GWebs was an early pioneer of online firearm-related content. Pete, the man behind gWebs. recently released several interactive “2A Maps” on his Minuteman University site and they’re worth a gander.
The online spread of Second Amendment and firearm-related content goes back to the early days of the web. Jared Yanis recently joked that in the beginning, the internet was full of cat videos and holster reviews. Someone who came onto the scene early on was Pete, known as his user moniker gWebs — or gun websites. Bearing Arms spoke to Pete about his early days and the 2A Maps.
There are currently 36 different interactive maps that gWebs is maintaining on the Minuteman University website. The topics start with some of the usual suspects like “constitutional carry” or states with restrictions on their carry permits. But in those three dozen maps, other things are covered like what the suppressor laws are like, the number of gun shops in a state, what states have permit-to-purchase requirements.
Pete is a web guy that happens to also be a gun guy (he manages about 300 websites). The juxtaposition for him was an easy and seamless kind of thing. “I come at it as a nerd website guy and then a gun guy,” Pete said.
Interestingly enough, one of the things Pete might be most well known for is his perceived level of anonymity — a trait that can be layered over the pre-”you’ve got mail” era of the internet. (Things were wild online before there was online as we know it today. Spell “whisper” wrong and you could completely blow your cover — ask me how I know.)
“So (people) would say the guy that doesn't show his face, and then how do you challenge that?” he said. “You know, you just don’t.”
For Pete he wasn’t trying to function as some sort of anon, but rather his video content on firearms, he put a big emphasis on the actual subject — the guns. He joked about being referred to as “the big fat guy,” which, news flash, there’s a glut of us in this industry. So, he put the focus on the content he was building. From there, the lore of him being a Second Amendment Sasquatch was born.
The original idea for the maps came to Pete when he was leaving a buffet in a Hilton in Vegas, “the hotel where Elvis used to be at.” He said that when you take a left leaving that buffet there’s a large area that he described as a viewing area like in the movie “WarGames.”
“They have that room with all these huge screens and all the you know the nuclear wars scenarios are going on,” Pete said. “Except (it’s) horse racing and dog racing and every sport you can imagine with a ball and all this.”
Having something similar for Second Amendment-related information is where Pete’s mind went. It was just a matter of time until the tools would be available for him to fully realize that vision and make it into a functioning reality.
One of the things gWebs is also known for are his live-feed shows on YouTube. The map project started as a very elemental thing, something to work on manually while doing a feed. Pete was just using photo manipulation software to make up the maps.
“I would do stuff live in front of people, and because I needed something to do live in front of people, one of the things I would do is these maps,” Pete explained. “And once you do one map — at least for me — let's say I don't know which states have constitutional carry. Let's say it's 2017. Okay, that map changes in 2018. So now in 2018, you do a show and you go live and you update the map, right?”
With the changes in large language models and the use of artificial intelligence, gWebs has been able to streamline this process. Now, instead of having just a map that shows one set of data that he has to manually change every time there’s something new, there are several maps with user definable filters.
The process essentially went from stop-motion picture to 4K video recording overnight.
“I'm not scared of AI. I'm not scared of coding. I'm not scared of tech, and I own a lot of servers. We have 300 websites,” Pete said. And with those tools and experience, he built out the system to make it usable and interactive.
“We're old, remember in our day we didn't have constitutional carry?” Pete mused. “So how would I put this into a timeline?” He worked all that into the coding. Now, for example, if someone wants to see what was going on in the early 1900s, they’d just change that parameter.
I was impressed when Pete first sent me an early iteration of these maps to take a look at. My first and immediate reaction was, “Let’s talk about this.” After having a chance to play with some of the maps and talk to Pete about this project, it’s certainly something I think many gun owners would find valuable.
Take a look at what gWebs has cooking over at the Minuteman University. Maybe you’ll find some use for the maps, at a minimum, you can get lost in them while you navigate the timelines of our rights. The maps can be directly accessed at MinutemanUniversity.com/2AMaps/
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