Speaker 1: If you can only have five rounds in your gun,
Speaker 1: this gun probably isn't your gun. But if you want
Speaker 1: this gun, we'll sell you one, and we absolutely would
Speaker 1: provide it a five round magazine. It's the big take
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio. I'm West Gasova
Speaker 1: today how small gunmakers are testing loopholes in gun control
Speaker 1: laws in a string of big cases. Since two tho eight,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have
Speaker 1: the right to keep guns in their homes for protection
Speaker 1: and to carry them in public. But the Court has
Speaker 1: also been careful to say this Second Amendment right to
Speaker 1: bear arms is not absolute. The federal government and the
Speaker 1: states can require background checks in gun licenses, and they
Speaker 1: can play certain restrictions on who can buy guns and
Speaker 1: where they can be carried. States can also limit or
Speaker 1: outlaw certain weapons for public safety. It's that last part
Speaker 1: that we're talking about today. Several states do ban the
Speaker 1: sale of some kinds of guns, like a R fifteen
Speaker 1: style rifles that often are used in the mass shootings
Speaker 1: that occur almost daily in the US at least five
Speaker 1: hundred eighty nine mass shootings so far this year alone,
Speaker 1: and courts have largely upheld state laws limiting which guns
Speaker 1: can be sold. Now comes a new way gun manufacturers
Speaker 1: are testing the limits of these laws. Later on you'll
Speaker 1: meet Rob Pinkett's who you heard at the very top.
Speaker 1: He's a gun rights advocate who's also bringing his first
Speaker 1: gun to market. But first to explain the rapid rise
Speaker 1: of small gun makers, I'm joined by Jason Grotto, an
Speaker 1: investigative reporter for Bloomberg in Chicago. Jason, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me, Jason, you and your
Speaker 1: reporting partner Mike Smith have written a really interesting story
Speaker 1: about gun manufacturers and an increasingly popular way to make
Speaker 1: and buy guns. When we think about the gun control debate,
Speaker 1: a lot of it centers around should there be more
Speaker 1: regulation of who can buy? Should there be background checks
Speaker 1: if you buy a gun on the internet or at
Speaker 1: a gun show. But you're writing about something completely different,
Speaker 1: which is not about buying a gun, but about buying
Speaker 1: a gun in different pieces and putting it together yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's correct. So one of the thrusts of the story
Speaker 1: that we've done is the sort of do it yourself
Speaker 1: phenomenon within the gun industry and a lot of its
Speaker 1: centers around a R fifteen style rifles, which are you know,
Speaker 1: some consider them depending on which side of the debate
Speaker 1: you're on, Some will call them assault rifles, others would
Speaker 1: call them modern sporting rifles. But these are guns that
Speaker 1: are component based. Core of the gun is what's called
Speaker 1: the lower receiver. This is the piece sort of in
Speaker 1: the middle that houses the trigger, the firing pin. It's
Speaker 1: where the pistol grip or other type of grip will
Speaker 1: be inserted into, and it's threaded. It has threaded pieces
Speaker 1: that receive other parts of the guns, such as the
Speaker 1: barrel where the bullet comes out of, and the stock,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the shoulder piece that leans up
Speaker 1: against your shoulder for when you fire it. And so
Speaker 1: these guns are made to be modular that you can
Speaker 1: mix and match pieces. It's not like you have to
Speaker 1: buy it as it would come from a manufacturer. That's correct,
Speaker 1: you can buy it whole, but they come apart very easily,
Speaker 1: and there are technologies inside the gun that make it
Speaker 1: incredibly accurate and easy to shoot. So, for example, inside
Speaker 1: the stock going into the receiver, the upper what they
Speaker 1: would call the upper part of the receiver um is
Speaker 1: something called the buffer weight, which kind of keeps the
Speaker 1: guns steady when you fire it, so you don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of kick that you might associate with like
Speaker 1: a shotgun or something. So there's all kinds of things
Speaker 1: that play here that make these guns, you know, incredibly popular,
Speaker 1: and because their component based. One of the things that
Speaker 1: we found is that smaller manufacturers have really gotten into
Speaker 1: this game, and the air fifteen has become a very
Speaker 1: popular firearm. Of course, we hear about it quite a
Speaker 1: bit because it is sometimes used in mass shootings, and
Speaker 1: among people who buy them, they're popular because they're relatively
Speaker 1: inexpensive there as you say, very accurate and um, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat easy to use, and they're abundantly available. That's right.
Speaker 1: If you look at the federal statistics on gun manufacturing
Speaker 1: whole completed rifles, the number of those has fallen thirty
Speaker 1: six percent since two thousand, but the number of lower
Speaker 1: receivers has grown four thousand percent. So this market has
Speaker 1: really exploded. And you're exactly right that one of the
Speaker 1: things driving it is this sort of ability to soup
Speaker 1: up your firearms. So it's it's not unlike you know,
Speaker 1: guys souping up their motorcycle um only now they're souping up,
Speaker 1: you know, these firearms. So there's from the enthusiast perspective
Speaker 1: why people would want to buy these, why the market
Speaker 1: is exploding for them. But from a law enforcement perspective,
Speaker 1: this kind of do it yourself popularity has all kinds
Speaker 1: of challenges, doesn't it It can. I think the biggest
Speaker 1: issue in terms of public safety, I guess you would
Speaker 1: call it is how lethal these types of weapons are.
Speaker 1: So some of the folks who advocate for stricter gun
Speaker 1: laws would say, well, you can't have a Formula one
Speaker 1: race car on the highway. You can still have a
Speaker 1: driver's life since you can still get a car, but
Speaker 1: you can't drive, you know, a race car on the highway.
Speaker 1: So if you look at mass shootings, one of the
Speaker 1: things you'll find is, you know, handguns are involved in
Speaker 1: most mass shootings and most shootings in general, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot more handguns out in circulation than assault rifles,
Speaker 1: so called the sault rifles. However, if you look at
Speaker 1: data on mass shootings from every town, I should say
Speaker 1: here that Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP,
Speaker 1: the parent company of Bloomberg News founded and helps fund
Speaker 1: every Town for Gun Safety, which advocates for universal background checks.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at the data from every Town,
Speaker 1: what you see is that assault rifles and high capacity
Speaker 1: magazines that go with them, they account for eighteen percent
Speaker 1: of the mass shootings in the US since two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, but thirty percent of the deaths and seventy
Speaker 1: five percent of the wounded. So what is the argument
Speaker 1: in favor of it given all that set effects. So
Speaker 1: the folks in the industry and gun enthusiasts would say,
Speaker 1: and they do say, literally, you cannot legislate away evil,
Speaker 1: that there is evil in the world. And uh, that
Speaker 1: comes amid the Second Amendment, which they read in a
Speaker 1: certain way that says you cannot curtail our right to
Speaker 1: own firearms. And that's really the debate is how far
Speaker 1: does the Second Amendment go and what right does government
Speaker 1: have to limit something that is in sort of the
Speaker 1: core constitutional provisions. Jason and your story, you write that
Speaker 1: the ability to buy a gun in its individual parts
Speaker 1: and assemble it yourself has enabled people in some states
Speaker 1: to get around state laws which prohibit people from buying
Speaker 1: weapons like this. Yeah, so take a state like Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: In Massachusetts, they have a so called ban on assault weapons,
Speaker 1: and they literally list the weapons that you cannot I
Speaker 1: you cannot buy an A R fifteen, you cannot buy
Speaker 1: an A K forty seven. But what they say is
Speaker 1: you can't buy them whole. What you can do is
Speaker 1: you can buy a lower receiver. It has a serial number,
Speaker 1: and before you purchase it, you have to go through
Speaker 1: a background check. And so it's the same as buying
Speaker 1: a gun under federal law. That lower receiver, the part
Speaker 1: of the rifle that accepts all the other parts is
Speaker 1: a fire is the firearm. It's the only thing that
Speaker 1: they really track, and that's because without it the heart
Speaker 1: of the gun. Without that, you can't do anything. That
Speaker 1: is the critical component. And so the part that they
Speaker 1: think should be regulated under federal statute. Yes, in other
Speaker 1: countries they regulate the barrels or other parts of the gun,
Speaker 1: but here in the US we regulate the lower receiver.
Speaker 1: They do not regulate the barrel or the stock, and
Speaker 1: that's not tracked at all. So you need to go
Speaker 1: through a background check to get the lower receiver. But
Speaker 1: then you can buy all the other parts and no
Speaker 1: one would ever know and there's no tracking of that
Speaker 1: at all, and so that's exactly what people do and
Speaker 1: that's then completely legal to do. Yep. And then is
Speaker 1: that gun legal in Massachusetts for someone to own it? Is?
Speaker 1: In your story, you write about a small manufacturer of
Speaker 1: the kinds of weapons we're talking about here, and he
Speaker 1: originally was going to become a licensed gun dealer but
Speaker 1: then took a different turn. Why do you do that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the through line of our story.
Speaker 1: As a company called dark Storm Industries, which is based
Speaker 1: on Long Island, and their original purpose was to have
Speaker 1: a gun shop. And two weeks before they started, however,
Speaker 1: the state of New York passed what's called the New
Speaker 1: York Safe Act, which restricts, you know, what kind of
Speaker 1: assault rifles you can have you can sell, and that
Speaker 1: was what this company was planning on doing. They were
Speaker 1: planning on selling those kinds of rifles. And so what
Speaker 1: they started doing was two things. First, they started manuf
Speaker 1: facturing lower receivers and then they also began designing rifles
Speaker 1: that they would say complies with the laws of New
Speaker 1: York State. One of the things that the state did
Speaker 1: is it said you cannot have a semi automatic rifle
Speaker 1: that has a detachable magazine. And by magazine, I mean
Speaker 1: it's the piece of the guns. Some people call it
Speaker 1: a clip. It's where the bullets go and you stick
Speaker 1: it into the lower receiver in the rifle. And some
Speaker 1: of those magazines can hold, you know, thirty, forty, even
Speaker 1: a hundred rounds bullets in it. And so what the
Speaker 1: state wanted to do is they wanted to limit the
Speaker 1: number of rounds you could put inside one of these
Speaker 1: so called the salt rifles. And they did that by
Speaker 1: saying the magazine has to be fixed and it can
Speaker 1: have no more than ten rounds in it. What these
Speaker 1: owners of this company did is dark Storm, is they
Speaker 1: patented a design where they created a it's an A
Speaker 1: R fifth seen it looks exactly like an A R fifteen,
Speaker 1: and they used a small little screw and they fixed
Speaker 1: the magazine in there, and now you can have an
Speaker 1: A R fifteen. And that has really upset Assemblyman who
Speaker 1: co sponsored the New York Safe Act. They look at
Speaker 1: that as a blatant violation of nothing else of the
Speaker 1: spirit of the law, and supposedly are now requesting that
Speaker 1: the Attorney General look into this to see if they
Speaker 1: can get some kind of injunction on selling these, and
Speaker 1: they're looking to potentially rewrite the law to close off
Speaker 1: what someone call a loophole, a design loophole that allowed
Speaker 1: them to sell these kinds of rifles in New York.
Speaker 1: They could also argue the company that they're just complying
Speaker 1: with the law. They found a way to meet the
Speaker 1: standard of the law, and so they are legal to sell.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. During the nineties, we had a crime
Speaker 1: epidemic and the federal government banned assault rifles. You could
Speaker 1: not buy one in the entire United States that law.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and four, and people that want
Speaker 1: to restrict the type of weapons you can have to
Speaker 1: cut down on the gun violence, which is really high
Speaker 1: in the United States relative to other developed countries, they say,
Speaker 1: we need another law like that that you cannot do
Speaker 1: this in the piecemeal fashion that's being done right now
Speaker 1: across the country with different laws, that we need a
Speaker 1: federal law that tackles this, you know what they would
Speaker 1: call a problem across the country. My conversation with Jason
Speaker 1: Grotto continues after the break. So, the founders of dark Storm,
Speaker 1: they found that it was actually easier to become a
Speaker 1: gun manufacturer than it was to become a licensed gun dealer.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of ironies there. The first one
Speaker 1: is the fee to get a manufacturer's license is just
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty dollars. If you've never committed a
Speaker 1: felony and can pass a background check, you're going to
Speaker 1: get a license as long as you have a place
Speaker 1: to operate out of advances in machine technology means you
Speaker 1: don't really even need to know much about making a gun.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have any prior experience. The other
Speaker 1: irony is that technology coupled with the restrictions opened up
Speaker 1: a market for dark Storm. Because what we found is
Speaker 1: and what they told us, the big gun maker's cult
Speaker 1: Smith and Wesson, you know, Glock. They're not going to
Speaker 1: retool their whole manufacturing operation in order to sell guns
Speaker 1: in New York. It's just not that big of a market.
Speaker 1: But dark Storm, because they made a gun that specifically
Speaker 1: complied with New York's restrictions, they had a market that
Speaker 1: was tied up. And then what they did is they
Speaker 1: went and made a gun for Massachusetts, and they made
Speaker 1: one for Connecticut. Each one that I'm complying with the
Speaker 1: individual state law exactly. And so these smaller manufacturers they
Speaker 1: can operate at a smaller scale and be very profitable. Exactly.
Speaker 1: They're very nimble. So if they're all federally licensed, that
Speaker 1: means they're complying with federal regulations and means that the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Alcohol to back of firearms and explosives, the
Speaker 1: a t F has oversight of them. So does the
Speaker 1: a t F kind of looking on their operations, regulate
Speaker 1: what they're doing and make sure these things are being
Speaker 1: manufacturing sold the right way. Well, so there you're hitting
Speaker 1: on another rub in this whole space, and that is
Speaker 1: the a t F lacks the resources necessary to meet
Speaker 1: its own goals in overseeing these companies. So, for example,
Speaker 1: dark Storm has never had a compliance inspection in the
Speaker 1: ten years plus that it's been in operation. So a
Speaker 1: t F has never come by and said, hey, we
Speaker 1: want to look at your Nope, they've never done it.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the data is hard to come by,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty clear from what data there is out
Speaker 1: there that they just don't have the manpower. In fact,
Speaker 1: they had a report that came out in May that
Speaker 1: said they would need to double their staffing levels for
Speaker 1: inspectors in order to inspect every gun licensee once every
Speaker 1: three years, not once every year, once every three years.
Speaker 1: Is there any effort to increase the A t F
Speaker 1: s budgets so they're able to do their job more effectively?
Speaker 1: So I have seen um in this year's appropriation ask
Speaker 1: um that there is some request for additional staff, but
Speaker 1: not nearly what they would need to really inspect these
Speaker 1: folks once every three years. And again some people would
Speaker 1: say that's not adequate. What percentage of manufacturers is the
Speaker 1: A T F able to inspect? Well, so in COVID
Speaker 1: being a wrinkle, they only inspected seven percent. And how
Speaker 1: many gun manufacturers are there now in the unit? Well,
Speaker 1: today there are eighteen thousand licensed gun manufacturers. And so
Speaker 1: there's another phenomenon happening because of the component based craze
Speaker 1: where dealers are now getting manufacturing licenses. With the manufacturing license,
Speaker 1: you have the flexibility to both own a gun shop
Speaker 1: and sell retail and build your own guns from scratch
Speaker 1: or assemble guns from parts and resell them. So if
Speaker 1: you have a dealer's license, all you can do is
Speaker 1: sell guns or sell lower receivers. You can't help people
Speaker 1: build them or build them and sell them resale. But
Speaker 1: with a manufacturing license you can do all of the above.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the other ironies here is that
Speaker 1: as the federal government through the a t F, tries
Speaker 1: to clamp down on this through regulations, and as states
Speaker 1: try to do it through their piecemeal legislation, what they
Speaker 1: keep seem to be doing is opening up little niche
Speaker 1: markets for folks in the gun industry, you know, that
Speaker 1: want to push the envelope or provide products for their
Speaker 1: customers that wouldn't be there without those regulations. So it's
Speaker 1: a cat and mouse game. Jason Grotto, thanks very much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to explain all of this to us.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I appreciate your interest. I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear from a small gunmaker, which is how
Speaker 1: I recently wound up at a gun range outside Denver.
Speaker 1: And just a note, you'll hear the sound of gunfire
Speaker 1: in this part of the episode. All right, now, the hips,
Speaker 1: bend the knees and body weight forward shoders in front
Speaker 1: of the hips. Both eyes have been on the target.
Speaker 1: Extend right now, keep both eyes open, focused on that target,
Speaker 1: and touch the trigger. And then that's Rob Pinks. He's
Speaker 1: a gun safety instructor, a former law enforcement officer, and
Speaker 1: a staunch defender of gun rights. He's teaching me how
Speaker 1: to fire a new gun his company, called a Vidity Arm,
Speaker 1: is getting ready to bring to market. I'm a total
Speaker 1: novice and not doing much harm to the paper target
Speaker 1: in front of me. Hey, you got finger off the trigger.
Speaker 1: Come back to the ready position, all right, breathe, All right,
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit high, but when you drove
Speaker 1: the gun out, you were a little bit like Pincas
Speaker 1: believes gun owners and sellers have a responsibility to make
Speaker 1: sure the weapons in their possession are handled safely, but
Speaker 1: that the government should get out of the way when
Speaker 1: it comes to deciding who can own what. He has
Speaker 1: a federal gun manufacturing license and he follows the law,
Speaker 1: but he says background checks are an infringement on his rights.
Speaker 1: If you asked me to put it to a vote tomorrow,
Speaker 1: I say no background checks. However, I fill out of
Speaker 1: three whenever I want to do a traditional purchase from
Speaker 1: a dealer, because like most gun owners, I'm complying with
Speaker 1: laws that I think are unfair, unrealistic, and probably unjust
Speaker 1: under our system, there are people who you believe should
Speaker 1: not own guns. Does it bother you at all that
Speaker 1: people like that are very easily able to purchase guns?
Speaker 1: It bothers me? Does it concern you not to a
Speaker 1: level at which you cross the threshold where I think
Speaker 1: you're right or my right to purchase a gun should
Speaker 1: be impeded? So that so I do not think that
Speaker 1: the fact that someone that I believe at that point
Speaker 1: in time should not have immediate access to a gun
Speaker 1: should mean that no one should have a media access
Speaker 1: to a gun, because that's what you're saying. If if
Speaker 1: you have to go through a background check, no one
Speaker 1: has immediate access to just go pick up a gun.
Speaker 1: I can't loan a friend again. I can't tell a
Speaker 1: friend again. I can't give a friend again because somebody
Speaker 1: out there on earth right now I believe shouldn't have
Speaker 1: a mediacs again. You know whose responsibility that is the
Speaker 1: person transferring them the gun. What if the person is
Speaker 1: just buying it essentially from a stranger, and they're not
Speaker 1: a mental health professional, they don't know where the background
Speaker 1: isn't they don't have a responsibility to find that out,
Speaker 1: So they don't have a legal obligation, or they don't
Speaker 1: have the responsibility. I believe they have the responsibility. I
Speaker 1: don't think they should have a legal obligation. The gun
Speaker 1: he plans to sell isn't an a R fifteen style
Speaker 1: rifle like the ones we heard about earlier. It's a
Speaker 1: small handgun. There's nothing unusual about its appearance. To my eye,
Speaker 1: it looks fairly similar to another pistol. He's brought along
Speaker 1: to the range, a glock that he pulls from a
Speaker 1: concealed holster in the waist band of his jeans. So
Speaker 1: we'll be using two guns today. The first is a
Speaker 1: production prototype of the Avidity Arms PD ten. This is
Speaker 1: the gun that we're bringing a market this year. It's
Speaker 1: been a long project with some COVID interruptions and other interruptions,
Speaker 1: but that is the single stack nine millimeters. It holds
Speaker 1: ten rounds in the magazine in one round um in
Speaker 1: the barrel of the gun, so your capacity when you're
Speaker 1: One of its notable features isn't the gun itself, but
Speaker 1: how he intends to sell it more with Rob pinkis
Speaker 1: after the break. There are a lot of handguns the market.
Speaker 1: Rob Pink has plans to sell his new gun in
Speaker 1: a way that's unconventional. Customers can buy the complete gun
Speaker 1: from him, but he also wants to make plans available
Speaker 1: for free to anyone who wants to make their own
Speaker 1: version of the gun's plastic frame on a three D printer.
Speaker 1: The rest of the gun's metal parts they can buy
Speaker 1: from him. The major manufacturers have not embraced opportunities to
Speaker 1: let people utilize their technology, their designs, their their parts.
Speaker 1: They're engineering with guns that they manufacture at homes. In
Speaker 1: other words, you know, these major manufacturers will sell you
Speaker 1: a stripped frame or lower receiver quite often, and then
Speaker 1: you can buy parts and construct or assemble a gun.
Speaker 1: But it's still they did the work on the frame,
Speaker 1: and obviously there's a huge number of people that enjoy
Speaker 1: doing that work that considered a little bit of an
Speaker 1: art form, especially in the three D printing world. If
Speaker 1: we're able to provide the files so that people can
Speaker 1: three D print a frame that is based on my design,
Speaker 1: but then they're going to put their initials on it,
Speaker 1: they're going to print it in whatever color they want.
Speaker 1: They might adjust the palm swell a little bit um
Speaker 1: or the length of pull of the gun a little bit.
Speaker 1: Now that it's a distance between the front of the
Speaker 1: trigger and the back of the grip, they might increase
Speaker 1: that a little bit or even decrease that a little bit.
Speaker 1: As long as it is within the design tolerances and
Speaker 1: the parts will still fit, then they can actually customize.
Speaker 1: He says he won't make much money this way since
Speaker 1: the frame is often the most expensive part, So then
Speaker 1: why is he getting away the plans for the three
Speaker 1: D printers. That's a relatively small community, and absolutely we
Speaker 1: would be essentially losing money on that proposition. But I
Speaker 1: believe it's incredibly important to show support from the traditional
Speaker 1: manufacturing side of the firearms industry to the private gunmakers
Speaker 1: and and hopefully it encourages other much larger gunmakers to
Speaker 1: support them as well. If a gun maker sells a
Speaker 1: customer a complete gun or just its frame or lower receiver,
Speaker 1: federal law requires it to have a serial number, and
Speaker 1: the buyer has to complete a background check. Serial numbers
Speaker 1: are one of the tools that law enforcement uses to
Speaker 1: attract the origin of guns used in crimes. For this reason,
Speaker 1: in a handful of states, it's against the law of
Speaker 1: three D print your own gun, or you have to
Speaker 1: apply for a serial number if you do, I asked
Speaker 1: Pincas if there's a reason not to put a serial
Speaker 1: number on these guns. Some states Massachusetts, California, Connecticut allowed,
Speaker 1: but federally there is no requirement or even mechanism for it,
Speaker 1: So there's a logistical problem with it. There's also, I think, obviously,
Speaker 1: the civil rights issue of of the the infringement, the restriction,
Speaker 1: the the idea that I have to report to the government.
Speaker 1: One of the questions I get asked sometimes is how
Speaker 1: am I going to feel if a school gets shot
Speaker 1: up with one of my guns. I'm gonna feel bad.
Speaker 1: But if I haven't accepted that possibility, I have no
Speaker 1: business selling guns. And if you haven't accepted the possibility
Speaker 1: that when you're working in a gun shop and you're
Speaker 1: selling a gun across the counter, that that person could
Speaker 1: kill themselves, kill their kids, kill sixteen kids in a
Speaker 1: school down the street, you have no business selling that
Speaker 1: gun across the counter. And if we take that seriously
Speaker 1: and we preach that in our community, I think people
Speaker 1: will be a little bit more careful about who they're
Speaker 1: selling they gun across the counter to whether the government's
Speaker 1: involved or not. I was just speaking to a reporter
Speaker 1: on a story that Bloomberg did about the proliferation of
Speaker 1: small gun manufacturers, and one of the points of that
Speaker 1: story was that um individual states have varying restrictions on
Speaker 1: kinds of guns, in particular a R fifteen style rifles,
Speaker 1: and the larger manufacturers sometimes don't accommodate for those different
Speaker 1: state variations, and so these smaller manufacturers have started to
Speaker 1: manufacture guns that in the narrowest sense, meet the restrictions
Speaker 1: of these states. Is that something that you're part of, Like,
Speaker 1: how how does that play into this kind of growing
Speaker 1: small manufacturers which are really aimed at trying to uh
Speaker 1: comply with state Yeah. I think that's the issue is
Speaker 1: is there's a lot of talk around this, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, what you're describing is the
Speaker 1: gun industry's attempt to comply with rules which in most
Speaker 1: cases we think are unjust convoluted and unfair, uh and
Speaker 1: probably unconstitutional. As as more and more of these laws
Speaker 1: are tested, we're saying more and more than ruled unconstitutional
Speaker 1: but screen court, and that's good. In the meantime, it
Speaker 1: is good that these companies are trying to solve these problems.
Speaker 1: For people that want to have certain capabilities with firearms,
Speaker 1: whether it's for defense, for recreation, for hunting, for whatever
Speaker 1: it may be inside of these more restricted areas. So
Speaker 1: sometimes we see major manufacturers adjust their product line UM
Speaker 1: in response. For example, UM reduced capacity magazines. So you've
Speaker 1: got a standard capacity. A state says they're going to
Speaker 1: restrict the level of ownership magazines one can have in
Speaker 1: that state. So the major manufacturers will adjust that and
Speaker 1: they'll have a version with a reduced capacity. UM handguns,
Speaker 1: you know, rifles that happens a lot here in Colorado,
Speaker 1: were restricted at the state level from having magazine new
Speaker 1: magazines over fifteen rounds. So any new gun that's manufactured
Speaker 1: in the community that gets sold in Colorado, that manufacturer
Speaker 1: has to ship it to Colorado for sale through dealers
Speaker 1: with magazine capacity fifteen or less, even if it might
Speaker 1: hold eight being sold in Kansas, you know, prior across
Speaker 1: the border. UM. As far as my company goes, uh,
Speaker 1: we're selling our first product. Their first firearm product is
Speaker 1: a semi automatic handgun with a magazine capacity of ten rounds,
Speaker 1: which is incidental to the whatever the laws may be,
Speaker 1: it's that's the size we talked about the ergonomics really
Speaker 1: being the driving design factor. Uh, if we had a
Speaker 1: customer base in a state where a restriction at some
Speaker 1: point shows up and he said, you can only have
Speaker 1: five rounds, I would tell them, honestly, there's probably more
Speaker 1: efficient designs if you if you can only have five
Speaker 1: rounds in your gun, this gun probably isn't your gun.
Speaker 1: But if you want this gun, we'll sell you one,
Speaker 1: and we absolutely would provide a five round magazine. The
Speaker 1: increasing popularity of making guns at home that are beyond
Speaker 1: the scope of gun regulations has caught the attention of
Speaker 1: several states. California is trying to regulate machines that are
Speaker 1: sometimes sold with gun kits. Those allow buyers to make
Speaker 1: handgun frames or lower receivers at home from a solid
Speaker 1: block of aluminum. In Delaware, a federal judge blocked a
Speaker 1: new state law to prohibit certain build a home guns,
Speaker 1: and in New York, a Democratic lawmaker is drafting legislation
Speaker 1: that would outlaw modifications that companies make to ban guns
Speaker 1: that allow them to be sold. We'll keep an eye
Speaker 1: on this story and report back to you when we
Speaker 1: know more. Thanks to Rob Pinkis and Jason Grotto for
Speaker 1: joining me today. You can read Jason's and Michael Smith's
Speaker 1: story about small gun makers on Bloomberg dot com. Thank
Speaker 1: for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's
Speaker 1: the daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For
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Speaker 1: and subscribe to our daily newsletter at Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash Big Take, and we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Email us with questions or comments to Big Take at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take
Speaker 1: is Vicky Burgalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Moe Barrow and Michael Falero. Hilda Garcia is
Speaker 1: our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.