Episode Details

On this episode of State of the Second, host John sits down with Othais and Mae from C&Rsenal, the deep-research firearms channel known for hour-long documentary videos on World War I small arms. The conversation is a wide-ranging history dive rather than a policy debate. Othais explains how the show started: he picked up shooting after college with a Mosin M38, became a gun collector chasing answers the books did not have, and started writing blog posts and posting his own photography on Reddit. When the channel moved to video, Mae came on as the designated markswoman so Othais could film, and the two now run the operation full time alongside their animator, Bruno.

Most of the episode is gun-nerd territory. They get into why World War I was such a brutal subject to cover (Battlefield 1 and the YouTube series The Great War drove prices up while Othais kept his promise to finish the era), and how John Moses Browning's real genius was efficiency and iteration rather than pure invention, with credit also owed to designers like Whiting at Webley. Othais makes the case that the modern revolver was essentially settled by an 1874 patent and that much of revolver history traces to Britain and Belgium, not America. They cover Sam Colt as a salesman who pushed economy-of-scale manufacturing through constant overselling, the cyclical history of 9mm versus .45 and .40 caliber debates, Ballistol's strange medical history, surplus collecting, and why old guns cannot be cheaply reproduced today because the old-growth walnut, the milling knowledge, and the primer-limited ammo supply are all gone.

C&Rsenal brings a Winchester 97 trench gun and a Remington Model 10 into the room, and Othais talks through restoring sporterized rifles, hunting auctions for matching parts, and the obscure guns he still wants, including a Fedorov Avtomat. They also pull back the curtain on production: four or five cameras, eight channels of sound across four mic layers, and shooting between passing clouds. The back half turns to industry gossip, including a chaotic Gundies awards-show bus ride with Brandon Herrera, Rapid Fire Rachel, Ian McCollum, and Matt Larosiere, plus a story about meeting Liberty Doll. John admits they never really got to gun policy because Othais is the gun nerd of GOA and Kaylee is the policy person, so they agree to have him back for a policy episode. You can find C&Rsenal on YouTube or at the redirect domain oldgunshow.com.

Questions this episode answers

How did C&Rsenal get started, and how did Othais and Mae end up running it?

Othais took up shooting after college with a Mosin M38, became a collector, and built a following by blogging and posting his own firearms photography on Reddit before moving to video. Mae joined as the designated markswoman so Othais could film, and the two now run it full time with their animator, Bruno.

Why was covering World War I firearms so much harder and more expensive than expected?

Interest from Battlefield 1 and the YouTube series The Great War drove up prices for World War I small arms while Othais kept his promise to finish covering the era. The subject was a brutal, expensive one to document, but he stuck with it rather than abandon the period.

What did John Moses Browning actually invent versus refine, and who else contributed to designs we credit to him?

Othais argues Browning's real genius was efficiency and iteration rather than pure invention, deeply refining and combining ideas from the pre-Browning era more than inventing from nothing. He also credits other designers, including Whiting at Webley, for work behind designs often attributed to Browning alone.

Why does Othais argue the modern revolver was essentially figured out by 1874, and why does so much revolver history trace to Britain and Belgium?

Othais makes the case that the modern revolver was essentially settled by an 1874 patent and that nobody rea