SOFREP RadioLocked & Loaded: Stephen Morgan, Director of Product Marketing Primary Arms Optics
Join us as we dive into the world of firearms, optics, and tactical gear with Primary Arms! From expert insights to the latest industry trends, we bring you everything you need to stay sharp, informed, and ready for action. Whether you're a seasoned shooter or just getting started, this is your go-to source for all things shooting sports and defense.
Hey, what's going on? Welcome to another awesome episode of soft Rep Radio. I am your host, Rad and I have the pleasure to introduce you to a wonderful person.
But first, before.
I introduce you to him, I want to talk to you about the merch store and that soft rep dot com Forward slash store. Go check out our branded goods of items. We really appreciate you guys tagging us and sharing it all over the world. Thank you so much to all of our listeners out there for picking up the merch And we also have a book club and that is soft rep dot Com Forward Slash Book Hyphened Club. Go read a book. You know, books are good for you. You can get a book.
Read it, put it in your brain, use it for later.
You'd be like, why do I think I know that? Maybe you read a book and remembered it. Okay, that's why read a book. Now, with that said, today we're going to talk to a veteran who has gone from joining the military out of the military working for his own company, Primary Arms. Right, Am I saying that?
Right? Steve Morgan with Primary Arms.
Yep, Yeah, we're the optics division over here. So Primary Arms Optics yep.
That's right.
And Primary Optics. Now, let me go ahead and read a little bit about that. Thanks for being on the show first of all, Now, thank you appreciate it. About Primary Optics, right, let's just jump into what you transitioned to after you were in the army.
So found it in two thousand and eight.
Primary Arms Optics is a leading innovator in tactical optics, offering a comprehensive selection of rifle scopes, prism scopes, red dot sites, binoculars, optic mounts, and accessories. Every Primary Arms Optics product is hand inspected at their Houston Base headquarters, and all of their products come with a Primary Arms lifetime warranty. Let me just put that out there at the very beginning of the show. Did I set that right?
Yeah?
One hundred percent exactly right.
Yeah. Right.
So, and so, before you got into Primary Arms, you decided to leave high school and join the military.
How old were you when you joined the military.
I was seventeen, so I was a waiver joining Yep. I actually didn't tell my mom that I was joining the army, and I needed her to side my waiver. So I told her that the government was going to give me a physical so I could go play hockey. And she's like, oh that's great. Then we don't have to pay for a physical. Awesome deal. So I splid her the paperwork, she signed off on it, and I went down to Maps and joined.
So, oh wow, you really pulled one over on mom. Right.
They say that you'd be an actor if you can lie to your mom. If you can get away with a lie to your mom, you could get one as that's pretty good. You're like, yo, Mom, just sign us off. I need to get a physical, right, and.
Yeah, I'm gonna go play hockey. It'll be great.
So so seventeen and then all of a sudden, the army comes knocking and Mom's like, where's the hockey league?
Right?
Pretty much? Yeah? Well I called her.
So it was after I was done with Maps, with all the contract signing and everything, so I called her up because I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to hide this anymore and like, hey mom, So, by the way, they had a really good offer down here and they offered me a job. She was like, oh, that's really cool. It's like yeah, it's a as an infantryman in the army. So I took it and great, but they're gonna buy me dinner on the way home, so I might be a little late. And she absolutely went up the listing. She's like, well, at least where are they gonna take it at dinner? It's like, well, we're gonna drive through McDonald's on the way home. So it's I'm coming out on top of this.
Oh my god.
Yeah, you're like, I got some food. I'm going to get a job. I'm gonna get fed. Don't worry, mom, I got this. So off you go to infantry. Did you go to like Fort Benning, Georgia? Is that still the name or were you?
Yeah, it's or whatever it's called that.
I think it's Benning. Maybe I'm not sure, but yeah, it's Uh. Went to Benning for OSAN one station unit training. So did all what is it sixteen weeks there. I had a couple of add on schools and then my entire platoon actually got assigned to Korea except for me. They sent me over to Washington with first of the fifth Infantry and twenty fifth I D so I got excited because I saw the twenty fifth. I d like, Hawaii, this is sick. I'm gonna love this, No, Washington State slightly different, a little more rain.
Oh, it was still good. It was a good unit.
So Pacific Northwest. You went up to the northwest Washington, right, that's what you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, it was I think the longest stretch of rain we had there was like forty two straight days just nothing but rain. And thankfully we were in the field that whole time, so it made it extra.
Yeah, because you ain't training if it ain't raining, right, exactly exactly were you mechanized infantry, were you working with the strikers or what was your yes?
So we started off.
I got there right as they were getting ready to transition over to strikers, So we started as light infantry, and then even after the striker transition, because it was a wheeled vehicle and not a track, they were still considered a light infantry, just striker support light infantry. We started training off on the labs, which if anybody's ever been in a lab, it's got the twenty five millimeter Bushmaster turret turret. So the like the troop compartment is a box about the size of my desk chair, and there was a plit an entire squad of us crammed into that box. And I mean we couldn't run the Bushmasters anyway because we didn't have AMMO for them.
They were just training vehicles. But yeah, that was kind of what we started with.
And after I was there for a couple of months, we got our shipment of brand new Strikers in and we did our train up on that.
They're like cool, all right, all right, deploy So we're like, all.
Right, well, you know, we got cool in new vehicles, Like no, no, no, you're leaving those here. There's Strikers in country for you. You'll be taking those over. So the ones we got in country were they were well used, let's say, well used.
Yeah, in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out, my coffee bug in and out.
Yeah, it was in and out.
It was an experience that that first one that was like the golden days of the Guy two. That was early two thousand and four ish, so like right before Fallujah was the big fight while we were there on that first deployment, so we were the unit that went into Fallujah with First MARTIV And yeah, it was that was those were those were the g WAT days.
Did you have did you guys get into like you know, conflict and enemy fire on the strikers while you're in them. It's like tinting, did you oh all the time?
Yeah?
It was actually the so our first our first tick our supply NCO was actually running air guard and the trail vehicle and he was the first person to engage anybody for our unit when we deployed and we were rolling from we were going to this school like combat out post in the middle of nowhere and rolled out of buy out and as we were going down the road, somebody pulled in behind us and a dude shot through the windshielder. Of course it was a white and orange opol so just like every other car that's out there, taxicab did shot through the wind shielder that he engaged to the windshield and that was that was our first official None of us knew what was going on because we were all sitting in the vehicle, but he just comes out like I got what and then it goes back up.
The dude so so so mechanize.
So you go from seventeen year old getting Mickey D's with your recruiter, going to Metz yep, going up showing a healthy brown round to the to the doctor. Okay, You're like, I'm good to go, and they're like, okay, you're going to Washington.
You all of a sudden, I'm infantry.
Now.
They're like, hey, you're gonna get a ride though with this unit, this mechanized vehicle here, this Striker.
You're like all right, and so you're really attached.
To that, like like a womb, right, Like that striker is where you guys live, get in, get out. You guys are constantly communicating with it at all times, right, Like they're talking to you while you get out, you go in a house or whatever you have to do on that that mission.
Right, Yeah, it was you.
Know, working out of the Strikers was we didn't have to do any long walks, which was nice.
We got we got rides most of the places we went.
The funny thing like, because the Striker was so new and it was expensive piece of equipment, the Striker kind of sits in a weird place as far as the combat vehicle. So it's it's it's you know, the the detractors will say, too light to fight and too heavy to run. The only weapon system that we had originally where the remote weapon systems with the m two's and the Martin nineteen's. Later on they came out with like the Unicorn, which is the one oh five basically like tank man gun on.
It, like on a Bradley right, Ady has like a one or five or something like that.
But the Brads have that twenty five milimeter bush Master the change and then they've got that tow missile pot on the side. And yeah, we had we had a fifty or a Mark nineteen sitting on a remote weapon system and then four dudes standing out of the top. So it was good against small arms EFPs like that was That's what ended up kind of finishing.
The Tell me what an e FP is, Tell me.
What it's explosively form penetrator. So it's basically like a copper bowl with a charge behind it, and when the charge goes off, it inverts that copper into a basically a liquid dart or a semi solid dart. And those things punched through anything, it doesn't matter. They'll they'll cut through abums like butter It went through strikers like it wasn't even there, and those.
Or something how like a thermite charge or something just eat through what.
Yeah, it's it's so hot and so fast it just it burns through everything. It's a it's Those things are nasty. EFPs were definitely one of the biggest threats that we had. Like I mean, I wrote a gelled rocket fuel platter charge actually drove over the top of it. Was the estimated it was about four hundred and fifty pounds that detonated under my vehicle. We got a slight breach in the hall, but you know, for the most part we were kind of jacked up a little bit feet broken bones and scrapes and stuff, but everybody survived that. But yeah, EFP's. Once that one of those things cut through, I mean, it would create a vacuum inside of the vehicle when it hit, and it would just it would destroy everything.
It was.
Those things are nasty, and that's on the other guy.
The other guys have that, or we have that.
No, the other guys had that.
So we had all these like crazy countermeasures that we tried to do.
There's one thing called the Tomahawk because.
They were using a basically like a passive IR sensor, so like think of a motion sensor on a floodlight outside of your yagh. And once a vehicle would go in front of that would detonate and it would go. So we came out with these tomahawks. Was just like a heating element inside of the two by four is that we hung off the front of the vehicle and then yeah, it would trigger and hopefully trigger in front of the vehicle.
So you know, they kind of wised up to that.
They're like, okay, well we'll just take our efpiece here and we'll point them that way. So they were still pointed at the vehicles. And then we had other things that we did. We had electronic countermeasures, like the the ingenuity of the enemy we were over there in the g what was just it was incredible. It was impressive because we'd throw millions and millions and millions of dollars at defeating what they had at electronic countermeasures, physical countermeasures, all this extra armor, all this stuff, and they would be like, okay, so I've got a hose pipe and a roll of telephone wire and they would defeat everything we have.
It's just incredible, incredible because.
If there's a will, there's a way, right, that's what that's the that's their model, right, and someone over there, you know, and I can imagine if something happened over here in the US. What would we be doing being in our homes and like, you know each other, Yeah.
Community, especially like the boys man, we everybody like well, you know that wouldn't be that.
You're also just walking with it, like like Red Dawn with the bike across the street, parking in front.
You know, yeah, hello girl, Hello girl, she's just walking away.
Boom right, holy bread basket right, and they have all these encounter members.
That's amazing.
Well, first of all, to you and all your joes, thank you for you know, raising your hand and swearing an oath and defending our flag and our our nation and our constitution and helping those who you were told you were helping over there, right, You're like, we're going over We're going to free these people.
We're gonna liberate Iraq.
We're gonna like you know, be their friends and you know and go that way. So, so good job on, you know, just putting your brain in the right place. Okay, So I appreciate that. Thank you, Yeah bro, Yeah yeah, so, and welcome home. And then also did you carry a pistol?
Later on in my career, I did, yeah.
And did that pistol? Have an RM r on it at all like a rear mount and read that.
Ye I wish no it was.
It was og bretta M nine Yeah, crack blocking block, just like everybody else's. And yeah, I think it was black at one point, but by the time I got it, it looked like a Polish stainless.
I love that. Yeah, in the old in and out in and out of the.
USBI flap holsters and everything.
Of course, dude just pulling it out, pulling out that old bretta, right.
Yeah, but then I didn't.
Have to carry rifle when I went to the Chowell. I could just throw that out my leg and I was good.
One hundred percent, right and so and so here you are going through all of this combat and you've got just the static equipment they issue you. You're making two by four heat sensors to try to trigger sensors.
So that didn't come on, But that didn't come with the ship, you know what I'm saying, Like, you.
Got one hundred mile an hour tape, you got pair of cord, you've got ingenuity yourself. You're going up against injunuity, and you got somebody saying, hey, this is what the Joe needs. Here's a contract. And then the Joe gets the lowest dollar contractor they're like, you know, oh, we can make it for fifty cents. You're like, no, make it for fifty five, because we want air conditioning fifty five.
We won't be brought just another nickel.
Just another nickel.
So you got the you got the lowest bidder coming in trying to outfit the best military in the world and going up against you know, people who are you know, have ingenuity and other means to come at us. So now you transition from combat infantry guy to what what happens after you get home? You know, ohees, waves have happened. You've gone over how many times?
Now? Right?
And now I mean I have five deployments altogether. It was it was it's a wild time. When you transition out. It's you know, the military's got programs for soldiers and marines and you know, airmen and stuff. They are getting out and it's like, okay, so what's your mos? All right, these are the civilian jobs that we think you would do well in with that training. What's your education level? This is how you do an interview, This is how real people dress. Stop wearing your pet shoes. With jeans and a T shirt tucked in, like let your hair grow a little bit. Stop knife handing every time you talk to people, Like yeah, it's it's like the whole thing that.
You go through, but they don't really like prepare you for the process.
Yeah, like it's it's the Outpreas you finish up, you get that last signature, a clear post, and it's like, Okay, now I paid the eighty dollars to the library because I lost that book six years ago. So now I'm done, I can clear base. You get off base and then it's like now what and you get back to.
Where you are.
And my first thing was, dude, I'm retired. Now I got medically retired out, I'm I'm done. I'm gonna just go fishing and go hunting. And I had like two weeks that I got to spend with myself, way too much time, way too much.
Time with myself. I don't know how I've been married to.
My wife for twenty one years now, and I don't know how she put up.
But I couldn't do two weeks.
So the uh, yeah, he's like handled you for twenty one years.
You can't have yourself for two weeks.
He's like, yeah, I was like, I am miserable to hang around.
I don't know why she is still here, but it was.
You gotta be funny.
You gotta have some jokes, that's the thing.
And she gets the humor too, like most veterans we know, like dark humor's real humor. And there's some some stuff that I would say to her, and you know it's she gets it, and she she laughs at it and it's funny. And I've I've made similar jokes out just out in the world at like jobs, in my office and stuff like that, and everybody looks.
Like I know where my wife and I have the same We kind of like I said, I'm going to die first, and she's like, no, I'm dying first, and I'm like.
Argument, I'm like, I'm not dealing with the pain of you die first. I'm gonna die first. You could deal with my pain, and like we just go it's the darkest. That's love.
That's love, right, Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
That's it.
So you have a supporting significant other at home and she's there to help you calm me down and make sure that you're you know whoa yeah, yep.
She helps helps calm me down. If not calm me down, she at least is a sounding board.
She'll she'll be that champion that says behind like, yeah, yeah, you go kick his ass.
That's right. I mean, she's she's down to roll all the time. She is. She's amazing.
That's awesome. That's awesome. Now, now how does she feel about you?
Now? Did you guys meet when you were in the military? Real quick?
We did? Yeah, yeah, so we met at my first duty station.
She was actually the daughter of a medic who was in my unit, which I did not realize until well within our eating path.
So they always say, never talked down to a medic, because one day your ass will be looking up at one.
Yep, exactly, you know, exactly.
Well, always be nice to your medic. The medics, the cooks, and supply. Those are the three dudes you want to.
Be friends with.
Really, And and the guy that does dorm guard for you having to wake up every two hours.
That guy too, Oh yeah, yeah, dude puts the firewatch schedule together.
Yeah yeah, yeah, be friends with that guy. Just be like, hey, what's up.
I'll take whatever shift, but can I have the one that just goes to bed at nine instead of seven. Let me, yeah, exactly, Yeah, but not like the eleven to twelve. No, No, you know, be friends be friends. You know, kindness goes a long way. Now now we're joking about like some kindness. And you know you're an infantryman and you're working for Primary Arms, and you know Primary Arms has a very specific thing, and that is making solid products, optics and equipment for end users to use and successfully. Right now, tell me a little bit about the manufacturing of Primary Arms. Does that come from the USA or is this optic that I'm about to talk about just the specific one a USA made optic.
So right now we've got one US made and it's a we've made a really big deal about it. We released it at Shot Show. We've been talking about it with a couple of agencies and organization for about a year now and kind of gauging interest on it on a federal side and things like that. But yeah, we've released it to the public Shot Show twenty five and it is it is our first US made And when we say US made, we mean US made, US materials, US manufacturing, US coatings, It is US maids, it is it's not you know, parts of here. Yeah, it's it's none of that. It's not assembled. It's made here.
Right, it is made. Is it made in Texas?
Yes, we we put it all together and build it here in Texas. And then we've got some manufacturing partners with some like machine shops, a couple of them here in Texas. We've got some electronic shops here in Texas, but some of them very very specialized things like the lenses. That was probably one of the biggest struggles that we had. But they're therefrom outside. So we've got you know, people from all over the United States kind of with specialized components that were we did all the design stuff on and while the prototyping and bring them in here and we build them all here in Houston.
It's called the ht X DASH.
One is the US made optic and that fits a multitude of pistols that have a rear mounting site capability, right for like an RMR or like a rear red dot.
Is that what we're talking about.
Yeah, So that's that's kind of one of the coolest features about it.
So, like I've got one here.
You can see just the raw body there isn't a footprint, not a specific footprint for anything anyway. So when we initially set out with a design of this, instead of using like some type of plate system to adapt your gun to the dot that you're mounting it to, we want to adapt our dot to whatever platform you're putting it on. By doing that, we can keep it as low as possible, because anytime you use a plate, you're going to lift that thing up off the slide a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more depending on the plate system, and you're gonna lose your co witness.
You're going to change the way you shoot that gun.
So a good example is somebody who's really used to shooting like iron sights on a glock. Now they're going to throw a dot on there, and now they've got to switch over to suppressor eye sights. They actually watch these dudes pick this gun up, but they've been shooting for ten, fifteen, twenty years, and they pick the gun up and then their chin goes because they've got to come up another half inch. So now they're yeah, because they're used to presenting flat, and then people come up.
And it's they're losing that time.
So if we can make something low enough where we don't have that issue, then they don't have to use suppressor eyes, sights, they don't have to change the way they shoot. All they're doing is they're basically inserting a red dot into the platform that they know and love. So they're gaining that additional functionality without losing anything, without changing anything, without.
Having to retrain, because retraining's hard.
I mean all of us that have been doing something one way forever, like just a slight.
Variance to that, and it's like, no, I don't like this anymore. This isn't this isn't my thing.
Right, change and we resist change.
Yeah.
Yeah, We're like whoa, whoa.
Because I wrapped my hands for boxing a certain way and I have for a while, and my coach is like, no, you should do it this way, and I'm like, yeah, I'm still doing it the other way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The one time you like do horrible in the fight, everything hurts, like you get ko right three seconds in a round one.
It's like, because of these stupid raps, I told you I need to do it.
The other yeah, right, right, exactly exactly.
It's just like the simplest thing it's like, you know, you sit here and you put the ball in the basket.
You put the ball in the basket. You put the ball in the basket, and now you got to.
Put the red dot in the basket, and so you have to just acquire that. But what I like about a red dot for what we use is you just open site picture. You just find that red dot. You just know that it's zeroed into your coat witness of your your platform, and pop, pop pop this wherever my I see the red dot is where I should be placing it.
Yeah, it's target focus shooting. So you don't have to you're not looking at that front side anymore.
You're not yeah, you know, swinting.
You shouldn't have to squint, you know, it should be just both eyes open scanning, you know, peripheral vision going on. So we do a lot of war games here in Utah, right, So one of my main things is getting like one hundred and two hundred guys together, like us, guys who could never serve guys with asthma. Things like guys goals and they go after replica pistols like the M seventeen. We have an Airsoft version of it. We have the glocks we had at charge.
You know, all.
Every replica guns are amazing.
Right, and so something like this, you know, if it comes at a price point that's like maybe I don't know, I'm guessing like three five hundred dollars. That's something that an injuries are like my own crew would put on their guns. We got eotech, We've got you know, all these different things, and so you know, Tucha cons guys spend thermal We have hollowsome thermal optics on six hundred dollars guns. Yeah, yea, So hunting each other at night with there's your soul, hunting through the fog at Camp Pendleton when ocean side rolls in and the fogs all over there, We're like, how come nobody can see nothing in all you years?
Hit? Hit? My guys are just looking through the fog with thermals.
Right, yep.
And so and so to be able to have like you know, a primary arms rear amount of sight on a multitude of pistols, I'm just how much is this thing going to go for?
Can you give me kind of a price point?
Yeah, So the US one, I mean, that's that's kind of the cash twenty two to it when you build stuff in the US, it's.
Not cheap prices.
Yeah, it's it's it's definitely a premium dot. And we're running MSRP on this thing with the Vulcan Radical, which I'll go over here in a second, is right around the seven fifty Street price is going to be less, of course. And then if you just do a dot and not the Vulcan to standard for MOI dot, you're looking right around like the seven and six ninety nine as an MSRP, so Street's a little bit lower on it. But that's kind of the cool thing about primary ms optics is we do a multitude of optics. So like for the dudes that are looking for dots for training or for like throwing them on, they're high Kapa, are there?
Whatever? Yeah there? You know.
We do a in our CLX series or our Classic series, we do a arm our footprint and we also do an RMSC footprint red dot that retails at like one hundred and fifty bucks with a lifetime. So you take a BB to that thing, or take a header off of a set of stairs and you crush it, like I give you know what.
It's primary arms to be stocked at my store A S A P.
I just want to put them out. Oh yeah, one hundred percent. You know, we'll we'll, we'll work that out, no problem. I'm actually expanding into a new kill house and nice. Yeah, I got about a ten thousand square foot kill house right now.
And then you know that we do.
That's kind of the side that this is.
I love to do this interview right here, all right.
I love to be on this podcast and talk to guys like yourself and gals and learn about you and and the side gigs that I do.
There's just so many other things like the.
War games and the indoor kill house and you know all that replica firearms that I deal with.
The muscle memory is one to one and.
Yeah, it's the same.
I got into it, like I've been playing for I don't know, five six years now, seven years longer than that long time. And I got into it for the reps because I just wanted to, like, hey, I want to be able to shoot my pistol in my house. And at the time, I was living in Wisconsin and it's cold in the winter time. It's just snows all the time. It's always cold, or it's oppressively humid one of the two and being able to shoot inside and get those reps in you know, site picture, side alignment, trigger press.
It's transition from target to target. It's huge. And then I've like, oh, other people like this too, and now.
I can shoot other people this and I will ask and it's just like this big thing that comes out. And then you go and you have access to facilities all over the country. You can go out to GTI, you can get and you know, if you and I wanted to go out there, we got to pay thirty k to get in there for a Saturday and Sunday if there aren't any other trainings going on. Correct, but you got to do a big like meal sim event or something. In these places, it's one hundred and fifty two hundred fifty bucks in you're in and you can go train at these multimillion dollar facilities.
The training value it's huge.
Now there is the airsoft aspect of it, and sometimes air softers are going to airsoft. Anybody who plays and knows exactly what that means.
Percent Nothing gets away from use, the real smell.
Nothing can get away from the smell and the fear of a real platform of a firearm. Yeah, nothing that's ever going to like take away the bang this is? Is this loaded? It's completely disassembled on my desk. Is it loaded?
You know? You're like it's.
Completely dissembled, but you might be loaded, right, Like, you know, I don't want to pull your you.
Can still bite. It's like a headless snake.
Yeah, sharts something about you, you know.
And so you know a lot of people say airsoft teaches bad habits, and I'm like, tell me the bad habit, and I'll tell you the bad habit. And so the bad is we hunt other people like consistently, Like my bad habit is I point my gun at somebody.
Don't do that, you know, And you're not supposed to do that. No, I meant to do that.
It's intending, right, So to intend to shoot at what you aim at. That's the whole point of using your gun. And so it's like my dad always taught me, hey, don't point it unless you intend. And I'm like, well, there's three guys over in a bunker. I totally intend. You know what I'm saying. It's like, yeah, exactly. So other than that, it's like there's a lot of same disciplines A lot of same. You know, safety guardrails are in place, like don't sweep me, don't muzzle flash me, you know, et cetera. And it's a great learning ground, okay to teach as well. And again, some people who have asthma or like a premature eye for birth, nothing they can do about it. They just can't enlist, they can't go. Yeah, it's like what do they get to do? Well, they get to throw on some gear, run outside and go fight for five or ten hours in the day in the desert with us, and they get to like, you know, maybe shoulder to shoulder with a guy like yourself who's been playing for six years now, and like, hey, what's up, bro?
It's like, what is that on your gun? Oh?
You mean the primary arms optic that I have on my airsoft pistol that I got from Rad's store.
What or wherever you get it? I'm just saying, right, because that's that's that's.
Just one avenue for you guys to always think about, right, which you obviously do. The other is, obviously the agencies and the folks that are like, you know, always wanting to have it there for that exact reason. I just don't see any difference between having an M seventeen or P three twenty and M seventeen P three twenty with the dot you can take the dot off or put it on yours, or take the dot off and put it on the airsoft one so that you can always train with it in your house and have that same clarity, the same you know, chrispness that you want to see from that radical. You know, there's these there's radicals on the market. I've seen them. I've seen a.
Ton of them.
A ton of them have been to like seventeen shot shows, you know, and like how many times, how many optics can you see? You know, these were made in China, these were made overseas, These made here, multiple radicals inside. It's like yeah, but there's a little blur in it, or it doesn't quite it's just not quite crisp. But then you get somebody who puts love, energy, passion into a device. They say, hey, you know, if we had this type of fiber in it, it would be brighter and crisper. Those types of things are priceless because it matters when you're getting into a firefight.
Yeah, yeah, it's all about you know, speed to first round on target, and there's certain things you can do.
Nothing can ever replace training.
I mean, if you've got to choose between buying a four thousand dollars gun or spending one thousand dollars on a gun three thousand dollars on Ammo and going to shoot, buy the thousand dollars gun, spend the rest of it on AMMO, go shoot. Training. Training. Training. That being said, and there are technology or technologies out there. There are equipment suggestions and equipment choices out there that can help to.
Bridge that training gap.
I've mentioned briefly the Vulcan Radical when I was talking about the HTx here, and that's one of those pieces of technology that can help bridge the gap. So people that are transitioning over to a pistol optic for the first time, the hardest thing they kind of struggle with is finding the dot in that window.
So with iron sights, it's easy.
I can see where my front side is, so I can drop that ball in the basket. Every single time I can see where it is, I can drive the gun to get my front site post into my rear.
Notch with a red dot.
If that dot's not in the window, I have no idea where it is. That's when you see a lot of guys when they we call it fishing.
For the dots.
So they'll get their gun and they'll sit there and you can see them kind of doing this because they're looking for that dot with the vulcan. Our vulcan has a in the HTx is a two and forty our circle and are other optics. We've out a two hundred and fifty way out of circle, but when you present it correctly, you can't see it.
You can't see that circle. All you see is the dot, which is the site picture that you want.
If you come up with a bad grip out of the holster, you're shooting around the barricade, you know you're somebody shooting at you, and it's a very reaction. Oh shit, I got to shoot back. And you don't have that perfect side limit site picture. You lose the dot in the window because that circle's so big. You can still see the circle, so you know which way to drive that gun to get it back to center.
Everybody knows how to.
Find the center of a circle, unless you're in the Marine Corps, in which case you to ask your anybody and I'll help you but you can drive that right back to center and pick up that good site picture. So we're increasing that first round on target speed. And like, the dude who sits right behind me is actually my boss. He's Marine Corps. We got a bunch of Marine Corps UDEs. Oh, I believe it.
Anybody who's in it's you know.
We can all make fun of each other if somebody from the outside makes fun of us, and we all gang up on that one person on the outside.
So I'll tell you, dude, I'll tell you my buddy that works up in light and shot Mitch. I'll give him a shout out. He's a love and bravo. My office manager up there, pax Uh you know, has that circle with the chevron on his red dot ready to go. He is that guy. He also loves Primary Arms and so when I was telling him I was going to have you guys on the show, He's just like, yeah, that's awesome. And he's the guy that should be really like, I should have said, write me everything you wanted to know about Primary Arms, and he would tell you about your company. He's so he can't help it. He can't help it.
He's got I'm the same way it's my My wife tells me like every time. I'm like, you know, I was thinking about getting into and she's just no, no, no, because there's no like little bit. I'm not gonna like dabble in this a little bit. It's I go whole hog. It's and it doesn't matter what it is. I'm a big radio nerd, so I do like ham radio stuff, scuba dive, I do motorcycles, guns. Guns has been the biggest consistent I've out of my life. But it is it is full send on everything and unfortunately everything I like to do.
Like I don't have cheap bobbies. I mean I got a room full of airsoft. Gots it up.
I got a whole shop and I'm another a kill house for airsoft.
I'm telling you, I've dedicated.
And started is one weekend. You're like this seems.
Yeah, exactly. No, that's like a lifestyle. I've invested everything. I put my neck on the line for it. You know the podcast, I go full speed on the podcast. I love that, dude. I love that your full speed all the time. And what you love to do is you're passionate about those things and get out of the Yeah, yeah, just get out of your way, and so you probably really enjoy working at Primary Arms. And so, as someone who transitioned out of the military at Primary, now tell me something, did you are you the founder? How did the Primary Arms come about in two thousand and eight?
No?
No, yeah, So I work for him, the owner of the company. His name is Marshall Learner. Awesome dude, really really cool guy.
One of the.
Nicest, kind of most caring dudes I think I've ever had the opportunity to work for is It really is great. He's also big into cars, which is cool because I like him too, and he's got a lot cooler cars than I do. But he actually started off selling optics on air fifteen dot com on rfcom kind of through the back of his barbershop. He owned a couple of barbershops at the time, and that's how it started.
He's basically on.
The forums, and you know people on forums, they're there, they haven't changed over the years. So somebody was basically like, you know, you can't get any good optics. There's no such thing as good stuff from overseas, from China, from Japan, from wherever. And Marshall's like, well, you know, if you if you design it right and you have a good manufacturing partner and you hold them up to their quality, you can get good stuff. So a dude on the forum is keyboard warring it. He's like, prove it.
Do with that.
So Marshall's like okay, and he flew overseas. He went visited a bunch of factories and got established a really good relationship with the one that he liked, and he brought in the first thing. It was a red dot, a little just standard red dot. Brought that in and offered it up on art coom and boom sold out immediately, so he got some more. And then oh, that's that's cool too. Let's let's do something with this other optic. And he brought that in and it just kind of grew and grew from there, and he started selling out of there's a strip mall here in Houston that he moved the first Primary Arms into. And that's when he kind of picked up other stuff as well. So if anybody knows Primary Arms, dot com sell everything. You can buy guns, Ammo, you can buy optics, you can buy other people's optics. They sell you know, all the big brands, Vortex and Trigicon and everybody's in there. And he did that at that strip mall, and it grew and grew and grew, and he'd buy more spaces and more spaces until basically owned the whole thing and just ran out of space, right And that's when he made the transition and moved to the location there now, which is actually across the street from here. It's on the south side on Beltway in two eighty eight, on the south side of Houston. Gorgeous building. It is absolutely jammed a capacity right now. And because you know, the growth just never stopped right then, we bought and started to build out over here about three years ago because originally Optics was operating kind of out of the back corner of that, and we kept growing and kept growing, and then we started this main USA project and we knew that that wasn't going to happen in the building over there. So we got this facility where a little over fifty thousand square feet here and this is where we do everything. So you know, I'm over here on the marketing and product development side. We've got our engineering team over here, our sales teams over there, supply chains over here, our inspections are actually done right outside of my door. We've got our inspections area. Which of primary arms optics that go out to the world are inspected the facility. Yeah, it's every single one of them, gets hands on them. Anybody who has a primary room's optic, open the box up, look in the lid.
You'll see a stamp with a number on it.
That's the inspection stamp, every single one, which is pretty impressive. A lot of companies do and this isn't the first optics company that I work for, and I can tell you a lot of the other optics companies out there.
They'll do just a ten percent.
So they get one hundred cases in, they'll inspect one case, good to go. Okay, yep, we'll go and we'll ship it out, and you know, usually it's pretty good.
Return rates aren't too bad.
But every now and again you get a lemon with ours, our return rates under one percent.
Because every single one is.
Inspected and we have a threshold of acceptable fallout, there's you know, well we'll catch them, pull them out of line, and sometimes they're just blems, like it's just a small cosmetic thing. We've actually got kind of a joke outside that they'll they'll bring stuff into us and we'll take a look at it and like, so, what's wrong with this? Like now, look if you see here there's like a little abnormality in the thing, and you're looking and you're looking like.
I don't see it.
They're like, well, it's there, and it's I mean, okay if you say it's there and then they gets.
Out or whatever it is, but field bro just destroy the field.
Yeah, It's it's insane.
Like they can actually look through scopes like they take you know, this is one of our new big boys. So they can look through this and they can focus on separate elements of glass inside of it to make sure that everything is right. If there's dust on like the second set of doublets that sitting in here, Oh there's dust in it, and then they'll bleme it out. Like it's incredible that the very unique skill that comes with that job. They've absolutely mastered out there, which is pretty neat. Yeh here for three years, built out the clean room here and you know, started producing and doing prototyping and the HTx and started building out and stuff like that. Now we're denounced, we're in production. We're starting to make them and it's exciting a lot of growth in a very very short time.
Well, a lot of shout out to Marshall for just persevering and just saying prove me wrong kind of thing.
You know. It's like, okay, forums, he's sitting.
Here going snip snip, snip, snip snip, looking at his forums, cutting hair. He's like optics out the back door, and now he's got fifty thousand score foot facility. I'm literally looking at a thirty three thousand square foot facility here in Salt Lake City. My price is per square footage?
Is?
It's not cheap? Right? These things?
I mean, we're Houston, we're downtown. He used to like this. It's not cheap either.
No, No, it's the facility street.
The main facility is twice as big as this one.
Is massive, massive, damn.
Yeah, you guys need to make a little indoor CQB shoot house in a corner of it and have them come in and play a little bit there and maybe check out what you have for them to see.
I don't know, I'm just thinking already.
So I actually put together it's called tactics and tacos.
Yes, yes, I do taco Tuesday.
Yeah, there's this. There's this little Mexican good spot next to the indoor place we go.
We get together once a month and there's a bunch of people from the office here and it's it's open to everybody, every and whoever wants to come up. I've got a bunch of guns that I get ready, I charge the batteries. I got Amma magazines to like, you come pay your field entry fee, I will give you everything else else play, which I think if you like it, like it, go by year and you'll be and everybody likes it, like they go in and play once and then as soon as they're done with.
That, they're going over to the store with a card in there and they're ready.
To ye, like what can I and and and and the more real it is from a real manufacturer, the better we like it as consumers in war games and airsoft because we want we want the real thing. You know, a lot of the gear that guys at our level are wearing is deployed gear that's been purchased or you know, it's like, oh, they could never get in and get this JPC plate carrier, but yeah, here's one for a certain amount and they can afford it, they buy it. These dues are kidded out to the nines.
You know.
I got guys in the Guard. In the Guard he has a.
High cut on his helmet and they're like, who are you high speed? And he's like, oh, I'm private first class so and so. And they're like, hey, why do you got a high cut in a cobra buckle belt? And he's like, well, I know rad and they're like, can you get us five more? I love the guard I love the guard man because those guys wait all month long to go blow stuff up on the weekend and they want to look good doing it. It's not they have to do it every day. So I love the guard bro. I love the guard All guards are great, even you Air Guard, Marine Corps guarden. There's no Marine Corps guard. That's a joke to the Marines. No Marine Corps guard.
Except if Marine Corps had a guard, they'd be the best on guardian out there.
No no, no, no no no. So primary arms are you guys looking for anybody to come on board with your fifty thousand square foot warehouse and the double the size on the other cross the street. If I'm a veteran or somebody's out there in the market and they're like, hey, how do I put my skill set to use? You know, I've been a gunsmith in the army, working in the armory for the last fifteen years. I need to do something. Do you think can they reach out to Primary Arms?
Absolutely? Yeah.
So if you go to our website right down at the bottom, there's a tab that says careers, click into that. It's got all open job listings. You know, when we open a job listing up, we don't just open it internally. We just don't just open it externally. When we open it, it's open to everybody. Because Marshall's got to saying he's he's proud to be able to put the right people in the right seats on the bus. And that's what's built in the success of Primary Arms and Primary MS Optics is having those right people in place, and you know, you might be the right person, might be on the wrong seat, So there's always opportunity to share around and do the thing that both benefits you as well as benefits your organization and with for veterans, especially dudes that are getting out. Veterans know what it is to be committed to the suck. So like, even though it's miserable and you don't want to do it, you're gonna burn that basically burn the fifty five gallon drum of shit that came out of the bottom of that porta John, because that's your job and if you don't do.
It, somebody else has to do it and to get done. Yeah, it's got to get done.
And so a lot of it's have that mindset of like, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna buckle into this thing and I'm just gonna do it because I made a commitment and this is my job and I'm going to keep doing it.
You know, that's not what we look for here.
We want people that know what their strong suits are, that know how to value themselves and then how they can benefit the organization.
Like there's there's dedication and there's a free course.
So like I'm extremely proud to work for PAO and they're is that dedication to the brand where all I want is Primary Arms Optics. When I compete, I'm running Primary Arms Optics. Everything I do is p AO. It's I live breathing po I want the brand to grow and succeed regardless of my involvement in it. I want to make sure that everybody here is elevated to the maximum their potential. And that's the mindset that you look for in those employees, which which you know veterans have that in them, but they do have that part where they just they hold on to that thing doing something that they hate.
But that's their job and they're going to keep doing it.
Like it's okay to be like, yo, this isn't for me, This isn't I'm more of a vanilla ice cream guy, and all you've got strawberry over here. I'm not into it. And it's it's okay to let go of that and then move over to something that you think is going to make you happier. And if it doesn't, it doesn't you know by gone snow killings, and yeah, you find something that does.
But yeah, we look for that, We look for the dedication.
We look for pride and sell as well as pred and unit or in our case, pride in the brand that you work for for in the company, and you know, the fight to move forward and grow into what we all know it can be.
So I love that, now, are you guys?
Going to have any type of shot show twenty twenty sixth party, we're talking next year.
I don't know. We've been talking about that for the last couple of years.
I really wanted to do an HTx party because I mean reshoring manufacturing, especially something like this. So I can tell you HDX developing that supply chain, it didn't exist. There's no like, you can't call up one eight hundred lenses and have them cut.
The lens that we need to write this thing like.
We had to first find a US lens manufacturer, which is not easy. There's a lot of people that cut lenses in the US with imported class.
That's that wasn't what we were looking for.
So putting all that stuff together and building that supply chain out now hasn't been done before. There's one of the glass manufacturers that we work with now they're like, you know, we can build this, but the machines don't exist here. So we have to figure out how to build this. And we worked with them and we work together to develop that, which is really cool, a technology that didn't exist here in the States.
You know, we got to develop that to help them make it happen.
Happen but that's I mean, it's a big deal to be able to do something like that. I really wanted to have a party at Vegas for it and you know, bring everybody in and like, you know, look y'all wanted us made stuff.
We did but didn't happen. So maybe, I mean we're still talking about it. Maybe for next year. Well we'll see. There's a lot of cool, big things coming.
So you know, that's always always a possibility.
Put it on your calendar now so you might look into it. You can save a little bit of your books sooner, that's all I'm saying. Yeah, to get a building. It's like, you know, what about this for next January? You're like, but it's just barely January.
You're like, yeah, you know.
Now, I've been some crazy shots show parties, you know, and I've seen like snowmobile championships from pry to you know, all these different types of parties. So I could just see Primary pulling in that crowd.
You know what I mean?
What a booth that is quote une hundred percent dude, a bus picture up at the Venetian takes you to the primary space, you know what I just saying. So and because I'll be there. So I'm just trying to get myself on the list right now.
It's like list rad.
You've got one of the VIP.
That's what's up, dude.
I just I just want to see some of your more cost effective optics. Probably, uh, you know, after we get done, I'll reach out to you and you can over some info and I can just have my business partner check it out. And if you're also a small business out there and you're looking to carry a product line that can be sustainable in your own small business, you got glass cases and you're locally supported, then you know, I would also recommend checking out Primary Arms Optics and you know Primary Arms honestly and seeing if you guys do uh I mean you have the wholesale, you have that whole line for distributorship to retailers like ourselves, right, yeah, yeah.
We've got there's a couple of divisions of the company here, so like the primary and wholesale is again it's a bunch of different brands. So if you're a dealer out there, if you have a small retail shop, like it's a it's a true B to B wholesale, so you can go through and order whatever you're looking for on there and get it shipped here and you can you know, ship it for resale and then we do b to be direct to retailers here with optics as well.
So optics. We don't sell directly consumers.
We're a dealer based only dot Com Worker Side, which is another basically another company. They're the ones who do have the consumer sales. But yeah, any of the shops are out there. We love our dealer network where we've actually I just have been back in the States now for three days after a month long trip overseas. We had wa Yeah, yeah, the European Shot Show and before that, which is like a big the same sort of thing, but it's more like military police, law enforcement, that tactical stuff.
You know, G wagons with fiber rocket launcher.
Yeah, seriously, bro.
All that stuff. Yeah, it's a wild show. Crazy.
The g wagons I see driving around Draper Utah, Sandy, Utah where I live. I'm like, you guys, those are military, you know vehicles, and they're all like eight hundred.
Thousand dollars Haligen headlights. So I'm just like blacked out.
I'm like up armored. You can tell they're up armored.
Just the way it sits on this dude, that's that's not a sixty eight hundred pound truck.
That's a that's a ten thousand.
Pounds you got right, tax right off seven thousand or more? Right?
Yeah?
Yeah, exactly up armor that.
Holy cow, dude, you're so cool, bro.
Thanks for coming on to our show, and thanks for talking about some of your conflicts and you know, going over to Iraq and talking about your striker unit and being infantry and your mom and bringing her up and the love that you still have for her.
Whether she's here or not, I don't.
Know, but oh yeah, she's still around, then.
You should always just tell her I love you and thanks for letting me get that big mac mom.
I appreciate it, right, yep, every day day, every day, every day.
And you have a supporting wife at home who's sitting there taking care of you and making sure that you can bounce off of her wait in more ways than one, I suppose.
Yep. I do have four kids as well.
Okay, yeah, I got three kids, so we still live okay, and uh, you know, and Primary Arms right doing good things for those of us in the shooting sports industry, and.
You know whether even if you're just like on a boat and you need some binoculars.
Okay, I mean you guys have got some legit binos too, right, I mean yeah, and.
Like they're great. You can kind of see them on the shelf behind me there. You know.
We came out with those a couple of years ago, and we did a Selex and a GLX line and I'm in a ten forty two. They're fantastic binoculars and they retail like the g Lex, a really really good one retail.
They got like a compass inside of it so as you move around, you can see all of your different points of reference.
No, we don't have we don't have any like augmented feature sets in there that like, we don't have image stabilization or compass.
Or anything in there yet.
We might there's enough demand for it for sure, But I mean the retail on you're looking like two hundred bucks less than two hundred bucks.
The SLX is.
Like one hundred and fifty is I mean, it's super approachable price points. Again, a lifetime warranty, so you got them on the boat. Unfortunately, you drop them off your boat there. The like I need them to be able to replace the back. Actually, call me up because I'm a diver, So tell me you dropped them. I'll get them. There might be a slight finder's feed for it, bring them up to the top of or a place for it.
Did you dive Lake Michigan when you lived in Wisconsin? Is that where you do? Did you die?
No?
Actually, so my wife and I got certified down here, which I should have just done enough on Wisconsin because we got certified in January in Houston when we did our final checkout dive was fifty one degrees freezing.
It was miserable.
And but yeah, I mean summertime when you got bathwater basically that you're diving in if you're doing greenwater, and then down on the golf down in Cosmo, Mexico, all over the place.
Oh yeah, that's really nice. See.
My dad grew up in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, which is on the border of the Lake Michigan right there. I used to leave it at my grandpa's house and go fish on the pier on Lake Michigan. But that end of the day, my dad used to go scuba dive an old tugboat wreckage or something, and he had a tug.
I don't know.
I just that's what I was thinking. Did you scuba dive of Lake Michigan?
You know?
So Yeah, there's there's some really cool diving on Lake Michigan, really cool.
I haven't done it yet, but that's definitely one of the bucketless dives I want to do. There's a cool wood boat, like big wood sailing vessel wreck that's out there you can dive.
I'd love to get down on that thing. That thing is right, such a cool boat to see.
Dude, you're awesome. Bro Okay, I actually keep talking. I keep talking. I've had you for an hour. I know you're running a business. So thank you so much for being on softwap dot com and softwarep Radio and dude, you know, it's just been a really nice time to have you here, Steven.
I just I don't know what else to tell you.
Broo, pleasure man. I appreciate you having me on. Whenever you guys want.
You're welcome back.
Yeah.
If you have more products that you guys want to like, you know, expose on our show and say, hey, check us out.
We have a new thermal glasses. You just push the button.
They look just like your Carreras rad You wouldn't even know they're thermal overlays a.
Flylens, right, bro.
So, if you have anything you want to bring back, or you want to let us know about some other ideas that you guys have going on at Primary Arms, you just let us know about it and we'll have you on and again, thanks so much. You can check out Primary Arms on X on Instagram, on Twitter is x so.
You can do that and YouTube.
I think there's a YouTube account, and you know, they do really good footage and it's really cool looking. So tell them rat Sentia, tell them you came over from softwarep Go follow him, give them a like. And I'm gonna say thanks so much for being on the show.
Dude. Everything I'll let you close it.
Yeah, go ahead, appreciate it.
Yeah, you know, we we love all our customers out there, We love all the listeners out there.
Thank you so much for having me on.
We'll definitely be on again because there's we're always working on cool stuff. Yeah, hit us up all the social media's Primary Arms optics type that in you're going to find us. If you see my face on it, it's probably one of ours. It's uh, it's that's where all the cool information comes out and where a lot of people like especially on I G and X or x, Twitter, tweet, space face made, whatever it is, all that stuff, That's where a lot of.
The new stuff gonna debuts.
Where you're about it first, So follow us, and we also love hearing from everybody out there. If you have like, you know, it would be cool if that's how all these projects start. So wouldn't it be cool if we had been closed pistols that you can mount in every footworn. Wouldn't it be cool if you had a first book playing rifle scope that was as bright as my red dot? It all starts as at So if you have ideas.
This would be cool if a twenty thirty two never died and you didn't have to buy them and throw them away, you know, Like, wouldn'd be cool if you could have rechargeable twenty thirty two's, CR one two three a's. I'm just saying, like some of these little things. Now, okay again, I'm gonna have you back on the show. Okay, we're gonna get back on the show. We could talk all day, but I'm gonna get your info and then I'll start getting some of your stuff in my shop too. And if you're a local shop out there and you're looking for a edge on the market with a cool ass product, check out Primary Arms Optics. And this is rad On behalf of Steve Morgan over at Primary Arms and Marshall and my man, my main man, Brandon Webb who's also my boss, and all of the guys and gowns behind the scenes here, thanks so much, and Calum, my producer. I really appreciate you always putting this out there and typing all of the words out. He listens to the recording, he has no idea what's gonna happen. And then when they put it up on SOFTWAREP Radio, I read what he writes and I'm like, is that what.
We talked about. That's great, that's great, you know, perfect, perfect sick.
So shout out to my crew and again Primary Arms Optics check them out on all social medias. And this is rad On behalf of Steve and Brandon webs saying peace later.
