State of the Second

John sits down with Kurt from the GEAR team to break down the GEAR Summit: a weekend of guided trail runs, firearms training, hands-on vendors, and camping in the canyon country outside Amarillo, Texas.

Bring a fully built rig or a bone-stock truck. Bring years of trigger time or none at all. There are green trails through advanced runs, beginner classes through low-light and night vision, recovery and navigation courses, Stop the Bleed, and a cantina to close out every night.

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The suppressor win wasn't the finish line. It was the first domino.

This week, Braden Langley joins John to talk about what the suppressor lawsuit really opened up, why gun owners need to learn how to win after decades of playing defense, and why the 2A movement grows by building bridges instead of gatekeeping new gun owners.

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Why do suppressors cost so much, and what does August’s ruling actually change for the people who make them?

John sits down with Danny of Shadow Silencers to talk about building suppressors under a patchwork of state laws, why California and New York-style restrictions keep spreading, and what the latest court decision means on the manufacturing side.

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Hi-Point's Dave is back on State of the Second, and this time we get into why the $0 tax stamp put Hi-Point in the suppressor business.

John and Dave go through everything Hi-Point has launched since his last visit: the AR line in gold, silver, leopard, M81 and Desert Storm, plus the Hush Point 22, Hush 45 and the 3D-printed 30 cal cans. Then John runs down a decade of caliber requests and Dave answers each one: 5.7, 22 TCM, 357 SIG, 30 Carbine, straight-wall, .32, and yes, the Hi-Point AK.

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This week John sits down with Trey of EAA to discuss the part of the gun business nobody explains: why a $25 magazine adds $70 to the price tag, why a $100 optic cut costs you $300, and what tariffs are doing to entry-level handguns. Plus, From the Soap Box: YouTube's new firearms policy, and why a cosmetics brand can sponsor a creator when a gun company can't.

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Kailey and John sit down with Tim Hoffman of Hoffman Tactical, the 3D-printed firearms pioneer behind the Super Safety. Tim explains how open-source design beats the ATF's raid-and-harass playbook (his "weapon of mass distribution"), why most gun-industry "innovation" is just another muzzle device, and where real innovation is actually happening, belt-feds, recoil-operated designs, and decentralized American manufacturing.

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This week, Constitutional attorney Mark Smith of Four Boxes Diner joins John on what actually started the Revolutionary War, the 1792 law that still decides which firearms are protected, and why "dangerous and unusual" can't describe something tens of millions of Americans already own. Plus what body camera footage did for gun rights that no argument could.

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This week, Matt of AS Designs joins Kailey and John on the legal ground his whole business sits on: what "common use" actually means when the threshold moves depending on how scary a product is, how a settlement between one company and the DOJ ended up writing the definition everyone else has to live under, and why patents restrict new designs more than any regulation does.

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This week Stephen Bozich of Bare Arms joins John and Kailey to argue that the Gun Control Act of 1968 never restricted firearms. It restricted commerce in firearms. Nearly everything regulated downstream of it hangs on somebody being "engaged in the business.” As well as, generational misinformation in firearms education, and why you shouldn't expect a government funded school to teach you the limits of government.

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This week, Lady Liberty Australia joins John and Kailey to explain what life actually looks like without a Second Amendment: a 12-month wait to buy a single pistol, mandatory registration, police who can search your gun safe without a warrant, and a home invasion she was legally barred from stopping with the firearm locked in her own house.

She fled to Texas as a political exile. Now she's warning America about the road Australia went down, and why the ATF's registry should terrify you.

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This week, John and Kailey sit down with Vince from Kore Essentials for one of the more honest conversations we've had on this show about the state of the firearms industry; what it gets wrong about new shooters, what it gets wrong about women, and why the people loudest online about wanting innovation are the same ones killing it.

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Special thanks to our sponsor for supporting this season!

Kershaw Knives - Built for the everyday carry, ready for anything. Get your Kershaw today.

This week, John and Kailey sit down with Vince from Kore Essentials for one of the more honest conversations we've had on this show about the state of the firearms industry; what it gets wrong about new shooters, what it gets wrong about women, and why the people loudest online about wanting innovation are the same ones killing it.

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This week Cody Bennion of Jaguar Silencers joins Kailey and John to talk 3D-printed cans in Inconel and titanium, why nobody in this industry measures decibels the same way, and why he has suppressors on his desk with 15,000 rounds through them that still don't need cleaning.

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Kailey and John welcome back Rachel from Night Fision, the team behind Night Fision night sights, Glow Rhino, Cammenga compasses, and now Zaffiri Precision. Rachel breaks down why a sights company bought a slide maker, the push to own "everything north of the frame," what platforms are getting support next (Glock Gen 6, Ruger RXM, the P365), and why "do it right, not fast" beats rushing product out the door.

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This week, Kailey and John sit down with Scott Volquartsen of Volquartsen Firearms, the Iowa family company building rimfire's finest since 1974. Scott makes the case that the humble .22 is the best on-ramp to the Second Amendment, explains how suppressors reshaped rimfire, argues the .22 Magnum is criminally underrated, and calls out the "high speed, low drag" marketing that's costing the industry its next generation of shooters.

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Patriot...

This week John and Kailey sit down with Carlie Bodiford to talk about going from college TikToks to 700K+ followers, using humor to reach people who've never touched a gun, and why the future of the Second Amendment comes down to one conversation at a time. Stick around for a spicy From the Soapbox.

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Register for GOALS GOA's 50th Anniversary, August 1–2 in Des Moines, IA. Tickets at gunowners.org/goals.

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This week, Kailey sits down with Joey from Attorneys for Freedom, the law firm behind the Attorneys on Retainer program, to walk through what actually happens after a self-defense event, and the mistakes that turn a lawful shooting into a courtroom nightmare.

AOR is at GOALS 2026. Come by Booth 2712 on Saturday, August 1 at 11 AM. Use promo code STATE OF THE SECOND for $50 off an individual plan or $25 off a family plan at attorneysonretainer.us.

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Register for GOALS GOA's 50th Anniversary, August 1–2 in Des Moines, IA. Tickets at gunowners.org/goals.

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This week, John and Kailey sit down with Jim of Steyr Arms to get into the AUG's rise to one of the most-fielded rifles in the world, the surprising Steyr link to the Mercedes G-Wagon, the new AREX pistol collaboration, and the engineering behind the Safe Bolt System, including the over-pressure test that lets a shooter walk away from a completely blocked barrel. Jim also breaks down the legendary Steyr Scout, the only rifle that meets every one of Jeff Cooper's original requirements, and why he's taken more game with it than his other 62 hunting rifles combined.

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This week, John and Nate from Nine Line Apparel are back for round two, and it goes everywhere: the new Gun Owners of America x Nine Line collab, why Gen Z is rediscovering patriotism, and the right way to welcome a first-time shooter to the range. Plus the live AR that sat on YouTube for 24 hours and did nothing.

Grab the GOA x Nine Line gear

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Register for GOALS GOA's 50th Anniversary, August 1–2 in Des Moines, IA. Tickets at gunowners.org/goals.

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This week, John and Kailey sit down with Drew and Jeremy from One Horse to talk about building a 100% American-made AR that any gun owner can afford, and to drop a major announcement you won't want to miss.

From 13 years at Anderson to launching their own brand in eight months, they break down what the "poverty pony" label gets wrong, how a quality American-made rifle lands at around $600, and why they refuse to chase the race to the bottom.

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Register for GOALS GOA's 50th Anniversary, August 1–2 in Des Moines, IA. Tickets at gunowners.or...

Alex from Caliber Row joins hosts Kaylee and John to talk about what she calls one of the coolest jobs in the firearms industry: photographing and filming brands. Alex runs Caliber Row, where she specializes in photography, videography, and brand marketing for firearms companies. Her path started in Chicago, where she grew up on the Southside and shot in the fashion industry with agencies like Wilhelmina, Factor, and Ford. She applied on a whim to a job at apparel company GrunStyle, got hired despite limited firearms experience, ran its photography department, and stayed with the company for six years...

Tim and Michelle from Patch Ops join Kaylee and John on State of the Second to tell the story of how a single patch grew into a business. It started in 2018, when the couple wanted to send their kids to private school and Tim calculated they needed to make $50 more a day to afford it. Tim, a Marine, had been introduced to patches by an Army friend, and there was nothing on the market for Marines at the time. He made an 0331 MOS patch because he wanted one for himself, sent it to his fellow Marines, and the demand...

Tony Simon, founder of the 2A Diversity Shoot, joins John and Kaylee to trace how he went from a gun kid on a Virginia farm to one of the most active Second Amendment advocates in New Jersey. He grew up on a farm in Virginia, shot on his high school air rifle team, and joined the Marine Corps. After getting out he moved to New Jersey, where the state's firearms ID card requirements stalled his gun ownership. A 2012 class with an NRA certified instructor friend rekindled it. He became an NRA certified instructor in rifle, pistol, and shotgun, and...

John McClane of Rock Island Armory joins hosts Kaylee and John to talk about how a budget-friendly firearms company from the Philippines built a recoil system he believes other manufacturers will copy once the patent runs out. John shares his path into the industry, from a closet gun owner who hid his first rifle under the bed for a year and a half, to a C-class USPSA shooter, to multiple Grand Master cards on Team Armscore. A chance EMT call between Vegas and Pahrump introduced him to the owner's family at Armscore and Rock Island, which led to a...

Roy Harrell joins State of the Second to talk about taking over his late brother Paul Harrell's firearms YouTube channel and keeping its practical, no-hype approach alive. Roy has been a cop for 37 years, started his law enforcement career in 1988 carrying a revolver, and has done hunter safety and firearms instructing, the same work his and Paul's father did. When Paul got sick, the brothers talked about the future of the channel and Paul asked Roy to take it over. They spent the next nine months before Paul passed working on videos together, with Paul giving pointers along the...

Anna Taylor joins State of the Second to tell the story behind Dean Adams, the concealed carry company she built after a frustrating start with her own first gun. In 2013 she was a stay at home mom with four young kids in a shady part of Kansas City called Grandview, and her husband at the time traveled often. The conversations around Sandy Hook and the fear of losing rights pushed her to get her concealed carry permit. The gun store handed her the "shrink it and pink it" girl gun, she got home, and she could not find education...

Joe Farewell joins John and Kaylee for a conversation about what high-level firearms training actually delivers, and why the answer is rarely what new students expect. Joe is a former law enforcement officer and SWAT sniper team leader who spent seven years in policing in Florida before leaving toward the end of 2018 to teach full time. He's also a competitive shooter who represented Team USA at the IPSC Rifle World Shoot, taking silver in 2019 and gold in 2024. He walks through how competition shooting is structured, from local matches up to nationals and the World Shoot, which he calls the...

Dianna Muller joins State of the Second to explain the strategy behind the teal shirts and the slogan that defines her work: educate, not legislate. A retired Tulsa police officer turned professional competitive shooter, she walks host John through how she went from ignoring politics for most of her adult life to founding the DC Project and Women for Gun Rights. The turning point came when she stood in front of a congressman and asked whether professional shooters should be doing something to educate the people in that building. After Virginia fell in 2019, she realized the real fight was...

On this episode of State of the Second, host John sits down with Ryan from Atrius Development Group, the company behind the FRS (force reset selector). Ryan grew up around guns. His dad was ex-LAPD, he and his co-founder Malcolm served in the military, and he got into the industry around 19 or 20 at a startup near where he grew up, where he started by packing boxes and went on to help launch almost 700 accessories. He describes the accessory market as a place where you can be "an ally to everybody and enemy to nobody," and he frames Atrius as...

The Forge Relations team returns to State of the Second for a post-Gundies wrap-up, and this year's show was different in one major way: it went live. Ben and Will explain that Ben had pushed a live stream for years before they finally pulled it off, and the deciding factor was finding the right home for it. YouTube was a non-starter because the platform told them a stream would be cut if a guest said something against its guidelines, and with the level of investment involved, a mid-show cutoff was a risk they couldn't take. Rumble stepped in, set...

Professional competitive shooter Jalise Williams joins hosts Kaylee and John for a conversation about a career built on discipline, family, and a deep love of firearms history. A Team USA representative, Jalise is a 12-time world champion with 43 national titles and more than 200 major wins, and she became the first woman in the United States to qualify for the USA Overall Team (long called the Men's Team) at the Handgun World Shoot. She traces it all back to St. George, Utah, where she grew up hunting with her father from the time she was in diapers. After her mother...

State of the Second hosts Kaylee and John sit down with Colton, founder and CEO of Reap Weaponry, a central Minnesota company built around a bullpup conversion kit for the AR platform. The idea came out of coyote hunting in the Midwest, where Colton and his crew got tired of lugging around 18-inch guns and suppressors and wanted to shorten everything up. He didn't like the bullpup options on the market, found that nobody was making a conversion system, and went down the patent process to build one. Reap's kit is legally a grip that bolts onto a mil-spec...

In this episode of State of the Second, hosts Kaylee and John sit down with Jennifer, the director of sales and marketing at Urban Chic. The brand makes stylish everyday carry accessories with integrated Level 3A ballistic protection, built with DuPont Kevlar and patented technology. Founded in 2018, the company set out to bring personal protection into a genuine leather bag that looks like an everyday purse, rather than the tactical, pink-camo gear that dominated the market for women. Jennifer explains that the protective insert adds only 17 ounces to the bag, so it stays discreet instead of feeling like a...

Johnny Q built a large following before he ever touched a gun. On this episode of State of the Second, hosts Kaylee and John talk with the firearms content creator about a path that ran from wedding photography and marketing, to viral spin-art paintings on TikTok, to documenting his time as a police officer, and finally to full-time gun content. He hit a million YouTube subscribers in his first year, added another million the next, and brought that audience with him every time the content shifted. The throughline is approachability. His signature good question reply started on TikTok as...

Cakes Concealed Carry started as a personal problem, not a business plan. Its founder got her CCW license in California, where the instructors told her repeatedly that off-body carry was not acceptable. She bought the gear they recommended, spent hundreds of dollars on holsters and a stiff CCW belt, and found none of it fit her lifestyle or body type. She kept asking one question: what would make her actually choose to carry every single day? Off-body was the answer. She tried tactical bags that announced she had a gun, then tried rigging her own purses and realized how...

Clint Smith, the founder of Thunder Ranch and a U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran with two infantry tours in Vietnam and a long law enforcement career, joins State of the Second hosts John and Kaylee for an episode built around one blunt idea: a pistol is a tool of convenience, and a rifle is what ends a fight. Smith walks through how his thinking changed across more than 50 years, from the near-zero pistol instruction he got in the Marine Corps to his early run-ins with PPC, the Practical Pistol Course he says was anything but practical. He explains...

Stellar Arms co-owner Scott Melton joins Kaylee and John for the season three premiere of Gun Owners of America's State of the Second, recorded in the show's new studio. Stellar Arms is a smaller precision rifle manufacturer out of Lincoln, Nebraska, with roots in aerospace. Its founder, Ty, came from the aerospace world and started doing custom firearms work about 15 years ago, and the company's sister operation, originally called MASP Enterprises, still produces aerospace parts for companies like SpaceX and NASA. That aerospace background drives how Stellar builds firearms: tight tolerances, most parts made in-house, quality control on outsourced...

Ben Stacy of Forge Relations returns to State of the Second to talk about how firearms brands need to market as 2026 arrives. Hosts John Fahrner and Kaylee open with the core problem: the dedicated, everyday gun owners are already reached, so the real question is how to get the next group interested. Ben names them plainly, the young mother worried about her safety and the recent college grad into overlanding or sports, and argues the first move is going where the customer already is. That means TikTok and YouTube, the platforms new owners actually use, even when those platforms...

Adelina May joins State of the Second to talk about how women actually carry a firearm day to day, and why most of the conventional advice misses the people it claims to serve. She runs Girls Just Want to Have Guns, a company with women instructors and women attendees that teaches women across the country to go from anxious around a gun to confident enough to carry every day. Her path started young. She grew up with guns in the home, started training around age 12 when her dad pulled her into his church security team's range sessions, moved into...

State of the Second welcomes back Dan and Danielle Morton, the husband-and-wife owners of Ammo Squared, for a wide-ranging conversation about ammunition as a stored asset and what real preparedness looks like. The Mortons started Ammo Squared in 2015 out of their garage and describe the company as building an ammunition safety net for America. Their model flips the usual transaction: you buy a generic need, like 9 millimeter practice, store it with the company, and have it shipped whenever you want. Since their last appearance the business has grown fast, from about 40,000 members to 147,000, and they just opened a second...