OSD 298: Launching the OSD podcast. Episode 1 with Isaac Botkin.

Highlights from the conversation.

The OSD podcast is live, and we’re thrilled to have Isaac Botkin as the very first guest. Below you’ll find a list of specific clips from the conversation, but first, here are the links to subscribe to the podcast in your app of choice. We have more interviews with more builders and founders already recorded, and still more on the way, so the best way to get notified is to subscribe:

• Apple Podcasts app and Overcast

• Spotify

• Amazon Music

• iHeart

• Podchaser

Rate it too, to juice the algorithm.

Now onto the highlights from the conversation with Isaac.

The early days of T.Rex Arms, and when Isaac knew it was going to be big

The hard parts of growing a business very quickly

It’s hard to find people who are both high-competence and mission-aligned, but it’s very important that you find them

How content marketing has changed for civilian defense companies

Do guns actually prevent tyranny?

The future of gun culture, body armor, and night vision

Lightning round on upcoming gun-related innovation

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This week’s links

Peanut the squirrel

Isaac Botkin on why it’s not about individual bad actors, it’s about systems.

Book report from a subscriber on Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe

Thank you to newsletter subscriber Joe for this synopsis:

Non-human social animals can only really trust their mothers, possible to a much lesser extent other close kin, because the group has no efficient way to police bad actors; enter pre-humans, who by evolving the ability to throw (rocks) as accurate and deadly missiles, discovered that they could simply gang up on bad actors in their groups, quickly and at a safe distance — with broad distribution of the means to enforce conduct through deadly violence came the ability to expand the circle of trust beyond immediate kin, and thus the ability to trust and amplify what I suppose we would call “culture” — providing a fruitful environment for language to evolve and accelerate everything, and a pretty sturdy backdoor argument for 2A.

What can the president actually do for or against gun rights?

An excerpt from:

OSD 90: Weaponized ATFism

A while ago, we sent some thoughts to the current presidential administration answering the question, “What can we singlehandedly deliver for gun rights?” Here’s the list we sent them:

• Redefine “armor-piercing ammo” to re-allow previously banned ammo types

• Redefine 922(r) out of existence

• Repeal Bush 41’s assault weapon import ban

• Bring back kitchen table FFLs, and make a new internet-sales FFL (this is in the 2017 ATF white paper)

• Repeal the photos and fingerprints parts of ATF Rule 41F (an Obama-era rule change), so that trusts don’t need photos and fingerprints for their members. (Careful here: Rule 41F also changed “you need CLEO approval” to “you just need to notify your CLEO, but they can’t stop you” — that was a very important positive change that we should keep.)

• Expansive allowance for pistol braces. Basically make it official that anything goes.

• Grant a blanket “lawful purposes” exemption for gun possession to all people in the country on nonimmigrant visas (tourists, H1Bs, etc.)

• Machine gun amnesty (Forgotten Weapons’s explanation)

• Presumptive approvals for Form 1s and Form 4s. They approve it right away, and then can claw it back 10 months later or whatever if you get denied. Precedent: this is how NICS checks already work — if you don’t get a yes/no within 3 days, you can take the gun home and then they just claw it back if you eventually get rejected.

• C&R firearms are defined as any gun more than 50 years old, or any gun that the ATF deems to be a C&R. They could add a massive influx of modern guns to the C&R list. Basically all the cool ‘70s–‘90s guns. There’s no reason the Steyr AUG and MP5 and FAL and the like shouldn’t be considered classics. Hell, AKs too.

Now, zero of those things were acted on in four years, but that’s not why we bring it up. We bring it up because of what this list says about the ATF. Our list was about all the things the ATF should do. But the deeper issue is what the ATF can do.

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