On May 28, Lucas Botkin announced his resignation from T.Rex Arms, a Christian-owned tactical gear company specializing in holsters. In 2020, this company blew up and went viral and currently, they have around 100 employees. But the resignation of Botkin, the company’s founder and face, called into question the hypocrisy of the company when compared to its stated values.
On June 2, T.Rex Arms put out a statement announcing the resignation of Lucas Botkin.
I hope you guys are ready for a hard video because I’m not. But this is where we are. On Wednesday, May 28th, Lucas Bodkin chose to resign from T-Rex Arms. Now there are some limits to what I can say, but one of our core principles as a company is truth and we desire to have as much transparency as possible with you.
And so to provide a little bit of backstory, for years there has been a lack of alignment, both personally and professionally between Lucas and the other three owners, which has kind of grown over time. And then recently there was an incident that was the tipping point. A T-Rex team member sent inappropriate images to someone close to Lucas. Sadly, our initial response fell short of the principles that we profess and desire to hold ourselves to.
Now we have since resolved this issue, but it was a painful moment that contributed to Lucas’s decision to leave the team. And Lucas leaving is also incredibly sad. He’s not just my brother, but he’s the founder of the company and someone with incredible creativity and drive. I really want what is best for Lucas in the future, and I’m excited to see him pursue that vision. But at the same time, I cannot overstate his impact in the past on T-Rex and the entire gun industry.
However, T-Rex Arms is more than any one person. We are a company of nearly 100 team members today. People who have poured years of their lives into building this company for you. And our purpose remains the same. To serve you and the mission. Our principles and direction do not belong to any single individual. They belong to God alone.
And so, we will keep pressing forwards, creating great educational content as well as we can, designing and manufacturing great life-saving tools, curating great products, and aiming for the best possible customer service. It’s a great mission, and we are committed to that mission, and living out the Christian principles that this company was built on, now more than ever.
Isaac Botkin gave the statement and admitted to longstanding issues where the final straw was an employee sending nude images to who Lucas Botkin would announce was his wife. To R.Rex Arms’s credit, they were transparent about this salacious detail.Â
Lucas Botkin would launch his own YouTube channel and announce his reasons for leaving the company he founded. Botkins founded T.Rex Arms in 2013 and after hiring his brother to work in the company, his brother then asked for equity. Not only did Lucas Botkin naively oblige, but when the agreement was finalized, David Botkin and his brother in-law, collectively had majority ownership in the company. This was in 2016.
To make matters worse, David Botkins wanted to bring the elder brother, Isaac Botkin, into the company. And when the agreement was finalized, Lucas would give up more of his ownership than David would to make this happen. These additional owners did not provide any capital when receiving equity in the company!
When Lucas Botkin met he wife, his brothers did not take kindly too her and as they got serious insisted on a prenuptial agreement that they had not signed with their own wives. This was but one inconsistency that took time to resolve, but the hostility towards his wife remained. Lucas Botkin describes his wife as the only person who advocated for him, which, given the partnership agreement he signed, is correct.
The tensions in the company escalated until the final straw when an employee sent nude images to his wife and was not immediately fired. Botkin acknowledges that they have since been removed, but it was already the final straw.
Lucas Botkin states that he attempted to buy out the other owners was unsuccessful. So he left the company and now the other owners are to buy him out. Lucas Botkins states that he is starting a new business and is excited about the opportunities ahead of him.
Analysis
As a business owner, this was painful to listen to. Giving away equity because an employee asked for it is dumb in general. But his brothers took advantage of the fact that the youngest looked up to them, which is sickening, on their part. Their unwillingness to provide capital for buying in shows this.
As for Lucas Botkin, his video blew up on YouTube, and he has a loyal audience that will follow him to his next venture. I’m excited to see what that will be.
One Response
Their surname is Botkin, not Botkins.
I’ve known the family since Lucas was 4 years old. I built the set for the vault in his videos in 2020. I met Kara the first time he brought her home to meet his family.
It is folly to judge his brothers without hearing what the actual agreement was. They worked their arses off doing the boring tasks of building and running the company which enabled Lucas to run around the country to gun events like a rock star. He could not have scaled the company on his own. Or if he had, he would not have had time to make the thousands of hours of shooting videos. The success of Trex Arms was because the Botkin brothers, including Lucas, worked very well together as a team. They did the hard things he didn’t want to do which enabled him to focus on the fun and exciting things he loved.
All it took was a woman to wreck that. I smelled gold digger the first time I met his future wife. This is exactly like Megan and Harry. People close to Lucas understood that he was a socially naive wealthy young man who was the perfect mark for a gold digger. To the degree that people didn’t like or trust Kara, it was because of the vibe she gave off then and now. Suggesting the prenup was mainly to protect Lucas from her. She has convinced Lucas he’s a victim and dragged him into feminist marriage counseling, proving that first impressions are usually correct. Of course Lucas is white knighting for his wife when she says boo hoo. Those of us who have been around the block a few times have seen the kind of woman who isolates her husband from his family in order to better control him.
Lucas was a grown man when he made his decisions to sell equity to his brothers. He should own his decisions like a man instead of whining about it 10 years later. They made him wealthy and earned that equity ten times over. He was a dope and a simp to take his complaints public in a way that suggests his brothers cheated him, or that they tolerated the employee who sent the dirty pics. They did not. Lucas isn’t telling the entire story.
This guy nailed it:
https://youtu.be/c4YzuU0id7I?si=KlEwl0MI3HcAEUFY
The story of Megan and Harry is not over. Time will reveal all things.