Matter of Facts: Ruining Anti-Gun Propaganda

Welcome back to the Matter Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mofpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravele. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. And welcome back to Matter Facts Podcast. It's once again time for the least professional podcast on the Internet. And anybody that wants to challenge us on that, I invite you onto the show. You can explain how your podcast is more idiotic and less responsible and less professional than ours. Good luck. Indeed. If I was correct, we are kind of early. Exactly a minute early. Yeah. Well, you know. We were here. We do go early sometimes. Sometimes we run a little late. But I'd really try to, like, stick the landing. Run a ball. Run a ball. Yeah. So I see Raggle, and I see a Miss Emrick, Mrs. Emrickson. My wife is supervising teenage girls at a football game tonight, solo. Hmm. Bold choice, huh? It is a bold choice. She might require recovery bourbons. Um, she can't drink. That's right. She'll die. Yeah. But I have coffee in the pot. Well. So there is that. At least she probably won't do a war crime. Probably not. Lots of witnesses. And a daughter she's trying not to scar for life. Anyway, we got a little bit of admin work to do. I see Dr. Scary Guy. Yep, you're accounted for, sir. All right, a little bit of admin work and then the topic. We're going to ruin anti-gun propaganda and hopefully give you some ideas to ruin anti-gun people's day. Because as high and mighty as I came off on the last episode about we have to play for the people in the middle and we have to be responsible advocates for the things we believe in. This is one of those moments in time where I'm going to say that there are days where Phil presses the violence button. And I am absolutely out to make someone's life a living hell for the next 15 or 20 minutes. Showering them with facts and statistics that completely unwind their argument. It's not much, but it's honest work. I had a family friend of my wife's who challenged me to bring her facts that support the pro-gun argument. And I showed up with a binder. Oh my. She did not expect me to cite CNN and the CDC. Did you literally show up with a binder? Rachel, did he literally show up with a binder? She wouldn't talk to me when I showed up with the binder. She refused to talk to me. So I started spamming her Facebook. Every single time she made a post, I started replying with pro-gun facts with links and cited sources. It was great. For all of you out in listener land, let this be a lesson to never pick a fight with an angry autistic nerd. See, I did. I have proof. I have a witness. People in my life have learned very clearly to be very strategic about when they call what they think is my bluff. Because I almost never bluff. I almost never bluff. Because I don't see a reason to when I can just win. When I can just win. Yeah, I mean, why would I fake that I'm winning when instead I can just win? Yes, but Nick, if I know you well enough at this point in our working relationship, you view winning like using a thermonuclear weapon to solve a schoolyard tiff. That is accurate. Look, when I was a child, one of my uncles taught me a very important life lesson. And that's the lesson of weaponized escalation. It got me into a lot of trouble when I was growing up because if, say, a person was belittling or mocking one of my friends, bullying them perhaps, I was known to bounce their head off of a steel door or a locker or another kid's head, whatever was convenient at the time. But when you escalate things... So rapidly. It's like Operation Praying Mantis. Proportional response. Well, the best kind of response is an overly proportional response. Because it teaches a lesson. Don't touch my boats. Right. It teaches a lesson of you could, but you're not going to enjoy it. At all. And Rachel is correct. Her dad now must buy a camper. It's... Raggle also has you pegged. So either a shitty poker player or the best. Oh, absolutely atrocious. Absolutely atrocious poker player. Because my luck with cards is terrible. My luck with cards is very terrible. I don't like. And your ability to bluff is equally terrible. No, yes, because I really don't try to. I don't like games of chance as much as games of skill. Because games of skill I can manipulate to my advantage. Games of chance you really can't. Unless you're card counting, which I did learn how to do for blackjack. Because, well, what are you going to do when you go to an engineering school? You're going to learn how to drink and you're going to learn how to play blackjack really well. Either way. I didn't go to that engineering school. That's probably for the best. I'm not an engineer, probably. Well, I'll learn you a few things. All right, let me click off the admin work. We'll get into this. If you'd like to promote Bad Decision by becoming a patron, that link is in the show description. There are patrons in the chat. They promote Bad Decisions. I'm pretty sure they're at least partially responsible for inciting Nick to buy a boat. Because we, since you mentioned it, we have not let you off of it. And you have badgered your poor wife in the green line. Well, it's not so much badgered. It's more like discussing the potential options and accoutrements that you could put on the boat. If I call her right now, would she characterize it as badgering? Yeah, probably. But it's in the nicest possible badgering. Okay, it's nice badgering. Yeah, I cornered her in a car for six and a half hours. You freaking sadist! No, we also had on a very nice James Patterson audiobook. I think it was James Patterson. Shows how much attention you paid. It was about a lawyer, and everybody gets murdered. I don't know. It was actually a pretty decent book, but but you remember every detail about the boat. Yes. Yes, I do. My wife is correct. I have not stopped talking about it for at least the last 13 years. So, you know, sometimes you got to play the long odds. Oh, goodness gracious. All right. If you'd rather not be a patron, you'd rather buy merch for the vibes from the Southern gals. That link is also in the show description. I have no good authority that one of the two team members from Southern Gals is currently on the road delivering stuff in this god-awful weather they're spinning up. So he's not in the chat because he's driving. And we discourage people to social media and drive at. The same time. Yeah, that's generally frowned upon. But I do wish him a safe trip and a safe trip home. And if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee, code MOF. I've got disaster in my cup, and I've got disaster in the pot waiting for Mrs. Rabelais to get back from her excursion this evening. And it does prevent war crimes. It does. I have never gone more than a couple of days without coffee since I was eight years old, and I've committed zero war crimes. So the math matters. Yeah, the math does math. And I will admit it does brew up just as well at higher elevations. Higher elevations. What's a higher elevation? You know, a distance above sea level where you don't flood every day. What's that like? Well, it's higher. Higher, like when you stand on top of a two-story building? It's just like when you're walking around and you look and you can see, like, the top of buildings. That's like when you get on the top of the high-rise bridge down in New Orleans and you're, like, really, really high up there. You can see it. Yeah, but another, like, 2,000 feet. Yeah, I can't count 2,000 feet. Good. It's probably for the best. Nick and I, right before the show started, were commenting on the fact that I realized at like age 17 or 18 that I get really horrible vertigo that's caused by rapid changes in air pressure. And that because I had lived at sea level my entire life prior to that, I had no earthly idea. Never came up. I should probably not take you on any high-inclined mountain hikes. I am. Because some of them. I've done, I've gained like 2,600 feet. Mrs. Rabbley has joined us. Everybody say hi, Mom. She is the MOF dead mother at this point. She attempts to corral our darker impulses. She does an okay job. I mean, she does whoop out the teacher voice on me. Us every now and that is that is very accurate and you can feel it through text your wife has teacher voice too does but she hasn't really. Whooped it out on us uh she's done it to me well you're a husband that's why i mean she hasn't whooped it out of like the whole group yet. Give it time give it time. I'm sure the day is coming where the two of them gang up together. It'll be important. To try to discipline all the unruly children. Alright, topic for the night. Anti-gun BS. Now, I have prepared a selection of banners, and I'm sure we're going to get off topic at some point, because, you know, the squirrel's going to bolt across the yard, we're going to start chasing it, realize that we forgot something on the list. But this is a list of things that I have either I've either personally or secondhand bore witness to things that anti-gunners do and say and my rebuttal to most of them. A couple of these things I might actually surprise you all on because there's so many things where I'm like, there's an argument to be made. But for the most part, I think, I mean, my viewpoint on the Second Amendment and on the right to carry firearms is, pretty self-evident. I think I should be able to buy an RPG out of a vending machine and walk up and down the street with it, and anybody who has a problem with that can talk to me from the back of my truck with the Pentel-mounted M2 Browning. Good. Like, I believe we should be able to have anything that is man-portable that the military can have. Man-portable? I would go higher than that. Well.... Okay. Okay. We should be allowed to have anything the military can have. Yes. And if it is so damn dangerous that you cannot trust a 43-year-old taxpaying American with a clean criminal background with it, then I ask why you were able to trust me with it when I was a moron 17-year-old private. Agreed. And you can't say I was supervised because we weren't that closely supervised. Oh, God, no. Given the things my grandfather has told me about his time in the Army. There was no supervision whatsoever. there was none at all. There was minimal supervision. I mean, I can tell you about all the shit that we got away with. Despite the supervision. There was, there was definitely like stern talking twos after you got caught, but that was about it. You remember the part from, um, inglorious bastards when he says, I'm going to get, you'll be shot for this. Nah, I'm going to get chewed out. I've been chewed out before. Yeah, that's, that's, That seems to be the most likely. That and arbitrary and silly punishments, like mopping the rain off a parking lot or things like that, seem to be the more common of the two things that happen. Yeah, taking a shovel and moving a pile of rocks and then moving it back where it came from. Flipping all the rocks so they don't get sunburned. Yes. Yeah. I have shenan before, I shall shenan again. Agreed. All right, let's kick this list off. I have to acknowledge Jim Rawls before we get going. Hey, Jim. He's a good lad. So let's start right from the very beginning, and I'm going to say this one. Actually, there's a cartel of truth to this one, but then there's a cartel of stupid with it, too. Mm-hmm. This should have been not, but I am awful at spellchecking when I'm in a hurry, apparently. Good, good. Not allowing kids to visit gun owners. Okay. Now. I have heard every permutation of this. Grandpa has guns. I'm not comfortable with my kids going over there. Your friend's parents have guns. I'm not comfortable with you going over there. I've heard every permutation. State-sponsored, where foster parents are not allowed to foster kids because they're gun owners. I mean, there's all sorts of different variations on this, and it all revolves around the idea that even if the firearms are properly secured, even if they are kept out of the hands of minors, even if Everything is done in a safe way, humanly possible. The mere presence of firearms at the home makes it somehow unfit for children. You know how they justify it, Phil? Stupidly, but I don't think that's the answer. You're looking for. Here's the claim that they make. You are seven times more likely to be shot if you live in a home where firearms exist. So why do a lot of people call it? Yeah, you're also infinitely more likely to be involved in a car accident if you own a car. No fucking shit. Yeah, you're infinitely more likely to drown if you have a swimming pool in your backyard. That's not an argument. That is some stupid shit that people throw out when they don't expect to be challenged on it. It's like the statement that you hear every now and then. You're most likely to be involved in a vehicle accident within one mile of your home. Yeah, you dipshit. It's because you're most likely to be existing within one mile of your home. You're also more likely to die within one mile of your home. Does that mean that homes are bad for you? No, it means you're there and you exist. Therefore, things will happen there where you're existing. I'm sorry. It's just an outrageous argument. It's a fallacy on its face. If you die by foul play, the odds are it is a close associate or family member that did you in. Does that mean that having close associates and family members in your life is a bad thing? Or does that just mean that continued proximity yields a greater likelihood? I mean, it's, it's all about access. Yeah. Yeah. Your, your, your close personal friends and family have a great deal of access to you and spend a great amount of time with you. And since that dovetails so cleanly into this argument, a lack of access also means that like I, I had this conversation with my daughter very recently, and everybody that's been around the podcast for a while knows my daughter is now 14 years old. She got her first gun safety speech at about four. As you should. Like, as soon as she, the first time she saw a gun and asked what that was, I was like, today's the day. We're going to have this discussion. You're old enough to ask the question. You're old enough to be told the answer. And this is also why I like there were never toy guns in this house, because everything that looks like a gun is a gun. That's fair. We don't treat guns like toys. They are dangerous. You should be– you know, like the gun safety speech evolved with her age. But it always started from a perspective of you should not be fooling with these things without me or mom's direct supervision. My daughter's access to this farm was limited. She knows how to shoot. She's more accurate than most men I know. But her access is still limited. Now, recently– I'm sure y'all probably remember. I used to have an AR-15 that hung from a mount on this shelf back here in the background. And I kept it back there for a lot of years. Anytime I had an AR sitting back here, by the way, nine times out of ten, it had a training bolt in it. So couldn't have cooked off a live round if you'd have wanted to. Right. And that was really because they made it super convenient to just get some reps in with the Manus Blackbeard anytime I wanted to. Yep. I took it down as my daughter started having more and more people over. Good idea. And just left it down because even though it has a training bolt in it, and even though I know it's perfectly safe, I did not want to have the uncomfortable conversation with another parent about why is there a gun just like out where my child could get to it. Or, God forbid, have a kid steal it and try to pull some bullshit with it. Yeah. So like I told my daughters, I always made a point of if the gun was out and you had friends over, the bolt was pulled out of it. It was completely harmless. But how much easier is it to just leave it in the safe and now there's no gun out? So my point of view is like years ago, my daughter was friends with one of her classmates, and they used to come over here all the time. And that parent asked me point blank and period, do you have firearms in the house? Are they secured? I was perfectly happy to answer that question. Yes and yes. Yes and yes. And as soon as I said yes and yes, I told her, Mike, there's one firearm in this house that is not in the safe and it's on my hip. And if your eight-year-old can take it from me, she can have it. Yeah, she's earned it at that point. Yeah. We had no problems. Mom and dad were happy to have her over here whenever. I was happy to have Piper over there whenever. I knew they felt the same way. They had firearms. They were secured. I am. Perfectly okay with the idea that whether you're anti-gun, pro-gun, or anything else, that you verify that the home your kids are going into believes in securing the firearms. I think that's responsible parenting. Oh, it absolutely is. I have found that the people that tend to ask that question fall into two camps. You have the rabidly anti-gun that are politically active and trying to get rid of guns, or the gun owners that their kids would already know the safety rules anyway. Yep. 10 out of 10. It's usually not the milk toast, eh, I've got a shotgun, and I occasionally go pheasant hunting people that ask those questions. Yeah, but I guess to my point, if you meet that person that says, even if they're secured, I don't care. Guns in house, guns bad. I personally find that to be a very stupid way of thinking about things, if for no other reason than, I would much prefer... I encounter a person that answers affirmatively yes and yes. Then the person that just has a J-frame tucked in their sock drawer that doesn't mention anything, that doesn't come across like a gun owner, you let your kid go over there, and now the kid's fooling around where they should be because that's what kids do. They do. And they find an unsecured firearm. I would rather you send your home into the home of your average firearms enthusiast because the majority of them are very serious about gun safety. Oh, yeah. We've got some idiots among us, and the gun community is very quick to police them. Listen, there's no one more critical of gun safety than the gun community. We go off when someone NDs, when someone does stupid shit with the guns, because we acknowledge it makes all of us look like idiots. If there's one thing, one positive thing, undoubtedly, that the NRA has done that is good, bar nothing, no criticisms, is their firearm safety literature and their firearm safety proposals. I will grant them that. They, as much as I hate. The NRA, have really done good for firearm safety. Really, really good. In the name of intellectual honesty, I like almost nothing about the NRA. I think that most of their board directors are crooked crooks and thieves and liars and bastards. But I am forced to admit that their gun safety and in particular their youth-focused gun education programs are– I recommend them as a person that doesn't like the NRA. It's a good product. They do that very well. I wish they did advocacy work as well as they do that, but can't win them all, I guess. Yeah. Raggle, I hear what you're saying. Yes, they've been working on it. They have had their time. to have worked on it and done well since long before I was born. And you know what? FPC has made more progress. For us, has done more for us, NGOA, FPC, GOA, and what's the other one? And is. It? No. NIRPC? No. Is it NGR? NGR, NGR. Those three organizations, as small as they are compared to the NRA, have done more good per dollar spent than. The NRA has in a very long time. And it's because they come from the point of view of no. Just flat no. No compromise. It's gone. It's done. There is no negotiation here. And that is what we need. Yep. Braggle said, if they hold a candle to FPC or GOA, I'll consider joining. I'd join GOA. I might join FPC too, but I joined Gunners of America. I firmly believe in rewarding good work. And what GOA has done in the last several years, and FPC too, I think GOA has done a little bit more, but it's a really good argument to have. FPC has done more for Illinois. Yes. But the thing of it is that both of those groups have done more for gun rights than the NRA with a fraction of their war chest. With a fraction of their war chest and a fraction of the time they've existed. And a much smaller membership. Much smaller. But. When you're aggressive, when you're loud, you get what you want, it turns out. Yep. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, as always. It has been really enduring to watch gun rights organizations spring up that start to sound a lot like I did back in the day when... I couldn't even have a conversation with most gun owners because I was like, I should be able to buy rocket launchers out of vending machines. What are you idiots talking about? Shut up and go get the tax stamp. So, you know, it's been very endearing. It's good for my heart. Anyway, on the backs of kids can't go over even if the guns are stored securely, safe storage laws. Now, I understand. I get it. I just got through talking about safes and not leaving guns unsecured. And I just got through talking about all that. I believe in safe gun storage. I advocate for safe gun storage. I demand and bully and badger people about safe gun storage. But I really get uncomfortable at the idea of some dickhead bureaucrat with a BMI over 35 in a state capital or in D.C. with a spray tan and two friggin hookers on call. Being able to dictate to me and the rest of the gun owning public what they think safe storage is. Because inevitably what winds up happening is they push the needle so far. It's not safe storage. It's antagonistic storage. It's I'm going to make having a gun so freaking uncomfortable. You just don't even want to do it anymore. And then they like to add in those pesky little provisions for them to come inspect your safe storage. Yeah. Piss off. Me exercising my rights does not mean you get to come into my home. And if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear is the dumbest friggin. If that's the case, body cams, 24-7 live streaming politicians make it a death penalty crime for a politician to remove their body cam. I want to find out how often you take a shit, Pritzker. I don't disagree with that. You're a public servant. I mean, fair is fair. If you advocate for a policy that the police can come and check your shit out anytime they frigging want just because you're a gun owner. Then I think we ought to be able to check out 24-7. I want to be able to watch you 24-7. JB, do you really want to watch him 24-7, though? That sounds like a horror show. I want someone watching him 24-7. Just not you. No, here's the thing, though. That's really what it is. That's what they're asking for. That's what they're asking for with these flock cameras is to watch my life 24-7, 365. And grabbing all of my digital transactions in there. For your safety. For my safety. Yeah, for my safety, no. Because I know what surveillance states do. I saw what the Soviet Union did. I'm seeing what China is doing right now. Guess who has concentration camps and who doesn't? Yeah, that's kind of a thing. Yeah. I mean, the only two countries with three countries with active concentration camps, North Korea, China and Russia. Are all surveillance states. Yep. I actually had this conversation. Australia built concentration camps, also. A surveillance state. Oh, yes, they did. And they mostly incarcerated Aborigines, Aboriginal Australians, in their COVID concentration camps. Funny how that worked out. They didn't advertise that part very well. People would have been very upset if they would have seen the white people jailing the brown people. No, they wouldn't. Clearly, they weren't that upset because it was all over the news. Oh, you have a good point. It's okay to jail the brown people as long as they're the brown people. If it's for their safety. They don't take the shot. Yeah, exactly. That makes perfect sense. It's always okay to bully... Everybody do. It's always okay to. Bully minorities if they don't do what the liberals tell them to. Yep. Someone out there just got really, really upset, and I couldn't give a damn if you literally threatened my life. Like. Yep. It's not my fault I'm right and you're wrong. It's yours. You should fix yourself. You should. But yeah, safe storage laws, man. Like. My standpoint is always going to go back to the idea that I really truly believe that if we educate each other, if we hold each other accountable, I think we can get like 99% of what we want out of safe storage laws without the laws and without inviting the government and bureaucracy into your life in an intrusive way. Gun safety is a perfect example of peer pressure working. Bullying works. It does. Peer pressure and bullying works phenomenally well. If it can get your kid to do drugs, it can get your kid to put their gun in a safe. You might as well use it for good. Might as well. Might as well. I mean, look at this. How many firearms owners do you know, Phil, anymore that don't keep most of their firearms in a safe? Yeah, I've got one on my hip pretty much all the time. But see. In my area of control. But that goes right back to what I said a minute ago. Like, I used to tell people, there's one gun in this house that is unsecured. It is on my hip. Mm-hmm. If your teenager can wrestle it away from me, they deserve to have it. Yep. There's probably a reason they have it. Yeah. And, you know, bear in mind that I am a chubby, broken, brooding 43-year-old man. That might not seem like that much of a challenge. But, you know, there was a time when I was perfectly capable of ripping a person's arm out of socket. I'm pretty sure I could still pull it off if somebody tries to take a gun away from me. It's just going to hurt the entire time. Oh, no. It's not going to hurt the entire time. I'm going to need ibuprofen and a nap afterwards. Yeah. Amen, that happens. It is going to hurt me as bad as it hurts you. Mm-hmm. But if you can get that gun away from me, you can have it. Yep. Why carry in public? I have directly faced this one down. Me too. Okay. From my own grandparents. Oh, I got this from a coworker. Preach on, Brother Emmerichson. I got it. I got this question from my grandfather and, uh, he, he was the exact same guy that would keep a, um, a cut down baseball bat behind the seat of his truck. I said, why'd you keep the bat behind the truck? Oh, cause I'm always in the truck. Yeah. But why would you need the bat? He said, well, you know, sometimes people do stupid things. Yeah. Sometimes people do stupid things. And I like having a little more distance than a baseball bat. Look, I carry a gun in public because chances are pretty low of a violent encounter happening in my home. I'm in public fairly often. chances are a lot higher that I meet someone doing stupid shit in public. And that's when I would be most likely to need it. And see, I go about this from a slightly different angle. But my answer to a coworker who, I don't even remember what it was, something had happened in the news recently, some concealed carrier user firearm in this, it was at a gas station, and my coworker. Was like really, really upset. Oh, the one that happened in Illinois? Right. Where the guy was like the most obvious mugger possible? No, no, no. This happened in... Actually, in the town I live in. And this was years and years ago. This was. Between 2017 and 2020. Because it was after the tornado ripped up my office building, but before COVID. It's weird that I can count chunks of time in my employment by what catastrophe was happening. Yeah. But anyway... This came to her attention that there were people just walking around in public carrying guns all the time. And she was very upset about this. And as she's having this conversation, I'm standing there and I'm just I'm standing there with another friend of mine who also is a military veteran, also has a concealed carry permit. I took him gun shopping. I've helped him build ARs like me and this dude know each other and know what our arsenals are. And I know he was just screaming on internally. Because he knows this woman is like, she has let the spoon fly and she is just cooking this grenade right next to the person who can disassemble their argument. And he's looking at me and I'm just doing this. Like, nope, nope, leave it alone. Let it go. No. Just let it go. Just let it go. I don't remember what it was. She's finally said that like, was like, okay, I can't let this go anymore. But I think it was something that she said, well, just what kind of maniac carries a gun out in public? And I looked at her, I'm like, me. And all four heads in the conversation swivel around. It was this maniac right here. It was like frigging night of the body snatchers. All of a sudden they're all just like. But I was like me. I have a concealed weapons permit. The only place I don't carry a firearm is here at work, and I'll go to federal prison if I do. Everywhere else, I. Carry a gun all the time. You carry a gun to go grocery shopping? Yes. With no emotion in my voice? Yes. Why do you have to carry a gun to go grocery shopping? I'm like, I don't have to. Because I don't believe that when someone decides to do something horrible and violent like a mass shooting, that they call everybody who's going to be in the grocery store at that time and ask each one of them individually, would you mind getting into a gunfight at about like 4 or 5 p.m. today central time at this location? If not, you might want to go somewhere else. Oh, it'd be awesome. I'd take my family to go somewhere else. We wouldn't be involved in that nonsense. But I explained to her, I'm like, I don't get to choose when I'm involved in a violent situation. I am not electing to receive. I am suddenly jumped into this situation against my will. Therefore, I'm going to carry a gun every damn place I can legally and some places I'm not supposed to because, you know, sometimes signs aren't illegal. They're just inadvisable. Yeah, yeah. But I explained to her, I'm like, that's my justification for carrying in public because sometimes people do things that I'd really rather them not do because it's dangerous, it's crazy, and it hurts my family or it scares my wife and daughter. And if my ability to talk them down fails and my ability to remove my wife and daughter from the situation is impinged, then I'm going to drop them. That's all there is to it. Yeah, no, you don't get to... Well, in this case, by them pulling that bullshit, they have elected to receive the consequences. Yes. They have chosen to break the social compact. Therefore, they get what they get. Yeah, but that was my whole justification for why carry in public. Yeah. I don't get to pick when the shit goes down. Yeah, I didn't get. To pick the time I got an attempted mugging. They sure got to pick some consequences, though. Which consequences did they pick? Several broken bones and a couple concussions. But they didn't get lead injections. No, that was before I had a concealed carry permit. Now I do. Oh. No, no, that was well before I had a concealed carry permit. That was before I was old enough for a concealed carry permit. I just happened to be a rather angry exercise enthusiast at the time. And you seem like such a calm person these days. I mean, I'm definitely calmer now than I was then. I probably. No, no, it actually probably would go worse for him now. I would have probably just shot all three of them. Yeah, probably. And given, given my shot times and accuracy, it would have been all three. Now, recidivism rate does drop to zero in instances like that. It does. It does. Look, I don't like the idea of having to do that. I really don't. But when you remove my choice in the matter, I don't feel a moral compunction to, With stopping you. Because you've taken the immoral road already. And for me, this doesn't even get to a point of morality. It is a very simple calculation. Yeah. I value my life more than yours. Well, I value my life because me punching out of this cockpit prematurely means my wife and daughter don't get to have me for the rest of my life. So I have a moral obligation. To try to survive any situation for them. And by extension, I am not prepared to live in a world where my wife and daughter outlive me. Unless it is by natural causes and I am like ancient and ready to go off into the sunset anyway. And my wife checks out first. That's the only way. But like under any kind of violent encounter, I'm not prepared to outlive the two of them. So I'm going to do everything humanly possible to protect their lives and well-being. And if that means I'm put in the position of having to end somebody else's life to protect them, I don't feel any– there's not even a hesitation in there. There's no anger or malice towards that person. It is a very simple calculation. Those two people are my responsibility. You are getting between me and my responsibility. That's a decision you made. I do believe that's true. I mean, you can only violate the social compact to a certain degree before you are no longer protected by the social compact. I mean, to get to a very just to get to a philosophical point of like natural laws, like, you know, you know, you know, I've talked before about how I believe that laws exist without I believe that rights exist without law. without constitutions, without anything. They just exist in nature. And most, not all, most animals will kill to protect their young. They are protecting their bloodline. They're protecting their progeny. Not all, but most. Many will. Yeah, I don't know about most. I'm not quite sure on the statistics on that. But I do know that just about every animal will at least fight to protect itself. And, well, almost every animal will fight to protect itself. A lot of animals will also fight to protect their family units, their tribes, their packs, their whatever. Yeah. The creatures that I believe are, and a lot of those also because pack animals rely on each other for their own self-preservation. They do. You know, apes many strong kind of thing. Yeah, even wolf packs, groups of birds will occasionally intervene in self-protection. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea is... These two are my pack. I'm going to defend them to the expense of someone else's or something else's life if necessary. Right. Because you're required for their survival. They're required for your long-term survival as well. Yeah. And that is not a morality issue because there is no morality in nature. That is a simple, natural right. You have the right to– you have the right. to extend your own life through self-preservation and, by extension, the lives of the people that you count on for your life. Discussion over. Why assault weapons? And I'm using the term, even though it makes my skin itch to use it, because, yeah, it makes my eyebrows do what Nick's eyebrows just did. He just went from the one eyebrow up, shifted to the other side. You know why they use the term assault weapon, Phil? I think I know why. Why? Well. Because Germany. Used stormtroopers and assault weapon tactics and they could tie it with the Nazis potentially. And so that means bad. The problem is that whether they use the term assault weapon, assault rifle, AR-15... I. Mean, they tie everything back to the Nazis anyway, so I think it's a fair guess. Well, and I think a lot of this also comes back because that's what I've been hearing lately is military-style assault weapons. I really feel like this argument keeps coming back to a center point of these are military guns, and military guns are for military people. And civilians shouldn't have these things because they're wrong for civilians. They're too powerful. They're not good for hunting, whatever inane bullshit they brew up. And these are okay for military people. And just to dip my toe into that for just a brief moment because I used to be one of those military people. I was playing around with freaking thermite and grenades and belt-fed weapons when I was 17, 18 years old. Mm-hmm. I was not a responsible human being at that age like I am now as a 43-year-old with a tax ID. But the DOD was happy to have me run around the woods playing with shit. As much as you wanted. As much as I wanted. The idea that these things are safe in the hands of military but not safe in the hands of civilian has nothing to do with the fact that military are so much better trained or so much better supervised. What it really is, the pinpoint of their argument that they won't admit out loud is that military are state employees. Also, the military is used over there. Okay. Hurricane Katrina. Kent State. Towards the end of Jim Crow. Civil Rights Movement. How many times have the military put their boots on our own soil and roughed up our own civilians carrying those military-style assault rifles? Look, committing an assault is a crime. Either they're trying to conflate the weapons with the evil people, whether it's the Nazis or just criminals. They're trying to conflate it with things that it's not. Like, anything can be an assault weapon if you use it for an assault. It's a catchy slogan. That's all it is. But now all that said, the justification for why assault weapons. Sure. What they call assault weapons is a rifle or a carbine of intermediate caliber. That means something less than a. 308. They're much lighter. They're very portable. They have fairly large capacity magazines. Standard capacity, I would say. They are of a power level that you can be taught to shoot them very well in an afternoon. As a child, even. They are prolific in this country. My 14-year-old weighs like a buck ten, and she was shooting one at the range. They really are appropriate for all ages, all genders, and all people. Well, that's why they're so popular for militaries across the planet, because you can hand them to any adult human, and they're able to handle the recoil. And. They excel in defensive roles for all the same reasons why the military has issued them to all their soldiers. Because I think it's a misconception that in the military, like every single person out there, they're all infantry. They're all door kickers and pipe hitters. They're all special forces. That's bullcrap. Your average person in the military is a cook or a clerk or a mechanic or a driver. They do stuff that's very important. Because without them, the infantry doesn't get where they need to go. They don't have the shit they need. Your tier one guys don't have the shit they need. Like, you need big army behind you to do the menial shit so that you can go off and do the cool guy stuff that they make movies about. I remember hearing it was something like 10 or 12 to 1 support troops to frontline soldiers in a modern military somewhere in that neighborhood. That sounds fair when you consider, like, the amount of intelligence and information that has to be marshaled around in a modern conflict. Like, yeah. Or how many, how many mechanics were there per Blackhawk? Uh, my unit was really understaffed. We had one mechanic for every two Blackhawks. Okay. There's, so there's two pilots and you got one mechanic, just the mechanic. Well, two pilots and two crew chiefs who were also mechanics. And this kind of, this kind of tilts the math one way or the other. So like, Those two mechanics were doing your post-flight inspections and stuff like that. They were not doing the heavy maintenance like we were in the maintenance unit. But you could kind of conflate this and say, well, there's actually three mechanics for every two aircraft, even though two of those mechanics were flying on the aircraft and not doing anything. Doesn't matter. There's still a mechanic. There's still a support staff that you have to have. Yeah. And then there's the fuel guys and the ordinance guys and the guys doing the supply chain for those guys. I mean, when you bear in mind that, like, for every Blackhawk, you need two pilots and two crew chiefs. Mm-hmm. And we had two flight companies. I want to say we had two flight companies. We had headquarters and HHC. And HHC is, like, all your support guys. Mm-hmm. Maintenance company, which was its own thing, separate from everybody else. And HHC was like, you know, your cooks, your clerks, your fuel guys, all those guys. And HQ is like flight operations, planning, and so on and so forth. Slightly less than half the unit was the flight companies of the entire battalion. And that's just at the battalion level. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you break it down further than that, you get into the company and like, A flight company, the entire company is pilots and crew chiefs. Like, they don't have their own maintenance assets. Right, because you do have to organize that based on speciality a little bit. But all that to say, zero of those guys were frontline infantry guys and door kickers. Even the pilots and the crew chiefs are delivering people and equipment into active conflict zones. So, like, yes, there's this huge swath of people in big army that are not the infantry and not your tier one guys. But all that being said, they issued every single person an M16A2 or an M4A1 because every one of those weapons was expected to be used in a defensive capacity in the event things went bad. Because me as a mechanic, my primary role was to keep the Blackhawks flying because that's our mission. Yeah. If they don't fly, none of us are doing our jobs right. So if I have to pick up my rifle and defend my life with it, we're having a really bad day. Yes. Now, the infantry guys, their weapons are being used in an offensive capacity. But that whole 12 to 1 ratio, there's 11 guys whose weapons are almost never used. And if they are, only in a defensive capacity for the one person that's using it offensively. And civilian AR-15 ownership and AK ownership and MCR ownership and all those things is exactly the same calculation. Most people own them for defensive purposes. And they are very, very efficient at that. And for the person that says assault weapons are only used in mass shootings, then why do so many of our law enforcement officers have them in the trunks of their cruisers? Because they just work? But my point is, if they are only useful for criminal acts, why do so many agents of the state have them? The weapon itself cannot be the problem where it has to be the problem in all cases. Because the agents of the state are the ones doing the most criminal acts historically? They do. They are. Statistics is a beautiful thing. I think in the 20th century, we crossed over from disease killing more humans to government killing more humans. I think it was in the 20th century. I mean, World War I and World War II really set the bar high for killing humans. Post-war really escalated things, though. If you start talking about, like, all the purges of communism... Between Mao and Stalin alone, we're talking about, what, three more holocausts? Pretty much. Yeah. But, oh, communism's good. No, communism's stupid. Right, right. I actually was talking to my daughter about communism, and I kept... Every now and then, she would just blurt out, just like, but that's not what communism is. Because I was. Sure. So she was laying forth the argument. This would be another good episode for another day. But she was telling me that somebody at her school, I'm assuming a classmate, was trying to sell her on the idea that communism was basically anarchism because it involved a... Wait, don't beam in the punchline. Just let me have it. Give me some rope, bud. Hold it in. Y'all can't see Nick's face. He's about to pop. Communism is basically anarchism because it involves a moneyless, classless society. Nick is screaming internally. It.... No. Just no. Just no. It was never moneyless. It was never classless. I mean, if you read Marx. There's two classes. Exactly. There is two classes, by definition, in communism. If you've read Marx, it... You can sum Marx up. Everybody out here probably has a degen family member, right, that's never worked a day in their life and they've scummed off of their family for many, many decades. That was Karl Marx. That's Karl. Except add syphilis and a penchant for hookers. All right. Well, actually, maybe that might be one of your family members. I don't know what you've got going on. If you do, my bad. Hey, you've got another Karl Marx on hand. Just have him write a manifesto. He'll probably be fined. I think we broke raggle. Yes. Look, communism doesn't work for so many reasons, and most of them come down to evolutionary biology. I know. On a biological level, communism does not work. My daughter and I had that conversation. You and I will have that conversation another day. I'm going to need a whole bottle of whiskey for that. Once I explained to her how communism works in the real world, she just kept saying like, but that's why I kept telling my classmate was that that doesn't make any sense. And I'm like, you're right. It doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah. Because, because Marx, Marx never accounted for human nature. You know, Marx, Marx believed that a perfect society would bring out the best in humans. And no, no, he did not. No, he did not. Marx believed that in a perfect society, everyone would be fine. He never said it would bring out the best in people. Not once. He said everyone would be fine, fed, and housed. Semantics. Everyone is fine, fed, and housed in a prison. Okay, let me rephrase then. I think what Marx was getting at was that all human suffering comes from inequality, and if everyone is equal, then they will be happy, which doesn't completely obfuscates the fact that everyone being equally miserable because they're all equally poor does not make people happy. It makes them all equally miserable. Look, the problem with the argument facially is that you can never in any way. Make two people equal. You can't. Even if the number is as simple as two people, there will be something that makes those two people unequal. It could be height. Could be facial hair, could be athletic ability, could be earning potential, could be IQ, could be disease. It is functionally impossible. Functionally impossible. If your worldview is shaped by the idea that inequality. You can just get syphilis and scum off of your relatives for many decades. Yes. If your worldview is shaped by syphilis. Pretty much. I mean.... Another episode next. Go for it. That's a whiskey episode. I have coffee tonight. I might actually need tequila for that episode. I can't do tequila. I can. And my wife will regret it. I can't drink tequila unless I have direct supervision from my wife. Yes. That's why I said my wife would regret it. Yeah. I tend to get adventurous and wander off. I tend to get in trouble. Yeah. Anyway, why. No universal background checks? Nick. Universal background checks, good. We don't want bad people having guns. Why won't you, gun owner, who can pass a background check, just allow us to have universal background checks so we can close the gun show loophole and we can make sure that only the people that are supposed to have guns can have guns? Who's doing the background checks, Phil? The government. You mean the FBI that protected Epstein and all of his clients for the last 35 years? That one. You mean the CIA that is known for hiring pedophiles? Yes. And hiding them because it's easy to blackmail them into keeping state secrets. Yes. You mean like the state police or like, say, Chicago PD, who's known to operate black sites in Cook County and in Chicago? Were they, let's say. Motivationally coerced confessions. Them to out of minority groups. Yes. Yes. You forgot the ATF that set a whole building full of women and children on fire and shot a man's. Wife while holding a baby and shot their daughter. And their son. Look, if the people doing the background checks are not trustworthy, the background check is worthless. It is. The background check is worthless if the people doing the background check can't be trusted to be worthwhile listening to. That's why I could give a shit about background checks. You can do them. You can not do them. It isn't going to make any difference. Yeah, I know. I've been told. Your wife has said no tequila allowed. Damn it. Whiskey's okay, though, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like bourbon is within bounds. Tequila might be pushing a little bit. Yeah, tequila can be pushing it. Me and tequila get along way too well right up until the time we don't. Yeah. Look. But here's the problem. I don't disagree with any of the argument you're laying forth, but the whole point of this is to dismantle anti-gun BS, and most people there are anti-gun. The Venn diagram has a lot of overlap with people that trust the state. So that whole argument is going to fall on deaf ears. Also, pedophiles, turns out. Yes. A lot of pedophiles are anti-gun because, turns out, when you sexually assault a person's children, that gun gets awful tempting as a problem solution. Yes. Give him the Ploche treatment. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Father of the... Father of the year. Every year. Every year. If you have not smoked a pedo that touched your child, then you can be like, you know, like second tier father of the year. But Gary Ploche, that man, he set the bar really. Really high. Perfectly executed. The man even hung up the phone. So polite. Hung up the friggin'... Hung up the phone... No sights from the center line with a J-frame in a crowded airport. One shot dropped the guy. One shot and done. Beautiful. Perfect execution. We have to create the ploche drill. Oh, I've actually seen that one. Is this like a recognized thing? Yeah, it requires two people because you've got to have a guy tackling you at the end. So you get one round in the J-frame and you've got to pull off a headshot. And then get tackled by your buddy. But you can't do it from the sights. No, no, no. It's got to be instinctual fire. Yeah. For time. I'm going to have to practice that. Not because I think I can pull that shot off very well. Because I'm not that good with the J frame. You would be surprised how quickly you can get instinctive fire down at those ranges. It's really not that hard. How far? What range are we talking about here? I feel like it was like 12 feet. Was it 5 feet? It was 5 or 6 feet. It doesn't look that close. Oh, it was pretty darn close. Because when the officer turns to tackle him, he takes one to two steps and he's on him. It was very close. All right, I'm sure we can look up. But later. Universal background checks. They don't work. Why don't they work? They flat don't work because criminals aren't going to go through the background check procedure anyway. But now here's my argument, and it has nothing to do with anything you just said, even though it's all correct. Sure. The way most of these stupid things wind up written, let's say my father, who is 72 years old, 73 years old, I don't think he's committed a crime in his entire life other than speeding. Who hasn't? Yeah, who hasn't? But he is the most... button-down, vanilla, Caucasian man I know. He has never had a crossroads with anybody. He has never gotten out of line with anybody. He is the most peace-loving person on Earth. I could not take one of my firearms under these universal background check laws and hand it to him to go to the range without both of us committing a felony. Yep. He has more guns than I do handing him a firearm. I could not take... Hunting is the only reason for the second amendment. According to some people, I could not bring two extra shotguns for two buddies of mine. They just want to come out wing shooting for a day and hand them those shotguns without all three of us going to an NFL to do background checks. Even worse. You could not safely cross a fence with your buddy based on the hunter safety procedure without committing two felonies because do you want better hand the firearm to your buddy and You cross the fence, they hand the gun to you. Now, this is not specific to universal background checks, but this is kind of semi-related. So the way that Alabama's firearm laws are written, and it was this way for a lot of years, it might still be this way. May not be. I don't know. Did Alabama ever go constitutional carry? I don't remember. I don't go to Alabama, so I don't worry about it. Years ago, they were not. And years ago, my Louisiana concealed weapons permit was valid in Alabama, as it is in many states. But I made a point If we would stop at a rest area, for example, and my wife was staying in the vehicle, I could not leave the gun in the car. Correct. Because per Alabama's laws, that firearm, in order to be in the vehicle with a non-concealed carry-having person, it had to be outside of the passenger compartment. So I would have had to get out, stick it in the trunk, and lock it in there where it was out of Gillian's reach. Mm-hmm. Because if I would have done what I normally do and, like, take it out of my waist and put it in the center console, she was in violation of the state's firearm laws because she is right there next to a loaded handgun with a concealed weapons permit. Now, with a concealed weapons permit, I can have a gun within my grasp within the password compartment. In Illinois, it's even worse. But the minute I step out, she's in violation of state law. In Illinois, you're not allowed to have a loaded magazine in the same storage device as your firearm. Because they could potentially touch. And that's now a loaded gun. That's now a loaded gun. They could somehow vibrate together, load themselves, and then you're now in possession of a loaded gun. This must be related to the AR-15 that, like, sneaks out of your safe and goes and commits atrocities at night while you're not looking. Look, if I could get one that would automatically commit atrocities, don't you think the military would have already developed it? Come on. We would have airdropped a whole pallet of them over Iraq and Afghanistan and just stayed home. Probably not. You can't guard the poppy fields with automatic war crimes. You got to have boots on the ground to keep those poppies safe. Yeah, but we wouldn't have been fooling around in the freaking mountains chasing after all the tribes. Well, yeah, because the tribes were coming down trying to steal the poppies to sell for heroin. And we wanted to steal the poppies to sell for morphine, which is definitely not heroin. Definitely not heroin. Definitely not chemically heroin. Like chemically identical. Yes. Anyway, that's my whole justification for no universal background checks is that, like you said, they're freaking stupid. They don't accomplish the thing that they are supposed to accomplish. They're facially non-functional. They're administered by bureaucrats who are idiots and don't know how to write laws properly and wind up with a whole host of unintended consequences that jam up people that are committing no frigging malice at all. And then to top everything else off, they are administered against the citizenry to a degree and to a standard and with a lack of care or empathy that they would never hold themselves accountable for. I know. Because there are tons of frigging law enforcement officers and even more politicians that legally cannot carry a firearm, except when you get the polyester uniform and the shiny badge, all of a sudden you have superpowers and you are above reproach and you can have all those things that you can't have otherwise. The interesting thing about universal background checks and stuff like the FOID card system, which for those of you that don't know, it's firearms owner's identification card, firearm owner's identification card. Essentially what it is, it's the poll tax on your right to buy a gun in the state of Illinois. I thought taxing your right was illegal. Yeah, turns out no. It's fine. Don't worry about that. That still feels illegal. It is. The interesting thing about it is you have these odd things happen, like an 85-year-old woman who moves into a house in inner city Chicago and finds a firearm. Somewhere in the house from the previous owner. She's then arrested for felony possession of a firearm without a FOID card. Or a 65-year-old woman, wife of a former police officer, that police officer dies, and he didn't tell his wife where all the guns were before he died. She got rid of the ones she knew about. A couple years later, they have a break-in. She has a break-in. Police come to investigate. They're checking over everything, and they find a gun. That she doesn't have a FOID card for. She's arrested on felony possession charge. Turned out it was her husband's service weapon. Issued by Chicago PD. That they decided, we'll just not worry about that one ever again. These are the kind of unintended consequences. That you run into. Punishing entirely innocent individuals. Yeah, but then here's me thinking to myself, are they really unintentional consequences or are they intentionally intentional? And see, that's part of my issue with universal background checks is that I don't know that I give the state, and by the state I don't mean like the literal state, but like the government. I don't know that I give them the benefit of doubt that the ultimate goal of universal background checks is purely just to jam up as many people as possible. It is. Because we have figured out how to make money off of criminalizing everything and locking up an insane proportion of our population. Yeah. That's really what it is. The idea is not necessarily to secure your safety. It's to punish you for going through the process. The process is the punishment. Both. Yeah. Yeah. Side note. This is the joke that we always talk about in the GMRS and the ham radio community that learning to navigate the FCC's website to get a license is the test. It is. If you can't read well enough to navigate the FCC's website, you don't get a radio. Sorry. I mean, that's the joke for GMRS, because everybody used to say, there's no test. Oh, yes, there is a test. There is a test. You have to figure out the FCC's 1993 CompuServe website. By the way, whoever designed that website, I'm positive they're retired already. But if they're not, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself. You should be ashamed. That is ridiculous. When websites were non-standardized with how buttons worked. Let's just say that at current, I am involved in a very long-standing project to do a complete end-to-end modernization of one of our applications at work. Ew. And I have literally... literally used the example of 1992 CompuServe to describe one of our internal-facing websites that is going to become external-facing in the future. And I was like, there's a 0% chance that our customers are going to see this website looking like this. This is ridiculous. It's ridiculous that our own employees have had to work with this nonsense for this long. Oh. A buddy of mine, I think I've told you this story before, but I don't think I've talked about it on the show. A buddy of mine was in the Air Force. He was an IT person in the Air Force. He was working on a logistics piece of software. They were trying to modernize the logistics software that was first in place in the late 80s. Sounds about right. Okay. So the databases that they had to refer to were so horribly built that That when they just referenced the database, it wouldn't reference the database. It would reference other subtables and other databases because they were so cobbled together and nobody actually knew how any of the databases functioned. They had to rebuild the databases all from scratch. Sounds about right. And when they did that, they found that some items had up to 14 separate duplicated identity codes. Depending on, say, the division, the. Department, whatever it was, up to 14 duplicate ID codes. Sounds like DoD. And that's why they were having such a problem with the old databases. It was absolutely wild. He was telling me at one point they spent like eight years. They'd spent eight years working on this. And all it was supposed to do was make the old database searchable by a modern computer. And they still had not succeeded. Even after totally rebuilding the databases from the ground up. This doesn't shock me. At all. Not even a little bit. Alright, last bullet point, and this might be the one that gets us really angry. Red flag laws. Which, before we start, I am forced to remind everybody that there was a politician who's a bit of a darling amongst some people on the right that was like, take the guns first and due process later, and His attorney general kind of bought into that idea, and me and a whole bunch of people said, that's freaking stupid, and we shouldn't be encouraging this or allowing this. But my state has them. A lot of states do, and thank Christ we don't have them at the federal level. But, Nick, on the face of it, red flag laws kind of sound like a half-assed good idea. Like, if a person is a danger to themselves and others, obviously we don't want to just let them have guns. We need to take the guns. We need to intercede. I mean, look, A good friend of ours is a mental health professional. He's had this talk with us about how, you know, like red flag laws make him nervous as hell. But on the flip side of things, he's like, but if you have a person who's like literally like going off the rails going to hurt somebody or hurt themselves, like we got to have a way to intercede and get the guns away from them so they don't hurt themselves. or hurt somebody. We do a 5150 hold. We do. We have that. We've already had that. We've had it for a long time. Restraining orders and 5150 holds. Look, the only thing that red flag laws do is they allow your disgruntled ex-girlfriend, your coworker. That hates you. Or your neighbor that you're feuding over where a Bush can be planted or trimmed, lets them send the police to your house to shoot you in the middle of the night. And that has happened. It's really all it is that that has, it has happened a number of times. What's even worse is when they get a, when they have a red flag law call, and then they send the police to the wrong address and shoot the wrong person. I think raggle saying that sounds like a job for AI is talking about your buddy, rebuilding a database. not instituted red flag laws, because that's horrifying. I think he was referring to that, but look, the extremely intelligent people that they did have working on it that were actually good at their jobs, unlike AI, they couldn't do it because of how horrible the government's inventorying systems are. Sounds about right. But anyway. Oh, well, I mean, look, I understand... where they're coming from, that it's a good idea to allow the people, at least in theory, that know the person best, the people that are closest to them, to reach out for assistance. I understand where you're coming from. The problem is the state is absolutely horrible at that, horrible at helping in those situations. It has no nuance at all. And most people are atrocious at that. The state has no incentive to administer these properly because here's the thing. No, they don't. Let's say hypothetically the types of states that tend to have red flag laws. Like I hate to paint. With a broad brush, but you got Illinois, New York, California, New Jersey, New Mexico. Places where the average... Michigan? I don't think Michigan has red flag laws, but if Andrew were here, he could We require an Andrew. So the thing of it is, those types of places tend to be rife with people who already think you're a scumbag and a psychopath for having a gun. So if the cops show up and you get crazy with the cops and then they gun you down, it just reinforces their perception that gun people are crazy, cops had to put the guy down, this and the other. On the flip side of things, if the cops don't respond and then the person does do something untoward, Then the whole populace friggin' wants to vote somebody out of office because you allow this tragedy to happen, this is at your feet. So the apparatus of this state has no incentive to not overreact to these things. The only incentive is a violent overreaction. They are incentivized towards that. And it is demanded by the type of people that would call in a red flag and hit on somebody. And look, the worst part about it is that you don't need any credible evidence at all. It violates the core due process and the presumption of innocence that most Western law is based on. I would argue all Western law is based on. Well, I say most because, well, we've gotten pretty far from the presumption of innocence. Well, yeah, but we've also... layered bullshit on top of law and principle and everything else. So let's just assume that we're not living in a lawful society anymore. I mean, yeah, I think that's fair. I think we're living in a, how did I, how did I hear it put recently? That was really good. A surveillance state. No, not a surveillance. No, it'll, it'll come to me. Don't worry about it. We're living in a barely a thinly veneered prison. Pretty much. Yeah. No, it was something, anarcho-tyranny. Ah, yes. Big word, but very accurate. The anarchy is used to promote the tyranny that they really want. And the laws. And the anarchy is the point. And the laws really are irrelevant. Well, but the laws are being selectively applied. Unless you're the one they want to oppress. Right. That is a hallmark of anarcho-tyranny. There's still law. It just usually applies to certain people. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you know, legal for a price. Well, I mean. It kind of comes into that, too. Turns out if you're wealthy enough, you can do whatever you want. Well, let's just say, and someone's going to get very pissed off about this, and God, I hope you do, because it pissed me off, too. There's a lot of parallels between the behavior of white supremacists in the Jim Crow South and the behavior of certain groups of people now that commit crimes with total impunity and expect no friggin' resistance whatsoever... knowing that the law will shield them from consequence and come down on you like a ton of bricks because the law has decided they are right and you are wrong. And if that pisses you off, then grab a history book and educate yourself before you come at me about it. It should make you mad. It should make you mad, but most of the people that are getting mad are the people that are coddled by the nanny state, so they're not mad. There's mad, I'm pointing it out. But anyway, red flag laws. Yeah. My gripe with red flag laws is A, like you said, we already have laws, and those laws, for the most part, work. They work when they're used. If we're going to remove the rights of a person, there has to be a due process. There has to be a chance to confront your accuser in court. There has to be a presumption of innocence. And even though you and I both admit that that is idealistic given our current legal system sometimes, that's the way it ought to be. And we certainly should not be greenlighting the state permission– to wad up multiple constitutional powers. Yep. And last but not least, I am a big believer in, regardless of the intent of a law or the intent of a thing, how it works in practice matters more. My issue with red flag laws. The intent is irrelevant. Intent is irrelevant. The end result of red flag laws has been shown that people get killed by agents of the state, swatting... Usually... Spotting happens, left, right, and center, and people get to now wield agents of the state like their own personal little bully stick. And in a couple of cases, police officers have showed up at the house of the wrong person and murdered that person. Using the just. Usually while they're unarmed. Yeah. Indiana did an interesting thing a while back. If the police show up and don't identify themselves... You can shoot them. I mean... You can defend yourself. It's perfectly okay that some of the cops are not identifying themselves as police officers in a clear and distinct fashion. I mean, I don't really care what the state says about the agents of the state and the laws. If someone punts my front door off its hinges and doesn't clearly identify themselves as a law enforcement officer, immediately... they're going to be retreating back through the door under a hail of gunfire, and that's not my fault. Right, because my assumption is you're here to do me harm. If you're violating my personal and property rights. And me knowing my behavior and my proclivities better than the average person does. I don't think I've done any felonies recently that merit a whole bunch of stormtroopers kicking in my front door, so I might defend myself regardless, just assuming that Even if you say police, you may not be police because I can't think of a reason why you'd be kicking my door in. There have been more than a few individuals that have attempted to murder and rob individuals and rape using police uniforms falsely. It's happened before. It's happened. It certainly has. And the fact that it's happened once makes it an affirmative defense. Also, I did not believe you were a police officer. Yeah. Also, the fact that there are multiple instances where actual police officers have misused their authority and done very horrible things. Oh, you mean all the dozens to hundreds of police officers that are being arrested and fired over stalking and harassing people with the flock camera systems? I wasn't even getting there, but yeah, why not? I mean, heck, this is just because their digital footprint is very easy to track when they log into those systems. Most people are not tech savvy enough to avoid track tracing and databasing. That happens automatically. I was more referencing police officers using their authority to shield them from property crimes and sex crimes they commit under the auspices of, I'm a cop, I can get away with it. Not that that's ever happened. Taking them on a midnight tour. Yeah. So, that's my whole tirade against anti-gun propaganda. It's all friggin' nonsense. It's all based in half-truths. It's all based... in lies and emotional manipulations and tactics. It's all scared. Mostly based in classism and racism too. I mean, that's the part that we didn't really touch on, but there, there is a lot of this, that kind. Of the state of Illinois is using slave codes to justify their assault weapon ban. The land of Lincoln, the emancipator is using slave codes and native American firearms restrictions to To justify assault weapons bans before the Supreme Court. Nick, I'm going to ask you a question. You're going to have to answer truthfully for me. Go for it. If you just had to, like, put a number on it. what percentage would you put out there that members of your state and local government are racial minorities? Half? Half. Oh, it's got to be at least 40%. Okay. So it's actually shockingly high in Illinois. It's very high given our demographic breakup. We have a lot of Hispanic lawmakers, African-American lawmakers. Do you see where I'm going with this? There's a pretty high percentage. Of women actually. Do you see where I'm going with this? That people are literally trying to use laws that a couple of generations ago would have prevented them from owning firearms to justify. Oh, yeah. Other people not being able to have firearms. And like, that is so fricking on the nose to me that like, just saying it out loud, it should like get in somewhere in the back of the head. They should be like, Hmm, that sounds like I'm the bad guy. The, the black mayor of Chicago citing laws from segregation to, to get rid of guns and to disparage white people. Buddy, that's not a great idea. That's not a good look. You're an idiot. He's the mayor of Chicago. You're probably an idiot to be the mayor of Chicago. This reminds me of a conversation I had one time because someone made the assertion that they made the assertion that neo-Nazis and racists and KKKs were in favor of the Second Amendment. Oh, you mean the groups that were largely funded by the NAACP? Don't beat me to the punchline. And my response to them was, no, they're not. They're not. They're in favor of them having fire. That was the thing I pointed out. I'm like, do you honestly think that if I get Joe KKK member right here, white sheets, pointy hat, the whole nine yards.... If you can find one, good luck. Yeah, good luck. Most of them are fine to buy at the Southern Poverty Law Center, but that's another discussion. But if I could find one, and I could produce him, and I said, hey, how would you feel about your gay black Jewish neighbor having a whole arsenal of guns? He would lose his absolute crap, because the idea of that person, all the bad things in the world, having guns, just doesn't make his skin crawl. And I'm like, now, I, an intellectual, think they should both have all the guns they want, And a well-armed populace is a polite one. It's really hard, really hard to abuse our minorities. Oh, yeah. Extremely difficult. Why do you think I volunteer to teach gay folks how to use firearms? The Black Panthers agreed with me. Malcolm X agreed with me. Hell, Marx agreed with you. Marx agreed with me. And that guy was, oh, Jesus. Lots of syphilis. So much syphilis. And so much lazy ass. Yeah. Dude went 50 years without ever having a job. Never was productive in his entire life. It feels like that actually takes work to not have a job for 50 years. You would accidentally get a job after 50 years. I have accidentally gotten jobs before. I don't know. It would take a significant amount of work To avoid doing any actual work. It's actually harder to avoid doing any amount of work. Yeah. But you're going to have to put a pin in that hole. Even Mark's agreed with me because there's a future topic. I will let you know what it is as soon as we wrap. Because it's going to require a little bit of homework on our part. Oh dear. It'll be educational. I mean, it won't be educational for you and I. We know a lot of this stuff. It'll be really educational for the listeners. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's interesting. Our videos went away. Nicholas? I can hear you. Oh, my internet. Might have pooped. I think I might have lost Nick. Let me text Phil. That would be quite tragic. Internet has pooped. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Okay. Well, I guess we're going to go ahead and end the show because my co-host's internet has frozen, which means that the internet has finally gotten him... Or we pissed off Skynet with one too many AI references. Anyway, matter of fact, it's going to go out the door. Good night, y'all, and talk to you in another week. Bye. Clouds are heavy on the county line signs are flashing reading in the time protecting the home locking down the block Raising values while we watch the clock. Turn the dial, cut through the tricks. Welcome to Matter of Fact. Well, we talk prepping for the storm ahead. The iron in the hand, the words they said. Guns, politics, and the lines they drew. We uncover what they hide from you. Yeah, lay it down. No spin, no tricks. This is a matter of fact. Static screams through the midnight air. A lot of folks talking, but nobody cares. For the M.O.F. standing on the track. We look at the truth, and we don't look back. Well, we talk prepping for the storm ahead. The iron in the hand, the words they said. Guns, politics, and the lines they drew. We uncover what they hide from you. Yeah, lay it down. No spin, no tricks. This is a matter of facts. No spin, no tricks. Shout out to the MOFers. This is a matter of facts. Thank you.