The November presidential election has been referred to as a “revolution.” I prefer thinking of it as the “reawakening” of a previously too-silent majority. It lacked the sweeping mandate of the Reagan landslide from the 80s, but it was sufficient to send an unmistakable message to progressive politicians and businesspeople who thought they could remake the country in their image. Turns out those of us who populate flyover country weren’t the only ones unwilling to follow that “progressive” pathway.

Republican wins in previously liberal strongholds, including all seven “red wall” states, confounded those who have long considered themselves, if not the “best” then certainly the “brightest.”

Mandate or not, some notable businessmen have already begun making course changes due to what they see as a turning political tide.

But those changes aren’t happening everywhere.

Or quickly.

As many business owners and managers in the “disfavored” firearms industry have attested, it’s still difficult to maintain, much less establish banking relationships. Ditto access to credit. The anti-gun/gun owner sentiments are still pervasive in may financial companies’ C-suites. To many in the financial world, firearms companies, among the most regulated businesses in the United States, are considered to have the same level of “business risk” as pornography.

But there’s another revolutionary in the Trump family: Donald Trump, Jr. He’s neither as vociferous or prone to outrageous social media pronouncements as his father, but he’s been quietly (mostly) battling against those financial organizations that care little for gun owners or the Second Amendment. Trump the younger unapologetically campaigned for his father, but has fought most of his battles in the business arena.

To do that, he’s joined forces with another Wall Street revolutionary turned entrepreneur, Omeed Malik. They’ve used Wall Street’s Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) to back companies Trump describes as sharing “my pro-American values.” SPACs, in simple terms, pair shelf-ready but otherwise blank public companies with small companies or startups. The result gives them listed public companies and access to the capital markets.

Their first SPAC created what they described to me as “First Amendment” protectors: Truth Social, Public Square andRumble. Additionally, it provided funding to create former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson’s his own media outlet.

Those outlets, not coincidentally, have been credited with helping the Trump presidential campaign and resultant win by providing direct communications with voters, rather than the “filtered” information delivered by what Trump Jr. calls a decidedly anti-First and Second Amendment “legacy media.”

Now, they’re using the same strategy to turn Grab A Gun, a “mobile-focused online firearms retailer” into a public company via a “business combination” with Colombier Acquisition Corp. II (NYSE: CLBR). According to the duo, the combined company will become GrabAGun Digital Holdings, Inc. with shares expected to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “PEW”.

Armed with what Colombier II Chairman and CEO Omeed Malik calls “equity currency and cash from this transformative transaction” he says GrabAGun will position itself to “modernize the firearms buying experience.”

GrabAGun is growing, and profitable, but CEO Marc Nemati, says they’re out to change the industry by “leveraging cutting-edge technology, advanced software solutions and seamless eCommerce experiences.”

He also observed that the industry has “historically been slow to adopt modern technology” giving them a decided advantage with what the trio sees as an ignored business segment.

The segment? What they call the “next generation” of gun owners, the same 18-29 voting demographic that cast votes for Donald Trump. Donald Jr. says the vote reflects the realization by many of the younger voters that they need to be capable of protecting themselves.

According to Trump, they “have seen some of the disasters taking place in our country, and are now very interested in that Second Amendment. They're interested in being able to protect themselves. I see the outreach. I see a huge uptick in the amount of women, even women that are probably left leaning in places that I used to live, that are very left leaning, that are saying, hey, you know what? I would have never thought about this before.”

And, says Namati, “a lot of younger buyers not just shopping online, but they're shopping using their phones and their phones and their mobile devices. So we want to make sure that the workflow they have from start to finish on a on a transaction that's a little bit more complicated than just buying a pair of stocks online or something. Obviously there are extra regular regulatory steps just to go through by shipping to an FFL. So we want to make sure that that the flow is easy for somebody, especially the first time, first time buyers.”

GrabAGun’s focus, Namati says, is fixed on keeping their interface “best of breed” and offering their young buyers the best prices possible online.

“Lots of young buyers are price conscious,” he says, “so part of our tech stack is optimizing our supply chain to making sure that we're getting the best possible deal on a on a product that we can then pass off the savings to to consumers.”

There’s also their Shoot Now/Pay Later option-the result of their affiliation with Trump/Malik and Credova financial, a result of their earlier SPAC success. According to information in their presentation deck GrabAGun is already profitable -and growing.

But projecting success or failure with capital markets is always a risky proposition. Especially since there’s an interesting wrinkle in the whole SPAC process. Since the original shelf company (Colombier II) is already listed on the NYSE (CLBR), it’s possible for individuals who like the idea to invest today. Essentially, that’s actually buying into the vehicle that will become GrabAGun Digital Holdings, Inc. At that point, CLBR shares will automatically change to become the new company, trading under the PEW symbol.

With this latest SPAC and the emergency of Old Glory bank (which we’ll be talking more about soon), it seems the revolution is, as they say, an ongoing situation.

As always, we’ll keep you posted.

— Jim Shepherd

Editor’s Note: To read the full interviews conducted with Omeed Malik, Donald Trump, Jr. and Marc Nemati of GrabAGun, be sure to read tomorrow’s edition of QA Outdoors. If you don’t already receive QA, you can read it online Friday morning at https://www.qaoutdoors.com