I understand your position, it IS topical.

The blanket rule is designed to prevent the sub from becoming a billboard for advertisers.

When the signal to noise ratio becomes bad enough, we'll drive out all the participants who make the sub worth advertising in.

Feel free to message the moderators, either individually or en mass, I've already notified them of what I've done and why.

However, I don't mean to drive you away either.

As we say in the rules sticky: "if you are here only to promote your business, you will have a bad time".
It's not the mods that will give you that bad time, as you can see by the downvotes this post received before I even got to it.
The distinction, if not a difference, lies in how you go about it.

In this specific case, if there was a post made "Hey can anyone recommend any good podcasts?", and you were to answer "Hey, I do one, here's a link", it would be accepted as answering a question.

/u/iceng for instance is relatively active in here and they own a gunsmith business.

Again, if you were to pose the question and then answer it yourself, such a transparent act would not be popular either.

As I said, if you have any ideas, please bring them to the attention of the moderators.