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1/2 (so far)
The Saga of Karl Kasarda
File under: Internet Drama
Dramatis personae:
Karl Kasarda is very real person with a significant internet presence, whom I have paid attention to since maybe 2015. He is (or has been) partners with Ian McCollum, who runs Forgotten Weapons, initially a website, mostly famous as a Youtube channel, and lately expanding to other social media platforms. If Forgotten Weapons is Ian's baby, InRangeTV is Karl's baby, though Karl has rarely (never?) made an appearance on FW, while Ian is (or used to be) a regular on IRTV.
Ian's focus is mostly on rifles and handguns, occasionally shotguns, and often military weapons. If it fires a brass cartridge, it's a potential Forgotten Weapon. While the focus is mainly on lesser known and rare weaponry, Ian won't hesitate to cover ubiquitous guns like the AR-15. He is also known as Gun Jesus for his long hair, mustache, and goatee, and his extensive research and authoritative takes on niche subjects.
Karl's competency is mostly based on competition shooting. He's a cerebral guy with a network security career, who has historically competed in "High Power" rifle disciplines, as well as "Cowboy Action Shooting". In the last 10 or 15 years, he has been a big promoter, host, and competitor in so-called 2 gun Action Challenge Matches, which are mostly defined in opposition to 3 gun competitions. There is plenty of history and internet words spillage regarding "2 gun vs 3 gun", but here's the gist: "3 gun" refers to rifle, pistol, shotgun, while "2 gun" omits the shotgun. "3 gun" as a discipline and community has a focus on precision without much physicality. "2 gun" as a discipline and community has a focus on effective shooting with lots of physicality (action challenge match).
Mostly within the last 5 years or so, InRangeTV has featured Russell Phagan, aka SinistralRifleman. He is a skilled 2GACM competitor, and good friend to Karl and Ian, who are all based out of Arizona (AFAIK). Russell works for KE Arms which manufactures firearms parts, largely for the AR-15 platform.
WWSD (What would Stoner do?)
In 2017, it was widely recognized in the American gun community that the AR-15 rifle (aka M16 or M4 in its military designation) (5.56mm ammunition, 16 inch barrel, gas operated, with a buttstock) is a pinnacle of engineering and design. It was designed by Eugene Stoner in the 1950s, as a scaled-down successor to the AR-10, which used a larger 30 caliber round (7.62 mm). It's pretty wild that here in 2023, the best all-purpose rifle for Americans was designed nearly 75 years ago. Have there been improvements along the way? Abso-fucking-lutely.
So now it's 2017, and what would Eugene Stoner do? Well, one of the unifying principles his early design was to use modern materials, like aluminum and polymer, to reduce weight for the same effectiveness. Polymer science was very primitive in 1950 before carbon fiber and modern epoxies. Both aluminum and steel production have become much more sophisticated, consistent, and reliable. Small parts tolerances have improved with CNC and modern milling machines.
I have a lot more to say here, but Karl and Ian came up with a modern "build" of an AR-15 rifle that uses carbon fiber and polymer along with modern metallurgy and design lessons learned from the last 75 years. Importantly, this design was based off of a polymer "lower receiver" for the AR-15, which is the item that the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives) considers a firearm. The milspec lower receiver is a chunk of forged aluminum that is then machined or milled to its final dimensions.
There have been many attempts at polymer lower receivers throughout the years, essentially all of which have been failures in function, design, or sales. The WWSD 2017 design was based off the CAV-15 from GWACS, which is a one-piece polymer lower receiver which includes the grip and the buttstock. The milspec lower receiver does not include the grip or buttstock and instead provides attachment points. The so-called "monolithic" design of the CAV-15 gives it extra strength and reliability relative to other polymer lowers.
Then, in 2020, just before the COVID pandemic hit, we have a product called "WWSD 2020". Partnered with KE Arms, Russell Phagan's company, Karl and Ian want to produce WWSD AR-15 Rifles to sell for a profit. First of all, due to their following, there are thousands or millions of enthusiasts trying to buy CAV-15 polymer lowers, along with carbon fiber handguards, and pencil profile rifle barrels, and the suppliers cannot keep up with demand. Second of all, of course, let's "monetize" this following. No shade.
I have a lot more to say but I am running out of steam. I will augment this post within 12 hours.
I never knew what to think about Karl.
On one hand he runs a very interesting and fun channel and is attuned to the issues a lot of old school cypherpunks are, which I believe to be of great import today.
On the other hand he has insane meme political views only a child could entertain.
How a grown man who in many respect is a respectable expert and subtle enough to make the best of some of the problems of modern life (his video on online censorship I believe to be quite enlightening) could also behave like such an idiot at times puzzles me.
I won't begrudge nerds for being weird, but he goes so much further than that. At least Ian has the professionalism not to embarrass himself with this sort of online drama.
Unfortunately, in my opinion they (well, I guess just really Karl at that point) stopped producing anything particularly interesting around 2019 or so. They were exploring interesting things, but they slowly stopped over time; they peaked at WWSD and then the channel broke in two. They had a few more videos on their 2020 version, but to me it came off as padding out the fact the channel was winding down (and a bit more sponsored-content-y).
I honestly find it's more just the Sinistral Rifleman show these days to try and recapture the early days of "how does thing X do in a match environment?". And that's fine, but if half your content is functionally just sponsored content I won't pay for that.
For fuck's sake, Karl, you have access to an SOT now; could you at least have an opinion about that?
It puzzles me that he drank the establishment propaganda on "muh oppression" considering most of his Old West stuff is a chronicle of the disaster that results when you make people with chips on their shoulders deputies in law enforcement, and that he styles himself as specifically counterculture. It's inconsistent with what I understand of that brand of Satanism in general- if one is anti-institutional-religion it naturally follows one would be anti-institutional-race and anti-institutional-sexuality but I guess that's what who/whom's for.
At least it hasn't managed to really make it into his videos, not that he even makes videos these days- though his refusal to use Odysee and/or Utreon for moral grandstanding reasons doesn't help the fact he shut himself out of being able to do what Ian's been gradually trialing with "go watch the full version of this over here".
Ian has enough professionalism to only embarrass himself in the ways I would expect from someone trying to advance the state of the art more than his own ego.
The Azov book didn't really go over well with his Russian contacts; in particular, Max Popenker "broke up" with him after that- I would have liked to see it specifically because, if its billing was accurate in that it shows how wars are actually fought now, it would have been informative insofar as the field of modern weaponry and its use in a fight against a neer-peer adversary. (Note: this was pre-invasion.)
Wait, when did that happen?
Also, re: Max Popenker and the Azov memoir thing, it's darkly funny that that happened literally like a week before Russia invaded, though it also sucks that we lost Max's book on Avtomats because of it. I wonder if that Azov guy ended up getting a publishing deal elsewhere.
Since Sinistral joined the channel (he posted match footage of a full-auto KP15 he made).
It would almost certainly be trivial for him to get access to proper machine guns for a video; I want to see someone seriously analyze the vz. 61 and P90, revisit that P&S collaboration where they tested ergonomics of full-power rifles and see whether or not 3-round burst really was ever a valid training tool, and maybe other stuff along those lines I'm not thinking about.
InRange has the technical capability to explore a lot of interesting stuff; Karl would rather argue on Twitter than use it.
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