00:01:50.940Weaver was arrested in January of 1991.
00:01:53.540He was ordered to appear in court, but was given the wrong court date.
00:01:58.120A year passed, and the ATF transferred the case to the U.S. Marshals,
00:02:02.360who were then tasked with bringing Weaver in.
00:02:05.260The Marshals set up 24-hour surveillance on the Weaver's property on Ruby Ridge,
00:02:09.940tracking their every move and detailing their daily routines.
00:02:14.120On August 21st, 1992, when the Marshals were scouting in the woods,
00:02:18.660the Weaver's dog started barking at them.
00:02:21.040Thinking a predator was near, the Weavers moved into the woods with firearms.
00:02:25.120At that point, a federal agent shot and killed the dog.
00:02:28.780And when the Weavers and their friend Kevin Harris heard the shots, they hurried in that direction.
00:02:33.980When Harris saw men in army fatigues and ghillie suits on the property, he opened fire, killing U.S. Marshal William Deegan.
00:02:41.000As marshals returned fire, they killed Weaver's 14-year-old son, Samuel.
00:02:46.000In fact, they shot him in the back as he fled.
00:02:49.380Shortly after the first shots were fired, the FBI moved in.
00:02:53.020The next day, the grieving family moved their dead son's body to a shed in preparation for burial.
00:02:58.980As he was returning to the cabin, an FBI sniper shot Randy through the shoulder.
00:03:04.240Harris was also hit in the chest with a nearly fatal shot that just missed vital organs.
00:03:09.400Vicki, Randy's wife, stood at the door holding her infant daughter and propping the door open.
00:03:14.960In a scene of absolute horror, the same sniper who'd shot the men, Lon Horyuchi, shot Vicky in the head, killing her instantly and leaving their infant daughter covered in gore.
00:03:27.480These wouldn't be the last victims of the sniper either. Horyuchi would again fire his rifle in anger just a year later at the Waco massacre.
00:03:36.260Ruby Ridge would turn into a veritable war zone over the next week.
00:03:39.960The FBI used a megaphone to torment the family,
00:03:42.900demanding to speak with Vicki, whom they knew they killed and lay dead on the kitchen floor.
00:03:47.980Finally, on August 31st, the standoff was brought to an end with the family's surrender.
00:03:53.420Weaver was charged with murder, conspiracy, assault, and various other federal crimes,
00:03:59.860but in the end he was acquitted of all charges,
00:04:02.420all except an 18-month sentence which he served for failure to appear in court.
00:04:08.380His family was paid over $3 million in compensation for the killing of his wife and son
00:04:13.740though what he lost and loved most dearly could never be repaid.
00:04:18.100In the aftermath of the slaughter, what came into focus was the gross overreach of the U.S. federal government
00:04:27.960The next year, in 1993, it planned a sudden daylight raid of David Koresh's Mount Carmel Center ranch near Waco, Texas.
00:04:36.780The ATF claimed it suspected Koresh of stockpiling illegal weapons and thus issued a search warrant.
00:04:43.100Although the ATF later claimed the branch Davidians opened fire first,
00:04:47.340one agent told an investigator immediately following the raid that the ATF fired first, killing a dog.
00:04:54.500Surviving members of the Davidians maintained that the ATF fired first.0.79
00:04:59.600After the first exchange of gunfire, four ATF agents and six of Koresh's group were killed.0.77
00:05:05.520After 51 more days, the FBI launched a CS tear gas attack with pyrotechnics.
00:05:11.480For years afterward in the press, and even before Congress, the FBI denied using pyrotechnics,
00:05:17.520but later admitted in 1999 that it had done so.
00:05:21.860The agency was caught lying so many times that it became a source of national disgrace.
00:05:27.620Among those who defended the actions were Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton, who said, quote,
00:05:32.280I do not think the United States government is responsible for the fact that a bunch of religious fanatics decided to kill themselves, end quote.
00:05:40.880Newly admitted U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno placed the blame for the entire situation on the Branch Davidians, the cult that owned and lived inside the Mount Carmel compound.
00:05:51.220In her opening statement of the investigation that followed the massacre, she said, quote,
00:05:55.800Day after day, FBI negotiators tried to arrange a surrender.
00:06:00.400We face an impossible situation, and they wouldn't leave, end quote.
00:06:04.740She used subtle language to deflect blame from the government and on to the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh.0.53
00:06:11.700Quote, during the standoff, she said, the environment in which Koresh forced the children present to remain continued to deteriorate, end quote.
00:06:20.040The government, in their opinion, had just eliminated a group of radical, child-abusing, law-breaking cultists.0.62
00:06:26.780To them, a service to the American people.
00:06:29.440The U.S. government, instead of taking responsibility for its reckless actions, would blame the Davidians, a Seventh-day Adventist sect, for committing mass suicide.
00:06:39.800Something that didn't fit with their actual theological beliefs, by the way.0.97
00:06:43.140In order to protect them from mass suicide, so the government seemed to argue, it had to kill them.
00:06:49.300As the compound burned, the 76 Branch Davidians, including 26 children, were trapped inside and perished.
00:07:05.780In 1920, America ushered in Prohibition, a nationwide ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages under the 18th Amendment.
00:07:16.280This sweeping legislation was enforced by the Volstead Act,
00:07:20.260also known as the National Prohibition Act,
00:07:22.500which gave the amendment its legal teeth.
00:07:36.420prohibition was virtually impossible to enforce.
00:07:39.260The U.S. simply did not have the manpower to prevent alcohol use in America.
00:07:44.180As a result, bootleggers sprang up all across the country
00:07:47.580and began importing their liquor from across the Canadian and Mexican borders.
00:07:52.580Organized crime took off in America and brought mass violence with it.
00:07:57.040The gangs were better funded and more effective than the federal government ever had been,
00:08:01.840and the amount of alcohol in the U.S. quadrupled within months.
00:08:06.320To help manage this new and complex influx of work,
00:08:09.540the government created the Prohibition Unit under the command of the Bureau of Internal Revenue,
00:08:15.660what is now known as the IRS. 960 agents, known as dry agents, comprised the initial task force.
00:08:24.260In 1927, Congress passed a bill that elevated the unit to bureau status, and so it became the Bureau
00:08:30.280of Prohibition, operating under the oversight of the Department of Treasury and later the DOJ.
00:08:35.980In 1933, after just over a decade of some of the wildest years in American history, the government finally realized just how untenable Prohibition enforcement actually was.
00:08:47.440Prohibition was officially repealed on December 5th, 1933, via the 21st Amendment.
00:08:53.560While the Prohibition era went away, the Bureau of Prohibition did not.
00:08:57.560Instead, it eventually morphed into what we now know as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or ATF.
00:09:05.920It has also since picked up explosives
00:17:16.540Well, part of the big deal is you have this, our space, like in listeners now, there's not a lot of like-minded people.
00:17:25.560This is a very small community that we're in.
00:17:27.960This dissident right, Christian right movement that we're in is very small.
00:17:33.300And so to get continual national platforms like this, this is a big deal because Isker and Mr. Engel, those guys are doing some great work in Tennessee with the community that they're starting, with their podcasts, with some of the investments and business moves and things like that.
00:17:50.460And so to get on a national platform on probably the biggest political show that exists right now is a pretty big deal, you know.
00:18:17.080I guess what do you think is going on?0.80
00:18:18.680I think what you're seeing here is the rising tide of conservatism, particularly among young men, starting to actually break into the national sphere in conversation, where for the last few decades we've been dominated by longhouse, gynocentric conversation.
00:18:37.760the gatekeepers of the national political discourse including on the conservative side
00:18:42.720has mainly been long housed type of gatekeeping where um men like andrew isker if you had five
00:18:50.620years ago said hey by the way uh isker is going to be interviewed by tucker carlson who but who's
00:18:56.060also going to have his own he will have broken free of the shackles and be doing his own thing
00:19:00.260and our guy andrew isker the eighth century wood chipper you know this like semi anon he's never
00:19:05.640really super Anon, but like semi-Anon edgy X account is going to be front, you know, front
00:19:11.680loaded on the, on this platform. And you'd see this happening multiple times. And I just think
00:19:17.860it's, it's great news. Like the young men are becoming increasingly just wildly right-wing
00:19:23.100and conservative, many of them turning to Christ. And I think this is going to have overall just
00:19:29.280massively beneficial effects on our nation in the next generation.
00:19:34.740Well, it is interesting because you've had over the last two decades, particularly with
00:19:39.720the Gospel Coalition, Tim Keller, this sort of movement, it was always the idea that you
00:19:45.120wanted to pander to the left, that you wanted, really, you wanted to reach the people on
00:19:50.040the left, so you code the message that way.
00:19:53.180What's interesting now, I think, is that I don't think it's pandering, and I don't think
00:19:56.780is particularly coding the message to people on the right. But I think just the authentic historic
00:20:01.900Christian faith actually has way more in common, Dan, with people on the right. Do you see that as
00:20:07.820a big opportunity? Oh, absolutely. And the thing is, we know that if you just look at Conservative
00:20:13.980Inc., Eric and I were having a conversation just this morning about it, is that ultimately what
00:20:18.460Conservative Inc. does is they just tinker with the current political establishment. And so that's
00:20:24.780why you see it moving left so and pandering left when we were talking about like even the daily
00:20:30.780wire which was supposed to be this like alternate media ends up being controlled by fundamentally
00:20:36.100the same people now bankrupt i would just like to know who those people are eric anyway so
00:20:41.720yeah they fundamentally just tinker with with uh the political establishment but there's no
00:20:47.300positive vision for the future and what conservative christians have or should have
00:21:16.400and he's trying to rebrand as a conservative.
00:21:19.020I think what's unique, Brian, about Stephen Wolf, about Andrew Isker, about what we're trying to do, even with a network, is we're not taking guys who are political chameleons, who just see a moment to capture.
00:21:35.100It's that these are actually principled positions.
00:21:38.860So I guess talk a little bit about the network, what we're doing there.
00:21:42.740Yeah, so we've brought on Contramundum with CJ and Andrew Isker, CJ Angle and Andrew Isker.
00:21:49.820They're basically coming into our network where we're partnering with them and helping produce their show, as well as some other things behind the scenes and really excited.
00:21:59.560Long term, we're expecting and hoping this to result in books and all sorts of other legacy type of media with CJ and Andrew.
00:22:07.580We're also helping produce one of the projects I'm most excited about with those guys, which is Appeal to Heaven.
00:22:13.960And it's a season-based, really well-executed video and podcast type of project where they're going through, in the first season, the Spanish Civil War.
00:22:26.460They're going to be talking in depth about what happened there,
00:22:28.980like over a dozen parts to this series
00:22:31.440that will be part of their supporter exclusive channel
00:22:55.260with Stephen Wolf and his show there, as well as, again, books and bringing him into the
00:23:01.700new Christendom Press Network, and really just hoping to build coalition and momentum
00:23:06.480in making important contributions to this national conversation.
00:23:11.780And also, one of the things that we've said before that I'm really excited about when
00:23:16.860it comes to partnerships like this, and not just us, but lots of people have noted this,
00:23:22.240is that in the real project of seeing Christian nation established or Christian polity established,
00:23:32.440we really increasingly need specialists and elites and experts in all of these different spheres
00:23:38.600of the conversation. And historically, what's happened is that we've tended to collapse
00:23:44.000everything into the church. As the church as an institution has crumbled or weakened in its
00:23:50.660potency and liberalized and drifted. Counter movements have, I think, rightfully typically
00:23:55.860come up through the ranks of the church and the pastorate. And so you'd have Christian pastors0.99
00:24:01.540sort of wearing 15 different hats and speaking to everything all the time. Increasingly, and that's0.84
00:24:07.660not necessarily bad, like we needed men like that. We needed that to happen. But increasingly, what
00:24:12.800we also need are genuine subject matter experts in areas. I think of like Stephen. He's a genuine
00:24:21.940expert in his field in Christian political theory. He's written the book of Node on the subject. He's
00:24:26.700not a pastor. He doesn't have the concerns of a pastor. He can speak to this narrow field very
00:24:33.540effectively and with a lot of force and also, I can't find the word here, authority because of
00:24:42.500his expertise. And so we're really hoping that this new Christendom Press Network will bring in
00:24:47.480and help platform and build coalition with some genuine experts who are not pastors in their
00:24:55.340areas and help get their voices out there and expand the effectiveness of their message.
00:25:01.720Yeah, so just very excited about those partnerships. Yeah, I'm excited too. We'll
00:25:05.560be republishing the Boniface option in hardcover. So we've done Zach Garris,
00:25:10.840with honor thy father's spinning here we're going to do it in that kind of that same format with a
00:25:14.880hardcover beautiful book uh i'll be doing a forward and then andrew's doing a new afterward
00:25:20.300for the book but we're excited to see that project happen as well in forming these partnerships um
00:25:27.080dan as we kind of transition into the discussion on the atf you were the one obviously to talk with
00:25:31.920isaac um we've connected with them in the past i've had his brother on the hard men podcast to
00:25:38.560talk about what they're doing at T-Rex. Really cool company, but also like really good Christian
00:25:44.480guy. And so Isaac did a series. I think it's on T-Rex Talk. T-Rex Labs is the YouTube channel.
00:25:53.780And it was on T-Rex Talk, which is their podcast. So it's on both.
00:25:58.040So he's kind of covered this issue. Really incredible, I think, theological, historical
00:26:04.200understanding you you i watched some of that series and he's kind of a savant i mean he's
00:26:11.040just pulling facts off the top of his but you got to read this book you got to so it's really good
00:26:15.040for resourcing if you encourage people to look into that and check it out but one of the things
00:26:19.720i think is really interesting is the even the mainstream media has picked up that the right
00:26:25.580starting in the 90s the right was shaped by these events with waco and ruby ridge and usually the
00:26:32.500left media will say oh they're you know a bunch of paranoid schizophrenics on the right who are
00:26:37.880just concerned about government overreach but then when you go go through and you read the history
00:26:43.280of these events i mean we can start with ruby ridge i mean they shot his son in the back as
00:26:49.720he was running away and then shot his wife in the head while she was holding their infant yeah she
00:26:54.920wasn't holding an ar-15 she was holding a baby it's it's also interesting lon harucci so he ends
00:27:00.520up being at ruby ridge and waco the sniper i think it uh waco he ends up like swapping the
00:27:06.760barrel on his gun claiming to you know they're like trying to destroy evidence there's all the
00:27:11.740stuff that that gets into um but he was charged with manslaughter for ruby ridge and then the
00:27:19.860charges were just kind of disappeared um do you think people on the right are are they rightly
00:27:25.860concerned with government overreach based on these types of stories well yeah absolutely
00:27:30.500I mean, the more you dig into these cases, and I would recommend the T-Rex Labs, you know, series on this, there's a disposition with Janet Reno.
00:29:21.680Yeah, homophobic hate crime, yeah.0.92
00:29:23.020Because of that, we get all these new hate crime laws, and we're pushing LGBT stuff into the fore.0.84
00:29:28.920So again, going back to that question, and maybe I'll ask it to Brian.0.76
00:29:32.640What do you think about the weaponization of the DOJ to make war on U.S. citizens and to reframe, at least attempt, and they've been pretty successful reframing American cultural life?
00:29:46.080Yeah, I mean, this is one of those issues that we either win or our civilization dies.
00:29:51.680Like it's that kind of – you see it playing out even right now with judges in America blocking a lot of President Trump's activities or orders and that sort of thing.
00:30:01.600And basically they're asking the executive branch to call their bluff.
00:30:07.180Like will you defy our orders and assert the authority of the executive branch of the government to do executive branch of the government stuff?
00:30:15.900Or will we have a complete basically judiciocracy where the judges are in charge of everything?0.57
00:30:24.560And by the way, a third of them or something like that are foreign-born of our judiciary in America.
00:30:30.080I saw a statistic on X this week to that effect.0.99
00:30:34.680This is one of those issues where they will turn these sorts of activities up slowly and slowly and slowly,
00:30:41.300And then you will realize that you have no freedom whatsoever, that you live in a bureaucracy that is essentially bent on stealing and killing and destroying anything that is good and true and beautiful.
00:30:56.080We just can't let like we cannot let this kind of stuff stand without challenging it and going toe to toe with it, which is why it's important that we don't forget stories like Waco and Ruby Ridge and forget.
00:31:10.760like what they've actually done it's why it's important that we don't forget what they did
00:31:15.480during the the scamdemic we have to remember and keep talking about these things because they will
00:31:22.200use all of the levers of their bureaucratic power to try and memory hole everything they did wrong
00:31:27.420they will blatantly lie the pyrotechnics are a great example of this basically the pyrotechnic
00:31:33.040charges the fbi uses caught the the place on fire that killed everybody and so they tried to claim
00:36:24.160Last thing I want to ask about, so we'll be at Right Response as of recording that's next week.
00:36:30.860I think they'll actually hear this after.1.00
00:36:33.620One of the things I'll be talking about is the Longhouse and this society created under feminist rules, basically, to give you the TLDR.0.95
00:36:42.160um but reading about prohibition in preparation is that not like the epitome of the long house
00:36:49.460speaking of the long house uh so brian just just fill us in like the why would it be problematic
00:36:55.100prohibition is basically largely like women are responsible for prohibition men are too but um
00:37:02.520prohibition was very much a long house movement the temperance movement was like a feminist it
00:37:07.000was and and you can see the selling point of like oh men are drunks and they're beating their wives
00:37:11.480and like people men did do like men do evil things with alcohol men and women but men do evil things
00:37:17.560with alcohol so there would be whole campaigns of like lips that touch liquor will not touch ours
00:37:21.960kind of thing it was the early like school marming you can literally see these pictures of women
00:37:27.420holding these signs um in the 20s and it's kind of kind of weird too because the it was the same0.70
00:37:32.920era when we got rid of head coverings yeah basically you have feminism come in the first1.00
00:37:38.440way feminism come in. And what do they immediately start doing? Well, they start basically trying to1.00
00:37:44.140pass micromanaging nanny state laws that the government has no business passing to try and
00:37:51.860fix their personal household problems. This is what women do when they get in charge of the1.00
00:37:57.840government. They weaponize the government to attempt to basically disempower men in all of1.00
00:38:06.800the spheres where God has appointed that a man ought to be the head. So in the home and the
00:38:11.800state and the church, they get in and that's immediately, you see this in all sorts of
00:38:15.460government bureaucratic meddling is that it's functionally long housed. Basically, you can say
00:38:22.640thank you to feminism for prohibition, the massive increase in government that arose from it,0.55
00:38:27.780giving us the ATF, and all the organized crime that created super rich and super powerful1.00
00:38:34.040organized crime networks. Similar things happen today and continue with the war between bureaucracy
00:38:41.240and organized crime. But basically, there you go. Thank you, feminism. Yeah, it's interesting too,
00:38:46.560because it's something, and we'll close with this, but something that we'll be talking about
00:38:50.160with the conference, which is Safety Third. One of the things the feminist longhouse did, Dan, was1.00
00:38:56.780really push safety first in every area of life. And you can think of all the ways that backfired1.00
00:39:03.400prohibition being one of them, but the nanny state being another one. So I guess if you would
00:39:07.840just talk about, um, the conference, why safety third, um, kind of the ethos for what we're
00:39:14.320trying to accomplish. We see this as an age of opportunity, uh, but not if we're going to keep
00:39:19.700being nanny state school moms. Yeah. Uh, Brian, Brian really says it best when he says it's
00:39:25.900really recovering the American will, because if you look at American history and some of the
00:39:30.640greatest things that that our people have done like the empire state building wasn't it built
00:39:35.700in less than a year oh interesting and and the uh golden gate uh bridge and like all all of these
00:39:42.280projects like all this all of them happened so quickly and yeah the hoover dam like just having
00:39:49.680this this desire and this will to actually build and it's been something that we've lost actually
00:39:56.420speaking of Andrew Isker, I think he just shared a post recently. He's like, why is it that you go
00:40:01.600into rural, um, like small, small town, Midwest America and the downtowns are, you could see that
00:40:09.140they were beautiful at one time. They were made of brick and of stone. Um, there's always like a
00:40:14.020beautiful courthouse and beautiful church and, and these great buildings. You can see that here
00:40:18.660in Ogden as well in the downtown. You can just see the, the, uh, remnants of what was once probably
00:40:24.920a very beautiful downtown area. But we decided that we're going to build the safe option,
00:40:30.340which is going to be low risk. It's going to be buildings that last essentially as long as a
00:40:35.940mortgage lasts. And then you just tear it down and rebuild. That's not aspiring to greatness.
00:40:40.760That's actually just living in a very safe and ugly world. And so we really do want men to do
00:40:46.240great things and to build a great country for their children, for their generations, to do
00:40:52.880things that will actually transcend their own lives and that could be passed on to the generations
00:40:57.260so that they have a better life than we did. Yeah, that's awesome. Definitely encourage people
00:41:01.980to check that out, newchristendompress.com slash, I think, 2025. 2025, yep. You can sign up for the
00:41:07.640conference today. We've got all sorts of events for Business Mixer, VIP Mixer. We've got a pastor's
00:41:15.280breakfast. Certainly, if you're a pastor, we want to see you there. We want to encourage a lot of
00:41:19.260guys uh and the good work that is is there to be done but brian also concert yeah um somebody that
00:41:26.540i know is doing a concert um i believe you'll be serenading me there uh with some songs to me
00:41:34.820you well you personally i'm actually planning i'm putting you on a stool in the middle
00:41:39.620and then i just sit in front of you and i make really aggressive eye contact
00:41:43.100and i sing songs to eric so if you guys also want to be there present for this you can you can be
00:41:50.140there but that's mainly what it will be and what it's going to look like from what i understand
00:41:54.000from our planning meetings eric asked for this this wasn't my idea that's what he asked for so
00:41:58.080history is a little murky on that one but it's going to be a good time yeah it's just going to
00:42:03.860be so much fun the singles mix are like hanging out a lot we got the new christendom games
00:42:07.640happening on saturday after the final uh closing of the official conference join us for sunday
00:42:13.340we'll have a barbecue in the park afterward really just great time to meet people find who you're
00:42:19.620going to marry who you're going to build businesses with you know that genuinely that's what happens
00:42:24.220at these conferences it's it's really just a highlight of the year it's so much work on our
00:42:30.200end that every year like by the day it starts we're like why did we do this but then when in
00:42:35.240the thick of it, you go, this is why it's worth the effort. It's worth the work. It's worth all
00:42:40.120of the man hours and mad scrambling because like genuinely, this is where people meet who they're
00:42:45.900going to start businesses and get married to and like do all these important things. And if we're
00:42:51.000going to build Christendom, if we're going to build America, you know, Christian nation and
00:42:54.480make Christian boroughs, we need this kind of coalition and friendship. It can't just be purely
00:43:01.440digital. It has to be in the flesh as well. So definitely grab some tickets, come. If you're
00:43:08.200a pastor and you want to come, reach out to us. If you want to bring your team, we have all sorts
00:43:13.740of pastor discounts and incentives and things like that. Also, if money is an issue for you
00:43:18.000on the ticket price, do reach out to us and we'll make it work for you. We want everybody who wants
00:43:23.780to be there to be able to come. Obviously, it costs us an enormous amount of money to put these
00:43:28.480things on, but we want people to be there that are going to benefit from it. So yeah, it's really
00:43:33.260important. Where should they reach out if they have a question like that? You can just reach
00:43:37.380out info at new Christendom. That's what it is. Info at newchristendompress.com is the email
00:43:42.340address. Info at newchristendompress.com. Reach out to us. Again, if you're a pastor or financial
00:43:48.640hardship, whatever, we just want to, if you want to be there, we want to help you be there. It was
00:43:53.780cool on Sunday because I was in the back. We were getting ready to do communion. And so like
00:43:58.500prepping for that. And in front of me was a couple that is pregnant and they met at last year's
00:44:06.580singles mixer. We got to be a part of that. So just an encouragement to people. I know a lot of
00:44:12.760the single people that we talk to in our church, it can be discouraging, but it's also just a time
00:53:31.180All this was my younger brother, Lucas, who if you if you look at our media, you will generally see Lucas running firearm drills, just shooting at a super high level, incredibly fast.
00:53:42.840So he has done a lot of the a lot of the media, a lot of the education.
00:53:49.140And but he is the guy who started making the holsters in the first place.
00:53:53.220And as the business grew, we kind of had our biggest spike of growth in 2020.
00:54:00.020The Lord really, I think, providentially put a lot of different things on our hearts.
00:54:04.480And so as we expanded from holsters into sewn nylon stuff and carrying body armor and a bunch of other retail things, we were relatively well prepared for stuff that happened in 2020.
00:54:17.640Like we'd been pushing body armor as something that civilians should consider owning.
00:54:22.200And we had a good body armor source and we had good ceramic plates we wanted people to buy.
00:54:26.900and nobody was super interested in body armor until riot season of 2020 and then uh everyone
00:54:33.240sort of went like oh yeah i guess that's what body armor is for and a bunch of people bought
00:54:38.740body armor uh we had significant uh significant growth we were able to hire a bunch of folks
00:54:44.120in our county um a number of whom if you recall 2020 it's now uh you know fifth anniversary of
00:54:50.600a thing that a bunch of people pretending didn't happen but um hickman county's in middle tennessee
00:54:56.380It's a pretty socioeconomically depressed area, but we knew a lot of folks that were
00:55:02.480looking for jobs in 2020 as stuff had shut down in Nashville and around the area.
00:55:07.940And we got to hire a bunch of folks at a really key, pivotal time, I think, in their lives.
00:55:14.100And so, yeah, our focus has been on community preparedness, both in the products that we
00:55:18.620sell to our customers, but then also in trying to be a manufacturing facility here in Middle
00:55:25.240So if you go to our website, it's, you know, it's all the stuff that I just mentioned, holsters, body armor, plate carriers, but also all kinds of weapon accessories all the way up to night vision.
00:55:36.440So our goal is to educate people on that stuff, make sure that we're a good supplier for it, have good customer service.
00:55:45.180But even that community piece of just what we're trying to build as a business here has driven us, helped us make a lot of decisions.
00:55:53.500And that's kind of been, I think, providentially a great goal for us because it's helped us be set up for stuff that we couldn't possibly have predicted or, in our own wisdom, been ready for in the past.
00:57:18.120So you guys are in the firearms industry.
00:57:21.380And if you've watched any of the T-Rex videos, listeners, you have seen Lucas and actually a lot of the new hires as well that you were talking about.
00:57:32.060Going through some of the shooting drills and reviewing firearms and things like that, you have a lot of really cool guns that probably attract the attention of the ATF.
00:57:40.740I imagine you guys have an FFL and things like that that would require you to interact with the ATF.
00:57:49.660We have an FFL, a federal firearms license, and we are an SOT, we're a manufacturer, so
00:57:55.900we can make interesting, fun, cool stuff.
00:57:58.980And some of this is very, very important to the business because part of our business
00:58:03.140is making cool YouTube videos with cool guns.
00:58:05.720The other part is also integral to our business as a holster manufacturer, as we develop relationships
00:58:12.780with firearm companies, occasionally, not as often as I might like, but occasionally
00:58:16.940we get prototype handguns and lights so we can start building holsters for things that are not
00:58:22.740quite on the market. So obviously people don't want to send prototypes through our local pawn
00:58:28.080shop FFL. So we kind of have to have our own for security purposes. They don't like to just mail
00:58:33.700prototypes out, you know, everywhere. So yeah, we have an FFL and we get pretty regular ATF
00:58:42.520audits, uh, which is not abnormal, but, uh, we have them a little more regularly, uh, than some
00:58:49.620FFLs do. Yeah. And, and we have been using the acronym ATF. I imagine most of our listeners will
00:58:55.460know what that is, but for those that don't know, it's the department of alcohol, tobacco,
00:59:00.300and firearms, which was my, uh, Oh, and explosives. Well, I was going to say that was my
00:59:06.400years ago. Yeah. My college house was known as the department of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms,
00:59:10.800But anyway, that's the dad joke. I'm a dad. Have to make that joke. It's a great corner store. Yeah.
00:59:16.600And so you would think, you know, just from the outsider perspective, if you don't know a lot about the ATF, you would think, well, yeah, it kind of makes sense.0.74
00:59:24.040You don't want to have some, you know, hillbilly in the haulers brewing some sort of corn mash whiskey that's going to make people go blind.
00:59:31.900And yeah, you should probably keep the firearms out of the hands of murderers and things like that. Is that actually what they do?
00:59:38.780what does the atf do so on occasion they do stuff like that there have been atf agents known to roll
00:59:47.780up into a random tennessee hauler or two uh there have been some busts of cigarette smugglers in new
00:59:54.420york um those people remember that dimly terrible cigarette smugglers yeah but but firearms is is
01:00:03.040the main thing. It's where most of the focus of the ATF goes. This is pretty widely discussed
01:00:10.160very, very publicly by guys in the ATF. It's obviously observed by people who watch the ATF.
01:00:17.380The focus is on firearm. I'm trying to decide exactly how to characterize this because their
01:00:23.800goal is, of course, safety and regulatory obedience. So there's kind of two tracks of
01:00:30.560the ATF. There's keeping a very close eye on people with federal firearms licenses to make
01:00:35.900sure they're following all the rules and filling out all the paperwork. And one of the Biden
01:00:40.400administration's directives to the ATF was what is, I forget the official term, but it's basically
01:00:45.880a zero tolerance policy. So any mistakes on the paperwork will get your federal firearms license
01:00:53.660revoked so that you can no longer transfer firearms. So there were record numbers of
01:01:00.900revocations of FFLs over the last four years, far more than there's ever been in the past,
01:01:06.820just because of this really much higher zero tolerance policy. And then the other side of
01:01:11.520it is going after people who have already committed crimes, because filling out your
01:01:14.880paperwork wrong is not a crime necessarily. It's just a reason that you can't have a license
01:01:19.800anymore. But they go after people who have theoretically committed crimes by violating
01:01:26.080the other rules that the ATF has. And the ATF, this is an issue across the entire federal
01:01:32.820government, the entire executive department. We have a legislative system. We have a legislative
01:01:38.180branch that makes laws. And then we have on the executive side, we have, say, the Department of
01:01:42.960justice. And their job is to enforce those laws and the judicial branch rules on those cases.
01:01:50.240This is the great separation of powers that we have here. But in the executive branch,
01:01:55.500there's a lot of agencies, most agencies, I would say, have taken upon themselves to
01:02:00.560add rules and regulations on top of the legislator's intent, like in a pharisaical
01:02:09.880sort of way. So the ATF has done a whole bunch of things, even just recently, even in the last few
01:02:15.260years, where machine guns are not permitted under the 1934 National Firearms Act. So for 90 years,
01:02:22.860machine guns have been illegal without specific paperwork and attack stamp and all that sort of
01:02:27.120thing. But the ATF just constantly broadens the definition of what a machine gun is. So they will
01:02:33.660just change the rules on what a machine gun is. They will change the rules on what a short barrel
01:02:37.020rifle is. So very recently, they changed the definition of a pistol brace into a stock. Even
01:02:43.340though we have like 10 years of pistol braces being sold, somewhere between 10 million and 40
01:02:48.620million pistol braces in the wild. So just millions of Americans own these things. The ATF, just with
01:02:54.620a stroke of a pen, not being a legislative body themselves, just decides that these are now
01:03:00.160shoulder braces and anything they're attached to is a short-barreled rifle. And anyone that
01:03:04.160possesses one has just committed a felony with a minimum 10 year sentence. So that kind of
01:03:09.500regulatory overreach and oversight is not limited to the ATF, but the ATF is a great place to kind
01:03:17.000of see it in action because it is about basic mechanical stuff where they're just, you know,
01:03:23.940they have no lawmaking capability, but their definitions and their redefinitions of basic
01:03:30.140mechanical parts. It's kind of interesting to see. Yeah, they have enough regulations that they make
01:03:34.880sure that if possible, they can make everyone a criminal. With the pistol braces, a great example
01:03:41.080of that recently. Well, and it goes further. If you have the right kind of oil filter on your
01:03:49.400property or the wrong kind of oil filter on your property, that could be an illegal suppressor for
01:03:54.740a firearm. So there was a very recent case, I think it was just a couple of years ago, they
01:03:59.680went after an active air marshal, a federal air marshal. And he had an organic farm and he had
01:04:06.360some fuel filters and he had some hose attachments, stuff that you would probably be using on an
01:04:11.560organic farm in a very innocent way. And they determined that since these could be used as
01:04:18.000sound suppressors or silencers officially on a firearm, and he didn't have the paperwork for
01:04:23.720that, he got busted on that. So he lost his security clearance. He lost his job. He did
01:04:29.920get jail time, but it wasn't the maximum. So I haven't figured out exactly all the details of
01:04:34.200the case, but yeah, just the possession of an item that has this potential use was sufficient
01:04:41.760for them to generate a case and go after this guy. I don't even know what to say about that.
01:04:48.780that's insane just because i i understand i mean oil filters i may have seen them used for that
01:04:56.860purpose but just because the the diameter and the thread pitch could fit on on the barrel of a
01:05:04.300firearm to be used even but there was no evidence that he actually had done that there's no evidence
01:05:09.880that he's done that and even reading through the case documents i don't think he even had any of
01:05:13.960the appropriate adapters. So it's one, I agree with you. It's, it's interesting if you have
01:05:19.920specific adapters for other items that you own, that does make me kind of like, but apparently
01:05:26.080this guy just had the filters themselves. No adapters were mentioned whatsoever. And yeah,
01:05:32.240I would call it a travesty of justice if they're, unless, you know, to give the ATF the benefit of
01:05:39.540the doubt, which I never actually do. Maybe something very weird and secret that didn't
01:05:44.640come out in the case, maybe kind of, sort of. But I also believe that that sort of thing should come
01:05:50.520out publicly in the cases. As it reads, as far as the public can tell, there is absolutely no
01:05:56.880reason for this guy to be indicted for this crime, let alone prosecuted. Yeah, that's insane. So I
01:06:03.180I know you said right now in our current regulatory environment, the ATF is primarily focused on
01:06:10.000firearms, but that wasn't the origins of the ATF, correct?
01:06:31.640And what happened was we went from the management of liquor in this country being a massive tax revenue-generating thing to just outlawing it completely.
01:06:44.260The Volstead Act banned the manufacture, possession, consumption of alcohol.
01:06:50.300And so all of those agents who had been going around just collecting taxes now became enforcement agents.
01:06:55.940And if you remember how Prohibition went, all of a sudden there's tons of bootleggers because people wanted to keep drinking alcohol.
01:07:03.500People wanted to keep making alcohol because it was a really good business.
01:07:07.500So now the United States government, the Treasury Department, needs a whole bunch of enforcement officers.
01:07:15.760They're chasing bootleggers around in the hollers of Tennessee and trying to bust into warehouses and infiltrate smuggling gangs.
01:07:24.280And everything that you remember from prohibition kind of eventually leads to the ATF because after years, the government and the people make it very clear to the government they don't want prohibition.
01:07:35.400It is a failure in every possible sense of the word and it is revoked and there's a new constitutional amendment that says you can't ban alcohol anymore.
01:07:44.860But the government still has all these enforcement agents sitting around and they still have the responsibility to oversee some of this stuff.
01:07:54.280And shortly after Prohibition, you also had – I mean Prohibition built a very large organized crime wave – organized crime organizations but also kind of a crime wave in the United States.
01:08:06.500So you have bank robbers and gangsters and murders and things like that.
01:08:10.240So the government has something ostensibly for these enforcement officers to go and do and they pass the National Firearms Act in 1934 after the Valentine's Day Massacre and other kind of horrific gangster crimes.
01:08:24.280And that is what bans machine guns and short-barreled rifles and suppressors and things like that.
01:08:30.100So part of it was a problem looking for a solution in a way where we have all these agents now and they need something to do.
01:08:38.480And part of it was people in the United States were legitimately horrified by the kind of criminal activity that they were seeing.
01:11:00.320But Waco was particularly interesting to me.0.74
01:11:03.860So it was the Branch Davidians, which I understand is a group of people that lived in a compound
01:11:10.540or in a building, a series of buildings on some property.
01:11:13.800Yeah. Some people live in the compound. Some people live nearby. Yeah. So this all happens in the 90s. So the reason we wanted to do this series on the ATF is the timing is the main reason, kind of twofold.
01:11:29.240Number one, we had a new administration coming into office talking about massive overhauls of the executive department and thought, oh, this would be a good time to talk about some ATF stuff.
01:11:38.600But the other thing is that all of this happened in the early 90s, which I was very young at the time.
01:11:45.260And now amongst T-Rex arms, folks, I'm actually quite old.
01:11:50.460So there's a whole generation of new gun owners and firearm aficionados who do not remember that time.
01:11:57.320And it wasn't very well reported on at the time. Remember, the 90s is a time where not only is there no internet, but there's barely cable television. There's barely any way for you to get anything other than mainstream news. There's almost no alternative news available.
01:12:13.280So the stuff that happened at Waco is stuff that even at the time was very hard to – it's very hard to get any backstory about it as opposed to just the – that mainstream narrative.
01:12:28.180So we have this group and I should have boned up on my notes a little bit before this conversation.
01:12:33.000But I believe that they're a sort of an offshoot of Seventh-day Adventists and I could –
01:12:40.820But they're a little weird, as we would consider, as Christians, we would consider them to have some abnormal positions that are a deviation from Scripture.0.80
01:12:55.560But we would not consider them to be the kind of heretics that need to be burned to death by the FBI.
01:13:02.140Like, that's not the level of heresy, nor is the FBI or the ATF the department that really should handle that sort of thing.
01:13:08.480if the magistrate handles that sort of thing at all. So the situation is really interesting.
01:13:15.180The ATF builds a narrative about these weird Christians. And the same thing happened with0.94
01:13:20.540the Ruby Ridge Massacre with Randy Weaver. The media kind of built a sort of a fear of Christians
01:13:26.660into a lot of movies and television shows at the time, weird outsiders. Homeschooling was still
01:13:33.040new. Homeschooling was still scary. So these people who go off and they live by themselves
01:13:37.720are scary and they're a threat. So that is kind of the narrative that Randy Weaver got pulled into
01:13:44.720and the ATF and the Marshal Service surrounded and basically put his home under siege and killed
01:13:52.460a number of his family members. He survived, but there were more people who were killed in the
01:13:58.060Waco siege. So we have this small religious group that definitely has, I would say, some
01:14:05.820unbiblical beliefs, but they live in a compound in Waco, Texas, and they have business activities
01:14:13.900that are not too different from T-Rex. They sell guns at gun shows, which we don't do,
01:14:18.600but they also make firearm accessories. They sew magazine carriers and chest rigs. They do
01:14:25.100to basic business activities that are completely fine. They have an FFL license. They are registered
01:14:31.300with the ATF. They have paperwork with the ATF. The ATF knows roughly what they own and are
01:14:36.720supposed to own. And the ATF is seeing what they're putting on the tables at these different
01:14:41.520gun shows at the time. So they're not as secretive or mysterious as the media kind of paints them to
01:14:48.720be at this time. And the media mostly focuses on other allegations, allegations of child abuse and
01:14:54.400stuff like this. So they're investigated by Child Protective Services of Texas. They're
01:14:58.580actually investigated by the FBI. And those cases are kind of dropped. But then the ATF
01:15:03.600really needs a win. They need a big, splashy win. And what is what is happening is
01:15:12.480I don't know how much context to give how well people remember this. But why did they need a
01:15:18.280win? Were they getting bad publicity? Were they being seen as like a do nothing sort of
01:15:23.720department? Did they need more funding? It was a number of things. So this is very hard. This
01:15:30.080will be hard for your listeners to believe. But Bill Clinton had just been elected. He hadn't
01:15:35.120been inaugurated as all this stuff is kicking out. I think he's just been inaugurated.
01:15:39.980Bill Clinton had just been elected. And despite being the kind of Democrat that Bill Clinton was,
01:15:46.000he actually campaigned on a clean up government and get rid of waste. And it's actually kind of
01:16:51.540In fact, they even sent undercover guys into the compound to look at stuff.
01:16:56.080So everybody in Waco, Texas knew these guys.
01:17:00.100They knew that David Koresh would go jogging.
01:17:01.900He actually had a Christian rock band and toured with the rock band.
01:17:04.980So arresting him would have been a very easy thing to do elsewhere.
01:17:09.820Looking at what is inside the compound would have been easy because they have an FFL and
01:17:13.900they've been sending undercover guys in there.
01:17:16.180But they set up a pretty significant raid with just a number of agents driving in in vans.
01:17:22.440And they call the press ahead of time so that the press can see what's happening.
01:17:26.860Well, because Waco is kind of a small town at the time, the postman finds out that this is happening and calls one of his relatives who was inside the compound.
01:18:22.560So all we have are the recordings that have been released, which are not complete.
01:18:27.720And the Branch Davidians have released some of the children, like they've let some of the people who want to leave the compound, leave the compound.
01:18:35.020But ultimately, everything ends with the compound burning to the ground.
01:18:40.920And I think there's two survivors that make it out after it catches on fire.
01:18:46.100But dozens of women and children are killed in this fire.
01:18:51.000And this is kind of only the beginning.
01:18:54.700In some ways, as bad as this is, the way that the investigation is handled, the way that
01:18:59.460the hearings are handled, the way that the evidence disappears later, these things are
01:19:03.220in many ways, even more troubling in the way than that the siege itself was handled.
01:19:08.980And instead of, you know, this incredibly botched raid and this incredibly horrific siege
01:19:15.980being a point of contention where the new president, Bill Clinton, and his new attorney
01:19:23.760general, Janet Reno, follow up on some of their campaign promises to look into problematic
01:19:28.920behavior, fire a bunch of people that George Bush hired.0.98
01:19:31.400That would have been like a thing that they could have done.
01:19:34.660They just, Janet Reno especially, they just really cover for the ATF and cover for the
01:19:39.600FBI and just really stand up for them and say, they did a great job and we're going
01:19:45.080to protect their jobs and their budget and so forth.
01:19:48.280So the fallout from that was really minimal for the people that were involved.
01:19:55.840And because the mainstream media was just a few TV channels and a few big newspapers,
01:20:01.060There wasn't very much conversation to the contrary unless you were a part of bizarre alternative circles.
01:20:10.060Like if you went to gun shows and you subscribe to Soldier of Fortune magazine or those – I don't know if you remember these, but like typewritten newsletters that were photocopied and mailed to your house.
01:20:23.660Like those were kind of our alternative sources of information back in the day.
01:20:27.740So unless you were connected to those somehow, you probably just saw Dan Rather and the other folks of the day talking about, oh, this horrible tragedy.
01:20:36.360Religious extremists have suicide-pacted themselves and burned all their children and the heroic agents.
01:22:30.700So a lot of the story just doesn't line up.
01:22:33.740And in many ways, I would say that we're better off today.
01:22:36.860Not only do we have alternative channels for information like podcasts, but Americans are
01:22:42.800actually more educated on how firearms work a 50 caliber rifle is not as scary i think now as it
01:22:49.760was in the 90s people have a better understanding of this stuff people have a better understanding
01:22:54.560of ballistics people are probably more likely to question well if they have deadly anti-tank
01:22:59.480weapons inside of their compound why are why are you just driving tanks around uh crunching up
01:23:04.380their cars like why are they not shooting your tanks already yeah that was something else i
01:23:07.960wanted to bring up was they brought in tanks. We're talking about, uh, like families living
01:23:13.820together and had committed no, no crimes that, that we're aware of. Were they ever convicted of
01:23:20.380any crimes at this point? So, so here's what happened, uh, later on. Uh, there were a number
01:23:27.280of survivors who left the building, uh, before the fire. And then there were a couple of people
01:23:32.100who got out after the fire started, managed to escape from the building. Uh, there were some
01:23:36.360people who were arrested because they had jobs inside of Waco, Texas. They were not there when
01:23:41.700the raid happened. And they were arrested when they tried to come back to see what was going on.
01:23:46.840Those folks were all put on trial. They had different charges attached to them.
01:23:52.100And the judge kind of treated them all the same as people who had conspired to kill federal
01:23:58.640officers because I believe that there were people inside of the building shooting back. I think that
01:24:04.700that is extremely likely. I also am curious about all the bullets that were removed from the injured
01:24:11.040ATF agents. What were those bullets? Because there was some incompetence that you can see
01:24:17.620in the videos too amongst the agents who were on the roof and going in and out of that window.
01:24:22.000I think there may have been potentially some other issues there. But I would say that
01:24:26.180if you are being attacked by people in that way, it is very possible that we should discuss
01:24:34.300self-defense. But that was one of the first things that the federal judge took off the table. He
01:24:39.440told the jury, you cannot consider self-defense in this trial at all. You can only consider
01:24:45.360these very specific limited set of facts, and we will not admit other types of evidence. So
01:24:51.540even that conversation with the federal judge was very, very limited to very specific things.
01:24:58.140He overruled some of the things that the defense, the prosecutor, and even the prosecutor's evidence, he kind of overruled some of that stuff, too.
01:25:07.120So just everything about it just feels very, very dirty.
01:25:31.060So the ATF and the FBI talked about the different types of tear gas, CS gas, that they were using at the time.
01:25:42.480And for a long time, they were very adamant that they'd been using non-pyrotechnic grenades.
01:25:49.000They'd only been using the gentle dispersal.
01:25:52.360And then after a while, after years of denying that there had been any pyrotechnic grenades, the evidence that they had been using them was pretty impossible to deny.
01:26:05.160And so they admitted, yes, they had been using 44mm grenades and various other potentially incendiary grenades to actually get the tear gas canisters, get the tear gas grenades into the building.
01:26:20.100And they were specifically using compounds and delivery systems that are not supposed to be used indoors because they are a fire hazard.
01:28:13.440And it seems like the type of work that they're actually inventing for themselves to do is things like Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the poor guy with the oil canisters, amongst many other things.
01:28:26.260I have even personal contacts with friends that have FFLs that have they're now felons because of some firearm transfer issues that are quite honestly just a joke without getting into details on that.
01:28:42.340So you're exposing yourself to a lot of risk, even just by having an FFL and by being willing to help citizens, law abiding citizens to own firearms and things like that.
01:28:52.020And so you have this whole department, it seems just rife with corruption, inventing all sorts of work that results in tyranny.
01:29:01.420And so there's some conversations since Donald Trump came into office and with the doge and all of that.
01:29:08.740If they're actually going to clean out the government, it seems like the ATF is ripe for being removed.
01:29:17.820And so there's a lot of discussion around that.
01:29:19.680I know that you've you've been thinking about this. I guess, you know, the ATF, would it be as simple as Trump giving an executive order or something like that?
01:29:29.460However, the due process necessitates to get rid of a department like this just says with a stroke of a pen, the ATF is disbanded.
01:29:37.200It's gone. Is it that easy? Like, what would the ramifications be? How would you think through that?
01:29:41.720Yeah. So not being a lawyer, I can't explain why it's as complicated as it is, but apparently it's very complicated. It's actually hard to get rid of a government agency. It's kind of hard to start with. It's not hard enough, I would say. But part of the reason that Doge exists and is able to do what it does is technically it's a renamed pre-existing agency. But getting rid of an agency is difficult.
01:30:07.740Now, there's been a lot of conversation about getting rid of the ATF over the years. It was something that was discussed quite a bit during Ronald Reagan's presidency. The ATF was in the doghouse during Reagan's presidency. Actually, Joe Biden was part of the hearing. There was a congressional hearing or a Senate hearing that looked into the ATF and concluded that they were just constitutionally terrible.
01:30:32.800I forget the exact words, but they were just utterly excoriated.
01:30:36.440The results of this hearing were, you guys are not going after criminals.
01:30:39.640You're going after law-abiding Americans.
01:37:44.360And so it was another world. But my dad was doing video production, campaign ads and various other things for conservatives, for Republicans for the most part. So we were already kind of plugged into this world. But as homeschoolers, we're also kind of already unplugged from a lot of stuff. We were already sort of alternative people of the time.
01:38:06.040So when he got a call from a producer who said, hey, this thing going down at Waco is a big deal.
01:38:14.720We jumped in the car and we went down there.
01:38:17.360And we'd been – my dad had been following it.
01:38:20.440And when we got down there, there was nothing left of the compound.
01:38:24.580It had already not only burned down, but the FBI had come in and basically bulldozed everything into a big pit.
01:38:31.740The story is that all of the crushed cars, everything that had been run over by a tank, all that stuff was collected very carefully and meticulously by forensic folks, and they could recreate all of that.
01:38:45.080But the cleanup of the actual compound area was very fast and just pretty much wiped clean.
01:38:51.460And so I remember very vividly just seeing it and the smell of it, the signs and the fences.
01:39:03.560And one of the things that did strike me is just kind of the audacity of the government to – and at the time, I was still thinking of the government in this sort of monolithic way.
01:39:16.360The audacity of the government to run this very obviously bad operation against these people and then be so confident in their ability to get away with it.
01:39:27.320They would just bulldoze the thing and leave.
01:39:39.260Um, and we interviewed a number of, of the survivors, uh, former, uh, or I don't know,
01:39:45.500it's the Branch Davidian group is kind of hard.
01:39:49.200It's hard to say whether they were current Branch Davidians or former Branch Davidians
01:39:53.420because, uh, David Koresh is a very important figure for them.
01:39:57.240So whether they're current or ex-Branch Davidians kind of depends on whether or not he was killed
01:40:02.480or whether or not he was somewhere else.
01:40:04.520But talking to these folks who are part of this community.
01:40:08.100If he was killed or if he was somewhere else,
01:40:10.260like they don't know if he's dead or not?
01:40:13.020A number of the Branch Davidians believed that he got away
01:40:15.980and some of them believe that he will be resurrected.
01:40:18.300So there's definitely some interesting beliefs
01:40:21.540about the importance of him as a prophet.
01:40:25.440But we talked to a lot of folks from this community
01:40:28.420And a lot of them were still – it seemed like basically in shock that this had happened, that their own government had turned against them, that American tanks, American helicopters, American FBI agents had done this to them.
01:40:50.400And if you read the testimonies of people in the trial and the people in the jury, even the people in the jury were in disbelief that these things were – surely the judge is not telling us – surely the judge is not going to say that every single person in the compound committed conspiracy to kill ATF agents, to kill federal agents, and to do so with machine guns.
01:41:15.200Like, surely that's not what we're voting on as a jury.
01:41:18.400And the judge is like, yep, that's what you're voting on as a jury.
01:41:21.280The ATF says there were machine guns there.
01:41:23.140Even though none have been proven to exist, everybody who is in there is guilty of using
01:41:28.000a federally banned automatic firearm to kill federal agents.
01:41:34.400I mean, that was kind of the way that the ruling was handed down.
01:41:36.580Everyone was just sort of in disbelief in and around Waco.
01:41:40.240uh, the survivors, uh, and, and myself just seemed so alien and mind boggling, I would say.
01:41:49.200So I guess as a final question, we had, um, Janet Reno as the, um, as the, um, um,
01:42:00.140she's attorney general attorney she got she got sworn in uh after the raid while the while the
01:42:09.580siege was ongoing it's kind of interesting timing and which by the way would have been a perfect
01:42:14.100opportunity for her to say hey my predecessor did that uh i am the new democratically appointed
01:42:20.720attorney general for the democratic party and i'm going to start my uh start my job as attorney
01:42:28.600general uh winding this thing down she did not do that at all she said everything they're doing
01:42:32.980is great and we're going to keep doing it that was her even even like uh comparing the party line
01:42:36.960the tanks to like rental cars uh which is yes ironic and she allegedly also said something about
01:42:44.940cults and dangerous people being bible believing christians i mean for bible studies and things
01:42:51.020like that would you like to clarify on that that uh i so i i unfortunately put this quote into the
01:42:57.380video. And then later I did some digging. And while many people have attributed this quote to
01:43:01.780her, I couldn't find any real evidence of it. But she certainly talked that way about other
01:43:09.380Christians at times. So I think the quote that I put in there is probably apocryphal. It's probably
01:43:15.380not actually hers. But I totally fell for it. Yeah. I totally fell for it because it was true.
01:43:25.000The attitude of the Clinton administration was very interesting because Bill Clinton would go to Southern Baptist churches carrying his Bible.
01:43:34.180It was a very big part of his getting elected campaign.
01:43:37.800And yet there was a disdain for Southern American Christians who had voted for him that came across in the way that he talked about gun owners, the way that he talked about pro-life advocates, the way that he talked about regular conservative American Christians.
01:43:56.920And then during the election season, of course, he claimed to basically be one.
01:44:00.380So that's that attitude came across clearly from him, even more clearly from Hillary and very clearly from from Janet Reno.
01:44:09.440And so even if you throw out the quote and you just look at Ruby Ridge and Waco and the commonalities between them, it's not much of a stretch to look through some of the Christian boroughs or Christian communities that exist today to where we are saying, you know, even Pete Hegseth, the SecDef, he said, like, take your kids out of public school.
01:44:30.980Christian education is the most important thing you should do. You should do everything in your
01:44:36.460power to conform your life around Christian education. And so we have communities, they're0.92
01:44:41.140Bible-believing, they worship God together, they do Bible studies, they educate their kids through
01:44:46.360homeschool, or in our case, we have a very small Christian private school. There's a lot of
01:44:53.200commonalities, even if our doctrines are different, but to a pagan, what's the difference whether
01:45:00.040somebody has this unique theology or not what they're seeing from the outside is an isolationist
01:45:05.760christian community that does not participate in government education and so uh and also those
01:45:12.560communities just so happen to be very interested in firearms and in um you know even there are
01:45:19.680christian communities that have mentioned the word militia before and do training great word
01:45:24.620great historical word yeah it is a really good word constitutional even uh and so
01:45:29.900Yeah. And so you have a lot of these growing communities, especially within our spheres that we swim in, that actually have a lot of commonality between Ruby Ridge and Waco. And we still have the ATF. And even if there are some good people in the ATF, as you've mentioned before, the laws, the regulations are bad.
01:45:51.720So even if they're doing a good job executing their responsibilities, it means that necessarily they're going to be tyrannical and not using real justice in order to protect the people and to serve the people.
01:46:07.260And so I guess do you think that there is a risk in the future if the ATF continues without any clarification on laws and new regulations?0.99
01:46:19.060Is there a danger of more WACOs and Ruby Ridges happening?1.00
01:46:26.720The reason I think it will be different is there have been a number of changes.
01:46:32.340As tiny as a change as it feels like, saying back in 1993, there were only three television networks, and now there's YouTube and podcasts and Twitter.
01:46:45.360That seems like such a minor change, but I think that's a huge cultural change.
01:46:49.440I really do feel like things would have happened differently in Waco, Texas, if there had been the ability for alternative viewpoints to get out.
01:47:02.340If there had been – if the folks in that compound had had Starlink or if the people even just up the road in Waco, Texas had had the ability to talk to reporters in other outlets.
01:47:16.960There were some good reporters, some investigative reporters that tried to get on this case.
01:47:22.320But it was a different world back then.
01:47:25.100It was harder for them to get the information.
01:47:27.820It was harder for them to get their stuff published.
01:47:30.260So we live in a world where as bad as the mainstream media continues to be, there is
01:47:37.020a greater level of freedom, informationally speaking.
01:47:40.860The other thing is, I do think there's a much higher level of education around the
01:47:44.760issue of firearms than there was back then. So if you look at even just the laws that have been
01:47:50.560passed recently, in 1993, there were a handful of states that would allow you to have a concealed
01:47:57.520carry permit. And today, the majority of states have permitless carry. And so the needle has
01:48:04.300definitely moved more towards freedom when it comes to firearm rights and firearm education
01:48:10.340and firearm safety and firearm understanding. That has been huge. So culturally speaking,
01:48:18.300on that front, it is, I think, much harder for the ATF to make a national case that a huge amount of
01:48:25.460the country gets on board with, with something like a Waco. Now, they are still rounding up
01:48:32.280federal air marshals and U.S. Navy personnel for violating these things. But I think that they are
01:48:37.360kind of trying to keep this as low profile as possible because it would be very easy for them
01:48:44.620to get in some level of trouble for violating people's basic rights over some of these things
01:48:54.500like oil filters and so forth. If they had actually gone in and destroyed this guy's house
01:48:59.360and killed his wife and his kids, I think that there would be a kind of outcry that just was,
01:49:04.080It was just non-existent in 1993 almost because the people who were concerned about this were very fearful.
01:49:13.660I don't know if you remember when you were a kid, but most of your neighbors had guns, probably.
01:49:20.980Probably very few of your neighbors talked about guns.
01:49:24.360If Instagram had existed, your neighbors were probably not posting pictures of their guns on Instagram.
01:49:29.760That is a cultural shift that has changed that is massively different.
01:49:34.080our neighbors back in West Virginia, you know, West Virginia, you should be fine with owning a
01:49:39.120gun. We had neighbors who were very quiet, very hush hush about having guns. And probably for
01:49:44.900good reason. They saw what had happened to the Branch Davidians. They'd saw that apparently,1.00
01:49:50.100according to the media, 99.9% of Americans were not cool with private gun ownership and were okay
01:49:56.520with feds coming in and burning down your house if you had them. So people were very skittish
01:50:03.720about this stuff in a way that uh today on this issue perhaps only on this issue but on this issue
01:50:09.940particularly much much less skittish well and it is fascinating how twitter or x has changed things
01:50:17.280even since 2020 you know we mentioned uh yeah you know the the disease the the flu that went around
01:50:24.020in 2020 uh and and how things have changed since elon bought twitter bought x and how much i mean
01:50:32.300that's where i go for my news and the thing is you look at twitter and you look at some of the
01:50:39.000news stories and you're like that might not be true but you watch mainstream media and you know
01:50:44.420that's definitely not true or the narrative isn't true maybe some of the facts are true but the way
01:50:49.640that they're spinning it is not for me it's not to my benefit whereas the freedom of information
01:50:55.080the ability to live stream events that are happening um you know everybody has a camera
01:51:00.220in their pocket now. And so the freedom of information is really interesting. And I think
01:51:05.340the tactics probably change. I think I agree with you as far as a Waco sort of situation. I don't
01:51:11.720think that's probably very likely to happen. But there are different ways in which I think that
01:51:17.160they can combat sort of people in our sphere. And it's usually for discrediting. And it's not
01:51:24.700necessarily through a direct attack, but indirect attacks. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that the important
01:51:30.880thing, I mean, one of the main takeaways from the ATF, um, is that you don't just fight the
01:51:35.000symptoms. Um, you don't just, uh, find Janet Reno and get rid of Janet Reno. And then the ATF
01:51:41.020becomes nice again. Uh, you really have to do look at root, um, the roots. What, what are the core
01:51:47.280foundations of, of this agency? And, um, one of the things we didn't really touch on in, in
01:51:52.260prohibition. But in that time, the turn of the century, there are massive changes in the world.
01:51:59.220There is a massive departure from Christian traditions, not just in the United States,
01:52:05.660but kind of globally. There is a belief that we can create this more scientific,0.56
01:52:10.980this larger state. There's this idea that we'll have countries that are more modernized and more
01:52:16.840scientifically figured out and planned out, and we'll have professional bureaucrats,
01:52:21.260and we'll do things properly and everything will be better than the way that we used to do it.
01:52:26.420And that kind of manifests itself in a bunch of different ways in different places,
01:52:31.660kind of based on the underlying culture. So in Russia, there's a very strong socialist
01:52:36.420revolution. Throughout Eastern Europe, there's people who try to run the same Russia revolution
01:52:42.380play, but depending on how many Christian foundations are still in place, they have
01:52:47.060more or less success. In Western Europe, it's much more subtle. And in America, it still has
01:52:54.380good, solid American values attached to it. And it's like, well, we want to stop people from
01:53:00.020being drunk. So we're going to do this. We're going to solve social problems with the power of
01:53:06.520good American values, but applied top down from the state. So Woodrow Wilson, you see building
01:53:15.680the power of the state. But FDR really had massive, massive things that he wanted to do in his new
01:53:22.320deal. And as bad as it was, we have income tax and we have just massive new institutions being
01:53:29.020created for the federal government. The stuff that he wanted to do goes far, far beyond. He
01:53:33.380wanted to abolish all local law enforcement, have only federal law enforcement. The National
01:53:38.620Firearms Act that was passed in 1934, it banned some stuff. It was supposed to ban basically
01:53:44.040everything. It was supposed to ban handguns as well. Uh, there's no point in banning slightly
01:53:49.120more concealable rifles unless you also ban very concealable handguns. But the congressmen were
01:53:56.360like, no, our, our constituents, I'm sorry, we'll never be reelected if we ban just like all hand0.97
01:54:01.600guns. Uh, we're going to ban these short barrel rifles cause it's 1934. Uh, we're still shooting
01:54:07.280black powder in a lot of States for crying out loud. This is, this is fine. No one will care1.00
01:54:11.100about this. But the ideas that were being tested and being rolled out across the world in the 30s,
01:54:18.440but even in the United States, were bigger, more centralized, top-down, secular scientific
01:54:24.100statism is the answer. That's what we've got to be pushing for. And so a lot of the institutions
01:54:28.540like the IRS and the ATF that were created at that time kind of have this mindset, this assumption
01:54:35.500that our goal is to manage people, not just to fight crime, but our goal is to sort of manage
01:54:40.620people. These are the fundamental things that we really need to fight back on. Now, the good news
01:54:46.680is we have freer voices. We've culturally made a lot of headway when it comes to firearm freedom.
01:54:53.160Just educating people about firearms, I think, has borne a lot of really good fruit over the
01:54:59.340last few decades. But there's so much more that we need to be talking about. There's so much more
01:55:05.920ground that we need to take in these different areas, where people have an understanding of
01:55:11.440freedom and an understanding of responsibilities, but ultimately an understanding of the foundations
01:55:15.920that those things are built on. And in our nation, it's really unequivocally, these are
01:55:22.800Christian traditions. This is a desire to build a law code that is based on the Word of God. That
01:55:29.800is something that is so clear in our country. And by the 1920s, 1930s, the desire to get away
01:55:36.100from that starts to stand out pretty obviously. So I guess in your opinion and with your
01:55:44.600philosophy, does change like this, if we were to change regulations and eventually get to the
01:55:53.640point where we're like, oh, the ATF, they're irrelevant at this point, is this primarily
01:55:57.600like a bottom-up change, or is this a top-down change in your view? How does change actually
01:56:02.100happen is what I'm really asking. I think change definitely happens bottom-up. Now, if Trump is
01:56:09.600friendly and Trump wants to change some stuff at the top, that's great. If he told his guys,
01:56:17.440the ATF, like, just stop doing X, like, just stop suppressors are just not something that you have
01:56:25.240to worry about anymore. I want to see zero convictions for suppressors unless a guy was
01:56:29.740murdered. And you mentioned that he had a suppressor when you put him on trial for murder,
01:56:35.320not put him on trial for owning an oil filter. If he said that to the ATF, I would say that's
01:56:40.960great. It's fantastic to have four years of breathing room to try to work on educating
01:56:46.540people about suppressors or passing actual legislation that the changes, the NFA. But
01:56:53.860the change really does have to come from the bottom up. If, if we do get, um, breathing room
01:56:59.260from, from the top, that will be great. And that's one of my, that is one of my hopes with,
01:57:03.580with Donald Trump. I think that he knows that, uh, the stuff that he does for the next, uh,
01:57:09.080four years can just as easily be undone in many ways by whoever comes next. Cause he saw
01:57:15.200Biden do that. Exactly. It got kind of wiped clean. So he, he did the same thing when he got
01:57:22.240in. He tried to wipe out a bunch of the stuff that Biden had done. But there is one thing I
01:57:26.540think that is really, really hard to reverse. If he does manage to shut stuff down and pass that
01:57:34.240power and that money back down to the states, whenever the next Democratic president gets in
01:57:40.980there, the states will fight that guy. Even the blue states, in some ways, maybe especially the
01:57:47.080blue states, will fight to keep their power and their money out of the federal government's hands
01:57:53.220once they get it back. So in some ways, the most effective long-term thing that Donald Trump can do
01:57:57.660from a tactical perspective, everything that he wants shut down and out of the hands of the
01:58:02.400government, give it to the states, and then the states will do their best to hang on to it.
01:58:07.920But ultimately, I do agree that positive change is going to involve bottom-up movement. You can't
01:58:16.680you can't really decentralize from the top, uh, nearly as effectively as you can
01:58:22.080centralize from the top. That's, that's very fascinating. And, uh, may the Lord actually
01:58:27.980bless us during these four years and, and, uh, change, uh, and bless, bless God's people during
01:58:33.780these next four years and not just have some, just some political, cheap political points.
01:58:38.660Cause you can see the temptation, you know, Doge comes in and is like, Oh yeah, we're not doing1.00
01:58:42.220trannies anymore in the military. And it's like, you know, just earns some cheap political points1.00
01:58:47.500with conservatives to make it appear like they're actually accomplishing something. I really do pray
01:58:53.420and hope that that real change does actually happen. And it actually does stick for the future
01:58:58.740for our generations. Yeah. I wanted to thank you for joining us on the King's Hall. Isaac Botkin.
01:59:06.560I mean, what a legend, this guy, uh, please go and, uh, buy a holster, buy some body armor,
01:59:13.360uh, support T-Rex arms, great godly, godly men, godly company, uh, really is a stalwart in their
01:59:20.440community, uh, and is blessing their people there. And so thank you so much for joining us.
01:59:25.340Uh, I really appreciated your time and thank you for listening to the King's Hall.