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Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
2024: Ranked #1 Law Podcast
Host: Tyler Owen and Clint McNear discussing topics, issues, and stories within the law enforcement community. TMPA is the voice of Texas Law Enforcement, focused on protecting those who serve. Since 1950, we have been defending the rights and interests of Texas Peace Officers by providing the best legal assistance in the country, effective lobbying at state and local levels, affordable training, and exemplary member support. As the largest law enforcement association in Texas, TMPA is proud to represent 33,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers.
Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement
#028- "Behind The Barrel" w/ Sons of Liberty Gun Works
Oh boy, do we have a treat for you today! We've been shooting the breeze (pun intended) with none other than Mike from Sons of Liberty Gunworks, the rising powerhouse in the rifle industry. He takes us on his journey from being a small-town boy with a love for firearms, to being the founder of a company known for producing endurance duty rifles.
In a riveting conversation, we dove into the nitty-gritty of the fascinating world of firearms. From the meticulous process of crafting the ideal rifle to the significance of providing rifle replacements for police officers separated from their arms in the aftermath of an incident - we left no stone unturned. Mike further opened up about the challenges of growing a gun company, the ideological divide between law enforcement and civilians, and his unwavering commitment to arming the good guys.
Grab a cuppa and settle in as we traverse through Mike's innovative manufacturing methods. We take a close look at how Sons of Liberty Gunworks uses data from thousands of rifles to enhance their products constantly. Oh, and did we mention the company's contracts with the US Marshals and other law enforcement agencies? Trust us, this is one conversation you don't want to miss. Whether you're a gun enthusiast or simply curious about the industry, you're in for an insightful and fascinating ride.
email us at- bluegrit@tmpa.org
This episode of BlueGrid podcast is sponsored by Sons and Liberty Gunworks, proud law enforcement supporters.
Speaker 2:This is if your rifle is used in the line of duty and it's taken for evidence. We're sending you the rifle in the exact configuration that you bought it in. Nobody's going to work us and nobody has the end user package that we do.
Speaker 1:Welcome back BlueGrid podcast listeners, watchers, lawyers before you delve or dive or whatever the hell we're going to say about this, you guys hit that subscribe button. We got a special guest on the day. We really, really, really appreciate it. Man out of San Antonio Yeah, san Antonio, texas, What's?
Speaker 2:going on, brother. Oh, not much man. Thanks for having me on. I've been looking forward to doing this, Yeah.
Speaker 1:Mike from Sons of Liberty. Sons of Liberty.
Speaker 2:Gunworks. What's going on, man?
Speaker 1:Oh not too much.
Speaker 2:I uh from a little town in uh called St Hedwig, outside of San Antonio, and they like wouldn't stop light.
Speaker 3:I've never heard of that. Say it again, st.
Speaker 1:Hedwig, i've never, i'm not even going to attempt. I just now finally got to where I could say at a scosa, so you did it. Hey, that's right. It took me about three weeks to to, uh, actually master that.
Speaker 2:So St Hedwig is like right next to uh Laverne, Yeah, Okay. So, it's right on the outside of San Antonio. Oh, it's in Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, right, right, right Right.
Speaker 2:So it's actually in Texas. Okay, yeah, it's right there. It's like I said, it's like a population I think is like 1300 people or something. you know so little tiny Texas town and um. But no, yeah, i'm the, the co-owner and founder of Suns Liberty gunworks, where the fastest rifle, uh, fastest growing rifle company in the country Um, we specialize in like endurance duty rifles And that's that's kind of all we do. So that's it. It's been a pretty wild. We're coming up on our ninth year in business and, uh, we're in all all 50 states and multiple countries. It's been a wild ride.
Speaker 3:So, growing up small town um, how'd you get to where you're at? man? Did you grow up around guns? You haven't interested it. Was there something that brought you as you grew up? or family owned, or Yeah?
Speaker 2:So when I was five, if I got done with my chores, uh, my dad gave me a handful of 22 ammo and I'd go sit on the tank dam and shoot turtles. You know, like that was the, that was the reward for.
Speaker 3:You know, for picking up your toys or something. Well, it used to be cheap entertainment. Yeah, no, i was expensive anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy, crazy. I look back, i have a four year old son, i have a four year old and two year old, but I'm a four year old And I think to myself like I, I couldn't handle him you know, i couldn't handle a bunch of 22 ammo and tell him to go walk through those high weeds into that tank and go shoot turtles. I mean, like to me it's like it's crazy, but that's how I grew up.
Speaker 2:I guess it was a different time you know and uh and I just I learned to really appreciate what you could achieve with a good rifle, you know, and that that kind of stuck with me my whole life That if you hit the rifle being a tool and if you have that tool, there's not much you you can't do, you could feed yourself, you can protect yourself. You know it gives you a sense of uh, almost security and a sense of responsibility and uh, and then when you actually get into the shooting side, i mean there's a sense of, you know, focus and patience and kind of being at one with what you're, your environment, what you're doing. And that just something that stuck with me my whole life. I never I started. I got into business, i guess kind of late. You know.
Speaker 2:I started my son's delivery and I was probably my mid thirties. I didn't I had no idea that was what my life was going to look like. It started out as something that it was a super mechanically curious about weapons and the, the metallurgy side and again the mechanics of it. And uh took that and, you know, kind of accidentally got into the gun business. I started building rifles in my garage for team guys and Marines and stuff, you know, and after, uh, after shipping about 50 of those out of the garage, uh, I got a visit from the ATF and uh like, look, look, asshole, he, he needed a license and uh, that's, that's son's liberty.
Speaker 3:But man, that goes a long way towards your drive, or your interest, or yourself drive to, to be delivering weapons to high speed. I mean to high speed folks, it's not like you were just shipping them out to high speed, high speed stuff, and to do it out of your garage says a whole lot for your ability and your aptitude for that.
Speaker 2:Well, though I mean we, it was. To me it was never a money making thing, and this was during the time where you could not find, you know, we this was a kind of right around the Sandy Hook time, whenever there was nothing to buy but junk, and then personal friends of mine wanted a rifle because, legitimately, people were afraid that you might not be able to get a rifle at some point. Yeah, and so this, to me, had nothing to do with money, had everything to do with, like I, i ideologically believe in in arming good people and I, everybody that that got one of those early rifles, um, was actually a friend of mine, or you know somebody that was a friend of a friend. That was about. So this wasn't like you know, i'm, i'm, i'm, I'm, i'm you weren't handed the shit out just to anybody. Yeah Well, you know, like Joe Biden said, a truck pulls up at the curb and, uh, you know, they just pass them out like ice cream, that's not what it was.
Speaker 2:That's not. That's not how things went.
Speaker 1:Well, the reason, really what that I've. I found out about you, me and Clint both uh some really really really close friends of ours. Uh, you became kind of known in the area as a really really close friend of law enforcement And you've kind of kind of interesting path uh of kind of how they get introduced. If you want to touch on that uh, maybe your background with, uh your introduction with law enforcement friends and so forth, not just uh with the firearms, uh introduction, but maybe touch on how you got introduced with with law enforcement community there in the San Antonio area.
Speaker 2:Well, i mean, when I was, uh, when I was much younger, 20 years ago, i had a, you know, a bit of a problem with authority, i suppose, And, uh, i still do. I still have a problem with authority, except for I've taken that problem with authority and I've channeled that into what I think is more effective, which is, you know, you know lobbying or you know, looking at the politics of things and how destructive some of that stuff is And then, uh, trying to make a difference in that arena. I also believe that, you know, there is a bit of rebelliousness, i guess, if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, of arming, arming citizens, yeah, you know. So, i mean, i took some of my problem with structure and I rolled it into something I think very positive and we've helped tens of thousands of people along the way. Uh, especially in the law enforcement community. I mean we've we've helped hundreds of police officers around the country.
Speaker 2:Uh, i think we're starting thousands when we talk about in terms of equipment. And then you know, like part of our end user, part of our end user service is if your rifle is used in the line of duty and it's taken for evidence, like we're sending you the or the rifle and the exact configuration that you bought it in If you bought it with a suppressor, laser optic, whatever, and uh, and that thing got taken for evidence. We're sending you a rifle with the laser, light optic, whatever you know, because most police officers that I've talked to that have been involved in an OIS. Like, getting that gun back is a kind of a big thing. It's not just the equipment that you lost, it's kind of a being made whole after a kind of a bad situation.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think that's extremely important point for some of our listeners that maybe aren't in the law enforcement community. Um, when an officer is involved in a shooting, uh, whichever weapon they use, if, if they chose not to use a handgun and they choose to, uh chose to use a rifle, and that shooting, that rifle's taken as evidence. And in some of the bigger counties Dallas County, i'm sure, bear County is the same way, harris County it may not go to trial for two years, three years, three years, four years, and so, even though I'm not guilty of something, the weapon I used, as uh, it's a suspect, isn't killed, is evidence And it's not. That evidence isn't disposed of until the trial is terminated or adjudicated, and that may be four years, and so it has a psychological effect too.
Speaker 2:I think getting that, getting that gun back, is the my sentence, the period at the end of the sentence, you know per se, but there is a level of closure to the whole thing And I think, while that weapons out there, um, you don't feel that that closure, at least, at least from the dozens of people I've talked to that have gone through this. you know that we've helped.
Speaker 3:And in a rural, rural area where they may not have a large budget, that officer may have bought that rifle himself. It's gone for four years. If the department doesn't have an replacement and he doesn't have the finances he may, he's with that, but for y'all's help he's.
Speaker 2:He's without a rifle for three or four years until it goes to trial When I was traveling around teaching armor in schools and people could bring in their personally owned guns. Most a lot of agencies have like an IOP program or you know, as long as you call with your personally owned gun, then you can carry it. And um, i would look around the room and look at some of the stuff guys were carrying and I would ask like why in God's name are you carrying that piece of shit? And the answer was always well, if I use it, i'm going to lose it. And in my mind I'm thinking if you're reaching for a patrol rifle, something is going on. You know, if you're reaching for a rifle, it's the worst day of your life. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, some, some's wrong And uh, at that point you, you know you you want the best possible equipment. You want an unfair advantage in that scenario And so I made it. It was a very easy choice for me to decide. Like, if the son's debris rifles using a justified use of force scenario, like you're getting a replacement rifle, i mean that's, that'd be a horrible excuse to carry a piece of shit rifles because you're afraid of the admin side of things, like I will. I can help you with that. I can take that argument away right now.
Speaker 3:Dude. That's and that's what stuck out when chief guys are got to tell me about you guys is there has been occurrences where we go out on a shooting And, to your point of been involved in a shooting, there's a huge psychological impact And I almost lost my life. And then you're going to tell me, hey, i'm free to go home now, but we took your weapon, we don't have a replacement, for whatever reason, they don't have a replacement And so, after almost lost my life, you're sending me home unarmed, completely freaking, unacceptable for somebody psychologically to go, almost get killed And then just go on your way or drive through the hood to get home unarmed And having over the couple of years, having to look through you know dozens of these incidents.
Speaker 2:usually if somebody gets shot with a rifle, they really asked for it, you know. I mean, like you know it's a barricaded, you know, so it gets a, it's a hostage thing, it's an active shooter thing, like if you get shot with a rifle. typically what we've seen is that you know you really had it coming, something that you would think would be a very Easy, clear cut type of deal, but unfortunately that's not. I think there's some places that actually have a minimum amount of time. you must hold that thing, even if the case is cleared, even if it's closed. you know, like there's no automatic button where you're getting your, you're getting your gear back you know, yeah, yeah, there's a retention period.
Speaker 3:Sure, um, what are you seeing, trend wise as far as patrol rifle and I'm, do you build sniper rifles?
Speaker 2:We do do precision gas guns. You have like I'm like not bolt guns, right, You're talking about like precision gassers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, yeah, anything in the precision like SWAT teams as far as Absolutely So never calibers and absolutely So.
Speaker 2:you know we we are building right now highly accurate is five, five, six uh precision gassers. where I'm, you know your Half minute guns, not just the, not just the accuracy potential of the barrel, but with the rail system That we developed that is so rigid that in maybe nine drive lock rail is so rigid Whether you're shooting on bipods or barricades there's there's no shift. So it's not just the accuracy of the barrel which we've achieved, it is the accuracy of the entire platform to no matter how that thing is deployed. you know you have a extremely high level of predictability of performance. You know hot, you know even as a thing heats up, uh, i said, no matter how much stress you're loading into a bipod, you know pushing into barricades, both is going to go retail to you And so that that's been a huge push for us, especially in this last year, because you know precision gas gun, there's a lot of utility to that. Uh, we've also started through other projects. that's trickling down into law enforcement and commercial use.
Speaker 2:uh is our. we're perfecting, i think, the six arc caliber. The six arc has. there's a lot of inherent issues with that in traditional gas guns that that case is not supported. You have a, you have to really butcher that bolt, the geometry of that bolt, to fit the larger case. So you're seeing premature bolt failure, uh, lug shearing, extractor's breaking. We started making six uh six arc bolts out of air met, which is indestructible, right? So if you're going to have a structurally weaker bolt, we're going to make it materially stronger, right? And and then just some of the other things we're doing with that platform to bring the arc into a very viable, um, very viable caliber and introduce to the law enforcement. I mean it's smacking with like 40% more authority and then it gives you a lot more capability. I suppose Something to look into.
Speaker 1:So the two, the guys out there that are just now starting out, the SBRs, SBRs, SBRs, that's the cool, sexy tactic, cool looking shit that everybody's wanting to do, Cause that's that can maneuver around doors and so forth. It has a tactical advantage to it. One what barrel length would you recommend by going that platform? In your opinion, is there a tactical advantage of going SBR with a patrol rifle?
Speaker 2:You talk about on the shorter guns right.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if somebody wants to use a shorter gun, i think that that makes sense. Exit in a vehicle or moving around structures or something like that, right, i mean, i mean, you know that there's. There is some maneuverability benefits to that, especially if you're going to have a suppressor. If you want to suppress gun right, throw in a suppressor on the end of the 16 inch rifle. You have a bit unwieldy, but is there a?
Speaker 1:magical twist on the on like a 10 inch versus a 13 inch barrel length. Yes, What, what, what twist would you recommend? being an expert?
Speaker 2:Well. So I put a one in seven on almost anything. To me that the faster twist rate is going to give you, i think, a lot more performance And, honestly, if you're shooting stuff, i think the faster twist rates are going to do well with your heavier bullets, and your heavier bullets seem to do well, you know, on on target, right. So there's some benefits to that. There's also mechanical benefits to the gun to right.
Speaker 2:If somebody offered me a 10 five rifle or an 11 five rifle, as somebody who has an armorer, i'm going to pick the 11 five every single time. Yeah, so that gun is 4% longer from muzzle to butt is 4% longer than the 10 five, but it has 40% more dwell time And that dwell time is basically the mechanical robustness to drive through adversity, right. So, like that, that just that little bit of extra dwell time, that's going to make your gun much less sensitive to input. Input meaning fouling dry, anemic ammo not being fully supported like a true market team. In order for it to function like a 10 five gun that's gas, right. The thing really has to be put like mounted into your shoulder, like if it doesn't have anything to bound off of. You got to get a phenomenal like limp wrist and a Glock a little bit. The 11 five, because of that dwell time, will plow through that. So I just think it's a mechanically superior gun.
Speaker 1:But I just wanted to point that out, because these younger guys are wanting the shorter barrels and they need to hear that from an armor itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no, we make both. We make 10 five. So I mean I think my 10 five sales just dropped. But but to be perfectly, honest I didn't mean to do that. No, i'm not. I'm saying the gun by my nightstand, where I would defend my family, is 11 five Yeah absolutely 100%.
Speaker 1:And you may not know this, but Tico, the, the, the, the Texas, the state agency, who governs what we can and can't carry As far as precision rifles? Wisconsin scurn, you can't carry anything over a five power, Yeah, So just on a perfectly well built patrol rifle as far as the patrol officer out there and it also goes off What area you patrol, So your world deputy is going to be way different than a downtown San Antonio officer as far as the patrol build. Right. But I think tell the listener, watcher, the viewer, give us kind of an overall perspective of what you think the best patrol build would be If we were to say give us an overall Texas best peace officer, Texas patrol rifle build.
Speaker 3:That was going to be my point. I'm a 22 year old, out of the academy with a little bit of money in my pocket, and you have no idea where you're headed.
Speaker 1:What would you basically what I could? stay trooper? That would be a really good answer, because DPS, they may end up at the border tomorrow and in Del Rio or Laredo, but as we see he's in Austin today.
Speaker 2:DPS. The air unit uses our 308s. No, i've been very proud of that, especially with the work that they're doing. You know what they're doing. I mean, that's makes me proud. And I see a DPS helicopter up there and, as a son of liberty, rifle patrol in the sky.
Speaker 3:Flutters. Yeah, it makes me proud. Oh yeah, with me too. You know, they do their due diligence on who they're going to do business with me, and that speaks a lot. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course So does I mean we have the San Antonio patrol rifle contract or, picking up the San Antonio Swanson contract, all the surrounding areas in there. We have multiple agencies in Texas, all through Flettsie, US Marshals all over the country. We're in hundreds of agencies that do quite a bit of diligence.
Speaker 3:You just said, us Marshals He may need a moment here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead and tell him. Yeah, tfo, baby, tfo, ts. Marshals, shout out, us Marshals out there.
Speaker 3:Right on man. Yeah, you can't hug him here.
Speaker 2:You know, you know this is open source. We got to take pictures, but Susan Parmel is coming in to pick up her rifle next week. Man, You know personally, which was kind of neat. Yeah, Interesting, interesting person, man, Yeah, Very interesting career. So, anyways, going back to the question of what is the ideal rifle? Well, for general purpose, right, These weapons. I believe things are truly purpose built, You know. I mean, I think a CQB gun. There are certain features you want to see on a rifle built for CQB, Yep. And then there are certain rifles that you want to see for, you know, other stuff, Like that 13-7 rifle that we make which is kind of like one of probably our flagship gun As far as a general purpose do it all rifle. That seems to we seem to see a lot of success with that. Then, having a general purpose rifle with, like a general purpose optic which is, you know, like an LPVO, that can turn to a true one, you know, or I guess you know, because it's equal One by five.
Speaker 3:One by five.
Speaker 2:I mean. But you know Steiner makes a pretty good option for that. I will tell you this. So, just in all full transparency, i do my absolute best to not get out of my wheelhouse. I can tell you exactly mechanically what's happening with that gun, why this spring is better, why this mass is important, why this is important, why you know we focus on extraction and you know, when it comes onto the mechanical function of the gun, that is my wheelhouse. When it comes to like, how to deploy a gun, how to set up a gun, there are people way more qualified than me to do that. Now, like I said, to me it makes sense that a 13-7 rifle has a very broad general purpose type of thing. But as far as you know, get into optic slings, the deployment of the gun I would defer to people that. That's their wheelhouse.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. I got you. I got you. Before you spin out your next build or something that you take, like a couple of rifles you mentioned earlier, you do you specifically, or do you have a team that will go out and start assessing Yes, where, what metric? where we're at on this, is this worth continuing? scrap it.
Speaker 2:What does that look like? So I mean, with a little bit of experience in this and remember I travel around the country teaching armor schools and part of that just as a side note. Before Sun's Liberty became a national brand, the first few years in our business was servicing other people's rifles. It could be an agency full of guns that were broken that we had to go in there and try to fix, where people could send us stuff from everything from garage builds to stuff they bought, and so, having worked on thousands and thousands of rifles from every single manufacturer you can imagine and collecting mountains of empirical data not opinion, like empirical, measurable, quantifiable data, we were able to put together a pretty good, comprehensive list of what works and what doesn't, and why And why. So I could replicate that issue every time I wanted to. And so, having having that kind of approach, whenever we start on an endeavor we're coming from, we're making some pretty educated guesses on the drawing board, right, And then, of course, you proof it out.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I preach is that this industry, what they do, they test something or they develop something, they engineer it, they make it, prototype it. Okay voila, it works, let's go to market. That doesn't tell you shit. What you want to do is you want to make something and test it until it fails, because when it fails is when you've learned something about it, and not over a sample size of one. Okay, and it can't be anecdotal. You have to be able to like, have meaningful data to support this, and that is how you bring a product to market. A lot of, a lot of ideas we sketch up, they're dead on arrival, like we look at it. We have other people look at it. You know we have really sophisticated high end end users like your operator type guys. We have our engineers, our machinists. We have people look at this thing like that concept interesting, but this is a bad idea Scrap. Well, we have a giant pile of bad ideas and we have some pretty fucking good home runs too.
Speaker 3:You know, that's just it, that's just it. So when that's where you find the home runs is mountain through the scraps. Failures, bad ideas, tripped up, this screwed up. Oh, this is the one, this is the shit.
Speaker 2:And you have to be forward thinking, right, you have to be forward thinking in that, like so, if you're, if you watch, like the evolution of gasport data, like you know over the years, well, if you're gassing rifles for traditional battle stack cans, you're going to treat that rifle slightly different than if you're gassing rifles for flow through cans that have less of a carrier speed impact, right? So the thing is like we can get to sweet spots now because of the evolution of the suppressor, and not just where it's at right now, but where we know it's heading in five years. To where, if your agency were to buy guns right now, or if he was an individual, an American citizen or a Texas police officer, if you were to buy a gun right now, like we're building that gun to make, to make to know that it's going to be truly suppressor ready in five years, despite where the industry goes, you know. Or if you start looking at, like my job is to increase the lethality of the weapon, that's what I do, right, i figure out how we make this thing go longer, be faster, you know, have more endurance, whatever Part of that, if you want to keep the M4 in service for the next generation.
Speaker 2:Well, you're seeing the advent, the evolution of, like, pretty high pressure ammo. You know ammo that's meant to defeat more barriers than it is now, right, so you're not having to go to a larger caliber, you're just able to shoot a much more destructive round out of the same gun. Well, if you're going to do that, you have to have an evolution of materials, right. So you need a stronger bolt. This is where air met comes in. You know we have S7 tool steel. You know bolt catches, and so you're not just building the gun for today, you're building the gun for where we think things might be headed in the relatively near future And to where what you you know you can feed it some really hot shit. That's. That has really amazing performance and your gun's going to survive it. The gun that you bought five years ago without any kind of forward thinking on that might be a little bit disappointing.
Speaker 2:Be, a little hot in your hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Y'all haven't teamed up with any ammunition manufacturers.
Speaker 2:I can't. Well, we have, but I can't, I can't say comment, you can't comment just yet.
Speaker 1:I understand, i understand. No comment, no comment.
Speaker 2:But, uh, but no, we, we're, we're, we're launching an entirely new caliber here in the next month. That, from having looked at the inherent problems of the six arc, we know we have a solution to all of it and it's going to be for need, including, you know, 30 round mags that fit in a real mag pouch, as opposed to having, like you know, this really aggressive curve in there that doesn't do well with mag pouches and um, so it's a whole new cartridge. The performance is insane. We, you know, right now arc runs at about 53,000 PSI and you can't load it hotter than that because there's case issues. Uh, you know, gas gun this stuff for running at 65,000 PSI.
Speaker 2:Um, i mean, we built it to you know, we built it to punch you. You know, six millimeter bullet, um, it's pretty neat. I mean, i can talk about it. We've already started kind of hinting it out, but that's one of the projects that we're currently working on. That's all we've actually completed. The work we're about to now those now is the marketing piece and the release and the stuff you know uh repeat those PSI for our listeners.
Speaker 2:So right now, on an arc you're limited to about 53,000 PSI because the way a gas gun like an AR, the way the chamber works and that that case isn't fully supported. So if you try to go hotter than that, you get something called belting with this that uses a different parent case with thicker webbing, and the way this thing works and it's off of a 556 bolt, we're pushing them to at 65,000 PSI, right. So, right now, the data out of a 14 five gun shooting a 90 grain bullet, i want to say is right at 29 80 out of a 14 five. Out of a night with a 90 grain bullet Damn, oh yeah, oh damn. You know they're highly. It's a.
Speaker 2:The bullet itself is highly precise by its design and we have the ability to produce tens of thousands of rounds a day. Now, again, you know how's the new cartridge going to be received? I don't know. This is one of those things that it's more of a. This wasn't so much a big commercial pursuit, this was something that I wanted to solve, a real problem. I think we have It's good Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's good stuff. What's the rollout on that? How far out do you think?
Speaker 2:we were shooting for like July 4th. No pun intended Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I forth the sun's liberated.
Speaker 2:This is kind of our it's kind of the rollout plan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, But but you know, I think, in order to do it right, we might, we might be pushing that back a little bit just so we can get some more. um, you know, comp, compile all of the data better in one place and have an organized way to put that data out to the casual end user. They might not appreciate some of the stuff they're saying. If you know what you're talking about, if you'd know what, if you, if you understand what these numbers mean, where you're going to be pretty, pretty happy.
Speaker 3:Starting your garage. How long since Liberty been around? So sun's liberty was an afterthought.
Speaker 2:Actually, my buddy that's here today, he's the one that helped me actually come up with the name and this would have been, you know, like around the 2014, no 2013 timeframe. Uh, when I was working on guns in my garage, this was like just a natural inclination, mechanical tinkering kind of thing, to where I thought you could do that better. You know you could. There's this feature of this guy I like. There's this feature of gun, this like if you unfortunately those companies had not combined those you know, but me as a guy in my garage, i could. So I'm not necessarily reinventing the wheel, i'm just bringing all the best pieces to the table. Um, again, atf's like Hey, this is your one warning, you know, go get yourself a license. And I, and I did my, and then my business partner Kyle. He wanted to start a gun company, but he, i think he wanted to do he had something much smaller in mind.
Speaker 3:I had grandiose ideas you know I wanted to be the best rifle company in the country.
Speaker 2:So he had a little basement in a lumber yard and I had a big, big dreams And so I sold my car, i came up with a couple thousand bucks and we were able to, like, start building, like the first 10 sons liberty rifles and we grew through word of mouth, which to me that's a huge deal. Yep, because we didn't have a marketing budget at all. We didn't have, you know, like existing contracts waiting for us to stand up. There's a couple of deeds where we felt if you build it, they will come, and we started building guns And then, whenever those guys go, tell their friends, hey, you really should probably check this out.
Speaker 2:To take that from a couple of couple of drunks in a basement of a lumber yard. You know it's an international rifle company competing with the giants. Not just competing but winning right. That says something about your product, and not just your product but your end user support and you know your philosophy for things and your ability to connect with your customer and be accessible and available to that person whenever they need something. You get to the top level of guns and you get to Knights and BCM and the Vesky and LMT, and you know these companies that I legitimately respect.
Speaker 2:Sometimes what separates the brands is the end user support. All of those guns should work inherently They should right. But your end user support sometimes is what makes a bit of a difference. You know, yeah, i mean, i'll tell you right now nobody's going to outwork sons liberty in terms of like our crew willing to go the extra mile, like nobody's going to work us and nobody has the end user package that we do. Every single part of that gun. If you shoot that barrel out, you get a free barrel in a hat. You know. You back over with your patrol car, we're going to fix it for free. You put 300 blackout in there and you blow the fucker up Like we're going to fix it Again. You. We already talked about the you know replacement program and that's across the board for not just LE but for all of our clients Like we're. We're in this with you.
Speaker 3:Well, yes that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Your point about word of mouth. the community that uses your weapons, whether it's military, whether it's the community, whether it's law enforcement, all of them usually could care less about some sexy article or ad or commercial or Facebook print 100%. But if I guide that I trust in value is a badass or a proven pipe hitter or somebody that's done shit, and he tells me there it's a squared away company that builds good stuff. That means more to me than a million dollar ad that somebody spends with whoever, because I value that guy and I trust his opinion.
Speaker 1:It's going to go way further than any more. And it's also like like a lifetime guarantee. I mean, that's what it sounds like, i mean forever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's forever. It's until you decide you're tired of it.
Speaker 1:And you're buying into a family.
Speaker 3:It sounds like, so did your relationship with the military and some of the community. Did you have that and having that helped your guns? Or did they come to you because they heard you were building some really high speed stuff?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Glenn, glenn was in the teams for you know 22 years and you know he's, you know, and at the time that I was trying to stand up sons liberty, i was going through like a hard personal time of my life. You know I had, you know I had gone through like this breakup and you know I had kind of was like it's kind of like a rock bottom and I had nothing to do but channel that, that energy and that into something. And you know Glenn knew that I was, you know, kind of a gun nut And so I always joked that sons liberty was possible because I somehow accidentally drank beer with like all the right people over the last 20 years. You know I don't, i don't drink anymore It's been a while, but but I will. I will credit alcohol to some degree with like a lot of the relationships that I built along the way And so great country song.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true. So through through you know, glenn, glenn's connections and his friendships are through the teams and the buddies that I met through him. Yeah, when, when those guys are liking your guns and and and they're suggesting them to their friends back home and stuff like that, yeah, it's a hell of a good endorsement. It's like you know Tiger Woods telling you what putter they like, you know, not the one they were given, but the one that they chose to go buy with their own money.
Speaker 3:So you had built a few. They got into the community and as those were used and word of mouth kind of spread and yeah, that, and I also had a pretty good way to articulate what we were doing.
Speaker 2:If somebody asked me, hey man, why your gun? I'd be like, pull up a fucking chair, man. And I, and like I hope you have time, because the stuff that I'm going to tell you is not opinion, it's not anecdotal Like. This is empirical data and I can explain to you why this material matters, you know, or why they're sitting down like you use car sales, mature, yeah, look, look. Look at the paint job on this thing. Look at all that cosmetic machining. Look how you know, like, look, look, you know. Look at this poster over here. You know, like, big titty girl on Instagram loves it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll give a shit It works. This is a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this thing has an extremely high performance expectation and this is why. And then you can sit there and I can give you a 16 hour class on from muzzle to butt on a white, every single component, material, coding everything, why that's been done. And I don't have to sell you shit. At that point You're making your own decision to buy it. I didn't sell you anything. You're trying to buy it because once you really understand what it is and why, then it becomes a very easy thing.
Speaker 2:Like you know, down to the torque value of something, the technique, i can tell you right now that you could take the. You could cobble together the best components individually. They are. And if you were to try to build that thing with just trash technique, if I sent you a Ferrari and pieces like whatever you built in your garage probably not a Ferrari, you know what I mean. Well, it's kind of the same thing with guns.
Speaker 2:And then as we grew, like our first couple of years, we were limited to like how we were able to source component. Once you have, once you hit a certain critical mass and we have the capital, well, i go in and I tell a machinist to build it to this print to this standard, to this spec. You know it must go in and go these test, blah, blah, whatever, every like our knocks, all the gas block trees. We design those, we engineer them, we test them, we have them, you know, produced, you know, to our specific proprietary spec. And then we've grown to the point where we control the majority of the machine time of every OEM we work with. So they're like man, you know, like y'all don't make anything in house. I'm like, no, that's not true, we know, we, i machine shop X. About 80% of their entire capacity to do anything is for sun's liberty. And they're making widget Y, you know, to our engineering print as proprietary. And that's how we're able to flex up and down whenever we need to do something. So, oh, i got you Yeah.
Speaker 3:You get a big order command.
Speaker 2:You can flex up Or when there's a rush, you know right, or when there's like a materials issue, or whenever you know you have a certain shop shut down because they're only allowed to operate 25% because of social distancing or whatever Right, we're able to go in there and use the infrastructure that we built to do We were delivering stuff when a lot of other companies could not. It has a lot to do with the way we structured our company And, i think, to attribute our growth, there were some companies that just tried to suck in all the money they could. They're taking money on preorders. They're taking money. Just give me the money. Give me the money. We have no idea if we can even make the fucking thing, but just give us the money.
Speaker 2:We saw a lot of that across the industry. For us, we did something different. We did not send anybody an invoice until their pallet of weapons showed up, because I don't owe you nothing, you know. And then, once your pallet of guns shows up, then we send you the invoice And instead of trying to siphon off of this tiny little pool that we're fishing in, what we did was we went to like RSR. You know, rsr is one of our distributors. They service 70,000 brick and mortar gun shops. Instead of trying to suck every dollar we could, we used that opportunity to expand, to exponentially expand our footprint to where, like you know, when you double, triple and quadruple year over year, you're doing something right. Wow, damn.
Speaker 3:You guys, like I'm assuming, at the growth rate you guys are going to build out You'll you, i mean, is there is there any limit to where you see this going?
Speaker 2:Right now we're limited to the actual physical size of our shop. Look, we have 65 guys right now working with this man. They're most of their ID.
Speaker 2:Like this is true, This is this is something I think law enforcement guys and SWAT guys appreciate. We don't necessarily hire based on the resume, because I it's my job to teach you how to do stuff right, Like my job is to teach armor. So I can teach you how to build a gun, but I can't teach you how to gun Give a shit Okay, And I can't teach you how to be cool. You can't teach passion. You cannot teach passion, You cannot teach work ethic, You cannot teach a fucked up sense of humor, which you need in this business. Part of our interview process is like like, as they're telling us like their life story, whatever, like out of the band, boom, tell us the most fucked up joke you've ever heard. And this is like in the interview problem.
Speaker 2:So we had us. We had we posted an opening. We had two openings. We had two open positions at Sun's Liberty. We posted those online. We got 2,500 applicants from people willing to relocate States to come. We was, if you, if you're familiar with our culture, it's a. We have a really neat family culture. It's a lot of fun. Well, out of the 2,500 dudes that applied, you know, one of the guys that we hired was a guy named Johnny Araya. He was a Tom Araya, the lead senior slayer.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:But he had. He had toured with them for 30 years. It was like a stage tech and a stage hand And that guy had an obsessive level of attention to detail, he knew how to work in like very bizarre environments And the guy fundamentally cared about the mission, which is to put good rifles in good Americans hands. Yeah, that guy was one of the dudes we selected. And then another dude, demar, who was a college professor, who, uh, who just wanted to do something that he found more rewarding. Two people that have never worked the weapons in their life.
Speaker 2:Now, me, i can teach you how to build a gun to our standard. Yeah, i can't teach you how to give a shit, and that's how we'd hire that. That's our secret. So I am limited to the physical, the building that we're in. Right now we're having to add connexes for storage because we can't fit any more humans in that bill. Wow, um, and right now it's kind of a difficult time to go buy or build commercial. Let's say I want to build like a, you know, probably like a 60,000 square foot till wall building. That's around what we need to start, you know, being up a little bit better dense than our demand. Materials are insane. The lead times for materials are insane, interest rates are fucking insane. So like this would be kind of an irresponsible time, i think, to go pursue that endeavor. But that's, that is our limitation right now. If not for that, we would be considerably bigger, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I love your point about looking to hire people. The guy that hired me here we he called and told me he was going to hire me. We went and sat down for lunch. He said, hey, we're going to hire you. I was like, all right, there's one small issue here. I have no idea what what a field rep does. And he goes. Well, i can, i can teach him chimpanzee to fill the rep, but I can't teach driving passion. That's what I need. That's why I'm hiring. I can literally teach a monkey to do what you need to do. I was like I don't know if you're, i don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I think it's a valid point. man Give, give me somebody with a bunch of drive and desire to do it and we'll figure it out. But some highly skilled slug You can. You can go somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Well, there were. We saw a lot of we. I mean, this wasn't, this didn't occur in a vacuum. I mean, there were days that we knew that had a 20 years of cadmium experience, you know, working on small arms. The military that had a lot of the technical skills. They knew how to stick a cast on, They knew how to read torque value, they knew how to do this kind of stuff. But whenever you put something in front of them that they had never seen there's no such thing as a 13, seven mid-gash rifle in the military That that, that skew, that platform is it's not there. And so whenever you're explaining them that like this has to be done a little bit different Some people are unwilling to learn.
Speaker 2:You know, or they're so institutionalized in a certain way that you can't break bad habits. You know, uh, to me start, you know, a lot of times blank canvas and then, with the right attitude, and man, you got some. You you got a. We have a, a battalion of badasses that truly care about the cause. During the rush, during COVID, man guys were sleeping at the shop. I mean, these were camped out. They know, we worked around the clock, 24 hour shifts, and if someone's there, if they're interested to punch a clock, they ain't going to do that. No, yeah, you know you did. There's not, that's not what. If you believe in what you're doing, man, it's amazing what you can do. Yep, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:So, with all the challenges right now politically, supply chain, just all the crap going on, what would turn around if I reach out and say, hey, build me, build me a rifle right now, or eight.
Speaker 2:Right now, our lead times are very short And the reason being is because we have managed expectations to our, our distributors and to other contracts we have. We've put in place the right. You know we have the right purchasing guys at our shop. We have guys that are, you know, that schedule work. If somebody wanted something right now we could knock it out, you know, pretty fast because we actually have organized the schedule to where we've built it that way, you know. I would imagine you know a few days to you know two weeks somewhere in there.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, and you guys are still direct to consumer.
Speaker 2:So we, we now we don't advertise a lot of direct to consumer stuff because, logistically speaking, me putting out 20 pallets to RSR and then them distributing those 20 pallets of 70,000 gun retailers that logistically as the way, that does not mean that we're not that we're opposed to be the B2C Like we're still a hundred percent in for for direct, direct consumer sales. It's just that, like you know, we haven't had a lot of stuff on our website because, well, there was nothing to sell throughout the rush stuff like that. Then you know the way we had built the business was more B2B. But I'm a hundred percent happy to do direct sales because I like that, i like having that direct connection to your customer and to a shooter. I still give my cell phone number out on like the internet for people to call me. I get a call. Hey man, what buffer should I use? I'm like mother fucker, it's Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3:Do you like?
Speaker 2:you know like you should call me back after Thanksgiving, But I still. I still like talking to shooters, man.
Speaker 1:You know that's good stuff, dude which is part of the success.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that accessibility has made a big difference. Yeah, the fact that I'm still on the internet forums and still answering calls, and I love it. I actually enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Well, when it goes back to exactly why Coser said it, eric Sanchez said it, everybody that we've talked to is just praise your. I mean giving you praise, your company's praise, all y'all praise, and that's why we wanted to have you on.
Speaker 2:Dude, i'm happy to be here, man, it's a, it's a good thing And, like we, texas is the home team for us, you know, and we're proud to take care of that stuff. Give guys the best equipment and the best in-utra support. You know, and and I believe in the, i believe in the cause, you know there's I'll be honest, like there are, some contracts I personally would never bid on. If you know, if the IRS had a rifle contract come up for bid tomorrow, like I would not bid on it, i would not bid on an ATF rifle contract because you know, things have things have gotten a little weird, you know, in terms of privatization of this order. But Texas agency needs something. Man, i'm more than happy to do it because I mean for them.
Speaker 2:I have not seen an example yet of Texas agencies having ideological issues. With the second amendment, you know, matter of fact, we see quite the opposite, you know you, you might see some stuff at the very high brass level that are appointed by whatever that have their things. As far as the rank and file, that dudes on the street doing the job, man, like A lot of the guys we work with they're, they're competing at the local matches. When I teach armorers classes, most of the agencies in Texas will allow us to do an open enrollment tour. The agency itself will host the class and then we can invite you know industry or commercial end users. Just come take the class with the. You know, offsets costs for the agency, whatever. But that's the kind of neat cooperative thing that you see in Texas where it's the. I think it is the pinnacle of what that citizen police officer relationship looks like, especially around the second member, which is something I think all the guys I know value. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I think that's a huge point because we have a lot of non law enforcement listeners, a lot of people not in the community that listen, just civilians that listen to the show. I think it's hugely important point you made years ago when Texas was going to get a to a license to carry And then when it went to open carry, there's a lot of concern or scary, everybody's going to. there's going to be gunfights in the street. It's going to look like wide herb. There's going to be all this stuff. Cops hate people having guns. End of your point. you said you want to arm good Americans with good guns.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I used to tell people when I was on the street, 99% of cops, if you pulled over and ask them, hey, are you afraid of citizens having guns? They're probably going to tell you, hell, no, that the more somebody gets shot getting car jack, you run up and try and pull grandpa out of the truck to car jack him and get shot in the face. I don't know many cops have a problem with that. I had a strange relative X in law or step in law. I don't have step in law. I don't know what he was to us, but he asked me one time years ago. We hear one of those cops.
Speaker 3:I said, yeah, what are you going to do when they start kicking doors, taking everybody's guns or what's your thoughts on them doing that? And I said, well, they're not doing it. Well, in Minnesota and Michigan they're doing it. I'm like they are. I've not heard about it. So are you going to do it? And I said well, no, well, all the Texas cops will be in that fall. I said Hey, and I was trying to have lunch. We were at a hospital, i was trying to have lunch with him. I said I don't know what you're talking about. Number one and number two there won't be any cops in Texas to go take your guns. If that were to happen, he goes well. Why? I said because we're all going to be at home protecting ours.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to be a little too tight up now.
Speaker 2:No, and I and I sincerely look, i get I've gotten attacked a lot. I get I get attacked a lot for being, for being openly pro police, because there's a lot of people in my demographic that believe that, that believe them arming the government and they, they, they and they're the governments that come take their guns. Well, something tells me, man, that, like you know, some county in Texas is not who you have to worry about. You know taking taking your guns right, and it goes beyond that. Could one of the rifles I send to a law enforcement agency be used to deprive somebody of their rights? Is that possible? The answer is yes, it is possible. Is it possible that one of the 10,000 rifles I'm going to ship this, you know, between now and the end of the year, could one of them end up in a fucking mall shooting? And the answer is yes, that is possible, statistically speaking. That is So I have two choices.
Speaker 2:I can either, if you want total risk aversion, i can either send no guns to anybody. That's the only way that I can guarantee that a gun is not going to be used to do something I find abhorrent or I can send guns out to people, which is what I believe in doing, and you know, hope that, hope that you know that that's something they're not used in some kind of way. That I fundamentally disagree with. But the only way to be sure is not send anything. So if for anybody telling me, asking me that if if I selling weapons to law enforcement agencies, is arming the potential opposition or some entity that's going to come deprive you of your rights, well, i mean, the same thing could be said for sending guns to civilians. You know, you don't know what they're going to do. I will tell you.
Speaker 2:I have an anecdotal story. I had to go teach up in Seattle and it was a law enforcement slash, open enrollment kind of class where we had this whatever really good people who went out to dinner that night after class and I had never seen a more hostile group of people were, if you walked into a place and you didn't have your mask on, people came and attacked you. I mean like, and they weren't, they weren't telling you Hey man, i'm sorry for the inconvenience to you, but would you mind, none of the? there was an attack. I never saw something where so many people were so enthusiastic to to confront you And I believe. How long ago was this? How long ago was this? This was a 21,.
Speaker 2:You know like right 21, someone 22. I have no doubt that those people, if they were allowed to, would have put me against a wall and shot me, you know for for whatever. So when people ask me about the ideological differences between law enforcement and civilians, and I think about it in the grand scheme of things, i'm way less worried about the individual officer, you know, taking my gun than I am about, like my neighbor turning me into like the, you know, like the uh health police or something Like. if that day were to ever come, if there was a situation where people were going door to door taking your guns, i'm probably slightly more worried about my random neighbor than I am about the average police officer, at least in terms of what I've seen through my travels of who's really being a fucking tyrant.
Speaker 3:Well, and there's all kind of unknowns that you never know, cause we had a government provide a weapon to somebody that killed a border patrol agent during a during a government. Oh the Fast and Furious Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're, you know, we, we, we, we remember.
Speaker 2:I mean it's way more to the story too. Yeah, i'm sure I again I mean again, without getting political I can I can honestly say that I, uh, i have very little concern about police departments going, uh, you know, full on, uh, stasi, uh, and, and honestly, if somebody had it feels that strongly about it, well, I would tell you, like you know, elections matter, your vote counts. You know, uh, you know, show ups of things. You know, support legislation or support even litigation, like the second moment foundation, the firearms policy coalition, like there are, there are cases currently being litigated right now. That would that would make that make that confrontation impossible, because you know, hey, this has been legalized, or it's now, it's shall issue, or now it's blah blah, like get involved in the from the top down. You know, as opposed to yeah.
Speaker 3:Bring a solution, not one about it. I try.
Speaker 2:That's what I try to. I channel my, my problem with authority. So my, uh, my, you know my frustration with Mark Zuckerberg and with, uh, you know, the pistol brace rule. You know, that's what I, you know, and I, i, if I would not have been that guy when I was in my twenties, i would have never been this guy that I am my forties and I've had a full spectrum of you know what it looks like on both sides of things, and I can honestly tell you that, uh, for the most part, you know, um, people are inherently good And I think, for the most part, people are inherently good, and I think that, uh, you could, you know, you're not defined by certain things you know, so they, you know what a testament, though, to go from problem with authority, to grown up small town to now, in a big city, owning a international company that's well recognized, well respected in the, in some of the folks in the community that you're providing them to.
Speaker 3:I mean, that is a huge testament to what you're, what you built, what you're doing and and their belief in you and your belief in the people you surrounded yourself with.
Speaker 2:And I'm in my story, i think gives hope to a lot of stuff that I see right When I see young college age kids that are being, you know, hyper disrespectful or just hyper uh, you know, uh hostile towards, like law enforcement. I believe that, honestly, once people kind of grow up a little bit, reach the age of reason, get out of the like this kind of imaginary ideological, good, bad, whatever, and start looking at things for how they really are, taking a little bit of individual responsibility for your actions, for your words, for the things that you do, it gives me hope that some of these, some of the nonsense you've seen over the last couple of years, and the whole defund and all that kind of stuff. I think that once reality sets in, whether that's through age, maybe that's through getting their first real job, maybe that's through having their first child, maybe that's through whatever their life experience is, i bet you there's going to be a lot of converts in that in that crowd. You know that, that look back at you know and realize that was a very misguided way to express your frustration or something, or a victim of a crime or whatever. Yeah, exactly Right.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, defund the cops. Hello, defund the cops right up until you know. You know you're laying on the sidewalk with the fucking knife and your ribs.
Speaker 3:Let me rethink that. Well, yeah, somebody not close to San Antonio young officer or somebody not military law enforcement wants has an interest in in arrival. What would you suggest they? somebody in far west Texas, up in the panhandle, wherever, where? where would somebody find a son's liberty and get ahold of a rifle?
Speaker 2:Right. So, like I said, work we're carried in, like We're carrying gun source, like our product are on shelves in all 50 states. I mean, you could walk into a gun shop in Ohio and there's sons liberty products in there, right. But if somebody wanted to do a direct order with us, which I would like to bring more customers back to deal in direct with us for the number one reason of having like that kind of direct connection with people, which is really good Um, my personal email is Mike in my ke at S O L G W E dot com. And if you're listening to this podcast, um, shoot me an email And if there's something that we can help you out with, man, i'll, i'm going to, i'll give them the family. Uh, if the 10% discount is the? uh, what is the acronym here? T MPA? T the T MPA Remind me that you heard this on the T MPA podcast man.
Speaker 1:I'll throw it up on the screen, yeah, And I'll.
Speaker 2:I'll make sure you get the, the, the, the deal, and we would love to meet new people. I think once people get familiar with our company, we're an extremely easy choice. Once you get the way we build a weapon, the performance expectation that we hold that weapon to the end of your support, and then the philosophy and the kind of the culture of who we are, you were pretty damn hard to beat.
Speaker 3:That's the two things that stuck out is everybody I've visited with about you guys are like dude, if you call them, they're going to take care of you. It doesn't matter in cops I don't know if you know it or not We, we know how to complain a lot And, uh, i've not heard one complaint, one. You know they screwed me on this deal or this deal was slow. And the other thing that stuck out and chief guys are in a couple of others like dude, if you get in a shooting and get your your rifle taken, they're going to take care of you.
Speaker 3:And get you another one exact, That's huge. I'm like that's freaking crazy Cause it will be the specification of the rifle that you had. They will get that to you. I mean, that's huge And we do that by the way we do that for civilians too.
Speaker 2:If a civilian finds themselves in a justified use of force scenario and like they've been no build and they're whatever, you know like we'd do the same thing for them. You know my buddy, steve Williford okay, i come, i'm from St Hedwig, like Southern Springs, just right up the road. You know, steve Williford, my buddy went out there and stopped that clown He was shooting up that church. You know they had his rifle for four years. Wow, you know I gave a rifle to Jack Wilson. He stopped a shooting in a church. You know the I mean probably pretty impressive shot. Do you see, remember that video? that guy walked in and he thought he was, you know, an old Jack. Just not not today.
Speaker 2:But we give these guys guns that have done this stuff. And it's amazing, though the uh, it's amazing The bureaucratic and administrative bullshit that goes into something that it doesn't get any more open and shut than that. You just shot a guy who's shooting kids Like you should be giving them a little bit of a shot. You giving them a, you know a steak. So but, uh, but this goes for civilians too. I mean, if you're a Suns Liberty customer and you've defended your life in a clearly justifiable way. Man like we know that, like the media may prosecute you, you might be scared of, uh, political prosecution, you might, you know, whatever. Well, we got your back, you know we, it's awesome, so that I mean there should be more of that, you know.
Speaker 1:I agree Yeah.
Speaker 3:You got to wrap it fire. Yeah, fire, you can do it because I always screwed up. We end every episode with rapid fire. Three questions, okay, favorite cop movie or line from a cop movie? Leave the weapon one, the original. Oh, there you go. Yeah, that's an easy one. Uh, favorite police car or car, if not being in the community. Favorite car that you've driven, if not police calls.
Speaker 2:So I, so I, i, i arm a horseshoe bay. So do you name Rocky down there? He's a cool guy, but I'm not mistaken, man, i'm. I think they had like a Rolls Royce flights, i don't remember.
Speaker 1:I'm, i'm, i'm, i'm almost shocked me, because horseshoe bay is pretty uppity Shout out to horseshoe bay, pd That's awesome, Yeah, But I'm, I'm almost positive.
Speaker 2:This is like. I don't know if it was like a mock up or a joke, but I'm pretty sure they had lights on a lot of roles and I like that's. that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Pull it in. They're calling for service, That's. that's a first in the chauffeur.
Speaker 1:Let's the officer Green Yeah.
Speaker 3:And a favorite adult beverage. Or you said you don't drink anymore, you're you're. When you're going to go, unwind what? what's your unwind?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know it's kind of funny. I was like two years without a drink in. My drink of choice was always vodka. I mean, i was like a big vodka drinker. That's what I liked. Oddly enough, in those two years of not drinking, i never once craved a vodka. I craved like I don't know why, because I was. I never drank it. It was tequila. And so one of my clients, a really good friend of mine, is a dude named Abraham Ansari. He's like a one of the best golf players in the world. He's on the, he's on live To now or whatever right. But him and Mark Wahlberg. They opened a tequila company called the Fletcher Azul And it's kind of funny because you know, abraham answers like a really hardcore gun guy.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of the guys in the organization are. I'll just leave it that. But that tequila smells amazing. I haven't tasted it yet, but I hear it's really good. So I think if I were to ever fall off the wagon, i would do it with the Fletcher Azul.
Speaker 3:Say that one more time.
Speaker 2:Fletcher Azul That not happened.
Speaker 1:Don't even, don't even try it, we're going to get to you on some of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll see. I'll send a bottle to the show. I'll try it. I'll try it.
Speaker 3:We're going to try it Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you guys, you guys stay safe out there. Man, hey, thank you so much for driving up.
Speaker 3:Awesome.
Speaker 1:Great episode. Yeah, absolutely Yep I appreciate what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, there's times that one enforcement doesn't feel supported. They don't know. And to see people boldly, strongly supporting, supporting with equipment, but supporting what's going on in the mission and the passion And you talked about. you look for passion in your people, but it's. it's your passion, i think, is why you've gone from a garage to to where you're at, and that's huge, man. I mean, that is huge. And to your other point about kids listening getting out of college be passionate about something. I mean, find something. you're not going to be given shit, so find something to be passionate about it and dive off in it. Well, look, man.
Speaker 2:I I appreciate the opportunity to come on here and talk. I mean, i love the fact that you guys asked very candid and open questions, because some of these things I would love to address in the sense that, uh, yeah, there might be perceptions of us, of who we are, based upon this or that or whatever. the thing is Like people get to actually know is like unfiltered know us uh, we're, we really do give a shit about what we're doing and the, the people that carry our guns. we care about the cause And I think, when people get to know us, i think that we're, uh, you know, they're proud to be proud to have us on their team. That's how I look. like we're on your team, you know. but whatever that end user is, as an American civilian or a police officer, like you have 24 hour tech support, yeah, so, guys, I thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, appreciate it man, appreciate it You guys. Stay safe out there. God bless you guys And, as always, may God bless Texas, wow you.
