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This Marine Built a Better AR – And Got Banned from Advertising It (Ft. Devil Dog Concepts)
Description
Cameron Hillman, president and CEO of Devil Dog Concepts, joins hosts John and Kaylee on State of the Second to tell the story of a company he calls an accident. A former Marine who served as an MP and canine handler, he went into law enforcement and spent about five years on a SWAT team in New York. He got sick of fighting with the standard AR charging handle while running failure drills in gloves, so he sat down drawing one day and came up with a side charging handle system for the AR platform. Eleven years later it has grown into a full product line, and he is now retired from the job and running the business full time.
The conversation gets into why building a firearms brand is so hard. Advertising the product directly is, in his words, practically impossible, so the company started a separate coffee brand (Crayon Eater Coffee) and an apparel company (Precision Custom Apparel) as a workaround to run paid advertising outside the firearms industry and backlink it to the main company. Cameron walks through how the side charger works, the engineering problems it solves, and the markets it found beyond tactical use, including competition shooters, hunters, people with injuries, and compliance states like California and Pennsylvania where it can turn an AR into a straight pull. He also details the roughly six-to-seven year fight to make a version that works across the fragmented AR10 market and a separate armorer's tool he developed with John from Hera Arms and the company American Resistance Gear.
Cameron shares a rough stretch earlier in the year when the company's social media and business bank accounts were hacked and everything got wiped, two weeks after he retired. Social media was a vast majority of sales, and he only recovered access after working through a local assemblyman and congressional contacts to reach Meta. The episode covers GOALS as a breakthrough convention because of its media day, what it's like owning guns in New York, the failure of district attorneys to hold criminals accountable, mental health, and GOA's closing message that contacting your senator and congressman takes 30 seconds and that elected officials serve the people, not the other way around.
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Questions this episode answers
What is the Devil Dog Concepts side charging handle and what problem with the standard AR charging handle does it solve?
It is a side charging handle system Cameron Hillman designed for the AR platform after he got tired of fighting with the standard charging handle while running failure drills in gloves on a SWAT team. The concept turns an AR into a side charger without having to machine, modify, or change anything on the rifle.
Why did Cameron Hillman start a coffee company and an apparel company alongside the firearms business?
Advertising a firearms product directly is practically impossible, so he launched Crayon Eater Coffee and Precision Custom Apparel as a workaround to run paid ads outside the firearms industry and backlink that traffic to the main Devil Dog Concepts company.
How did Cameron Hillman come up with the idea for the side charger?
He got sick of fighting with the standard AR charging handle while running failure drills in gloves on a New York SWAT team, sat down drawing one day, and came up with the side charging handle system. Eleven years later it has grown into a full product line.
What happened when Devil Dog Concepts' social media and bank accounts got hacked, and how did Cameron get them back?
About two weeks after he retired, the company's social media