Welcome back to another T-Rex Talk. Today we're going to be talking about three
different topics. None of these topics seem big enough for an entire episode. I
mean it could be if I had done a little more research. But also there's just been
a lot going on over the past week. So we're going to be talking about the ATF
brace, short-barreled rifle, ban, registration, trap scheme. We haven't
talked about that in a couple weeks and there definitely have been some
developments. We're also going to talk about Chinese spy balloons because that's
all that anybody is really talking about at the moment. And we're going to be
talking about a recent gun rights drama. This question, are gun rights for
everyone? Causing a little bit of confusion and consternation so we'll get
into that. But first let's talk about what the ATF is up to and the new final
rule change on short-barreled rifles and pistol braces. The last time we talked
about this particular final rule change on pistol braces and short-barreled rifles
it had not yet been entered into the federal registry but now it has. It was
filed on January 31st which means that the deadline for compliance is May 31st.
So if you have not destroyed your pistol brace or removed it from the rifle
because now it's a rifle it's not a pistol anymore. If you haven't gotten rid
of that thing or filed the appropriate paperwork the form for to get your
thing converted to a proper SBR legally because the ATF has declared it to be an
SBR illegally. You will be in trouble. You will be out of compliance on May 31st.
The other thing that's happened since we talked about this on the last episode is
that a lot of lawsuits have been filed against the ATF. A lot of lawsuits are
directly targeting this rule change. There's some legislation pending. There's a
whole bunch of different things going on and so the movement that has happened
on this particular issue is I think really really good and I'm optimistic
about it. The other thing that I want to talk about is a mistake. I need to
correct a couple of errors from that episode. One was that I talked about a
time in the past when the United States government sold a whole bunch of surplus
M1 Garans or M1 Garans and then they had to change the actual language of the
1934 National Firearms Act because they were short-barreled rifles. Now I was
actually incorrect about that. It's true that the government sold a lot of M1
Garans but that did not have a 16 and a quarter inch barrel. All of those rifles
had an 18 inch barrel. What I was actually trying to talk about was the M1
Garban. That was the technically short-barreled rifle that the US government
sold to many many many many citizens and then they realized that they had sold
them illegal short-barreled rifles and they changed the language of the text.
They changed the National Firearms Act from 18 inches minimum barrel length down
to 16 inches minimum barrel length because that was better than making
felons of a whole bunch of American citizens who had bought something that
the government said that it was okay to buy much like pistol braces today. The
other correction I have is regarding the 88-day background check window. That
window only opens once the ATF starts processing your paperwork and how that
window actually closes is complicated and I misunderstood that but in my
defense I know the some ATF agents also misunderstand that and so my
recommendation is to not worry about that too much just wait until the window
that you have for the actual M's D period is less than 88 days. That will
simplify things for you and for the ATF. Now that being said I'm not actually
offering you any legal advice. I have not become a lawyer since the last episode
the way talked about this so I'm still not a lawyer and I'm still not giving
legal advice. I'm not even giving you a recommendation of what is best to do. I
will just point out that the deadline for filing is a long way away and it is a
trap. I'm not recommending your course of action one way or the other but but
filing for the paperwork is a trap and there's a whole bunch of losses that have
been filed and there still is a fair amount of time before May 31st so I'm
recommending that you do nothing. I mean I'm recommending nothing. Now a bunch
of people have also commented that the ATF has run amnesties in the past and
they have been honest and true to their word in those amnesties and I would
point out that that is in fact true. However those amnesties are a little bit
different than what we're talking about with the pistol braceband. The purpose
of those ATF registration amnesties were specifically for machine guns. Machine
guns that had not been registered, historical artifacts, things like the MG
42 that your grandfather brought back after World War II and it sat in his
basement and he never registered it because he didn't know that he needed to
and then after he passed away you inherited and now your opportunity to
register that pre- 1986 machine gun that window had completely closed and a
couple times the ATF has opened the books back up. There's been an amnesty
where you can register that machine gun legally without any consequences and the
ATF has indeed been true to their word. They have not dinged people afterwards.
They've actually allowed them to register those. That is true. It's worth
pointing out that the ATF has done this. However this pistol brace fiasco I think
is a very different thing and I don't think we should think about it the same
way we're thinking about these past machine gun amnesties. This is something
that again covers 10 to 40 million Americans. There are 10 to 40 million
pistol braces out there and after 10 years of the ATF saying that a pistol
brace is not a stock they are now saying that for the past 10 years all of us
have been owning illegal SBRs. I think that the situation is a little bit
different and I think that it's an opportunity for them to build a de facto
registry of 40 to 10 million devices and that's probably what's going on there.
So that's something we're going to keep an eye on. I don't know that we'll have a
update every single week but it's certainly the sort of thing that we will
come back to several times because it is kind of a big deal. The next thing we're
going to be talking about is of course Chinese spy balloons because everybody's
talking about it. I only really have one point that I want to make and that is
that last week when the spy balloon was new and no one was really sure what was
going on. The Pentagon organized a press conference and the spokesman for the
Pentagon, Pat Ryder, he talked about the fact that this was a Chinese spy
balloon but he would not tell the reporters where it was and someone asked
well does the public not have the right to know about the location of this balloon
and Ryder said the public certainly has the ability to look up in the sky and
see where the balloon is. So my interpretation of that comment is that the
Pentagon has approved the public to you know acquire all the spotting scopes and
radar devices that are necessary to keep an eye on our airspace. This is
apparently now a private sector job. We should we should get on that. We should
acquire some of these intelligence-scathering tools because knowing more
enemy aircraft is that's apparently our responsibility now. So my next
question would be are we allowed to shoot these enemy aircraft down? I haven't
really kept up with all of the balloons that have been shot down this week
because it is a surprisingly large number. We're up to four downed enemy
airships at the time of this recording which is which is kind of weird. But the
first one I was keeping a closer eye on it and it was it was between 40 and 60
feet up which is really high that's 15 to 20 kilometers. And I'm using
kilometers because that's how model rocketry associations usually gauge the
height of their rocket launches. I'd like to point out that student rocketry
teams beat 20 kilometers all the time. So this is a very doable thing for
students. It's a very doable thing for amateurs and the private sector. Now I
will say that it's not particularly easy. It's not particularly cheap. But you
know sending a wing of F-22s up to fire multiple $400,000 side winders at
weather balloons. That's not cheap either. So again the private sector may be the
best solution for policing our airspace as the Pentagon has officially
recommended by my interpretation. So that I think is is as the big takeaway here
that we should we should all have. Now I'm actually kind of surprised that the
media has has declared these to be from China. I'm actually not entirely sure that
they are from China and I'm very surprised the media didn't claim that they
are spy balloons from Russia. That seems like it would be much more on brand for
everybody at the moment. I really don't know what this means in the long term.
It's another thing that bears keeping an eye on. But one thing that is interesting
is that NORAD has existed for 65 years and in all that time they have never
shot anything down until last week and they've now shot four things down. I've
no idea what's going on but I'm getting very strong vibes of people trying to
distract me from stuff. And now we're getting on to the third topic of the
podcast which is gun rights. Now we talk about gun rights a lot on this particular
podcast because gun rights are something that matter a lot to T. rex well I guess
all T. rex employees and T. rex customers and and those of you listening to the
podcast. But this past week or so there's been a pretty large controversy over
the kind of people who generally talk about gun rights and a fringe group of I
would say more left-leaning gun enthusiasts. And the argument kind of goes
like this if you are pro-second amendment if you are pro-gun then you
must be pro-gun for all these other groups for Antifa, for commies, for LGBTQ
etc. All of these groups you need to be pro-gun for all of these groups as well.
And if you are not actively including and arming these leftist groups then you
aren't actually too at all. And this is a complicated argument to weigh on on a
lot of people have I think assumed this this rather false equivalency and kind
of gotten gotchered by the folks making the argument because we're really talking
about two different things if you were pro-2a then you're talking about limited
government not infringing on pre-existing rights and if you're talking
about arming specific groups then you're only talking about the forced
acceptance of special interest group ideologies. These are two very different
things they're not actually the same they don't actually go in the same
equation. And I'll give you an example what T-Rex is doing right now and I'm not
saying that you have to follow T-Rex's example in this but as you're talking
about this issue maybe T-Rex's example will be helpful. When T-Rex lobbies right
now we are lobbying the General Assembly of Tennessee the legislature of
Tennessee is now in session and we have several bills that we would like to see
passed into law. These are bills that would limit the authority of the state
to infringe upon people's gun rights. They're pre-existing human rights to own
firearms. These are bills that would extend firearm freedom to everyone. There
are no exceptions for different groups. These firearm freedoms are for everyone
I'm just saying it twice just so it's extra clear. But on the other hand T-Rex
arms is also developing products and educational materials and those are
actually not for everyone. And these are two very different things I don't believe
that it is hypocritical or inconsistent to lobby for the government to get out
of an area that is none of their jurisdiction and then want to provide
product and education for people who actually want to defend life with these
tools. And that's part of the reason that on the T-Rex website once you go to
check out there's a little check box there's three check boxes that get you a
discount a duty discount and the first question that it asks is is it true that
you believe that you have a moral duty to defend innocent life where legally and
morally possible. We've been very outspoken about the purpose of T-Rex
products. We're wanting to increase the capability of people who are doing what
is morally right and defending innocent life and doing justice stopping evil and
preserving good and we would really like to make sure that our customers are
actually interested in doing that. And I'm not necessarily saying that every
other special interest group on the left isn't interested in doing that but
there are several that aren't. Communists for example are not and we can say that
based on you know plenty of historical evidence about what communists do when
they actually have lethal weapons and and enough lethal weapon capability the
defense of innocent life is not really on their to-do list. That's why when we
make T-Rex product or T-Rex educational material we're not really making that
with communists in mind but when we go to the state of Tennessee and we tell
them that they should change their laws so that their jurisdiction is smaller
their power to actually infringe on people's God-given rights is less that does
apply to human beings who have human rights who you know are also communists.
This is not inconsistent and this is not hypocritical. These are two different
things. Now I would point out that there is a time and a place for the state the
magistrates of the state the law enforcement of the state to actually
disarm some of these special interest group types of people but it is not when
they own weapons or tools or objects. It is when they do things that are
actually criminal with objects. When ever those objects are. I don't want baseball
bats to be prohibited for anti-fembers but I do want baseball bats to be removed
from the hands of anti-fembers when they're hidden people with them. That is
something that the state could absolutely do. And I know what baseball bat
companies to market their bats specifically to anti-fembers because
they have like really good balance and good swing. I would prefer that the
baseball bat companies defend the rights of all individuals to own baseball bats
and then market their baseball bats to people who play ball. Maybe that's a
better example than T-Rex. But I've seen this argument this issue swirling
around the internet gun community for a while and I just kind of flared up this
last week. And Lucas spot can record it some Instagram videos that you can go
and watch because I think that they state the T-Rex position really well and I
think that he describes the argument that has been fomenting on the internet
really well probably better than I am but I want to make just a couple of other
points that I think might be helpful. The difference between the individual who
protects the life of the individual versus the special interest groups that
protect their lifestyle these are two different things and it's kind of a
small difference but I think it's worth pointing out. I think it is actually a
difference that is worth mentioning and the other thing is that there's this
kind of bait and switch that happens where somebody says if second amendment
rights are absolute then you must apply them to this group over here. And that's
kind of a con that is happening there because the individual rights to keep
and bear arms is an individual right and an individual who is a member of say
Antifa has that right because he is a human being made in the image of God that
has that God given right. He doesn't have that right because he's part of a
group called Antifa. Antifa doesn't have group rights. Groups of drag queens
don't have group rights. Groups of communists don't have group rights but
inside of all these groups are individual human beings that have human rights
because they're made in the image of God and God has given his creations
individual rights. They pre-exist. They aren't granted by government. This is
really the big argument and as we have talked about the second amendment in the
past there are a lot of people who have come out and said like hang on hang on
hang on the second amendment is very important. We need to support it as
widely as possible. We need a very big tent. We need to cast a very wide net.
Talking about where rights come from is very uncomfortable and it's kind of
a alienate a lot of people. You're going to attract a lot more support from a lot
more people by just being vague but I reject all of that and I think that as
you can see by the way that this debate has kind of played out recently that
there isn't as much value in being vague and imprecise as you might think. If you
have this very mushy stance it's very hard for you to precisely state your
position when a more complicated issue and question arises and it's really easy
to get got by kind of a trap question like this. If you aren't actually very
clear in your mind what you're actually talking about what you're actually
defending and being willing to be really bold and I don't just mean obnoxious. I
mean bold. There's a lot of people who are willing to be obnoxious when a
complicated and very personal issue like this is brought up by people who are on
the other side but that is not nearly as helpful as being clear and being
precise and being really honest about the truth and being really bold to
proclaim it very clearly. So as you discuss Second Amendment issues with
different people on the internet a lot of them are going to bring group rights
into it a lot of them are going to bring special interest groups into it a lot of
people are going to bring emotion into it be clear and be precise and don't just
take the pragmatic position of trying to win them over into thinking that guns are
okay when you could actually make a deeper and clearer and more valuable
point occasionally at the the cost of getting yelled at and being called a
bunch of names on the internet but let's be honest you should probably be kind
of used to it by now. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world that I don't
fully understand like it's Chinese spy balloons and the ATF but one thing that
I do know very clearly is this now is a great time to stand up straight and speak
the truth. Don't talk around the edge of the issue go straight to the heart of it
figure out what is foundational figure out what the standards are be very
bold about proclaiming those things there's very few people doing that and I
would say the absence of that is being very keenly felt. I want to talk more
about this point actually in next week's episode which I think is going to be
about artificial intelligence. I've been researching artificial intelligence and
experimenting with a couple of different generative models for text and for
images and I think that they have a lot of implications that all of us should
be aware of so hopefully I have enough time to get some thoughts together on
that and I'll talk to you next week.