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May 27, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
51:19
JESUS. GUNS. AND BABIES. w/ Dr. Kandiss Taylor ft. PALMETTO STATE ARMORY!
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Hey everybody, welcome to Jesus Guns and Babies.
I am your host, Dr.
Candice Taylor, and I have a great show for you tonight.
We have two guests instead of one, so it's going to be really fun.
Y'all are in for a treat.
We're going to start with a very applicable verse.
This is one of my guests that says it's appropriate.
It's Luke 22, 36.
It says, find the right version, it moved on me.
Then he said to them, but now he who has a money bag, let him take it and likewise a knapsack.
And he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.
So we know a sword is like a gun.
So if you don't have one, you should sell your coat and you should buy one or your shoes or whatever garment you have.
So tonight we have a gun manufacturer or maybe they sell guns.
I don't know.
They'll tell you what they do.
But it's Palmetto State Armory and we have two of the owners, Josiah McCallum and Cameron Tackler.
Welcome to Jesus Guns and Babies.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I hope I didn't butcher your names.
I tried really hard.
So I hate when people mess my name up.
That's why I'm like, what?
How do you say it specifically?
You're good.
That's all good.
We'll just start.
I know you guys are used to being interviewed together.
And so what I like to do with my guests, my people that view my show, they like to hear kind of where you're coming from.
It's hard for people to listen to what you have to say if they don't know who you are.
So before we get into who you are, though, I want you to tell us how you met each other and y'all started this company.
And can y'all just tell a little bit about that?
So, Cameron and I met, we, I'm one of the founding members of PSA, and I'm not an owner currently, but I was for the first about five, six years, and it was me and my brother, Jamin, we started the company, and then back in 2008, and then Cameron, when did you start working for PSA? 2016.
2016.
So Cameron, I took about two years off and then Cameron's been with us since 2016.
But we met at PSA. Okay, awesome.
We'll get into PSA and how it evolved and that kind of thing.
But first, because it is guns, and guns are such a hot topic, which obviously I love guns.
That's part of my whole slogan I ran for governor on, and I feel like without our Second Amendment, we have no America.
So I'm obviously a huge gun advocate and want to protect our right to bear arms and protect ourselves from a tyrannical government and protect ourselves from people who might want to hurt us.
Either way, we have a right to protect ourselves and I think that's how we are free today.
So I wanted to talk to you about why you care about a gun.
Where did that come from inside of you?
That's rooted in me.
I was raised by a GBI agent.
My parents have always hunted.
We've always eaten deer meat.
We've always carried a gun.
Where did that come from, both of you?
Y'all can take turns, but I'd like to know where that came from inside of you, to care about it.
Ours was rooted, my brother and I grew up mainly shooting pistols.
It was ingrained from us, I'd say probably from the time we were about 10, 11 years.
We shot BB guns and pellet guns as kids in the backyard, and then picked up pistols as we got older.
Our parents were very responsible.
You know, teaching us proper firearm safety.
And so we grew up around firearms.
And then as far as, and then my brother really loved the AR platform and got into that.
We, our parents were very responsible citizens, and they taught us how, and I teach my son how, and we That's how I personally got into it.
And what PSA does is we sell firearms at a very affordable price to responsible, law-abiding citizens.
Yeah, and I think for me, you know, growing up, I was a huge outdoorsman.
And, you know, just being always outdoors...
Uh, with my parents and, you know, my family, you know, just kind of grew up there.
Like when kids were young, we used to get like Toys R Us, like kid books.
I got Cabela's catalogs and that's how I picked what I wanted for Christmas was from a Cabela's catalog.
And so, you know, it just kind of ingrained in me and who I was, you know, growing up and, you know, I was very passionate about it.
And that's how I kind of got into the industry and, you know, love what I'd be able to, you know, what I'm able to do every day for a living now.
So do you enjoy shooting too, Cameron?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, I love it.
You know, it's hard with two kids now.
You know, I got two young kids under the age of four, so it's hard to find the time to really go out there.
But, you know, I'm a big hunter, so, you know, I'm hunting all fall and, you know, getting out there.
And my kids, you know, we have a pond at the house, so we're fishing every day and stuff.
And so, you know, now that they're getting older, you know, get them into it, get them around it and stuff.
But yeah, big time.
Love it.
So tell me, how was it birthed?
I know you and your brother had this idea, but tell me how it came about.
Sure, absolutely.
So my brother was an accountant, and I was Al Bundy.
They joke around and call me Al Bundy because I used to manage famous footwear.
So my brother, he was an accountant.
He went to Iraq and that whole time I was working for famous footwear in retail.
I was getting very tired of it.
Retail is not for the faint of heart.
And but he got a TBI traumatic brain injury when he was in Iraq.
When he came back seven issues concentrating and I was up in Pennsylvania and he was down in South Carolina.
That's originally where we were from in Pennsylvania.
And we were thinking of something that we were passionate about.
We could start a business.
We're like, we want to do something different.
So what can we do?
So it's like, what are we passionate about?
Well, we both grew up, you know, around guns and very passionate about it.
We both had concealed weapons permits and we love firearms.
And it was a very underserved in South Carolina at the time.
Very underserved, very expensive.
The gun shows, the gun stores around us were very expensive.
And so we were like, why don't we start something?
It originally started out as we were going to reload ammunition.
But one thing led to another.
And eventually we realized that carrying other people's ammunition was cheaper and reselling it, like Wolf and Pripy Partizan.
And we started carrying magazines like PMAG's Lancers and whatnot.
And then that was out of his four-car garage.
And then it just took off from there.
Obama got elected.
And one thing, you know, led to another.
And then we were able to buy about a year, year and a half in.
We were able to buy a 40,000 square foot warehouse.
And then each, every few years, just blew up to where right now we've got about 1,800 employees, just under 1,000 CNC machines.
And everybody, a lot of people, I should say, think of us as a retailer.
But most of what we do is actually manufacturing.
And we manufacture, we're vertically integrated.
We manufacture, you know, uppers, lowers, from forage to finish.
We forge the upper and lower.
We CNC machines, finish them off, and then we anodize ourselves, make our own barrels, pretty much everything except for springs.
Okay, so basically, well, my husband's family has a metal fabrication shop.
So I know about CNC machines and all that kind of stuff.
But I don't know anything.
They've like redone bullets and redone that a little bit themselves.
And then they, it's hard.
Like, it's really difficult to make it good.
So you're right.
It's kind of finding your niche and what you're passionate about.
So it sounds like y'all kind of went through that phase until you found out what you're good at.
So you're actually manufacturing guns, right?
And you're saying the different kind of guns.
And so how is the demand for that now versus when you first started?
Is it just a company that's just growing?
Well, I've heard, and I know from trying to buy bullets and trying to buy guns, the price has gone up, which everything has with inflation, but it seems like they're less available.
They're more of a demand for them, maybe.
There was a severe demand spike during COVID, and that was a good two years of a serious demand spike.
Now we're seeing that come down with a Republican House.
People aren't as afraid of gun control quite as much.
ATF, they're making some stupid rulings, like with the brace ban and stuff.
But there's several lawsuits out there.
Hopefully we'll do something to get that state put on that.
But...
The demand right now, it's coming down a little bit.
It's a normal summer slump.
Instead of spending money on guns, fathers are spending money on vacations, on those things when the kids are out of school and they have to spend money on.
But my brother, during that whole COVID timeframe, a lot of people are like, we don't know what's going on.
It's crazy.
We're going to stop innovating.
We actually increased the size of our engineering team during that time and continued to innovate.
So that's allowed us, while demand has gone down, we've increased the number of different guns.
Now we're into pistols.
We've got a huge AK line that Cameron is, I mean, he's the man on.
But while demand is dying down, our I would say the demand in PSA has gone up because of all the different firearms that we're carrying.
And I can let Cameron speak to more on that if he wants.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
So, yeah, I mean, during, obviously, kind of with Josiah, I started in 2016 and kind of to see, you know, how many we were producing then, you know, I'm based out of the manufacturing facility, so I'm hands-on every day seeing what's going on.
And so seeing where we were in 2016 and seeing where we are now is a huge jump, right?
But like Josiah said, during COVID, we couldn't make enough, right?
I mean, every day we were just wide open, every day running 10-hour shifts, wide open, just making as much as we could.
But now it's starting to kind of taper off, I guess, a little bit.
But on our senses, we started expanding who we are as a brand and who we are as a company, right?
We started out making AR-15s.
But then we expanded into AK-47s because we saw there was a void.
There wasn't really a quality American-made AK-47.
And we wanted to bring that to the market.
And so, you know, we really ramped that up.
And so now we did that.
And then we're into polymer pistols.
So now we have pistol lines.
We have all kinds of new, like, variations of an AR-15 that we have out now.
So there's always these little, like, quirks that we're able to find.
And I guess, you know, I was trying to explain to someone the other day, we find this little bit of gold in the sand.
And we will mine that gold until there's no gold left and then we'll find the next thing.
And that's something that we really, you know, being able to have a lot of the stuff in-house, we're able to adjust and adapt to what the market wants at the, you know, the same day.
So, what about, I have several questions going through my head when you were talking, but, you know, you said several things, and I've lost my train of thought.
One thing I wanted to ask you, it'll come back to me, but I was going to say, I think it was COVID, people got a lot of money, which they probably invested.
Then you've got riots going on, and they're thinking, what's going on with our country?
Are we going to lose our gun rights?
And you're right, whenever...
They feel threatened.
They may lose their gun rights.
They want to spend money on guns.
But I think right now it's because of inflation.
I know for me, my grocery bills doubled.
So I was just thinking, like, I want to buy my husband a new gun for Father's Day.
And I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to make that work because it is summer and we're going to go on vacation.
So, I mean, all these things like factor into being able to do that.
But I think that diversifying is good because for me, I have a handgun that I really like.
But you're talking about having more handguns.
I'm like, okay, well, what's the best pistol for a girl?
Because as a mother, I don't use a hammer anymore because it can get caught in my pocketbook and it could go off or my six-year-old could grab it.
So I have to have something that he can't cock and load.
And I need something that...
But something I can do because it's hard for a girl to do that.
Absolutely.
What do y'all sell that you think is the best one for a woman?
Go ahead, Desiree.
Oh, no.
I was just going to say, I mean, I've had this conversation quite a bit on, you know, I run our, we have the largest affiliate marketing program.
Nobody knows what that is, the affiliate marketing.
Basically, we have different, there's different people that do a review on our gun, and if they like it, they push out sales to us, and we're able to track those sales.
And so I have this conversation quite a bit as we go on different podcasts, and it really depends on the needs of the woman.
I've gone down to a friend of mine, Hank Strange, his place, and I've shot with several females, and it all depends on the female, because the old adage was a revolver, because it's very simple.
A woman can't figure out how to shoot properly.
Well, When I got married, my wife had shot a gummy once in her life.
Well, within two months, she was a better shot than I was.
I view women operating a firearm exactly like I do a man.
It just all depends on if you're carrying, whether you want to print or not, how comfortable you are.
If you like a revolver, that's just your personal style.
There's A ton of guys out there who love wheel guns.
And there are some women who love wheel guns too.
But there's also women who they want a striker fired or a hammer fired pistol that they can rack.
It's all personal preference, really.
So y'all heard what I said about safety.
So if I'm sticking it in my pocket boot and I have a young child that I don't want to be able to pick it up and shoot it, what would you recommend, Cameron?
I mean, I kind of want to Push our product here, you know, obviously, you know, we have our dagger line.
But no, I mean, I've been in the firearms industry before PFA before then, too.
So I've been in a long time.
And I think one of the most popular firearms in the, you know, carry guns right now is probably a Smith& Wesson M&P Shield.
I mean, they got a little thumb safety on it.
I mean, we love our product, too, right?
Our dagger is our polymer handgun that we carry.
That's a nine millimeter handgun, which is a very nice gun, too.
Don't get me wrong.
But I think, you know, Just something that comes to my head is Smith& Wesson and Shield.
That's one of the number one sellers that we sell on our website to consumers, too.
But yeah, I mean, it's nice.
It's concealable.
I think a lot of times what I've seen in the past, especially working behind a gun counter, is you know someone wants to come in and a female will come in like I want something small but small is not always the best thing for for that like it's almost like snappy in their hands when they actually go and shoot it so yeah exactly and so my always recommendation for everyone that's like first-time shooter or females like you know I really want to protect myself I want to do this like hey Why don't you go to the range rent a couple guns and try some furs and get a feel for it because just because it feels
okay in your hand now wait till you shoot it like it could feel it could snap it could you know and and I try to explain that to them like my wife I bought her a little Ruger LCP and it was small and she absolutely hated it but she liked my Glock 19 which is a full-size gun you know and so you know and so it just feels more comfortable so my always I always try and recommend people like test some out Don't buy one just because you want to buy one today.
Let's get some training in, shoot some guns, take a class, take a course, get comfortable with it, and then make a value decision based off of that.
You're absolutely right, Cameron.
We just did that with my sister.
She was down for vacation, and me and my brother, we took out about six guns and let her try out all of them, and she picked one.
You're absolutely right.
My husband has a Hellcat that he just had to have.
He thought it looked so good.
And we were campaigning.
We saw a lot of people that would open carry.
And we don't open carry, but it looks good.
And so everybody had a black one.
So he got him like, I don't know, a hunter green kind of dark olive green, maybe?
Yeah, ODG. Yep.
Yeah, he loves that gun, but I do not like shooting that gun at all.
I hate it.
And I have a little Taurus pink.
I don't know.
I want to say it's like a.328,.228.
I don't know.
But anyway, but I can shoot it.
I shoot it very well.
And I actually know I aim and I have my distance about this far from where I'm aiming and I shoot perfect.
Isn't that funny?
Yeah, training.
I mean, that's really what it comes down to.
That's what I tell everyone.
If you don't train and you don't practice, then that doesn't do anything for you.
Yeah, you have to learn your gun and learn my muscle memory and where I shoot.
Because, I mean, you're going to have different pressure you put on your gun.
And then I know how accurate it is.
I know how to adjust for that distance since other people can shoot my gun and they cannot shoot it accurate.
I'm really good at it.
Listen, that's all that matters.
Yeah, so tell me what, so everything that's going on in the world, like when things happen, like for me, I'm an educator, so I pay attention to school, you know, shootings, I pay attention to all these things, and I get slammed a lot because I post a lot about our gun rights.
I get slammed a lot.
Because people are like, you know, guns need to be banned and, you know, you're killing people.
But we know people kill people.
I have a PhD in counseling.
And people kill people, hurt people, hurt people.
If it wasn't guns, it'd be a sword.
It would be dynamite.
It would be a knife.
It would be something.
Because people that want to hurt you, they're going to hurt you.
And they're not being unstable.
Absolutely.
And so I know that, but trying to tell the public that when they're brainwashed with the media is so hard.
So do y'all do messaging at all?
What happens to you?
Do you get attacked like that as a gun company?
Do you get hate mail?
Like, talk to me about that.
There's, I work, Cameron works at one of our manufacturing facilities.
I work at a corporate office.
We occasionally get some phone calls, and very rarely do we get mail, occasionally, you know, an email here or there.
But to be honest with you, not that much.
We don't get much at all.
Well, so, yeah, on that side, for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, but if we post something on, like, social media, that's where it comes, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like, you know, they might not be calling us or, like, showing up at our retail locations or things like that.
But, I mean, if we post something, like, at 12 o'clock and something happens at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, like, they're going to come and try and, you know, comment and blow us up and do, you know, like, comment on our post and just, you know, just go spam us, like, on certain aspects sometimes.
But, you know, it's not, they're not, you know, coming through our doors with pitchforks.
So, I'm appreciative that y'all are doing this.
And I know one thing I was going to say.
American-made.
You said American-made and that triggered me.
So, everything that you manufacture, is it all American-made or do you import from other places?
Like, talk to us about that.
So, everything that we make is, you know, in-house is American-made.
Now, what we do on the AK side, we do have some kits that we call them.
So, they're like beamed.
Kits from Eastern Europe type stuff like Romanian AKs got chopped up and cut up and then we rebuild those in America with some of our parts.
But everything that we make in house that is, you know, Palmetto State Army branded is American made.
That's awesome.
People want that.
In fact, there's companies that they are going to, one's called Melaleuca, and it's kind of like a Walmart, Amazon of the internet, but everything's made in America.
So you get washing detergent, you get all these things, and it's just spread like wildfire lately because people want to buy American-made products.
Yep.
It's so important that you're manufacturing everything from America.
People love that.
And your product will sell better because of it.
We want to support our own people.
We've realized that we have just sent all this money to China and all these different companies and countries, and it's nothing against them, but we have to take care of us first.
We have to put ourselves first because our economy's Flailing right now.
And so we have to do that.
We have to support.
I think it's amazing that y'all make everything here.
And that was one thing.
When you said the first thing you said, I thought, what was I going to address?
But that was it.
What about training?
So do y'all have firearm training or safety training?
Do y'all offer that anywhere?
I know you're more of a manufacturer.
So do you have somewhere that y'all refer people to when they ask?
We do.
We do have training.
We have, I forget the numbers, about eight or nine stores in North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina.
And we do training, concealed weapons permit training.
We've offered a number of different tiers of training for different aspects.
But yeah, training is very important to us as a company.
We always, even on our website, we've got a link For training, like, hey, if you need to get training, here's some valuable resources.
As part of responsible gun owners is training.
It's very important.
And kind of going off on a little bit different topic, but Cameron and I, we get stuck making guns or whether it be behind a computer, and it's always nice To go out even training ourselves.
And I do what we call tours of PSA. And we just went to one of our facilities that has a single lane 60 yard range.
And every time I go there...
I take out, this past time we took out an 18 inch PSA AR-15 and we took playing cards and we flip them like this and we send them out to 60 yards and see who can split that playing card within three shots.
So it's always constantly keeping up as far as your accuracy, being proficient with a weapon, but also safety and we promote that very heavily within the company.
Yeah.
I mean, our retail stores, our retail fronts that we have within the company, most of them have a range inside the building.
And so the range guys, we offer training and classes, one-on-one classes that customers can come in and schedule with them one-on-one and really train.
On top of the concealed weapons classes, we have certified concealed weapons class instructors.
And so they're in there.
They do classes like every Saturday for eight hours.
I mean, it's always booked.
I mean, and they do four hour classes sometimes in the afternoon.
So, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of opportunities that we offer internally through Palmetto State Armory.
So I'm closer to South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama than I am to Atlanta.
So I'm in Southeast Georgia.
But tell me, where is your store in Georgia?
Savannah.
Savannah.
Oh, I'm really close to Savannah.
I'm like an hour and a half from Savannah.
So I have to go there.
But when we would do, when we campaigned, we did a lot of gun stores and we would go into ranges and they'd have events there, a lot of events.
But my favorite one was a small one.
And when I went, it had a ton of guns, but it was just like a hole in the wall.
But they had a Tommy gun.
You know what I'm talking about?
It was from World War II. Yeah, yeah.
And you have to rent the gun to shoot it.
But they let me shoot it because I was in the office.
And so I am obsessed with this gun.
Let me tell you, I love this gun.
Like, I have no need for this gun in real life.
Yeah.
I might if I needed to protect myself.
But this gun, y'all shot a Tommy gun, right?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So this gun, I got this gun, and it has like these little, and I was like, I hated to shoot the bullets because it looked so expensive.
So they're like brass, like nice bullets.
And it was over like this, you know, just, I shot, they told me like, shoot the head and then shoot the heart.
And I'm talking about, I did so good.
Like I shot it perfect.
And it didn't kick or anything.
And I was like, oh my gosh.
And so my husband, Ryan, he was like, I cannot believe you shot.
Like, I shot really accurately.
I was like, okay, well, you can shoot it.
I said, can he shoot it, please?
I'll pay for it.
They said, no, he can shoot it.
It's fine.
So they reloaded it.
And he said he was scared to shoot it because I shot it so well.
He shot it better than me even.
That's awesome.
So easy to shoot.
That was my favorite gun I've ever shot in my life.
Yeah, they're a heavy gun to hold.
And so, but that's what takes up the recoil.
So it's like, it's like, you know, when you pick it up, you're like, wow, this kind of got the weight.
When you shoulder it, and you get behind it, it just stays there.
Don't move.
Yeah, yeah.
They actually used that as an example for me, like with a pistol.
They were like, okay, so you see how heavy this gun is and you didn't feel it.
That's what you liked about it.
So if you get a heavier pistol and it's going to be easier to hold and not kick so bad.
So that made sense in my brain.
And grip.
Yes.
Yes.
It's hard, you know, and women, we have smaller hands.
It's harder to even cock a gun and then pull in it.
It's just hard, you know, you have to find one that's right for you.
It's harder.
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
So what is your favorite gun?
That's what I told you.
I told you my favorite gun.
What is your favorite?
I have an AR. We have an AR. I don't love shooting that AR though.
People like ARs.
I'm telling y'all that Tommy gun messed me up.
I love that thing.
Well I mean so I am a little privy and I'm sorry but I am an AK guy so I was not an AK guy but then I got into it so much with what we're doing as a company and I just like I'm all in and so I'm obsessed with AKs and so like from the classic style like you know wood and all that into the more modernized ones and everything like I'm just It's my thing.
I love them.
I love ARs.
I love all guns.
I don't discriminate against any firearm.
I'll shoot whatever, but AKs are close to my heart just because I'm so involved with them every day.
Well, Cameron, tell us the difference and the feel for shooting an AR versus an AK. All right.
I got you.
So here's the biggest thing that I'll say about an AR-15 versus an AK-47.
AR-15s are adult Legos.
And an AK-47 takes actual skill and time to fit together, okay?
And so, you know, the running joke on AKs is the way you fix an AK is you get a bigger hammer and you just whack it harder.
And so, you know, I just love the durability of them.
So the AKs will jump a little bit more because it is a.30 cal bullet versus a.556 projectile.
So it's going to be a little bit more jumpy.
But it is, I mean, it is meant to be drug through the mud.
It is meant to be covered in sand.
It just runs.
It's not going to stop.
And that's what I just love about them.
They're just so reliable.
They're fun.
They're fun to shoot.
I love building them just because it actually takes a skill.
And so, you know, it's, you know, an AR-15, if you're, you know, you could just tighten down screws, put it together.
As long as you torque everything right, it's going to go bang.
And AK, you've got to rivet things.
You've got to press things together.
You've got to polish things.
You've got to massage it a little bit.
I love it.
It just speaks to me.
I love it.
You have to baby it a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You've got to show a little TLC. You can't just, you know, you've got to, you know, tweak it, bend it, do this, do that, and you're ready to roll.
So, Josiah, you tell us the difference.
Like, what for you?
What do you like?
I personally like the AR-15 platform the best.
Dude, AKs are wonderful.
I love AKs, and I'll just lay off the camera because it's an age-old thing between AK and AR, guys.
I love AKs, I love ARs, but ARs the most, especially lately within the past, I'd say four or five months, I've been doing a lot of accuracy shooting, and like I said, with being able to split a playing card in half, you know, you get some higher-end ammunition, and you get a About an 18-inch barrel AR, and I like to accuracy shoot.
AKs are a little bit less accurate, and so that's why I like the AR-15 platform, just a little bit more accurate.
It's accuracy by volume, Josiah.
Or is it accuracy by shooter?
So maybe Cameron's really accurate.
Listen, yeah, I go by volume, okay?
I go for quantity over precision, okay?
That's funny.
So do y'all, do y'all have, do y'all, well, do you manufacture like scopes and silencers or is it just the actual gun?
We've expanded.
We own companies from Minnesota down to Florida, out to Alabama.
Out in Alabama, we have AAC Suppressors, Advanced Armament Company.
So we make suppressors under that name.
And then we also have America's Ammunition Company, where we make our own ammunition now, our factory-loaded ammunition.
You know, 14 years later, after we started PSA, we actually started making ammunition.
And then you said suppressors, and what was everything?
Skypes.
Well, we do have a PSA custom line where we do have some scopes.
Not a whole lot, but we have dipped our big toe.
We got some coming.
Yeah, we got some coming.
But yeah, I mean, I'm glad you asked this question, so that way I can start on this.
But PSA, who we are, obviously we started as a finance manufacturer, but our parent company is called JJE Capital.
And so that stands for Jamin, Julian, and Ed.
So it's not just some random corporation in another state that we have to speak to, right?
So these are the guys, Jamin, Josiah's brother, who founded the company.
And so under that umbrella, like Josiah said, we have companies all the way from Minnesota down to the Southeast, right?
We try and stay in the Southeast a lot for what we do, but we try to control our own destiny in every aspect.
But at the same time, like during COVID, what we saw with Ammo We took that, you know, during the Remington bankruptcy, we put in a bid to purchase their ammunition side.
Well, it fell through and got purchased by somebody else.
So we took that money and said, you know what, we're going to start our own ammunition company.
And that's what we did.
And so last summer, we started rolling off 5.56 off the line.
And now we have, you know, 9mm, 10mm,.45 ACP. I mean, we're doing it all.
And the reason why we did that, though, is so that way we can kind of take care of the civilian side of things and control that side.
And so, you know, we're going to be making our own primers because what we saw during COVID is prices started skyrocketing and we could not control that.
And our whole business model is for the common man, right?
We try to spread freedom to the law-abiding citizen, you know, aka the common man.
And that's why we do direct-to-consumer sales.
You know, you won't be able to walk into a Bass Pro Shops or Cabela's or these other ones and find a Palmetto State Armory on the shelf.
We sell direct to consumer from our website and we do that so that way we don't have to have a middleman.
We want to take care of the person and give them the lowest price that we can every single day.
And so we try to control our own destiny and all kind of firearm aspects of things between ammo and firearms and parts and components and everything that the consumer could need and supply that to the market at an affordable price that every common man can afford.
So I'm not going to ask you how many guns you have because I don't want people to go crazy in my childhood.
And I'm not going to tell you how many guns I have.
But I do have a family member.
It's really not me.
But I do have a family member that has a lot of guns.
So they collect guns.
They have every kind of gun you can think of.
I mean, they have every one.
And I know y'all probably have customers like that that just buy, buy, buy.
And ammunition.
And you just, you see that.
But as a standard, like for me, personally, I'm not saying against I have, but we have like one of every class, I would say.
I don't have an AK, which I'd like to have an AK. Now, especially, I've shot one before.
I got you.
I got you.
I'd like to have one.
We have a couple ARs, but then we have several...
I inherited my daddy's 9mm when he died, but I have...
I told you about my little pink gun, and then we have a Hellcat, and then we have a rifle and a shotgun, and a couple other pistols.
But what would you say is the...
Like number that is good to keep a family safe and for them to be well equipped?
Or like, what do you see as a good variety of guns that people need as a family?
That, to me, really all depends on where you're living.
You know, if you're in a city and, you know, if you have a You know, there really wouldn't be a need for a shotgun.
And it's for the comfortable, it's how comfortable you are as well, too.
If you have a lot of small children and you don't have a big safe and stuff, you know, it's more how comfortable the consumer is.
And how versed they are in each platform.
So I don't really think there's a number that we could throw out.
I personally, you know, I've got, I have a gun, you know, locked up somewhere in my kitchen, my living room, my bedroom, my bathroom.
And so if there's any situation that arises, I have one that is quickly accessible, but everybody's going to be different.
Yeah, I mean, I think what maybe...
I don't know if this makes sense when I say this out loud, but I'm going to say it anyway.
I think that there are a couple of guns that everyone should have, right?
I think everyone should own a shotgun, a handgun, a hunting gun, like a bolt-action or something, a semi-automatic firearm, and then a.22 rifle.
I think every law-abiding American should own a.22 rifle because if you need to get a squirrel or a pigeon Or something.
If something goes down, you're going to need something to keep eating.
And so, I mean, there's like five major things when I think of when it comes to that.
Yeah, my six-year-old shoots his.22.
He loves it.
Yeah, I love a.22.
I mean, I bought one for...
My wife yelled at me because I was like, I bought one before my kids were even born.
I'm like, I'm buying this for our kids.
She's like, you don't need another one.
I'm like, I do.
I'm like, I'm buying this for our kids.
She's like, we don't even have any kids.
I'm like, we will.
Yeah.
And you need a.22.
You just need it.
And you have to have a BB gun too.
Absolutely.
That he can go out there and play with.
He can shoot a squirrel or whatever.
We, the 22, you know, obviously he has to have total supervision on that.
But it's good for them to understand.
And, you know, because I think we teach him gun safety, he would never touch a gun.
Like he would never.
Absolutely.
He does not try to touch our guns.
We lock them up.
But then I have a, I keep a gun in my pocketbook and he doesn't ever.
In fact, if it is open, he'll say, mama, you need to see your pocketbook if your gun will fall out.
And he knows the bullets not in the chamber and he watches me check it because every day I look at it to make sure something crazy didn't happen and somebody didn't caught my gun I may not know.
And I'm trying not to be paranoid but you know you just you know you never know if that happened or some crazy thing happened.
But I think that is a huge part because you know we all have especially y'all selling guns you hear you know freak accidents that happen and you pay attention to those things and so Gun safety is so important.
And I don't want to downplay, oh, well, we're talking about guns.
Everybody should have guns, but you have to be safe.
And it's just like, I'm in a car.
You have to be safe when you're driving.
You can't be texting and driving or watching a movie or reading a book like people like to do on the interstate and drive me crazy and in my lane.
Right?
Because a vehicle is a weapon.
Yeah, exactly.
It starts very young.
My son's eight right now.
By the time he was four, I mean, If he was playing with a toy gun, I think he was three or four, I stopped him.
I said, someday, buddy, you're going to have your own gun.
And from here on out, you never point a gun at anybody.
So with his toy guns, we started practicing muzzle awareness.
Yeah, I do the same thing with my four-year-olds.
We have Nerf guns and stuff.
I teach them trigger discipline and never point a gun at anything unless you intend to kill it type of thing.
We really...
Started with the Nerf guns, and so I'm teaching them how to shoulder it and get eyesight.
It's fun.
So then when my son was six and I bought him a little Bold Action Savage, he knew muzzle awareness.
Like Cameron said, his finger was never on the trigger, and it helped out starting him very young.
And then he is very...
He, when that, just, it starts, if you start them very young, it's just a very wise idea.
Yep.
Education is very important.
I mean, I feel like that is, you know, I, yeah, I mean, I can go on and on and on about that.
And you know, those Nerf guns now, you can just air, it's like they will hurt you.
And then our oldest son, he's 18, he's graduating, so they have these water, not paintballs, now it's these water balls.
Yeah, I know.
I see them all the time.
My nephew has them, and I'm like, what are you doing?
They soak them in water.
Yes, and they hurt, and he caught me by accident one day, and I went ballistic on him.
I was like, I will knock you out.
You understand?
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm telling you right now, he's 6'2", and I'm like, I will, and I'm 5'2", and I will take him down.
Your mom, don't you ever get me with that again?
Yeah, I got the mom strength.
You try it.
But those things sting, and really, it does teach them, like, the respect, again, that mess hurts.
So, I took them, when he got, when he was 15, we took a, maybe he was 14, but we took all of his buddies to a paintball, whole obstacle course, and they had blood blisters on them.
Some of them were crying.
Yeah.
Okay, so this is why you respect guns, because if that was a real bullet, you would be dead, okay?
Yep, yep, absolutely.
No, I agree.
Use them for learning opportunities.
So tell me what, like your company, I know it's all based in America and I know y'all make everything here.
You engineer it here and you have designers.
Are you both engineers in design or?
So I am the brand manager for Palmetto State Armory.
So my job, you know, I've been with the company for what, seven and a half years now.
And so I started doing ATS compliance stuff for the company, and then I worked in QC. I ran QC for two years, and then I ran our manufacturing, main manufacturing facility for two years, and now I'm the brand manager.
So, you know, I don't have an engineering background, but, like, I'm involved You know I designed firearms all the time and so you know I mean that's like my thing that's what I do and that's you know kind of why you know Jamin is my boss Josiah's brother and he kind of put me in this role because he wanted me to help push Palmetto State Armory forward into the future and so you know it's got like a lot of squirrel crazy ideas up in here and so you know I'm always coming up and doing new things but I work alongside with all the engineers all the time so I'm like hey let's try this and he'll draw it up for me
and do that stuff so But yeah, that's kind of what I do for a living with those guys now.
Yeah, I'm not an engineer either.
I don't have the smarts for it.
When I started the company with my brother, I did everything.
You know, you have to wear many hats when the company is smaller.
And then I became store manager of one of our first store in range down in Beaufort, South Carolina, just outside of Beaufort.
And then I had in JJE Capital, the second J and the E. Julian and Ed bought my shares out.
Took about two years off, came back in, worked in retail for about a year and a half.
And then came back in as consumer relations manager and now I do affiliate marketing.
That's fun.
I feel like marketing is fun.
Yep, it is.
So do you do a lot with social media?
Or do y'all do, like, how do y'all get the most of your sales?
Is it through magazines or gun shows?
Because I went to several gun shows, and they were awesome.
That's how we bought the Hellcat, was at a gun show.
But I loved them.
They were awesome.
And there were so many different people, and they had a bunch of knives.
And, like, there's all kinds of things at gun shows.
Who would have thought?
I know.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
No, I mean, we do most of our sales on our website.
But we also have our Daily Heal Subscribe email.
That has millions of subscribers on it.
And we send those out twice a day.
So, you know, we send one out at like 1130 noon, somewhere around there, then at 435 o'clock.
And so that's like our, we call them our daily deal emails.
And so we blocked out, you know, social, you know, there.
And then we, you know, we also do social media stuff.
You know, we're posting stuff all over social media.
You know, Josiah does a lot of the forums and some of the like internal, like firearm message boards and forums.
I handle a lot of the social media side with my team and the marketing team.
You know, they, They do their things, but we have Facebook groups and different groups out there that we're a part of, and so we're all in there talking about our firearms and what we're doing, what's new, teasing pictures and things like that.
Our main method of marketing, I would say, Besides organic people coming to our website every day via the emails, it's word of mouth too.
People really love what we do.
They love just from SHOT Show, from NRA, media people come in and do videos about what we're doing and then it spreads around and people come to our website and then people tell their friends and stuff.
It's a word of mouth type business too.
Yeah, I know social media is so huge, but then the email thing does work.
I mean, it really does.
Oh, yeah.
Everything you're talking about is things you do in a political campaign, too.
Isn't that crazy?
It all goes hand in hand.
It's all marketing.
It's like, how do you get your name out?
When people really aren't watching TV anymore, they're watching YouTube, they're watching Rumble, they're watching other things, and they're not just sitting down watching TV and seeing commercials.
And that's what I found when I was campaigning.
Is that kind of what y'all see, too, with your business?
That people are not watching just straight out of cable TV. Yeah, I mean, we do some like, you know, we do commercials and things like that for, you know, the Columbia, South Carolina area and things like that.
But most of our stuff is, you know, emails, social media, you know, I mean, especially with where we are now as a country, right?
I mean, everyone, you know, is on social media somehow, some way, shape or form, right?
And so, I mean, that is like your number one Like, that's your market base right there, right?
And so, you know, we do a lot of, you know, sending firearms out to, you know, YouTubers, you know, big timers and let them test them and review them, like kind of what Josiah was talking about.
But again, you know, our daily deal email blast, I mean, from where we're at, like, you know, seven years ago now, I mean, there's millions of people on that thing.
I mean, so, you know, it's a huge blast of media out there.
And it's always something crazy, too.
And it's funny to see because people are like, oh, you know, in our Facebook groups are like, oh, I saw this deal.
You got to get on it.
You got to get on it.
You got to get on it, you know, and sharing it and posting it everywhere.
It's cool to see.
And it can help you out flipping the inventory quickly, too, if you want to get rid of something, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and it's also like, you know, you can also plan, like, we plan our days around it, too.
So, like, we have a production meeting every morning at 8.30, 9 o'clock, and we're like, okay, you know, we kind of have a plan of what we're doing, but then it's like, hey, let's do, you know, 300 of these at 11.30, see how they do.
And, you know, we build it, we get it ready, we put it in stock, and then it's like, oh, this took off, let's build 300 more.
And so, then it goes back out at the 4.30 email, and so you can just Like I said, finding that little nugget of gold in the sand, we're going to keep going, going, going, and say, that's a little down, let's go to the next one.
And then tomorrow we're going to do this, you know?
And so, you know, it's fun.
And through vertical integration, that's what allows us to do that.
Because you have a lot of companies that are like, all right, here's the 10 products that we sell, pick the one and buy it.
But with us, we're very nimble.
I mean, you know, 12 o'clock one day, we can decide what's going to be in stock, 8 o'clock a.m.
the next day.
It's based off of consumer demand.
It's pretty cool.
It's really cool.
I'm sitting here thinking about, you know, what I've been buying Heaven's Harvest for like meal prep food, just in case something crazy happens with the economy.
So I've been buying like one thing a month.
So I have that stocked up.
And then I've been trying to invest anything extra we have in gold and silver.
So you can diversify because when we did Cornerstone Asset Metals and you try to diversify so you're not, everything's not in cash.
Yep.
And metal is just going higher and higher.
It's crazy how much gold and silver has increased over the past year.
And so now I'm thinking, I've been buying ammunition along and along, and I really haven't purchased a gun in probably a year.
But I need to, and I need to buy some bullets.
And so now I'm going to get to buy one of your guns.
But I do want to buy, I think, that gun, the pistol, and you were talking about it a while ago, and what was the name of it?
The dagger.
Dagger.
So I want to look at it.
I might have to go to somebody so I can shoot one.
Yeah, so we, so the cool thing about what we do is we don't do, like, a custom shot where it's like, I want this on it, that on it, that on it, where they don't, like, a drop-down box, right?
Well, I can't get it in Tiffany Blue.
What's that?
I can't get it in Tiffany Blue.
No, no, not right now.
Not right now, but it will, you know, we might have some stuff coming.
But what we do is we spread information.
You know, we go by variety, right?
And so like, for instance, like five years ago when we first started doing AKs, we had 20 different SKUs on our website of an AK, right?
These are your SKUs.
Right now we have close to 600.
And so like there's 600 different guns you can buy.
And it's like, well, I want this with this with this.
And so we have a variety and we do the same thing with our handguns.
And so with our handguns, so they just slide together.
So you can buy just a color frame, whatever color frame you want.
And then we have all different types of slide options.
With different barrels, different colors, rose gold, gold, tin, you know, silver, all different color.
You can mix and match and make it yourself.
You can pretty much make a custom gun yourself and it would be unique to you because you picked out the way it looked.
So if I go to Savannah to your store there, are they going to have a dagger there for me to shoot?
Absolutely.
And they'll even have, you know, AKs.
What about your AKs?
Oh, absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so tell me, Josiah, what's your favorite 1A to the AR, but specifically, like, what I should get my husband to shoot that you like?
I would say our best value and our most popular gun is a railed 16-inch AR-15 with Magpul furniture on it and our enhanced polish trigger.
I would say that would be the best AR to get.
So y'all can meet me in Savannah.
What if no way?
Y'all come down there a lot?
No.
You let us know when.
We'll make the trek.
Yep.
Hey, it's a foodie place.
We can go eat somewhere good.
Yeah, listen.
You sold me up food.
Right.
You sold me up food.
So this summer, I'll be off of work for a couple months.
So we're going to make a plan and get us a date where we can meet up.
Let's go.
Sounds good.
So all of you that are watching, y'all go buy a gun from Palmetto.
Tell them your website.
We'll put it at the bottom of the screen.
But y'all tell them how to find you, how to get in touch with you.
I know y'all talked about the website and talked about social media.
But just tell them what name to put in.
PalmettoStateArmory.com is the website.
I'm very open with my email address.
If anybody ever has any questions, just email me.
Josiah, J-O-S-I-A-H at PalmettoStateArmory.com.
And I am on AR15.com all the time posting in our industry forum.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and then also if you just type in PSA.com, it'll redirect you to our website as well.
We have Instagram, Facebook.
We got Facebook groups.
If you just type in Palmetto State Armory on Facebook, it'll come up with all kinds of Facebook groups, messages, everything.
You know, we're there.
We're easily reachable.
We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
I mean, everywhere you can look.
And Josiah, you have a great name.
I have a friend.
She teaches gifted, actually.
She has like seven kids.
And she wanted a boy so bad.
And they're all doorsteps.
And she finally had a boy.
And she wanted to name him Josiah.
That was her name.
I have to name that.
The Lord told her to name her son that.
So she knew she was going to have a son eventually.
She kept having kids until she had Josiah.
So it's a great name.
Yep.
It's becoming more and more popular.
Having kids is a lot.
I know.
I have three and I'm drowning.
We're outnumbered.
We got outnumbered.
I have to give it up.
I have two and I'm I'm good.
I'm one and done.
No more.
But hey, that third one, he is special now.
I'm telling you.
You know, I got senior, freshman, and kindergartner.
It's like, I'll spread out.
That's awesome.
Well, thank y'all so much for coming on Jesus Guns and Babies.
I'm so excited to have you.
And I think you'll probably, if y'all go buy from them, y'all tell them, Candace sent you so they know.
And I want to see how many guns y'all sell.
That'll be awesome.
Thank you so much for your time.
We appreciate you, ma'am.
Thank y'all for tuning in this week.
We'll see you next week, Saturday on Stupiter's Network, 8 p.m.
Eastern Time.
I love you.
God loves you.
God bless America.
See you next week.
Hey everybody.
I want you to go to HeavensHarvest.com promo code KANDICE and I want you to get prepped.
We don't know what's coming, who knows, but regardless whether it's a hurricane, national disaster, or the whole government shuts down, they have awesome deals on freeze-dried food.
In fact, they have a new item, it's freeze-dried cans.
It's a lot less expensive than the big barrels.
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