that channel
after it's released
from the back of the trigger bar. So
the ramp
that you see at the back of this
bird's head
is what's engaging that part. Right? So this
is sitting here kinda like this.
And let me get the right angle. As
this moves backwards,
it pushes that up. So this moves straight
back and that pushes this up.
And when this goes up from here to
there, that's enough to get this chunky part
out of the way of the striker,
which we looked at earlier.
And
again, do I I don't think everybody needs
to understand how this all works. I I
would
go back to ten years ago,
twelve years ago now when when, you know,
the guys at the table voted, you know,
me as the guy that would be most
likely to be able to design a gun.
You know, we had a guy in the
sales, we had a guy that was an
importer, we had, you know, guys that that
did a lot of different things
at the table, but I was the instructor
kinda I was the the shooter guy. I
was actually the guy who had the most
experience with the actual guns on the ranges
with people when we had that discussion.
So they all looked at me, but the
reality is I I
could have reverse engineered, right, any any kind
of gun and just said, well, here's this.
What I was much more I was much
more worried about things like the the the
bore axis and things like the the grip
width and the and the trigger press, what
the trigger press is gonna feel like, and
how the magazine release worked, and how the
slide stop worked. I was worried about the
user experience stuff, but I really didn't have
any vision for what the internals would look
like because I just never had to pay
that much attention to the internals.
So I wouldn't have been able to tell
you nearly as much about how the inside
of a of a SIG versus the inside
of a Canek versus the inside of a
Glock versus the inside of the PD 10.
I wouldn't wouldn't have been able to tell
you a tenth of what I can tell
you now twelve years ago. I've had to
learn a lot more about what's going on
internally in order to bring, like, my vision
of how a gun should feel to market.
And that requires the engineers and the the
tool and dye makers and all these these
experts in the manufacturing world who have educated
me about, you know, metals and coatings and
angles and and thousands and and all this
stuff.
A lot of people, you know, that's why
it's kinda what hurts the most if there
if the Internet can still hurt me, it's
the guys in the comment section like, so
basically, you just made another block.
Life would have been so much easier.
I thought hurting you was asking you how
long it was gonna take for it to
get the market. Have you have you seen
the inside of a Versa b p nine?
You know, have you seen the inside of
this gun? Like, you're watching a video showing
you the inside of this gun. You could
Google what the inside of other guns look
like, and you could figure out that there's
literally zero parts that I can take from
this and put in any other gun without
a bigger hammer than what I've been using
here for this video.
Yeah. It it's kinda like like And and
and people, oh, you just did you just
somebody said yesterday, I did an another an
RXM.
I'm like
Yeah. That really It it's it's like telling
Ford you just made another Chevy.
Yeah. Oh. They're just like, no. Like, that's
that's not the way it works. Right? Have
you seen the Nurburgring numbers from last week?
Ford wishes they had made another Chevy. They
put they had a $325,000
Mustang. It just got beat by three seconds
by the new vet.
Poor poor Ford.
Well, it's Poor little guys. Not the same.
Let's move on. Let's move on. Fuck fuck
that conversation.
I'm not I'm not gonna talk about cars.
Don't you talk don't you don't you talk
shit about my my ovals.
I I drive a Ford. I actually I
I right now, I have a Toyota, a
BMW, a Ford, a Dodge,
and Do you really have a BMW? Mini
Cooper, which is kinda like a BMW. Remember
that? I drove that once to a meeting
here at, like, little three cylinder thing. So
and a Ducati. So I'm I'm pretty well
represented across the board, but,
yeah, it's Yeah. I do feel bad for
the the the guys who are excited about
that 300,000
must first of all, $300,000
Mustang.
It's crazy. You're silly. You're silly. It's crazy.
Well and and this is, again,
the market
saying they want something without knowing what they
really want, and this is how we end
up with really shit guns. This is how
we end up with with the SIG p
three twenty is
the the market saying on Reddit
very loudly,
this is what I want, and and then
it comes out. And then very quickly, you're
like, oh, that's not what I want. And
and I I I did say this in
the video that I made about the p
three twenty is
I do wish there were there was more
of these conversations with the people who actually
make the guns
to educate the humans about what they really
want. Now
there there's always room, and we get it,
and we understand there's always room for the
competition people. There's always room for the the
silly stuff, the fun stuff. Right? You're making
a a a little silly shit that's gonna
shoot drones
out of a fucking,
three d printed,
bullet. Like, that's fucking silly. But it so
there's always room for for weird shit. But
when we're talking about self defense stuff, when
we're talking about
defending your life,
there needs to be more education, I think,
from from the,
the people who actually build the fucking guns
that tell people you don't need all of
the extra
shit
instead of just saying, yep. Yeah. Yeah. Like,
okay. So this is clear. Right? But but
this, if you if you take a look
at the the map that this trigger needs
to move
right? Like, this this is a Glock. It's
a polymer 80. It's a gun that I
built for it's a competition
polymer 80 Glock build,
using, like, almost no
OEM parts.
The magazine release, I think, is OEM. Otherwise,
you know, that's a barely moving trigger.
I'm pretty sure that the bird's head part
on this is already engaging that that drop
safety,
and it's it takes barely any pressure and
barely any weight to make this thing off.
This is a competition style trigger
in a Glock, right, as opposed to a
normal Glock trigger that requires a lot more
pressure and a lot more movement.
The these things can exist. Like, I I
can I have this? It's it's safe enough
for the intended purpose. I would never carry
it. I wouldn't stage it with a home
defense gun. I wouldn't hand it to you
when you came to visit and have you
go out to the range and go bang.
And so, oh, I wasn't ready for it
to go bang Yeah. Because that would be
reckless and negligent of me. I would tell
you, like, I would show you exactly everybody
that's ever shot this. I show them. I
said, look. This is gonna go off, like,
when you breathe on it. It's like a
cocked Colt Python. Like, it's ready to go.
Right? And people are like, oh, it's a
Glock, and they don't think about it. And
then but at least they're pointing at the
berm when it goes, and they say, oh,
I didn't know. I wasn't ready for it.
Right? And what's what's hilarious is
with, you know, my gun.
Right? People will go out there and they'll
start shooting it, and they'll they'll go to
take up the slack, and there's no slack.
There's no slack yet. Just right away. So
so the first, I'll see this weird hesitation
on the trigger, then they'll start pressing the
trigger,
and then they'll let go and they'll let
they'll sometimes, not always, but some people who
are really used to
there's nothing and then there's everything and then
it breaks. On a striker fired gun, they'll
start pressing the trigger. You can tell who's
never shot a double action gun before. Right?
And they'll start they'll start pressing the trigger,
and then they'll, like, I don't think it's
working.
Just keep pressing.
Like like, it it needs to move more
than a than a a quarter of an
inch. Right? Yeah. And and what's funny is
when you measure the total distance of movement
here, it's not any different than like an
MMP or an XD or a Glock. What's
different is you're feeling the weight right away,
and the weight stays pretty consistent all the
way through. So you're you're getting four and
a half five pounds
all the way through the full press Correct.
As opposed to getting nothing hitting a wall
and then getting everything or having something that
ramps up more like the Glock does goes
from a certain amount to more, more, more,
more, more, and then it breaks. So the
trigger feels different, but, you know, as countless
people have demonstrated in their reviews,
once you understand what the trigger is doing,
that gun's more capable
capable of more accuracy than I ever needed
it to be for for a defensive gun.
So would a you a a useful analogy
be for, like,
competition to self defense be the difference between
racing slick tires on a NASCAR track versus,
tires with tread on them
on roads that everybody drives on? Yeah. Absolutely.
I think I think the slick tires
on on any, you know, any kind of
racing track where you're gonna use slick tires
on a controlled surface in a controlled environment,
versus,
you know, your all season or your all
terrain type tire that you put on your
cars that you can just drive and not
think about your tires. Right? I mean, for
people who follow f one. Right? Like, the
I mean, half the damn conversation and all
the commentaries about the tires. When are they
gonna change the tires? Which tires they go
into? How long are the tires gonna last?
Are they degrading? Did they warm them up
to the right temperature? Have they broken them
in on the first couple laps? Like, half
of the conversation with f one racing is
about the tires for a reason. Right? It's
like the science of the tires and the
tires are incredibly important, but a one raindrop
falls and they all run
and and have to get the wet tires,
have to get the special tires for the
rain weather. Right? In NASCAR, one raindrop falls,
and they all stop racing. And they bring
out giant
trucks that the hairdryer, dry dry and blow
dryer trucks to, to dry the track off.
But you can't do it. They race in
the rain. It's the same principle. It's just
traction, but it is not the same application.
Right. So so a a competition
trigger
is very much like that. It just got
no room for error. It's only really designed
to work inside of this narrow window, and
it worked really, really, really well in that
narrow window.
You gotta stop. This this is
when people show up with, like, staccatos and
and all the douchery with the smooth trigger
press, this is what I think if we're
gonna use cars as an analogy.
You're right. Yeah. Okay. That's that's that's a
three twenty trigger.
That's probably threaded. You're just you just you're
actually moving most of the tread away from
where it ever possibly touched the road.
When when I hear people say I did
this because I want smooth trigger press, that's
exactly what I think about it is this
douchery that you're like, you don't understand how
how it all works. Yeah. Well, my thing
is always why. Like, why? Yeah. I want
it to be easier to hit the target.
Well, how easy does it need to be?
And once people realize they can hit the
targets that they're overwhelmingly
99% of the stuff they're gonna need to
do, that they can do it with a
stock Glock 19
or p d 10 or XDS or whatever.
Once they realize they can, I think they
they
they get past it? Now plenty of graduates
of of our training and and I think,
you know, I say our because you guys
teach the same philosophies and run the same
classes a lot of times.
Plenty of people who get it and who
carry
a gun like we would say, yeah. Good
job. They also have the range toys. Right?
They have the the the competition type stuff,
and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, both
things can coexist,
but you have to be willing to accept
the reality of the range is a racetrack
for guns.
So just like you can perform really well
if you set your car up exactly the
same way
on the rain, you know, for that race
track, like, the same way for the same
weather, for the same temperature, for the same
series of corners and all that, 100% absolutely
no problem,
then you're good. But if you start thinking
because you can drive so well with that
car set up that way with those tires
at the track, you need to have your
daily driver commuter car with those tires.
That's when you you would learn that lesson
in twelve minutes in the real world. Right?
But you'd never thankfully, I would say is
thankfully, we live in a world where most
people never actually have to use their guns
anywhere but the racetrack.
Right. So we don't have to learn that
hard lesson that people are making really bad
choices. The three twenty is just such a
bad choice
and and such a bad design
that people are learning a lesson that you
don't want these guns with really narrow windows
for for failure. You don't want narrow windows
for failure out in the real practical duty
carry home defense world. And and that's what
we've got, I think, with the three twenty.
It's not that those tires don't make sense
in context. It's not that this trigger wouldn't
make sense in context. I think one of
the contributing factors to why we don't see
the the x carries and the, you know,
those those fancier more expensive versions of the
gun with exactly the same trigger, why don't
we see them implicated?
They're being used by a more discerning
owner. They're being in most cases, they're being
owned by someone who's treating it like the
range toy that it is, you know, or
like the competition gun that it is. Yeah.
They're not throwing it around like like it's
a Glock 19, and that's the problem. It's
not you sell this like it's a Glock
19, but it actually has the window the
margin for error, that window for negligence tolerance.
Then you throw in the MIM parts, then
you throw in the mass production, then you
throw in the quality control, then you throw
in the obstinance of we're not gonna put
a tab on it because we don't think
we need one regardless of the fact that
this keeps happening.
We're gonna say, you know, there's no problem
even though there's clearly something going on. You
know, you just you just it just keeps
building and building and building and building and
building to the point where I think they've
killed the the design. Whereas they might have
been able to save it, you know, two
or three times in the last decade.
I I can't
take anybody seriously right now who's carrying the
gun. Like, Zeke Stout was on,
a video we did,
talking about this a week couple weeks ago
with, Tony Simon and those guys, and he
was saying he still trusts his gun. Like,
he's wiggled it. He's messed with it. He's
done this, and I'm like, yeah. But
any you can you can have a problem
with any gun. There could be a mechanical
failure with any gun. There could be a
negative there could be a mistake you could
make with any gun.
Why? Like, who's what's gonna happen the day
you make that mistake or that that mechanical
failure happens with the three twenty?
Literally everyone you know is gonna say, I
can't believe you were still carrying a three
twenty, dude, with all this going on. And
he he right there on air, he's like,
yeah. I hadn't really thought about that. You
know? So So he it's like I I
I'm less confident now just simply because of
that social
factor, that sociological factor of,
you know, judgment. Right? People said if I
ban the gun, I haven't banned the gun
from my classes, but I wanna see who
shows up with one.
I wanna see what kinda holster they're using.
I wanna see what their attitude is. I
wanna see if they've checked the tolerances
between the top and the bottom parts. Right?
I wanna I wanna I wanna see that
before I tell them whether or not they're
allowed to use it in the class, but
I'm not gonna blanket ban it because, again,
I don't first of all, I don't wanna
jump on the bandwagon. And second of all,
I don't think this is any different than
it was five years ago.
Right? The the airmen dying, if we don't
know much about that. Right? There we could
still this is, like, one of those active
shooter situations. Right? Where it's, like, there were
five people. There were five shooters. Now there
was one shooter reported by five people from
five different angles. There was one shooter. This
could very well be there was nothing on
the trigger, and then we find out the
guy left a note and killed himself. Like,
we don't know.
And until we till that investigation plays out
and we actually find out what happened, which
we may never know,
for me, that airman, as tragic as it
is, and and
feel bad for the family, feel bad for
his friends, feel bad for him, obviously,
that doesn't change this for me.
Well, we have incidents in our lives video.
Problems it's always had. Yeah. We have incidents
on that we have on video, and we
still don't know exactly what happened. Right. I'm
I'm I find some of those video,
incidents much more compelling
to me than what we know so far
about the airmen. Right. I don't think the
the fact that someone did die
for me doesn't change Correct. The the curiosity
and the question about what is actually happening,
what actually happened. So the ones that I've
seen on video where the gun being jostled
or just holstering it causes it to go
off, I still some most of those videos
aren't detailed enough for me to know whether
or not something was manipulating the trigger Mhmm.
Or if the trigger was dirty or belly
button lint or whatever, like, it was already
gummed up and it was pushed back, or
if it they said they had modified the
internals. I don't know anything about most of
those videos,
but they are more compelling to me than
the anecdotal
information we have so far about
what happened in at the airbase in Wyoming.
Yeah. Yeah.
From, Or Montana was it Montana or Wyoming?
I think it was Wyoming. I don't know.
I think it was too yeah. The Wyoming
gun guy and them. Lots of Wyoming with
the Yeah. I wanna go back to something
you said about how, thank god, we haven't
found out because, you know, in the real
world, we don't have to use our guns
as much as we,
as much as maybe maybe in the past
or, you know, there it's a relatively low
number of of incidents where we actually have
to use the gun. And this is a
good thing from a safety point of view,
and this is a good thing from a
civil society point of view. But from a
refinement of the tool and the weapon, it's
an unfortunate
situation because I think that that's where you
find out what is truly efficient is when
you when you have lots of experience with
that tool in context.
And
beyond that, a lot of this is theoretical,
and it's it's hard to have those theoretical
arguments
when
you don't have the concrete experience that teaches
us. You know, like, you look at war
and how war develops weapon systems. You know,
effective weapon systems get developed during conflict.
When we develop weapon systems outside of conflict,
we we apply them and we're like, oh,
well, it doesn't work or it doesn't work
like we thought it would or it would
only work with this modification. That's why you
see tanks driving around with, with
you see tanks driving around with,
with, you know, after aftermarket cages built around
them because nobody even thought about a drone
falling in from from above.
So it's a limitation
of the the market, you know, when Edgar
says that people don't really know what they
want is because we really don't know. Like,
we have theory. We have principles and concepts.
We don't know. We don't know what we
need. I think
your your point about the the the military
evolving weapon systems and strategies and tactics. Right?
A lot of times we say we're fighting
the last war. Right? Right. Because our our
tactics and and weapons and equipment and and
doctrine
strategy, everything's developed
to a razor's edge in the in a
twenty year global war on terror in The
Middle East. But if we deploy to,
the Pacific Rim, we deploy to,
you know,
Taiwan, it may be completely different, right, in
that environment. And and the warfare may be
completely different. If we say if we were
to send troops to Ukraine right now, it'd
be radically different, right, than what we experienced
in in The Middle East. So we would
see evolution, and we're starting to see that
evolution because of just observing what's been going
on in the war. Right? So in in
Ukraine. But I think that,
the best analogy we can go back to
is that driving. Right? People just drive, and
they drive in the background while they're while
they're listening to the radio, while they're talking
to their friends, or looking for the street
sign, they're following the navigator. The driving is
just happening in the background
because we have to apply our driving skills.
And the car choices and the truck choices
that most people make for their primary vehicles
are relatively very practical. Now you could spend
$90,000
on a pickup truck or $19,000
on a pickup truck, but if you're buying
a pickup truck, there's probably a reason. Right?
You're not you're probably not buying a pickup
truck if you want to drive really fast
around the curves. Like, that's not why you
bought pickup truck. If you buy an you
might buy a Miata, you might buy a
a g r 86,
but you're buying one of those because you
want to be able to drive really fast
around the curves without any horsepower whatsoever. Right?
Like, you're making that decision. But if you
buy a g r 86, you probably just
don't wanna drive because it's gonna be at
the mechanic all the time. Those
are stop. Don't don't hate on the the
FRS86GR
all Scion whatever all those things are. The
they they're like, you know, contemporary Miatas.
Contemporary.
Which is a compliment.
It is a compliment. Way. Don't give me
any Miata hate.
I roll one myself. I would drive a
Miata.
I I would I would take a Miata
before the '86.
Now you would. Thin thin Edgar would. Big
Edgar would. Thin Edgar. Fat Edgar. That wrong.
Right? Yeah.
Big Edgar would not have been able to
get in. Yeah. Coulda get in.
That's fucked up.
But I think I think kinda to that
point, just to add on to that, but
one of the context where where a lot
of people do put their guns through the
paces
is competition.
Yeah. Where they they they think like, well,
I'm going to use my gun. I'm going
to shoot targets that are supposed to mimic
people. I'm gonna shoot a lot of targets.
I'm gonna shoot them as fast as I
can. That sounds like what I would do
in a self defense situation.
So then the context
shifts to, well,
this is where I need to be the
most efficient.
And, of course, again, it goes back to
traction is traction, but it's not traction.
And so that becomes like the crucible. The
competition becomes the crucible to prove
the defensive firearm when it's not really the
crucible. It just looks kinda like the crucible.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's not understanding that
is you're using the wrong metrics. Right? And,
that's really all unfortunately, people say, well, that's
all we have. Well, in an unguided,
un supervised situation, it is much harder. You
don't have the scenario training. The information processing
to me is infinitely more important than the
difference between five shots per second and six
shots per second. Mhmm. But it it's hard
and cumbersome, and it's not as much fun,
and it's very much more subjective to to
try to mimic the necessity for information processing
while you're doing all this stuff with the
gun out on the range or to go
to a simulator or get involved in really
well run force on force training, and get
into scenarios. That's all infinitely more cumbersome than
just pulling out a timer and shooting a
quote, unquote standards drill or a qualification drill
or or go into a competition. So that's
how most people test their skills, but they're
they're testing objective performance in a controlled
Uh-oh.
Of in the fight where they need subjectively
to just win Mhmm. To deter the bad
guy or stop the bad guy from being
able to hurt them. So a psychological or
physical stop is equal in in the real
world. Right? And I'm not saying it's okay
to miss. I'm not saying fire warning shots.
Right? I'm not saying go with the Biden
tactics. What I'm saying is that's the reality
of the situation. Is that is that two,
three, or four shots in the chest, if
the bad guy drops a knife and runs
away, I guess it really didn't matter if
I hit him twice, three times, or four
times. And if it the first shot at
him is what made him drop the knife
and turn and run away, then it didn't
matter if I was carrying 18 rounds or
three. Right? And and that's the harsh reality
of it. And people don't wanna hear that,
especially when you start twisting your your tactics
based on your politics, you know, at least
your claimed tactics, your claimed strategy. When people
are saying, well, if you're gonna say that,
then I guess you're in favor of magazine
restrictions bans, or people are gonna quote Rob
Pincus, the personal defense network guy, as saying
you don't really
need more than 10 rounds anyway. You know?
And I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed
to carry. I'm not saying you shouldn't have
a spare magazine. I'm just saying you're not
under gunned if you're only carrying
eight plus one, if you're only carrying a
revolver, if you're only carrying 10 plus one,
if you're only carrying 15 plus one. Should
you have a spare mag? Sure. There's a
whole bunch of reasons you'd have a spare
mag, but you're probably gonna need to shoot
30 rounds is not the reason.
Yeah.
I I I do wanna kinda go back
a little bit because you were pretty passionate
before we we jumped on about the and
I wanna make sure we have a good
conversation about it unless you feel like we've
had a good enough conversation about
this idea of,
designs not being made in The US anymore.
This idea of
most of everything we get is is either
old here in The US
or it's European based.
I don't you know, it's become I I
think I'm a little more sensitive to it
just because there's so many people, you know,
flag waving and and let's,
support American companies and America first and all
that in our community. Right? People are are
living that that lifestyle on their Instagram,
and yet,
there really isn't a lot of innovation. And
and I can tell you firsthand, there isn't
a lot of like, I I I've had
exactly zero people,
far as I know, buy a PD 10
because it's an American made gun designed by
Americans with an American owned company. Right? And
you would think in today's market, in in
the the politics of today that everybody's Instagram
presence,
you would think there would be at least
some level of pushback to why support a
European company that has a office in The
US that is incorporated in The US to
because of import laws and and a whole
bunch of other things. I'm not I don't
think the import laws are a good idea.
Like, I would just assume buy a Glock
from Austria. I would just assume buy a
Sig from Germany. I would just assume, you
know, buy,
an FN from Belgium. I don't I don't
need
for those guns to be made in America
if I'm buying those guns. And the fact
that the bureaucracy has required those companies to
set up offices and shops here, I'm glad
Americans are being employed. But, again,
at the end of the day, if the
gun could be made at the same price
somewhere else and it was the same gun,
I'm not the guy who
won't buy the foreign thing. Right? I'm I'm
talking to you on a computer that's got
some Asian parts in it. I drive, you
know, the BMW or the Toyota. We talked
we talked about that, the Ducati. Right?
So I'm not that guy. But there's so
many people
claiming to be that guy
who I know full well have plenty of
stuff they're buying off Amazon from China and
everything else. Correct. But they're also carrying the
Glock.
They're also carrying the SIG. They're also, you
know, celebrating the
the Baghera or the Beretta, you know, whatever
it is they have as of and some
of them are the Walther, and they say,
well, Walther's made you used to live in
Gallatin, Tennessee. You probably know people or the
kids of people, anyway, that that you knew
are working in that factory and they're employing
Americans, and that's great. But if the only
reason they're employing Americans is because what is
it, September,
the import laws,
if that's the only reason they're doing it.
If they're doing it because labor's cheaper, believe
it or not, in The US than it
might be in Europe. Right? If that's the
reason they're doing it, well, then I don't
know that I'm all excited about that. And
it is still at the end of the
day a company that is filtering money towards.
Right? They're made in Georgia, but they're filtering
money back to Brazil. It's not like Daniel
Defense made in Georgia where the money stays
in America and it's owned by Americans. So,
I I don't
I don't I'm not I'm not waving the
flag and saying I don't own all these
guns. Right? I obviously, I do.
I'm sort of pointing a finger at the
people who are pretending this is really important
to them, who are gun owners, who aren't
going out of their way to support American
gun design and manufacturing because what it leads
to is the fact that the vast majority
of American handguns that are out
there are nineteen elevens or updated nineteen elevens
ARs or revolvers. Right? Yeah. You don't see
very many
actual
new
and I'm not even gonna say, like, the
p d 10 is a new design. I
don't think it's very innovative in this. It's
not like got some different mechanics going on
on the inside that aren't very common mechanics.
It's the slimness is very unique combined with
the profile and the bore axis and the
trigger and all that. It's a unique
conglomeration of established engineering and design Yeah. Principles
into a handgun. But what's important to me
is that people do realize it's there's no
MIM parts, you know. It's all made almost
all made here in this building. We get
some springs brought in, things like that. We
don't do the injection molding on the polymer,
but it is American made. It is American
design. It is American owned, and I think
that should mean more to a lot of
the people that are using the flag for
politics nowadays. Your mag release is pretty innovative.
And now it doesn't come standard on the
the gun, but, you do have a mag
release that that I like, and I haven't
bought it because I'm poor.
You you know a guy.
You get a discount. Well Yeah. I mean,
it's a lot of small sites. It's got
the it's got the forward pressure,
mag release for for people with shorter digits.
Like, there's some things on there that are
different that are designs I brought to the
market,
you know, with the with the claw sites
from AmeriGlove, and that's fifteen years ago we
did those.
The the modification to be able to make,
certain
mag releases forward press instead of having to
turn the gun and press in,
for shorter digited people. That's a modification. I've
been doing, like, the Glock extended mags for
at least fifteen years as well. So,
the internal funneling on the mag well of
the the ASR. Right?
That's something that that somewhere around here, I've
got some of the the old guns that
I just dremeled,
that channel to open that channel up. I
can't believe no one no no other manufacturers
ever done internal funneling
to, make it that a little bit more
forgiving for the the rib on the back
of the magazine as you're going into the
mag well.
No but nobody's ever done that before. So
so there are some things that I brought
to the market or at least I'm hoping
to bring to more of the market through
Avidity Arms that are that are interesting and
unique, But
I I hate to use the word innovative
in the sense of, you know, like the
the alien,
gun I mentioned earlier from Czech Republic. Like,
the way it takes the gas system, which
some people would say, well, it's just the
gas system from the HK p seven, kind
of, but the way they've locked it on
its side and got a really low bore
axis, like, that is to me an innovative
gun. The the recoil system in the,
the PSD,
right right up here. The way that that
system works inside the PSD,
which is which is patented by them, that
reciprocating mass that moves with the slide that
is equal to weight with the slide that
gets the mass coming that that you're talking
about the the,
the scientific
issue of angles and and
momentum. That incident is coming straight back because
the weight here is equal to the weight
there and it's balancing out. So there isn't
an upward twist despite the fact that this
is a very powerful round coming out of
this gun. And that's the reason that the
the h nine from Daniel Defense doesn't use
the system that the Hudson originally used because
Hudson was in violation of this patent. So
this is innovative. Right? The PD 10, I
just think is really well put together
version
of
some pretty standard engineering and design practices for
for striker fired firearms. Yeah.
That's a lot of information.
That that was
for that for me Play that back at
half speed.
I've had I'm drinking monsters. It's 09:00.
No. No. This is for me, this is
this is incredible. I and and and I
think this is, like, a conversations that I
I
I wish we would have more. But they're
nerdy. Right? They're they're to to your point.
Right? Like, I mean, I could keep going.
Right? Like, the Desert Eagle has some innovation
in it for gas. The way that, inertia
the the way the buffer works in that
300 Win Mag AR design from NEEMO, the
Omen. Right? I could pull that bolt carrier
out and people could see the the plunger
at the back of the bolt carrier group.
So you've got the normal spring, you've got
another piece in there that's absorbing some recoil,
and then you got a plunger in the
back of that bolt carrier group. That's innovative,
you know? Yeah. There's again, the more people
understand what's actually happening inside the guns, and
you've said this, and I think you've almost
convinced me it's more important than I would
have thought.
The more people understand what's going on inside
the guns, they more they can make the
right decision. I think it's obvious they can
make a more educated decision, but understanding the
physics and the engineering
might actually help people
make the right decision for their application,
not just pick the thing that's that's trending
with the influencers on YouTube. Yeah. And that's
that's the the biggest problem is they just
they just hear the influencers,
and they're like, well, that dude's got 2,000,000
followers, so it must be true.
They have 2,000,000 followers somehow,
and then they don't understand. And then they
end up with shitty guns because we see
them in classes with the shitty guns.
We see them in classes struggling
with with really subcompact firearms for a while
there, right, because they didn't understand the the
the kinesthetic alignment and full extension on the
arms and and how the recoil springs work
and and and all that stuff because they
get taught incorrectly. Go. Weight over the front
of the hand. I mean, Springfield discontinued
the four inch
XDS,
right, which is a really top heavy gun
with a high bore axis. But for a
compact gun with a four inch heavy slide,
you you could shoot that tiny gun really
fast because that had so much weight out
in front of the hand. So, like, the
three sixty five, like, the little broomsticky grip,
right, with a very short barrel, that was
a very snappy gun. And then they started
doing the XLs and the macro and now
the fuse. Right? So they started extending it
the Glock. Again, the the the Glock 48,
is a very well proportioned gun. Right? I
guess this is my carry gun before,
the PD 10 was ready with the shield
mag. So I was at 15 plus one.
This is a great proportioned gun. It's just
thicker than it needs to be. Why is
it thicker than it needs to be? Well,
Glock,
you know, might not say it, but I
have to think this gun was brought to
market extensively to be used with the 40
Smith and Wesson as well. So when you
build a gun potentially for 40 Smith and
Wesson, it's gotta be wider than when you
build a gun just for nine millimeter, you
know, and that's how we get to be
about 11% thinner because we're only for nine
millimeter. We weren't worried about 40 Smith and
Wesson.
There's really no other justification for why this
gun would be as thick as it is.
And then obviously, you've got the polymer magazines
that are what require would end up
necessitating
the 10 round capacity versus the steel magazines,
the metal magazines that shield uses for the
same gun.
You've got some structures in here that also
raise the bore axis just because of the
way they do their triggers. I don't think
our trigger is less safe. Our trigger is
just buried down in the gun more because
we don't have the substructure
inserts that are, like, holding the,
the different parts of the body. Doesn't have
the housing, right, in the the back of
the housing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So so there's
there's a,
there's explanations for all this stuff. And I
think a lot of people
don't understand, and maybe they don't care to
understand, and that's okay.
But just but when you don't care to
understand and you're kinda just okay with with
what feels good on the range when you're
shooting against the timer, when you're trying to
shoot tight groups,
don't be surprised when you end up in
the wrong place according to somebody who is
studying what's going on inside Right. Is studying
the application of the skills and what's gonna
be needed and trying to guide you to
the right plate right conclusion.
If your conclusion is based on ignorance about
what's going on inside the guns or how
the design affects your ability to shoot and
your
metrics, your measurements are what's happening only on
the range, not what you might need to
do in the real world, well, yeah, we're
gonna come to different conclusions. Yeah. You know?
And that's that's okay, except I'm pretty passionate
about the idea that people need to be
really prepared, not just believe they're prepared.
Yeah. And that's where the controversy comes in.
That's where the that's where the Rob always
thinks he's right. Rob always wants to challenge
every Rob wants to to he's an he's
an evangelist in the in the words of
Ken Hackethorn.
Yeah. I guess I am. Right? Like, well,
it it's it's because we're we're we're one,
we're doing the lord's work. So there's that,
obviously.
And then the other thing is yeah. Various
large, whatever the lord is.
And then the other thing is
humans might need to use what we're teaching
them, and and we cannot just go off
on a whim and just say, well, I
feel like it's the best thing because it's
trending,
and then teach what's trending. And that that's
that's hot garbage is if you're passionate about
what you believe in, you will study it
and you will understand. And, again, not everybody
needs to be at that level where they
need to understand every single aspect of the
gun. And, like, I'm still one of those
when people call it a clip. I'm like,
yeah. I know what the fuck you're talking
about. I mood. Let's move on. Move on.
Yeah. We know what you mean. Right. We
know what you mean. So
In the context of the of the goal
of self defense of or or of training
and preparation for self defense to be better.
If there is a better way, why are
you not doing that better thing? If it
fits within your budgets and your constraints, why
are you not doing that better thing? So
if we're talking about a half a centimeter
of boraxes,
we say, well, this is better. It's like,
yes. Objectively, it is better.
If you bought the wrong gun with all
the pennies that you have and you can't
afford
to sell your gun and buy another one,
then you're just gonna have to work with
what you got. Yeah. But this one's better.
Like Right. Or if you're issued the gun
I think I you know, I do wanna
just just
I wanna throw out this caveat. I tried
to throw it out whenever we get down
this,
you know, our way is better for reasons
thing.
And and we kinda you you you mentioned,
like, the trendiness and the followingness or giving
the students what they want. Like, that's a
big part of it. I think there are
there's obviously a lot of instructors who don't
teach what Rob teaches or or, you know,
what we teach in our programs, don't subscribe
to it, don't believe in it, whatever. I
think there's a lot of different reasons why.
Right? And I don't wanna suggest that everybody
who's teaching something different or or has different
opinions
is just get doing it for the money
or doing it to entertain people. Some of
them are. Right? Some of them are just
regurgitating
what they learned in the military or law
enforcement or what they've now learned in twenty
plus years of a very active private sector
training environment with guys who were passing down
stuff they knew from the olden days. And
and some guys have have come up with
some great drills and great classes and great
experiences
to make people incredibly better
on the range. On the range. They're doing
their job as far as they're concerned, and
and it's it's not fair to suggest that
they're not really awesome at what they do.
It's just that some people just simply do
not understand
what potentially is a really important difference between
what you do on the range and what
you do what you might need to do
to defend yourself or your family in the
real world. And that
is,
studyable. That's learnable. That's observable. You can go
out and you can do the work to
find out what people have actually had to
do with their guns. Not the anomalies, but
that bell curve. What is almost always what
people end up needing to do? And if
you focus on that, you're gonna find out
the shooting is the easy part. Like, as
long as your gun's gonna run, you know,
and you want it to be reliable and
you want a wide window for for negligence,
mistakes, like that safety margin in the designs
and in the reliability,
if you have those things, the shooting's gonna
be the easy part in in
99.9%
of the defensive shooting situation someone could find
themselves in. And once you accept that,
you stop worrying about split times, you stop
worrying about one whole groups, you stop worrying
about sub second draws or whatever the trendy
thing on Instagram is. Correct.
Yeah.
Decompress time.
That's that's pretty good. Ninety minutes.
Yeah.
Well, an hour forty six because we're not
gonna cut anything.
You already cut it.
Well,
I appreciate you,
dropping in and giving us your time. I
know you're a you're a workaholic,
and we appreciate that.
So
Yeah. Always always good
always good to have these conversations with you.
It's it's
always appreciated. And and for me, I I
like the nerdy stuff. I like the,
let let's dive deep into
the understanding of of why things work the
way that they work. And this isn't everything
that that I do, but this is why
I do appreciate always being around people who
are willing to push back.
Even if it's against stuff that I believe
in, it's because that's the only way we
we could ever become better human beings.
And,
so I always appreciate that. Now we were
talking about how guns work. It was fun
to see that if you fuck with a
gun, it's gonna fucking go off.
Shocking. Yeah. Shocking.
Yeah. So But it was just a screw,
thus the whole I wasn't manipulating the trigger,
and it only moved about a millimeter.
You know, I think it's important. I this
video
is really important to me right now, I
think, in this conversation, everything we've covered and
talked about because
when I cut when I talked about the
three twenty with Tony and Zeke and those
guys,
a, I didn't have any it was a
regular live. Right? And I pre I know
you guys wanted to do a live. I
appreciate you doing this in a way that
we could actually manipulate guns because I was
in a hotel room, like, after teaching all
day in New Mexico, and I all of
this stuff was probably said one way or
another, the stuff we when we were specifically
talking about the problems with three twenty. But
I think this video has presented that information
in a in a much more absorbable and
and educational way because I was able to
use the props. And
that was the day that the the I
just stuck a screw in the trigger
guy,
put that video out. So it was going
viral, and and we were all just kinda
reacting to it without really understanding
what he was trying to show. So I
was very just just I was completely dismissive
of it in in that video because it
was silly because he stuck a screw in
the gun and then said we didn't move
the trigger.
Now I understand what he was doing. Still
silly,
And I just think, again, he probably
didn't understand that he was deactivating
that safety with just that little bit of,
you know, less than a millimeter of movement.
And and that's
because he didn't understand what was going on
inside the gun
and didn't have an a rationale for why
sliding back and forth with such a tall
gun matters,
I think that's how you end up with
that video going viral. Right? And I've been
joking, like, he's now gonna be the Internet's,
like, go to guru for firearms engineering and
safety.
Right?
Because it stuck a screw in there. And,
I mean, meanwhile, what we need to do
is keep people out of Home Depot. Forget
about 3.8. Don't go down the fastener aisle
at Home Depot, and you'll be fine.
Because you might fall out. Yeah. And then
that fucking screw might accidentally go in, and
it goes off.
Fucking at Home Depot.
So Yeah. I honestly didn't even know that
that's how the given the giving me the
time and the interest. The Michigan one. I
didn't know that that's how it was done.
So, yeah, if you look at the pictures,
you'll see it's kinda like the gun's in
a vice,
and you can kinda see a punch. And
they say something like manipulating or you can
go but you can you can just kinda
make out the gun the the gun's in
a vice, and they've got, like, I think
one point, the guy has, like, two hands
jamming a punch or something into the back
of the gun. And they talk about relieving,
the back plate so they could observe
what was going on.
You know, like I said, there there's a
lot going on with with
these these issues.
You know, we we had to see
if we well, I didn't because I didn't
know. Right? We don't you can only go
so far with the math.
Our striker is tensioned. Right?
It's as we described, like, when we demonstrated,
it does move back under when you're pressing
the trigger. But
what now, again, let me be really super
clear here about what we did for the
test. We took the drop safety plunger out
entirely.
We removed that safety from the gun.
We used a trigger that did not have
a tab. We removed the tab safety from
the trigger.
We opened up the back of the gun.
We had un we had primed cases that
were un you know, unloaded but primed cases.
And we stuck a tool in the back
and
maneuvered it so that we were able to
push
so we were able to get in there
and and, you know, just hook on that
and push that down so that a striker
would go forward. And we did
ten
ten times with two different guns, and one
gun fired three times and one gun fired
twice.
And we used very importantly, we used a
bunch of different brass.
Right? So what does that tell you? Well,
primer sensitivity and primer height probably play a
role.
And to some extent, even how the round
chambers,
right, and and how much tolerance there is
on the lockup in any given gun barrel,
extractor,
breech face combination,
and the striker itself. Right? The tolerances on
the actual extension of the striker. There's a
whole bunch of things at play so that
what we found out was, like, less than
half the time,
there is enough
precocked force
inside the striker when it's at rest that
if you
teleported
or by some other magic
made the drop safety plunger come out of
the gun,
and you you
had a very small person go in through
this hole
and jump really hard and push up on
the slide and push down on the trigger
bar to push it off, or you had
a lightsaber kinda thing happen where the back
of the gun got cut open
and then
a ninja threw a really small dart in
the like, you could you could
maybe. I I see the next Rick Moran
is Are we under tension enough to make
the gun go bang? And then the question
is, well, how do we how do we
get it so that we're not we have
zero chance of the gun ever going bang
if the teleporting and the light sabering and
the gremlin all come together. And there's, like,
now you don't you don't want that 12
pound trigger pull, so that's not gonna happen.
Okay. So forget about that.
And and so all of these guns, if
you start pulling parts out and you start
jamming things in there, eventually, you're gonna make
them go off. Right? And, like, what I
don't want is for you can do it
as the teaser if you want, but I
don't want, like, the viral, Rob says glocks
are dangerous. Look at this because I made
like, I I do that just to say
this is one of the the safest, most
proven designs out there in more hands in
a 03/20 probably. Well, if you look at
all the Glock family for sure, probably even
Glock 40 eights, there's more of them out
there, I think, than March,
in public hands, not in the law enforcement
military side. But if you just look at
the public. And yet,
if you stick a screw in the trigger,
move it a little bit, defeat the tab
safety, cut a hole in the back, stick
a tool in there, and wrench it around
a little bit, you can make it fire
without touching the trigger. That's like the classic,
lesson learned. Yeah. That's the classic, hey, doc.
It hurts when I do this.
Yeah.
Don't do that.
Stop doing it. Stop
stop slamming the lid.
Well,
for those of you that are still here
after we said we were gonna log off,
I appreciate it because you just got some
extra information.
And now I have a new,
script to write for a new Rick Moranis
movie.
Fucking shrinking people to go into guns and
dancing on them. It's gonna be awesome.
That might be what that might be something
Sig said in a in a deposition.
Just for a second. It's possible. It's possible.
Think about it.
Shit. That's funny.
Alright. Well, we're gonna end this. I appreciate
you, Rob, for for, hanging out with us.
If you guys wanna know more about the
Avidity Arms, go to avidityarms.com.
If you wanna, learn more about Rob, just
ask chat g p t
who Rob Pincus is, and it'll tell you.
Or Grok. Grok does a good job too.
Yeah. But he's gonna say some some weird
shit. Grok I hear Grok is doing weird
shit.
So Grok too. Ask Grok. And then,
Avedity Arms PDN,
personaldefensenetwork.com.
I'm always
proud to be a part of the PDN
training tour.
So that that's always fun. Go check that
shit out and everything
else that that Rob's involved with. So, anyways,
I I appreciate your time, Rob. Yeah. Alright.
Thanks, guys. Keep up the good work out
there in Colorado and and wherever your travels
take you. Nice.
We'll see you guys. Peace.