198 - Isaac Botkin on Guns, Protestant Resistance, and Decentralizing Tech

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Summary

Has the American church kept gun ownership as a cultural inheritance while losing the doctrine that justifies it? Chase sits down with Isaac Botkin of T.REX ARMS and author of Path of Liberty for a wide-ranging conversation on the biblical foundations of self-defense, the strange world of GunTube, why John Piper is wrong about home defense, what red flag laws actually do to common law, Protestant resistance theory and the 250th anniversary of America, and why AI is the new gunpowder. They get into Palantir, decentralization, the future of corporate America, and whether the citizenry is virtuous enough to handle the tools coming our way. Whether you're a Second Amendment absolutist, a curious pastor, or just trying to think Christianly about technology and power, this one will give you a lot to chew on

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome back to another episode of Foolproof Theology. My name is Chase Davis, and I am your host. It's good to be with you here today. We're gonna have a great conversation with Isaac Botkin over from T-Rex Arms. We're gonna talk about self-defense, AI, Palantir, and the biblical rite of self-defense. We get into theology and some of the work he's done over at T-Rex Arms. Before we get into that, I wanted to remind you of a couple of things. One, Offensive Christianity is out. If you have not picked up the book and you are a listener to the program, shame on you. Go pick it up. Offensive Christianitybook.com is the best place to pick it up. It's selling really well. Uh, I just saw as I'm recording this this morning, it's a number one bestseller on Amazon. And so that's really exciting. Thank you all for the support for those who have bought it. I really appreciate that. Uh, leave a great review of the book on Amazon, Goodreads, wherever you have read it, and would love to hear from you any thoughts you have on the book as well. Uh, you can do that if you want to sign up on the Patreon. You can have direct access over there to interact, to provide uh prompts or questions about episodes, but also uh feedback on the book or insights from the book. Uh, share a copy of the book with a friend. That's a great way to get the word out so that more people can read offensive Christianity. Also, I wanted to remind you about a great way to get reconnected to our Protestant tradition, commonplace.study. One of the main points I make in the book is that we've really forgotten our heritage. We've forgotten the theological sources of the men, the great men who have come before before us and shaped our civilization. And so I provided a tool. Commonplace.study is a tool where you can go do theological retrieval on your own from actual sources, no made-up chat be chat GPT quotes if you're looking for theological resourcement. You're going to want to go to commonplace.study, sign up for a 14-day free trial. Uh, it's you can tinker with it. It's also got second brain features and functionality where you can upload your own books, resources, documents, all that kind of stuff. And you can do scripture studies and Bible study and theological studies over at commonplace.study. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And with those two things out of the way, let's get into our conversation with Isaac Botkin. Welcome back to another episode of Foolproof Theology. My name is Chase Davis, and I'm your host. It's good to be with you here today. We're going to be talking with Isaac Botkin from T-Rex Arms. Isaac, thank you so much for coming on the program today.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Oh, it's a it's a pleasure to be here. Uh I I we have a lot of mutual friends, so uh it's great to finally meet uh and have a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Absolutely. We're gonna have a great conversation covering a wide variety of topics. Uh before we do that, for those who aren't familiar with either yourself or T-Rex Arms, can you give the audience a bit of an intro to who is Isaac Botkin?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

So I'm one of the uh co-owners of T-Rex Arms. It's a family-owned business in Centerville, Tennessee, so middle Tennessee outside of Nashville. And we make, uh, we design, we manufacture uh and we resell a bunch of tactical equipment. So we design and manufacture holsters uh and some nylon goods, load-bearing equipment, stuff like that. But then we also carry, we're an outfitter for all kinds of stuff for medical body armor, night vision, thermal, um, all kinds of weapon upgrades. So the goal is uh kind of to be the one-stop shop for the modern Minuteman. Um, and uh we're we're kind of scratching the surface of that, just the tip of the iceberg of what all a modern Minuteman might need. But we do have a lot of stuff. We're a pretty, pretty full featured outfitter for a bunch of different areas from EDC uh up to some of that more advanced stuff, helmets and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

That's excellent. Uh speaking of the Minuteman, the other day I discovered through Ancestry.com, you know the picture of the Minuteman, the statue of the Minuteman.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

The statue at Concord Bridge.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yes. That is an ancestor of mine. Apparently, according to uh, you know, I was stupid enough to give my DNA to one of these companies that can like trace you. This was before I realized how bad it is.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

You they will they will clone you later, but for now, you know, you know your ancestors.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

That's right. That's right. So with T Rex Arms, was this something that just as a young child you just always wanted to start a gun manufacturing company? How did you kind of get into this industry?

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So this is this is an interesting one. On the one hand, um there there is an element of which T-Rex Arms is a little bit of an accident. Uh it's it sort of began when uh the four original owners of T-Rex um were all on the Centerville or rather the Hickman County Rescue Squad, which is our volunteer fire department together, and just doing a bunch of different things together on that side, the training, and then building random bits of equipment, uh, volunteer fire departments in tiny, tiny towns or or giant uh huge run areas with almost no people in them, make a lot of their own gear, fix and repair a lot of their stuff. Uh and my brother Lucas started making magazine carriers, and some of the guys on the squad asked for holsters. And then everybody wanted one, and that was kind of how T-Rex Arm started. So, in a way, a little bit accidental. However, um, our family has always been involved in political media and education and a lot of stuff in uh homeschooling curriculum. And uh, my dad, actually, one of the very first video projects I worked on with my dad was a documentary for gun owners of America. So, one aspect of what we're doing, uh we sort of stumbled into. Another aspect of what we're doing has been part of the family mission for decades. So they all they all kind of come together. Providentially, a huge number of skills that we uh kids acquired along the way turned out to just be really perfect for the place that um that God put us.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

That's awesome, man. That's awesome. And with I think I might have misspoke in terms of what T-Rex Arm Pro arms produces, y'all don't produce firearms, y'all produce all the accessories that go along with it, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Correct. We don't produce firearms uh yet it's always something that's on the table. Technically, we're an FFL and we're registers of manufacturer and have an SOT. So we have, according to the ATF definition, manufactured firearms. But though those have all been, by my definition, minor modifications. So uh we we we make a lot of the the other stuff, uh, but we're adding we're adding stuff to our to-do list all the time. We're adding stuff to uh the store, the e-commerce store all the time. So uh I guess keep watching.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, we'll we'll keep watching for that, waiting for that. Yeah, the ATF is is a disaster. Uh, we could probably do a whole episode on why that's nonsense. And if you're a listener, you know, you can find all sorts of videos covering how uh not just cumbersome, uh unconstitutional, and confusing. I mean, my own home state, Colorado, has a whole list right now of firearms they plan to ban in August. And there's no rhyme or reason. It's literally if a liberal finds it scary, uh, that's what they're trying to ban. Um, but I appreciate the work you guys do at T-Rex Arms and how you're outspoken about your faith. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is I've followed gun tuber accounts on YouTube. I enjoy a lot of their content. Uh, some of them are funnier than than others, some of them are just educational, but there's a lot out there uh and a lot of like uh overlap and a lot of people networking. It feels like it's maybe niche to some people, but it's very large on YouTube. I wanted to get your perspective as a Christian in that kind of space. What's it been like to operate there? Are there gospel opportunities there? Do you see a natural kind of bridge to talk about Christ? Are people open to Christ? What's it like in that space?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

So it's it's a fascinating place. Um what you've described is really kind of two things. There is the the gun industry, and uh that would that would be everything from the the big gun manufacturers. Uh, I was just giving a tour to a pretty large um the the some of the staff have a pretty large firearm company here in uh in Tennessee um just this afternoon, uh, all the way down to people who are just a one-man shop sewing in their garage and making cool stuff and everything in between. And you will see most of that industry at uh shot show. And if you want to, if you want to even expand that a little bit, there are defense contractors making stuff for militaries, there are um camouflage companies that sell a billion dollars worth of licensed rubber boots to duck hunters in Walmart. Like if the the SHOT show experience is the shooting, hunting, outdoor trade show, and there's military and law enforcement guys um kind of off in the wing. So the industry is quite a large uh industry in terms of um money, but also just a very broad industry in terms of what all is there. Then there's kind of the firearm community or the Second Amendment space or sort of the gun tube space, which is uh simultaneously the watchers and viewers and listeners of all the different media, and then sort of those those social media guys um like the gun tubers. And what's weird about the firearm industry is other industries will have those guys, like the car world has uh has car aficionados on YouTube, but the car world is also allowed to advertise on television and buy billboards and stuff like that. The firearm industry is uh prohibited from participating in all kinds of regular advertising on television and on the internet, and uh most of us small firearm companies are banned from all sorts of different um financial institutions or advertising agencies or sometimes entire social media platforms. And so, as a result of that, the fringe gun tubers are not just a kind of an offshoot of the industry the way that uh car YouTube is. They are a very, very big, very, very important part. Uh they're they're a massive percentage of the advertising and the cultural social outreach that this industry has, because everything that's done in on the military side is basically invisible to the public, and then everything that's available to the public kind of banned from most of the public forums. So that's interesting, that's odd uh in a lot of different ways. And I would say that GunTubers, um, it's fascinating to me how big GunTube is, because as a as a section of YouTube, it is the most heavily uh suppressed and kind of squashed and usually demonetized and often shadow banned and have videos removed more than any other uh corner of YouTube that I can think of. And yet um it's a hugely it's a hugely saturated space. I'm in this industry, and I probably find a new gun tuber uh every week or two that I've never heard of before, and he's doing amazing content and he has a million subscribers. Um, so the interest in this space is way bigger than you would expect from mainstream media. And uh the position of the average gun tuber uh is probably way bigger in that particular industry than a similar online influencer in in some other industry would be with like the same leech. So it's odd, it's weird. Um I have I've tried to figure it out and understand it, but it's not really studied or discussed very much. All of this you kind of figure out by just talking to people in the industry and talking to people in the online community and realizing oh, there is no other marketing strategy for X company that's doing uh a massive amount of revenue and nobody understands where their customers are coming from. Uh, it is a little bit like the old days before online marketing tracking was possible, and you would just spend money on billboards and hope that your sales went up and hope that they were attached to each other. Uh, every other industry uh can track people down to the minute and they can track their spending and their eyeball time down to the second and the dollar. Uh and the gun industry is really excluded from a bunch of that stuff. So we're still operating in like a, I don't know, pre-internet age in a in in a few different areas.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, one of the things that interests me about that industry and just I mean, the whole our whole history and heritage as Americans with the Second Amendment. Um, and it's something that's that I've reflected upon. I discuss a little in my book, the importance of self-defense. But uh Christian pastors and theologians, academics, whoever, um, are very quick many times, sometimes, uh, to defend uh very uh like consistent Christian doctrine on matters like abortion, on matters uh uh about uh sex and sexuality. Um so they're not afraid to either teach from the pulpit or write books on this topic, but there's very little, um, very little written on the Second Amendment, on our history, and that that's frustrating to me because I know if I if I speak online or speak from the pulpit, if it comes up in a text that I'm preaching about plain matters that are kind of in evangelicalism culturally acceptable, we agree on rah-rah, yes, this is bad, this is a bad law, and it has to do with sexuality, abortion, parental rights, all these kind of things. Um, that's gonna be fine. As soon as I get into Second Amendment issues and why it's important that we defend the Second Amendment as evangelical Christians, there it's not that, especially at my congregation, they wouldn't they wouldn't be dismissive of that, but it would be very rare for that to be addressed. I think you've written on this in a book, but I think it's something you've also kind of made a mission statement at T-Rex Arms that it's not opposed to Christianity. In fact, it's right in line with our Christian heritage. Can you kind of speak to that a little bit, provide some education on this?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yes. Um it's and it's also, I believe, very much a cultural thing. The church in general, uh, and not just in the United States, but around the world, the Western church in general, um, has, I think we've lost a lot of traction on this issue, and we've lost a lot of work and we've we've lost a lot of study on this issue. So in the United States, uh Americans, conservative Americans particularly, tend to be pretty pro-gun, but in a generic cultural way. And then you go to other countries. I I lived in New Zealand for a while, and uh uh for a while I attended a Presbyterian church with a fantastic uh pastor that had come from Scotland and a great, really solid uh seminary in Scotland, hardcore dude on so many areas of doctrine, did not believe that private citizens should have weaponry. So that's a massive disconnect from a huge chunk of Scottish Presbyterianism and some of the best Scottish Presbyterians in history, uh, many of whom came to America with guns and fought for the right to keep their guns uh in the war for American independence, and so on. So in America, we've kept that culturally, not doctrinally. And then in other places, like in Scotland, they've lost that doctrinally, and then they've also lost that culturally. So um it is a blessing that we've kept this culturally in America as a as a kind of a, I don't know what it is exactly, as a flavor, as a as a tertiary issue, as just a kind of a symptom of some patriotism. So it's it's a blessing that we still have that, but we do need to get back to that doctrinality. We cannot just have cultural pillars that are not standing on a foundation that we they're they're just kind of nostalgia. We really need to anchor that back to the principles that they came from, and they have to be, they have to be scriptural principles for them to have any serious foundation.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, and I found, you know, if if a church were to put in their statement of faith, you know, if you were this is a church where we stand for the sanctity of life, Christians back, good, good, yes, amen. But if I were to put in our statement of faith, this is a church that stands for our Second Amendment rights, and we believe it's our God-given right to defend ourselves and own firearms. I think a lot of Christians would be like, kind of give that a side glance and be like, what's going on at this church? You know, are you one of those crazy churches that's giving out ARs? What is happening here? Uh, can you can you provide? I mean, in your book, I think you've written on this kind of the history of it. Can you provide some kind of maybe theological or biblical examples you might go to uh to say why this is maybe not put in the statement of faith, but why is it more than just a cultural thing that we have in America and in Western civilization?

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Yes. So I would say that um the Second Amendment is a great place to start. But the Second Amendment is um the Second Amendment has a very specific job, which is to restrain the federal government if it ever wanted to disarm its people. So, in and of itself, it's not the be-all end-all ultimate statement defending the responsibilities of people made in the image of God. Super important for restraining the federal government, and it implies a bunch of things, it assumes a bunch of things that are really good. It assumes that a state should be secure, it assumes that the security of a state comes from militia, it assumes a lot of fantastic stuff. Uh, it is a nice, it is a nice package of a bunch of stuff. But um I do think that it's really important, even though the Second Amendment is not fully about self-defense, it is about national defense, um, and it is about a defense of the people in a nation. And I think it is really important to use scripture to go back to self-defense and look at the sixth commandment, look at the responsibilities that people have to preserve life, the punishments for murder. And uh, even some of the case law in Deuteronomy that talks about when lethal force is appropriate to use, that helps uh explain a lot and set a good groundwork for things. But then later on, when scripture talks about the responsibilities that men have, like in the New Testament, for providing for your family, we all agree that that means not letting them starve. But what other ways are we responsible to our families? To to uh to what degree are we responsible to physical protection as well as spiritual protection, as well as other kinds of protection? What are those actual responsibilities? And so many things in scripture um are they're they're as you know, they're they're full uh when you have a systematic theology, and then they they appear to not be in scripture if you only cherry pick from a few different places. So that passage um where Paul is talking to Timothy about um people being responsible for their families doesn't exist in a vacuum. Um, it exists within all of the teachings um in Scripture. Uh, these are all of the teachings that we're required to teach in the Great Commission. So I think it is really important. I'm not trying to make it more complicated than it is, but um, the Bible provides a faith for all of life, which means there's passages in Deuteronomy that are how you defend your home against an invader uh when it is lawful for you to kill somebody in the dark because you don't know their intentions, and it's not lawful to kill them in the daylight if their intention is not murder. That's in Deuteronomy. There's also uh in Deuteronomy laws for how countries go to war with each other, and there's laws that say kings cannot multiply chariots and horses for themselves. So in in one book of the Bible, we have multiple applications that should apply directly to personal ownership of lethal weapons. And for the last 400 years, that's firearms. We're talking about firearms. When we when we talk about tools for defending life against lethal threats uh at the home level, at the community level, uh, and at the nation level. That's really what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Yeah, and I think it's really important to educate Christian men, particularly, on how they need to be capable and familiar enough with protective instincts. Unfortunately, what's happened in the seminaries and pulpits is a lot of pastors are very soft on these issues uh for lots of different reasons. Maybe they're not educated, maybe they're just going along with kind of a liberal mindset, maybe they're scared to upset people when they talk about it. But men should be capable of dispensing violence when necessary to defend their way of life. And if Christians aren't being educated from the Bible on these matters, then that's gonna play out when Christians vote, when Christians uh either choose to defend or not defend our Second Amendment rights, they're gonna be less positive or less confident because pastors themselves, I mean, I I critique this in my book, John Piper, who's a pastor I I respect, I've learned from, I have many of his books, but he's written articles saying how he wouldn't defend his home if an intruder came in and he tries to use the Bible to justify this kind of behavior. Of course, I I believe this is very inconsistent with his duties as a husband and a father. And so I want more Christian men not just to go buy a bunch of guns, but actually be proficient. You can have a gun and you could not know how to use it. I've encountered many of these from from states like California, poor, these poor American citizens that have never shot a firearm uh in very restrictive places, and uh, and they just need to be able to be proficient. If it's not a firearm, uh, you know, get into jujitsu or some kind of martial arts. Um, and and this gets back to a key principle. Uh Jordan Peterson hints at it in his work that you know, men should be learn that they're violent, men should learn that they're aggressive. And then uh, you know, I would add on to that and learn to submit it to the lordship of Christ and apply it faithfully with wisdom according to his law and all that the scriptures command. And I think that's that's just something we've fallen away from. And I I do desire for there to be more education on it. You with the education, what what is the name of the book you've written again?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

So the book is called Path of Liberty, and it's not ultimately, or rather, it's not very specifically about firearms, uh, but it is the specifically the founding documents of. England, and then the American colonies, uh, the colonists coming over from England, and then the founding documents of America. And there's there's a huge amount of consistency through those. Um, I I'm annoyed by this idea. We we talk about it all the time. I guarantee you're gonna hear people talking about it this Fourth of July, but like, ah, yes, those those rebellious farmers who split away from England to try something new and a brand new wild experiment never done before. It's like, man, so much of our Bill of Rights comes from the English Bill of Rights. They kept the common law, they kept ideas going all the way back to King Arthur and before. Those are ideas that they're building on. They're building on. What they're trying to do in in 1776, if you read some of these documents, um, is not try something new, but try to figure out what extra protections do we need to put in place on top of what we had before? So um when the colonists decided they were going to resist George III, they they weren't doing a thing that had never been done before. They were saying, okay, how did our ancestors resist James II and kick him out of England? How did our ancestors resist Charles I and put him on trial for treason? How did our ancestors resist King John and ally with the barons to actually uh fight against him and bring him to heel and really um honor his commitment to the Magna Carta? Getting rid of a tyrant king is one of the most English things that you could do looking at their history. So our our founders saw themselves as freeborn Englishmen with rights, and they were like, what's the most English thing we could do right now? Ah, remind the king that he's under the law and uh use force of arms to do just that. And so looking at these documents, I think, is a really helpful way to see how we got where where we are. But it talks a lot about private ownership of arms, because that ends up being, uh, for lack of a better word, the trigger for a whole bunch of different things. That is really a key foundational point that people are relying on when they make some of these arguments about what greater and lesser magistrates have as a responsibility, what checks and balances there should be, why jurisdictions need to be limited. So many of these arguments um throughout the last uh over a thousand years of English speaking history are really tied to weapons because that is where the rubber meets the road. Whether it's firearms or or gunpowder hasn't been uh really implemented yet. This is the question. The question can be um theologically, is uh the king, does he have the divine right to do whatever he wants, or is the king under the law? Well, that's a great philosophical theological conversation to have, but ultimately um you're gonna apply the answer to that question with force. And if you have the ability to oppose the king, then the conversation can be more than philosophical. And if you don't, then it doesn't really matter. Um, if the king is the only one that has the monopoly of violence, then doesn't really matter what your theological position is gonna be because he is not gonna listen to your theological argument. That's right. Um, so so many of these conversations, um, and our founders and um the the Puritans who were involved in the English Civil War, uh, so many of these different people that were involved in these theological conversations had intense, careful, rigorous theological definitions for what they were doing. But ultimately, of course, they realized that there had to be, um, there had to be more than just the theological argument. There had to be more than that. So, so much of these conversations do revolve around where power lives in the different jurisdictions. And then so many of the actual actions are the result of disarmament uh attempts. So obviously, Lexington and Conquer, great example. We were still remonstrating with the king until the British regulars came to disarm the militias. And that was when they started shooting. And and the other thing I think is helpful to remember this is the 250th anniversary of America. Uh, the Declaration of Independence gets signed in July of 1776. But remember, the shooting war started uh in April of 1775. So we fought a war against the British for over a year before we got to the declaring the independence part. We still thought that there was a way that the lesser magistrates could oppose the greater magistrate. There could be reconciliation, there could be a way for stuff to get solved. Um, and the people were were believed that they were morally correct in resisting these unlawful orders and this illegal force before the Declaration of Independence was signed. So many of these conversations uh either they start with self-defense and work out. If you read uh Blackstone and some of the other uh legal minds, they build out community and national defense from the responsibilities of self-defense, which I think is is is great. That is a good um expository principle or a good hermeneutic in scripture and a good way to develop legal theory. Um, but also it also finds its way back down there. Uh, as you debate some of these bigger issues of jurisdictional limits, ultimately it comes down to minutemen who are willing to fight back in the woods of New England. So um, yeah, it's it's a I think it's a fun, a fun book. It's about half the original document, so you can read exactly what they said, and it's about half commentary explaining what happened in between each document and why they thought, you know what, next time we do this, let's make sure we specifically mention this. Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

That's excellent. I think that would be really helpful. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I wanted to talk about the Second Amendment real quick. I know you're not a lawyer or anything, but I just wanted to get your perspective because it's an interesting thread to pull given this kind of state of um our government and the citizenry today. And for and I'll just use an example in Colorado, they've introduced red flag laws, meaning that your Second Amendment rights can be taken away. My first instinct is a patriotic American, is this is bad, and this will probably be used against me. You know, like I don't like that. Um, the other thing would be we do have uh citizens in America, felons, who aren't able to own firearms. So I'm just wondering, you know, there's a lot of uh red-blooded Americans who who are kind of like uh Second Amendment absolutists in the sense that it almost gets into libertarianism, right? Um should there be any kind of uh is there any permissibility in your mind for the restriction of who ha who uh has access to their rights, their Second Amendment rights, and who doesn't? How are we to parse that out?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

So that is a tricky one. So I am I am uh very much opposed to red flag laws, uh the way that they are generally um, the way that they've generally been discussed and and executed and um uh emergency uh they're called ERPOs, but I always forget what that stands for. Emergency protective something. So yeah. Um but the they're they're called red flag laws by everybody because it's it's a better uh it sounds better, it doesn't sound as dumb as ERPO. No one wants to be pro-RPO, um, but also because red flags are always a warning. So it sounds like you're always acting on a legitimate warning when you're talking about red flags. It just kind of assumes that there's legitimacy to it. So I would say I'm opposed to red flag law, the way that they have been written and the way that they have been implemented uh in in every state in the United States that has implemented them. However, that doesn't mean that I'm okay with when cops arrest a guy, they have to leave his gun in his holster when they put him in the back of the squad car. There's definitely a time in which there is a high enough level of evidence that action can be taken. And the way we've done this in the past is um it happens at the time of arrest. The arrest requires a certain burden of proof, uh, a certain level where you've escalated to this point, and that's the point where now we've entered into a, you know, you have a pre-arrest time, and then you have your post-arrest time, and certain rights are denied to you at when you are arrested. You are you are no longer uh free to move about, and you're not allowed to take your weapons with you into the cell block, these kind of things. Um, but what red flag laws do currently is they create this fuzzy middle area where it's like, well, we don't have enough evidence to arrest you, um, but we do have enough evidence to disarm you, and now the burden of proof is on you. Now we've swapped the entire foundation of this legal system to where now you're guilty until proven innocent. Um, and you have to try to convince us that it's okay to get your guns back, but we haven't started any of the actual procedural stuff that begins at arrest. So, generally speaking, I think that there could be an argument. Somebody could make the argument that because uh of modern technology and modern weapons, there does need to be a way, uh, there does need to be a third step in between you are in prison and you have all of your guns on your person. But the problem is we're instituting that third step of you're not allowed to have guns in this very binary, um, free or incarcerated system that we've built over the years. So what happens is we're not creating a third step. We're just creating an opportunity for everybody to be disarmed before they get arrested, period. It's just a question of how much paperwork does it take and who gets to sign it. And is there one witness or three, or can we how much of due process can we skip? So that is the fundamental problem with every red flag law that we have in the United States that has been proposed. Um it is really breaking a really key core component of that common law that we've had for a long time and is based on scriptural principles.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah. And then with the Second Amendment, and I just want to see how how how much we can imagine here. If you had your way with the kind of ATF, you know, Trump gives you a call and he's like, all right, what are we doing, Isaac? Uh, you know, how are we running this thing? Are we just abolishing it? Uh, should should every American citizen be able to own a minigun? I would like you to say yes because that would be very fun. I would love to put it on the back of my truck. Uh what does it look like in in modern uh kind of armament uh for for the average American citizen to be able to arm themselves? Because the typical trope, which isn't actually true, going back to our forefathers, is like backpack nukes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Backpack nukes for everybody. It's like that's the same Twitter libertarian argument. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

So like what would you what what kind of laws would you say are permissible uh either to I some would say restrict or what are appropriate for people today?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Mm-hmm. Well, there are um there are historic laws that we can look back to. And then I think we should also always remember that our our our forefathers were wise but not infallible, so we check against scripture. But there were things um that that get quoted as if they are firearm laws from the colonial times, but they're not really firearm laws, they're safety laws. So there are small towns that have large magazines, and um there are restrictions on how much gunpowder you can store in your own house. You're only supposed to have so much in your own house, and then this magazine has been created for you to safely store the rest of your powder. And people have looked at that and said, like, ah, well, this is, you know, it's it's a it's the town magazine. So obviously, people shouldn't be allowed to have their own personal collections of stuff or whatever. It's they're interpreted in different ways by people that have an agenda. But um, the reality was that was a town resource for privately owned gunpowder to be in. There were no restrictions on how much gunpowder you could own, but for fire safety, the town thought it was so important for you to own more gunpowder than was safe for you to keep in your house. The town made this place for you so that you could safely own way more gunpowder than you should ever have in one place at one time. Like that, I think, is the better way to look to look at it. The community wanted to make sure, hey, George has a tiny, extremely flammable house that's very close to mine, but I really want him to have a safe way to store 10 barrels of gunpowder. Uh, so he has that access to that in the future. That's why these magazines existed. So I do think that there needs to be a way um for safety uh to be considered. One of the ways that I think that this does or should play out in a free market system are people that have demonstrated they're responsible uh in being uh just responsible adults and making money, is they will, those are the people that will be able to afford the really dangerous stuff like the miniguns. And people that are too irresponsible to have a minigun uh would probably not actually be able to buy a minigun or keep a minigun fed because they're remarkably uh expensive to fire. Um and the the mechanical discipline to maintain these kind of weapon systems. The the problem is once you once you get away from a purely free market system, you have a bunch of folks who are wily irresponsible, but they have access to enough funds that it's it's a bad idea to let them do whatever they want. So we're we're seeing a culmination of a bunch of different broken systems when you think about just downtown Chicago, but everybody has a minigun. Like that is the problem with that scenario is not a failure of the Second Amendment, it's uh it's other stuff. Um so I would really like to see um, I would really like to see a system where we think a little more broadly than just uh everybody's allowed backpack nukes. Well, in America, there's a few billionaires that could afford their own nuclear programs. And honestly, I kind of trust those guys with nuclear weapons more than a lot of folks that do have them. So I'm not terrified by unregulated nuclear programs as much as some people are. Uh, but we're also a very, very long way away from those guys wanting to prioritize their own private nuclear weapons. Uh so it's sometimes it's a very silly thing that that Reddit or or Twitter libertarians want to immediately jump to. Yeah. Miniguns is a great one because uh they're expensive, they're complicated, they're they're hard to maintain, they're very powerful, but they're extremely doable. Um I and the thing is, miniguns are actually very attainable. I know private individuals that own miniguns, and these are the firearms that are the least likely to actually hurt anybody of lots of firearms that I can think of. Um I know several people that own their own personal private miniguns and take such good care of them and have modified them to such an extent that now the military comes to them for upgrades to the Dillon minigun system. So what you're describing as a crazy eventuality is already the reality that we have if you are careful and you're disciplined and and uh you you have the right paperwork. Yeah. Um and and ironically, the paperwork for the minigun is is less than the paperwork for some other stuff that's technically less dangerous. That's insane. A lot of this stuff kind of self-regulates perfectly.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Especially and you brought it back to free market principles. That's a that's a helpful way to kind of conceive it. And maybe offer you can introduce me to these people who would let me come uh have some fun on a minigun sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

If you've if you've never shot a minigun off the back of a Taurus, I will tell you you're most people, but uh there's a lot of people that have.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

It looks very fun, very fun. I wanted to get back to a bit of the Bible because you know, this is my podcast, and we're we're gonna talk about scripture and this kind of stuff, but so a couple of examples biblically that are just kind of throw out verses for people to, you know, say, Well, gotcha, you know, what about this? The classic one is Jesus teaches us to turn the other cheek. How how do you reconcile with that verse with this ethic of self-defense that we see in the Bible?

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Uh, first of all, I think that the the there's a lot of cultural aspect to turn the other cheek, what that meant as an insult. Um, and and I and it would be easy to go down the rabbit hole of what what the culture would have been at the time. But um, regardless of what the culture is, a slap on the cheek is not a threat. It is an insult. Um you it it's very you have to stretch the the you have to stretch that pretty far to make the slap on the cheek be a legitimate threat against your person and not some kind of insult. And then what level of insult depends on what the the culture, the culture of Jerusalem was at the time, the culture of Judea at the time. Um, but it's definitely not a physical threat that you need to defend yourself against. It is a kind of insult. It is some salt of insult, some sort of insult. And so accepting insults as a Christian is different than accepting physical harm or um physical harm up to the level of murder, which is what the self-defense conversation is is really about. That is about the sixth commandment. It is not about accepting insults.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Okay, along that line, I'll hear people mention well, Christ himself was beaten, Christ himself was bloodied. He said we should take up our cross, he said we should have live a cruciform life. How do we reconcile that with this ethic of self-defense? And the to, you know, I'm I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit here because I obviously don't agree with this interpretation, uh, but this is something that that's confusing to a lot of Christians, I think. So how would you help Christians kind of unpack that?

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Yeah. Well, there's a couple things. Um, the the first is that there are things that Jesus took upon himself that we're we're not supposed to take on ourselves. Uh when when he condemns Peter for using a sword to defend him in the garden, um, I don't think that he's condemning Peter for um necessarily the wrong application of force for a generic uh being mugged in the dark situation. I believe that he's condemning Peter for not understanding, as he's condemned Peter for in the past. This is the moment of the Messiah's crucifixion, this is the moment of the sacrifice, this is this is what we've been talking about for three years, Peter. I think that is what he's mostly condemning Peter for. The other thing, though, is um magistrates have a legitimate office. Now, I don't think that really comes into play in the Garden of Gethsemane because it is a mob and they're doing it at night so they don't get seen. So the legitimacy of the magistrates that may or may not have been involved is a little bit fuzzier. I think a better example for defining that is when you see the disciples or the apostles later getting accosted and getting arrested and beaten for proclaiming the gospel. And you can see Paul do this. You can see Paul uh deliver a rebuke to someone, and then later saying, Oh, I didn't realize that you had an office worthy of respect. I apologize for uh uh insulting the office, um, but then refusing to obey the commands not to preach the gospel. So it is complicated to try to determine what are the legitimate offices of the magistrate, what are legitimate magistrates, and how can you uh how can you resist them? What is appropriate and what is uh what is really the right outcome. Obviously, you can always tell the magistrate that you're not going to obey their illegal commands, but at what point do you physically resist them? And we see in scripture the magistrate has a job that is from the Lord. When the magistrate is doing what he is supposed to be doing, he is fulfilling an office in an institution that God has created. Um, Romans 13 is very clear about this, and he bears the sword. He bears a lethal weapon for a purpose, not for nothing. So I think that resisting legitimate civil magistrates when they're doing illegitimate things is really hard. That's part of the reason that the Path of Liberty book is so long. This is a very complicated issue, and it it you see it happen throughout English history, you see it happen throughout European history, you see it happen in the Protestant Reformation in every country at once at different levels. Um so that's really a tricky one. But when it comes to, when it comes to self-defense from a totally illegitimate actor whose motivation is murder, it's a lot cleaner, it's a lot more cut and dried. Um, I think that we should definitely see, um, we should definitely see some complexity when it is a civil magistrate and when um you you have the apostles pursuing a very specific thing that they've been called to. Like Paul refuses to appeal his legal case because the Holy Spirit has told him to go to Caesar. I don't think we should apply that position to every legal case that a Christian finds themselves in and they just refuse appeal regardless across the board because of Paul's example. But there are certainly times when Christians should um hold firm on an issue. Um so I think that that's that's probably where I would that's where I've had the most arguments with people about this. It's helpful to get into some stuff. Specifics as opposed to just sometimes it's slapping, sometimes it's Peter, sometimes it's Paul, sometimes try to figure out what the actual principle is and really boil down to what it is. And and um scripture interprets scripture. So go back and see what Deuteronomy says, uh, which is often quoted in the New Testament. What is actually the principle that's being pulled out here?

SPEAKER_01 44:23

Yeah, I think that's really helpful. And I'm really passionate about helping Christians understand Protestant resistance theory because it's um it's not thought about a lot, it's not taught. And I think a lot of, I mean, uh sympathetically, a lot of evangelicals have a good patriotic instinct, but it's it's kind of unformed. There, it's immature in some ways to where, you know, they're they're going like 17 it's 1776 again, you know, or they'll post a you know meme or something about it, and it's like they really haven't thought through like permissibility, power, uh dynamics, uh, when to act, when to not act. And sometimes the Lord does appoint for us persecution and harm, um, and we have to endure that, but that doesn't mean there's not recourse and we can't resist. So it it's it's like you said, it's a complex topic. But if we'll go back to the sources, if we'll go back and do do the reading and learn, uh, there's plenty that we can pull from to grow into mature, wise Christians to operate shrewdly in the world. And we can depend on hopefully uh older men, wiser men than us who have thought about this, uh, and kind of the spirit of honoring our forefathers. I wanted to shift gears a little bit um and talk a little bit about technology, AI, and and defense, military, all this kind of stuff. It's kind of a hot topic. I it came on my radar, particularly with uh Anthropic's uh contract with the Department of Defense getting canceled. I know that AI is getting deployed and is being utilized by not only our military, but other militaries. Um, one of the things that I think many Americans are surprised by is this company, Palantir. We actually had a robust discussion on this at our church last night with some guys at our church talking about pros and cons of Palantir. A lot of guys, you know, would like to highlight this is the bad orb in Lord of the Rings, and they named their company after the bad orb. How can we ever trust them? But I think you guys have spoken to this a little bit. Can you talk to me about what, if for the listener who doesn't know what Palantir is, doesn't know about all this stuff, maybe give a brief intro and kind of your perspective on these matters.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Yeah, so my theory, I'm not super dogmatic about this. Um there's some things that I'm very dogmatic about. There's some things that I'm pretty sure about, but I'm not demanding that other people come to my exact conclusion. Uh, and one of them is this. I believe, but I'm not, I'm I'm very want, uh not only willing, I'm very much wanting to have pushback and and some discussion about this. I believe that um there is no neutrality in the world when it comes to people and when it comes to culture. Uh, but I do believe that technology is neutral. Technology is neutral and can be used either way. So um, and I would argue that there's no technology that hasn't been used for good and for evil. So, you know, a friend of mine, uh uh Colonel Joe Ismo pointed out one time the safety stirrup, the safety stirrup has never been used for evil. And then we started talking about all the all the uh ways that cavalry officers did horrible things that were enabled by the safety stirrup. All right, you know, refrigeration has saved so many lives, but also think about how air conditioning has destroyed our communities because nobody sits outside on their porches and talks to their neighbors anymore. Like, all right, there's upside and downside to each. And I think that AI is one of those things. Gunpowder is one of those things. AI uh feels a little bit to me like gunpowder. AI is this incredibly powerful technology that is a force multiplier in a massive way, kind of in the same way that uh gunpowder was. Prior to gunpowder, warfare is such a time-intensive and physically difficult thing to do. Uh, when you have a non-standing army, the amount of time that your non-standing army has to dedicate to being trained in force of arms is crazy. Um, the longbowman of England had to train every single Sunday. It was actually legally required for them because being a longbowman is such an incredibly physically intensive, and also just the skill level that's involved in being a capable citizen soldier with that equipment is intense. And gunpowder changes all of that. Gunpowder lets you be an incredibly good infantry guy with a drastically smaller amount of training and physical conditioning. Um, but it also allows you, if you are a tyrannical state, to get way more bang for your buck from your standing army. So gunpowder is a great centralizing or decentralizing tool, depending on the people that apply it. If the if the people of a state really implement this technology well, it will be a great decentralizing and freedom-building tool. And if only the uh the civil magistrates or the civil state itself implements the tool, it will inevitably become a centralizing tool. I think AI is going to be the exact same way. Um and I think that Palantir is um not quite on the bleeding edge uh of technology. They're they're they're they're probably a few steps behind some of the other companies, but they're good implementers. They're fantastic implementers. But where they are right now is they have one foot in each camp. They're a private company, but their biggest customers are in the military. And the other thing is they may not be able to compete with all these other AI companies because it's just such a fast-moving game. Who knows if they have the best guys and they have the best algorithms, the best ideas, and the best training models? But what they can do is they can go after a specific set of customers better than Anthropic or better than uh Google or better than OpenAI. So the temptation, I think, for a lot of these companies is just kind of which customer base they're going to pick. And Palantir has more of a foot in the building centralizing tools than decentralizing tools. Um, but uh that being said, very few of these tech giants uh really have biblical foundations uh for liberty and freedom in mind, regardless of which camp their feet are in at the time. Um they're kind of North Star, their goals that they're trying to create. Um yeah, it's it's it's really interesting to see how stuff is developing. But the technology itself, I see AI as as being an incredibly powerful force multiplier. Uh, we've been experimenting with it here at T-Rex, and the the ability to use AI to write software tools is really fascinating. You can't trust them very far, but you can write small software tools that do big jobs fast and quickly, and um it it is it is game changing in a way that the internet's gonna be game changing and in in a way that gunpowder is gonna be game changing um for sure.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Yeah, I think my uh because I I'm with you in terms of decentralization and not wanting the government to necessarily have more power or centralization at the same time, you know, I think the um kind of foil, or if you're if you're kind of reading reading the the crystal ball of the Palantir, if you're if you're gonna look into the future, a lot of people are seeing like, for example, what's happened in South Africa, right? You're seeing kind of the erosion of civilization, the degradation of infrastructure, mass violence, riots, that kind of stuff. And it would seem to me that something like Palantir would almost become, if we're gonna preserve a high trust society, if we're gonna preserve what we've got, it would seem to me to be an inevitability, unless, of course, we come up with other solutions to either uh, you know, accomplish mass deportations or um, you know, make uh local law enforcement actually follow the law and enforce the law more rigorously and get the bad judges out and make them enforce the law. It would seem that Palantir is an inevitability. They do seem to be anti-communistic, which I like. Uh, I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah. I I saw some clips of the case.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

What I said to you earlier was uh the worst thing that I can imagine is Palantir taking over the entire government, except for leaving the government the way that it is. Exactly. So yeah, it's uh it's it feels very frying pan and very fire. Um the other thing though to remember though is things are happening very quickly right now. And so it's there are some things that it is impossible to imagine. Like it's impossible to imagine some of these tech giants not being around in a few years, but there's a lot of giant corporations that seemed invincible 30 years ago and they're completely gone now. Sears was going to take over the world. They had all the malls, they had the biggest internet company, they had the first credit card. The assumption was that they were going to just own all global commerce, period, and they're gone now. The only thing that's left is basically their name on a tower. They don't even have offices in the tower anymore. So things happened very quickly. I was explaining to one of my one of my kids, asked me if I uh I I forget what it was now, but it was something like, did you Google this when you were a kid? I was like, well, actually, there was no Google. They're like, What? But um I I can fully envision a world where um my children live in a world without Google not too far in the future. So many of these giant corporations um own very little. They own a huge market share in a piece of technology that may be totally transitory, or they own a huge amount of wealth in a currency that may not have value in the future. These things will disappear faster than a Sears mall will or a Sears Tower will. Um so I think that there's an opportunity for stuff to happen super quickly. And AI has the ability to solve a bunch of problems. Like one of the things that we've done over the last century is we have built a corporate structure in America that requires a huge percentage of the young women of our population to be kind of clerical and administrative and managerial roles that are kind of sort of busy work, but the company also doesn't work without them. And if we see a desire to return to a more home-based economy, uh, it will gut a bunch of companies to have all of those uh women go home. But AI could immediately take a lot of those jobs. So it's one of those questions where I feel like we're at a tipping point, we're at a crossroads where if America sees repentance, every tool that is is on the horizon will immediately apply to human flourishing and everything that we would want to accomplish in that reality. And if America stiffens its neck, every tool that's on the horizon is gonna be a boot stomping on us. Uh it's pretty incredible. Yep. Uh so yeah, I think that really is the ultimate decider. It isn't, are we gonna be smarter than this? Is are we are we really up to the whims of uh carp and some of the other Palantir guys as to what happens? I think it really is just it's it's totally in the Lord's hands as to what happens, and it's totally gonna be driven by whether there is um repentance or rejection of a lot of the things that are on everyone's minds being widely discussed right now. I I think we're at a crossroads moment.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

Yeah, I agree with you completely. And that's part of the reason I wrote my book. Uh, listeners, you can go pick it up, offensive Christianitybook.com. Uh, but we need a more virtuous citizenry. We need more virtuous men, and that's going to come through knowing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Um, so yeah. Well, Isaac, this was a great conversation. I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with me. I want to make sure people can keep up with your work. Uh, so maybe tell people where they can either find what you're thinking about or working on.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Absolutely. Well, uh, I'm actually doing way less um media production these days, and I'm doing way more uh basic company stuff. But if you go to T-Rex Arms, uh T-R-E-X-ARMS.com, you can see all of our products um that we currently have available more are coming all the time. Um, and you can you can see our our YouTube and get involved in our email mailing list. We we have a lot of irons in the fires. There's a lot of educational stuff that's on the YouTube channel. Um, some of it's ideological. Like if you were curious about the ATF, um, and that that's several episodes that turned into way more YouTube videos than I originally planned. So there's a whole little documentary series on the history of the ATF that's up there. So sometimes it's historical education, sometimes it's really practical, skill-based education. Um, and then the products, um, the products that you need for everyday carry, uh, for training on the range. Um, and then even beyond that, the body armor, the medical, um, we have that as well. So, regardless of where you are on your journey of more preparedness or being able to take on greater responsibilities, um, our our goal is to outfit people all along the different steps of that path with both the the hard assets that they would need and then also some of the hard skills, uh, but then also the the foundational stuff, the ideological stuff for for why they have those responsibilities and how those rights and responsibilities go together. So, yeah, T Rex Arms, just look us up and see if there's something we can do for you. Our our goal is equipping, uh inspiring, educating, and equipping people.

SPEAKER_01 58:08

That's excellent. Well, Isaac, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

Thank you for the conversation. It's been it's been great to just have a chat.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

Absolutely, man. Thanks for joining me for another episode of Foolproof Theology. I really enjoyed that episode with Isaac. I hope you did as well. I think it was really informative and rich. If you enjoyed the episode, smash that subscribe button, give it a like, leave a comment on YouTube. Also, subscribe wherever podcasts are found. Leave a rate rating on there. Five stars only are welcome on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you are listening, and share the episode with a friend. Maybe you want to start a conversation with a brother in Christ who needs to learn more about these issues and hasn't really thought about our Second Amendment rights or self-defense or is confused on these topics. It's a great way to get the word out about the program and also provide resources to other people. Again, speaking of resources, offensive Christianitybook.com. Go get it today. Leave a great review, Amazon, goodreads, wherever you're reading. Go purchase it if you haven't. I'm really excited about it. Really, uh really proud of uh all the Patriots who are supporting the book and promoting it on X and other places. So appreciate your support. As always, you can subscribe on Patreon. Link is in the show notes. Thank you all for the support. Until next time, I'll see you.