OSD 145: Guns, Andy Warhol, and Coca-Cola
Good products are good. The best products are good and affordable.
This is a good time of the year to get a deal on gun stuff. Which gun stuff to buy is a harder question.
As guns continue to attract a wider audience, the products are getting better. That makes intuitive sense; a bigger, more engaged audience increases the returns on innovation, which in turn attracts innovators. But products “getting better” isn’t just a vague trend. It has a specific meaning. What “better” really means is “higher value per dollar”.
Andy Warhol said this about a particularly high-value-per-dollar good in 1975:
You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
That makes a useful rule-of-thumb for how innovative a consumer industry is: do billionaires and middle-class people buy the same product? There’s nothing necessarily wrong with an industry that doesn’t pass that test — it just means there’s still a lot of value left to be created.
For example, take a look at this reddit post from nine years ago, titled “1993 vs. 2013”:
For each device that the iPhone replaced, in 1993 a billionaire would own a much better version than what a middle-class person would own. The latter might not have owned, say, a camcorder or a cell phone at all. Today, everybody buys the same handful of smartphones, because they’re the best option at any price.
In reality, the 1993 vs. 2013 comparison is even starker than what’s in the picture. Because it’s not just that the iPhone substitutes all those devices, it’s that it completely supplants them. In 1993, you couldn’t have bought iPhone-like functionality at any price.
So how does this apply to guns?
Well, you can break the industry into three categories: products that have completed this Warhol shift, those that are mid-shift, and those that are still pre-shift.
Post-shift
Examples
Striker-fired polymer handguns (Glocks and similar designs)
Rimfire firearms, for the most part (excluding niche competition target guns)
FMJ ammo
Most software products and internet platforms
What’s next for products in this category
These are products where money doesn’t buy you better outcomes today, but that doesn’t mean the products are perfect. The path forward on these is to just keep making them better. Plenty still left to do here, especially in the internet space.
Mid-shift
Examples
ARs and other common centerfire rifles
Scopes and red dot optics
Chest rigs
Belts
Holsters
Suppressors
What’s next for products in this category
On these, there’s an active trend moving in the right direction. Spending 2-3x more still buys you a better AR or a better scope than the budget option — but the gap is smaller than it used to be, and it’s shrinking. Look for high-dollar incumbents here to face growing competition from the budget end of the market.
Pre-shift
Examples
Night vision goggles
IR devices like the MAWL and PEQ-15
Body armor
Radios and comms
What’s next for products in this category
These domains are still dominated by high-dollar incumbents. Historically, that plays out in one of four ways:
It stays that way long-term
The incumbents successfully move down-market
They get disrupted from below by startups
The the entire domain fades away
The corollary is that as long as the domain itself doesn’t disappear, these domains with fat-and-happy incumbents are the ones with the richest rewards for a startup that manages to break in and change things.
What are your favorite companies attacking mid-shift and pre-shift domains? Reply to this email and let us know. Especially if you’re the one starting the company.
This week’s links
Dad pistol combat course
The tactical New Balances are key.
The Sputter gun
A Sten modified to get around the definition of a machine gun in the US in the 1980s by not having a trigger. Once the bolt is released, it will keep firing until the mag is empty.
New Gallup poll: support for gun rights continues to rise
52% of Americans want stricter gun laws, lowest since 2014
Independents’ support for stricter gun laws down 15 points since 2020
Record-low 19% favor handgun ban in U.S., down from 25% last year
Whose Second Amendment is it?
The November 24 episode of the What Next podcast:
The Supreme Court is considering a case that may strike down New York state’s strict restrictions on carrying a gun in public. Some public defenders think that might be a win for criminal justice reform.
Guest: Sharone Mitchell Jr., Chief Defender for the Cook County Public Defenders.
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