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Feb. 15, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
59:27
The Importance of the 2nd Amendment
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Do you want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Folks, Doug Collins here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Got a great episode for you today.
Eric Kraft, Gun Owners of America.
You're going to be shocked at what you hear today, especially with the ATF and the registration.
They're finding on how much record they're keeping on you, especially if you're a legal gun owner.
You won't want to miss it.
We had a long conversation today, but Eric's a friend of the show, and we're glad to have him on to discuss these aspects of the Second Amendment.
But a lot of people also ask.
We've had some great response on YouTube.
Doug Collins on YouTube.
Doug Collins on Rumble.
Rumble has been exciting.
We're glad to be on the space.
Want you to go check us out.
You can find all of this on the DougCollinsPodcast.com DougCollinsPodcast.com Sign up for the Collins Collective.
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Things that you'll want to see on a variety of topics.
We want you to be a part of the whole Doug Collins experience here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
So again, go to DougCollinsPodcast.com.
You can find our podcast, but you can also find links to our YouTube channel and to our Rumble channel as well.
So great episode coming up with Eric Pratt, Gun Owners of America.
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Good.
Folks, we're back.
Eric Pratt, Gun Owners of America, is with us today.
You know how much I like it when I get to talk about things that go boom.
And shooting sports and guns are just something that I've grown up with and enjoy.
And Eric is with Gun Owners of America who are fighting for those rights of our Second Amendment.
Eric, just going to have a wide-ranging conversation today.
We've had a lot of discussions here.
I've had...
You know, folks from Silencer Central, Brian up there, just the folks, just the suppressor issue.
We have the Schumer issue.
We have the Democrats.
Where do you see right now?
I'm going to start us off as one.
Welcome to the podcast today, Eric.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's great to be with you, Doug.
Thanks so much.
It is good.
We do radio a lot now.
We actually get to see each other and talk about it.
But it is.
And this may sound like a strange question, but bear with me, because I think it's worth flying on.
Where do you see gun rights in the United States right now?
Well, I think we've got challenges.
There's assaults all over the place on our rights.
However, at the same time, a lot of good things are happening.
And so it might be good just to really talk about both things.
I mean, we are under assault in certain areas.
I mean, we may have talked about this on your radio show, but, you know, the ATF registration.
This is a huge issue.
And the left knows it's a big issue.
I'll explain why.
First, just a little backstory.
Last year, Gun Owners of America leaked the story that the Biden administration was accumulating records.
Now, we've known for, really, decades that ATF has been collecting records.
But we found that in one year, they had collected 54 million records.
Now, that's a pretty stunning number.
And so...
Let's stop right there for just a second.
Let's let that sink in.
Sometimes in life, we pass by, we don't smell the roses.
I want people to understand this.
54 million records in the last year, you said.
Is that correct?
Yeah, in one year.
And that was stunning.
It is stunning.
And today, on a totally separate note, I mean, this is something I fought with in D.C. in my Judiciary Committee days forever.
We're finding the CIA is keeping databases as well.
This is not something people need to pass by.
So, as you take into account here on the podcast, $54 million.
Continue from there.
So, I want to say, first of all, I'm very grateful to Representative Cloud of Texas because he took that information, the 54 billion, that million, sorry, that number, and millions, billions, when you're in Washington, the numbers blur.
Get to a tree and we'll talk about it.
Yeah.
So he took that information with 51 other representatives.
They demanded an accounting from the ATF. Well, what they got back was even more stunning because Biden's ATF admitted that they had almost 1 billion records in their possession.
It's almost as if to say, yeah, if you think that 54 million is bad, ha ha!
We have one billion records!
And by the way, and this is even in the ATF's response to Representative Cloud, 94% of them are already in digital format.
Now, folks, this is gun owner registration.
This is a huge concern because historically, and we've even seen this in this country, registration has often been the first step to gun confiscation.
What's really interesting about this, Doug, I mentioned earlier that the left realizes what big a story this is, how damning of a revelation this is.
So much so, they are trying to cover this up.
USA Today has their own set of fact checkers.
I mean, really, they're fact suppressors.
I mean, these guys lie like crazy, but they cloak themselves in objectivity, call themselves fact checkers.
So they've teamed up with Facebook, surprise, surprise, to suppress To suppress this story.
And so we posted this story on social media, and wham!
The Facebook censors flagged our post as being, you know, supposedly misleading.
And I'll just tell you, this is what the anti-gun left does.
They hate the Second Amendment.
They're doing everything they can to restrict our rights.
But truly, they hate the First Amendment too, because when you shine the light on corruption, the Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself, They try to suppress your voice even when you're telling the truth.
It is.
Eric, explain now what, you know, because sometimes, and again, the left will try and downplay this as nothing.
Explain what records that a gun owner could be concerned about that these billion records now, but, you know, we'll take somewhere between a million and a billion.
What is it exactly do they have and what could they conceivably do with it?
And it's amazing to me, by the way, you said 90% of these are now digitized, but yet we're still...
In the nascent stages of doing class 3 license, suppressor license and everything approvals, still doing it by hand.
Right.
Yeah, which actually may be a benefit in that that makes it harder to register all that.
But anyway, I know where you're going with that.
Quite frankly, we just need to dismantle all those regulations and restrictions.
But anyway, I digress.
So, I think the biggest concern that gun owners should have is the 4473 forms.
There's probably other records that constitute that nearly one billion records, you know, the dealer's books and things like that, but certainly the 4473 forms, which they collect when dealers go out of business, they get these, they put them in boxes, and then they start digitizing them.
And, you know, here's where the...
The Facebook censors in USA Today started lying about this.
First of all, in trying to disparage what we said about this, they said there's only hundreds of thousands of records that the ATF has.
Well, first of all, that's directly contradicted by the ATF themselves, which says they have hundreds of millions of records.
So, the fact checkers, the fact suppressors, come out and they say, oh, GOA is wrong because there's hundreds of thousands of records.
That's directly contrary to what the ATF themselves was saying.
So the fact suppressors can't even get the numbers right.
But then they say the ATF wouldn't register gun owners because that's illegal.
You talked about letting things sink in for a moment.
Let that sink in for a moment.
When has the leftist media ever given government officials a pass like that?
They wouldn't register gun owners because it's illegal?
I mean, that's so laughable.
What hypocrites they are.
Look, what ATF is doing is certainly, you know, may be illegal, but they're still doing it.
And by the way, the General Accounting Office has blasted the ATF twice already, One last thing on this.
The fact suppressors claim that while records are being digitized, they're not searchable.
This was the other thing.
Right, and that's the proper response, Doug, right?
Yeah, okay.
And I'm tall and handsome too.
Yeah, okay, I get it.
It's almost like they're living in 1980s technology, because anybody who has a computer knows how laughable that is.
Obviously, you can search pictures, words and pictures.
And again, the ATF admits that the purpose of this database is for searching records.
I mean, look, we know cops, their departments will make requests They'll trace guns.
They've told me, personally, ATF will come back in several minutes with an answer.
Let me tell you, that means they're not rummaging through boxes to look up the answer.
That means they're searching something that's digitized.
I mean, it couldn't be clearer.
But anyway, so we're not only dealing with the Biden administration and the ATF and what they're sitting on, but now we've got a complicit press that's trying to cover up what they're actually doing.
Well, several things to unpack there.
Number one, let's go back and for folks who may know, they don't know, let's go back and define.
You talked about the form coming from gun dealers.
What does that form and what does it have on it?
So, you go in to buy a gun, the Form 4473, you fill out your name, your address, the type of gun that you're purchasing.
Of course, there's other information too.
There's a series of questions that you have to answer.
But all that is on the front page.
It actually used to be separated over several pages, and this is one of the things that the ATF has done in recent years, is they've put all that key information on the front page.
Why do you think they've done that?
So that when they digitize these records, all that info is right there together.
The gun owner's name, their address, and the type of gun that they purchased.
I believe also the serial number of Sorry, the social security number of the gun owner goes right there too on that front page.
So this is very, you know, that social security number which we were promised way back in FDR's time was never going to become an ID number.
Yeah, that number.
So anyway, all that information is right there.
That is powerful information, which really, you know, the ATF says that's not a registry.
But look, it doesn't matter, you know, what you call dog poop.
It still stinks as bad, no matter what you call it.
And this is an ATF registry, because that is precisely what it is.
And they claim that they need this, you know, for being able to solve crimes and things like that.
Michael Cloud, Representative Cloud, in his series of questions to the ATF said, well, how effective is having all this information?
How effective is it to solving crimes?
This is what the ATF responded.
We have no ability to determine the successful prosecution of hundreds of thousands of gun traces that are completed annually.
Quite frankly, I'm stunned by the honesty of this response, but right there, they can't tell you this is solving crimes, and yet they want all this information on law-abiding gun owners.
That's a problem.
What concerns me is they talk about it being searchable, non-searchable, how you want to define that.
What concerns me in that response is they said out of hundreds of thousands of inquiries, which I've dealt with this, and I mentioned briefly the CIA issue, and I've dealt with the Department of Justice through the Patriot Act, these queries on the, quote, database.
It tells me that they're querying that database.
Yes.
They're asking, so they're going, and even, and then my question is, as we, you know, may or may not be applicable, but as an attorney is looking at this, from a criminal defense side, is that...
What triggers that information?
Is it simply that an officer or a police department or a detective in an agency says, you know, I'm curious about this person or about this gun.
How are they querying it?
Are they querying it through name?
Are they querying it through gun?
Are they querying it through social security number?
Are they querying it through serial number?
How are they querying this or did they give any indication of how they were doing it?
I don't remember either the clouds letter or the ATF response getting into that and that might be good to have somebody who's in law enforcement who regularly does that to give an answer.
But typically I think the traces are requesting based upon the request of the firearm and then they trace it to the name, to the name of the original purchaser.
Of course, right there That explains why this is not good for crime fighting, because we know from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that only 1% of criminals who used a gun in crime actually bought their gun at the store, at the gun store.
1%.
So by doing these traces, they are going after the needle in the haystack.
So it's no wonder that the ATF says, yeah, we can't tell you.
When you think about it, think about all the places that have gun registration.
Illinois.
Washington DC, Hawaii, authorities in all three of those jurisdictions that I've mentioned have said they can't give one example where gun registration resulted in actually solving a crime.
New York and Maryland used to register ammunition, and they actually repealed those laws like a decade later because they had spent millions of dollars, maybe even hundreds of millions, I don't know, but in both states they said that they couldn't point to a single case where it had resulted but in both states they said that they couldn't point to a single case Canada has gun registration.
In 70 years of gun registration, they can only point to one, one case that maybe was effective in solving the crime where they wouldn't have had any other way to solve it.
So think about just, you know, in all those examples, literally billions of dollars being spent hoarding all this Information on law-abiding gun owners, which can be abused one day, and yet in all those examples, only one situation where it actually led to solving a crime.
That's a problem.
Well, it's a bigger problem too when you start thinking about the queries that then could lead off of other queries.
When you say, okay, let's just say I don't have a gun And I'm going to use a scenario here.
And if there's a law enforcement person who listens to this podcast, go to my website, DougCollinsPodcast.com.
By the way, for anybody out there, go to DougCollinsPodcast.com.
You can go to our insider information area called Collins Collective.
We'll have a lot of stuff about this on there.
But also, you can send input in to me.
And I'd love to hear this.
What if an enterprising detective is sitting there and they're saying, you know, I don't know who did this crime.
I'm not sure.
We have a, and I'm just going to use a 9mm as the weapon.
Maybe you don't even have the weapon, but you know it was a 9mm, you took the bullet, they did the tracing.
They suspect Doug Collins and Eric Pratt.
They then query, they say, let me send their names to the ATF. And I'm going to send Doug Collins' name, I'm going to send Eric's name, and I want to see if either one of them happened on a 9mm.
I mean, it's not just the tracing of the gun.
It is also...
So my question is, would that be covered under probable cause?
Would that need a warrant?
Would that need...
I mean, there's so many questions there that, you know, or...
And here's a question, Eric, that maybe Mike, who I served with for a brief time.
My question is, is...
What is the purpose...
of giving that information to a law enforcement agent and is it now considered public record?
Is it now considered a, and I'm not going to say foiable, but is it considered that information no longer considered in a closed loop between you and the gun dealer or the buyer?
Yeah, I don't know the answer to that last question.
That's very interesting.
And as far as your other questions, those would be good questions for my law enforcement friends to know if they do expand, not just sending the gun trace, but also a potential name along with it.
Of course, we know that even if they are doing that, The ATF can't tell us that it's solving crimes.
Several jurisdictions that register can't say that that solves crimes because, again, criminals aren't buying guns from the gun stores.
I'll tell you what really concerns me about how a list like this could be used.
Right now we're waiting, as you know, Doug, for the ATF to finalize a set of rules that are going to ban up to 40 million Pistols that contain stabilizing braces.
These were guns that were, or technology, these stabilizing braces for pistols.
They were approved at one time by the ATF, but now Biden's ATF has done an about-face.
So they're about to be banned in the blink of an eye by executive action, by fiat, without Congress taking action.
And we're expecting these rules in the summer.
Well, guess what?
It very well may be that the ATF will know where every single one of those 40 million guns are because of the 4473 forms.
And maybe also because of purchase orders that they may obtain from gun stores.
But see, all this is going to amount to a confiscation list.
And really, Congress needs to defund what the ATF is doing here.
And all these records need to be destroyed.
And the computers that house them just need to be dropped into the middle of the ocean.
Exactly.
Okay, let's take it for just a second for the people who listen to my podcast and they say, but I don't see what's wrong with this.
You know, look, the gun, you know, this registration, if you're not, you know, the old argument, Eric, well, if you're not doing anything illegal, you don't have to worry about it.
But I'm going to take a step back before you answer that question.
I'm going to take you another scenario that is even more concerning in this regard.
Red flag laws.
In which, you know, law enforcement could say, I've had a complaint, we've had a domestic complaint about X. He or she, before we go further with this or before we go there, let's check and see what they have.
I mean, again, what would...
I mean, again, I'm trying to define the scope here and not trying to be alarmist, but I want to also understand, you know, for the person out there who says, oh, this doesn't matter.
How could it matter, Eric, in a way that is detrimental?
Not on the criminal side.
I'm looking at other sides.
The confiscation list you talked about is one, but what else?
Those are very insightful examples.
So to take each one in turn.
First of all, you're a law-abiding person.
Why should you worry?
If you're keeping your nose clean, why should this affect you?
Well, just think back to what we were just talking about.
Those 40 million guns with stabilizing braces, those people haven't done anything wrong, and yet their guns are about to be banned.
And so now they could become Criminals subject to 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine if you do not destroy that firearm or surrender that firearm or go through now the paperwork where you're basically going through the paperwork that you would if you had a machine gun.
Those are your options.
If you don't do that, you are a criminal.
So that's how good people can be dragged into this.
And then you raise the issue of red flags.
Wow.
Yeah, because there are good people, you know, red flags are sold as a way, you know, let's get, you know, those bad guys before they do bad things.
The problem is, is that when you throw due process out the window like that, you're now gonna drag in a lot of good people that don't deserve to be dragged through the mud.
I mean, consider Gary Willis of Maryland.
African-American gentleman woke up at 5 in the morning to banging on his door.
He goes downstairs.
They're there to serve a red flag order.
They're there to take his guns.
He's like, I haven't done anything wrong.
He ends up getting shot and killed right there on his doorstep.
And as it turns out, afterwards we find out he had had a family, it was like an extended family meal, and he and another family member had had a political argument.
And so she was very upset at him.
Because of that.
I'm guessing he probably had the conservative position and the other gal had the liberal position.
And so she took out a red flag order on him.
And see, that's the thing with red flags.
Gary Willis doesn't get to go Uh, into court and give his side.
He doesn't have his attorney there.
The judge just, uh, signs the order.
And so, and to your point, so now could they start, uh, you know, looking through this registry to see, okay, well, here's the guns that we know he has.
And so, you know, we're going to tear this house upside down, uh, until we find every single one of these that, uh, you know, that he's, uh, bought through.
And of course there may be others too that they'll find.
I mean, I've got a lot of guns, and most of them weren't even bought from gun stores, right?
There you go.
You come to my house, you may find one or two I bought from gun stores, but I've also bought from others and had others gifted to me as well.
Be careful where you look, is all I'll say, because they're all legal and you're not allowed in my house without a warrant.
Number two, this is I think the biggest thing here that is the concern for folks is, and I'm hearing this more and more and it's concerning me, Eric.
Take it out of the gun context for a second.
And I heard this back, and I'm going to use several examples.
I'm hearing it in, you know, with people who are more publicized in the media that they're accused of something, and the refrain is, well, if they're innocent, they just They don't have nothing to worry about.
They can just come out and say that.
Well, number one, as someone who has practiced in the past defense law, your best bet is to say nothing because they're not looking for you to admit.
They're looking for inconsistencies that could possibly show that they believe that you were lying, whether you were or not.
Number two, with these kind of issues that we're dealing with, Whether it be impeachment of President Trump, whether it be everything else, it is this idea that if I accuse you, the accusation is enough to stand on its own and that it is your job to prove my accusation wrong.
That turns jurisprudence in our country completely on its head.
And I'm concerned that because some people don't like guns, we're now heading down this path and this registry that is out there, whether they're calling it a registry or not, Basically is leading us to the fact that you have to prove that you're not the bad guy instead of the government having to prove it.
Yeah, isn't that pretty much what Brett Kavanaugh had to do?
I mean, he actually had to dredge up an old calendar to show where he was each day of a particular summer.
But you're absolutely right.
That's what red flags does.
You are assumed guilty first because you haven't had your day in court and you have to prove your innocence to get your firearms back when they come to take it.
We've got a book here in our offices called Three Felonies a Day.
It's written by an attorney, and his basic premise is there are so many laws on the books that the average good guy commits three felonies a day unknowingly, just walking, driving through life.
With the way we see the left wanting to keep lists and spy on people, this becomes a bigger problem.
Think about the Biden administration spying on law-abiding parents and treating them as domestic terrorists.
The Democrat-controlled Capitol Police spying on congressmen.
What's come out in the news recently.
Think of the Obama administration spying on conservative organizations and journalists.
Obama's FBI spying on a presidential candidate that was about to take office.
And now we've got the ATF compiling huge registration list to track what guns that Americans have owned.
This is the problem where good people are, there's so much information on us that once the rules change, then the government, the bureaucrats know that we're in possession of that now newly banned firearm, that now it's contraband.
And so in many cases, I mean, we'll almost have no choice.
You know, you either surrender it or you're going to go to jail for 10 years.
I mean, that's, you know, that's the danger that we're facing here.
And that's why, you know, again, I just keep hammering this.
These records need to be deleted.
I mean, how difficult is it going to be to do this?
You know, didn't Hillary Clinton delete 30,000 emails while she was under investigation?
This is not rocket science.
You know, how difficult is it to delete gun owners' records?
So this is something, you know, Americans need to demand this of their congressmen.
We have an alert on the top of our website, and with just a couple clicks of your mouse or if you're on your phone, you can send off a pre-written letter to your congressman and senator to demand this.
This is really important, and we need to start demanding it now.
And I realize it's a Democrat Congress, but we need to start...
We're demanding this now because then by next year, after, Lord willing, we get a wave that brings in a new Congress, we really are going to get this defunded.
But we need to start the pressure now.
Well, you just hit on something, though, that I'm going to bring up and I'm not going to be sensitive to either side.
I'm just going to be an honest statement here.
The ATF in and of itself, now look, the actual agents, the ones who are out there, you know, again, in a very difficult situation doing jobs, you know, that is, I've always tried to distinguish that, but the bureaucratic side of ATF that is being given the What we're seeing now,
this registry, this slow walking paper, everything that we've seen for Class 3. By the way, and we'll get into this in a little bit because I've already had one podcast about this just absolutely stupid discussion of suppressors that we have going on in this country.
Yeah, I'm...
I've never understood, you know, I don't have to have a title for a muffler on my car, but yet I have to have a whole new background check for a gun, for something that suppresses it.
By the way, it's sort of funny, and this is what we brought out with Mr. Adams the other day from Silencer Central, that in Europe, you can buy a silencer off the shelf, but you can't buy a gun.
In America, you can buy a gun, but you can't buy a silencer.
It's just great.
In fact, they encourage it in Europe.
Oh yeah, very much so.
They encourage that.
It's your neighborly duty.
Yeah, crazy.
It is.
All right, let's get into this because this affects, and I'm not conspiratorial in this sense, but this affects something that everybody needs to understand.
ATF has been doing this, growing this under both This has been Republican and Democrat.
This is a failure because many times Republicans don't want to take it on because some of them don't want to be viewed in a bad light by liberals.
I'm going to tell you right now, conservatives out there, liberals are not a pawn of your political positions.
You're not going to make them like you.
That's just a fact of life you just have to deal with.
We're the only side that actually wants the other ones to like us.
I've never had a liberal come up to me and say, you know, what can I do to make you like me as a conservative?
I've never had that happen.
I have plenty of my own party come up and say, well, how can we get the other side to like us?
Well, quit trying, number one.
But understand, how do we get an agency, and without using the conspiratorial deep state or anything else, there's a lot of people who just get up, go to work at ATF, and they do it because this is the way they've always done it.
Is it time for a complete overhaul of ATF? You know, that's an interesting question that's been debated by a lot of Second Amendment activists because you get rid of the agency, there's still the laws in place that require the job to be done that they're doing.
So let me just, you know, argue both sides here.
Let's say this.
We don't do away with ATF, but there's another agency that I would like to see redone or reimagined.
That's called the Corps of Engineers, okay, that deals with our water and everything else.
But is there a way to take the ATF, get it back to its core competencies, and not have it be a lightning rod Well, you know, I think one thing you were saying earlier, you know, there are some good people at the ATF. I mean, there are whistleblowers that come out.
There are some people that we work with.
I mean, so there are.
But typically, it's been corrupt from the top down.
And that's one reason why we so strenuously, oh my goodness, fought to keep David Chipman, who was just an anti-gun zealot, I know it's 50-50, but with Kamala, you get the tiebreaker.
There's no reason why He shouldn't have been confirmed.
I mean, just look at every judge that Biden puts up.
They all get confirmed 51-50, okay?
This should have been no different except we raised such a stink, and it wasn't just us, other gun groups too, but just rallying the grassroots made a huge difference.
And so not only did we keep the squishy Republicans, In the against camp.
But we even pulled even people beyond Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
There were some other senators who were also saying, I just can't go with this.
And I think that's the key, Doug.
I mean, you were talking about how Republicans, a lot of them, of course, naturally, they're going to be pro-law enforcement.
I think that's one reason why people need to speak out on this, because there may be that...
People listening now might think, well, my representative's a Republican, he'll be good on this issue.
Well, maybe, maybe not.
This is why he needs to hear from you, because there's this natural reaction from Republicans to go against the whole defund the police, and rightfully so, okay?
Although this is one agency that truly either needs to be radically defunded or at a minimum defund this whole registration scheme that they're doing.
I think we need to change the underlying law which results in their getting all these 4473 forms.
By the way, one thing I didn't mention, just to go back to something you asked earlier, how do they get these names?
I mentioned one way is when dealers go out of business, they turn them in.
But actually for several years, and I think this began under the Obama administration, ATF's been going into gun shops and they've been photocopying, I would argue illegally photocopying, 4473 forms.
Supposedly, they're allowed to search these records in the pursuit of a criminal investigation, but what dealers are reporting all over the country, which shows this is not just a localized problem, is that, oh no, it's much more than that.
They're just going page by page and photocopying this.
So there are other ways that ATF is getting this information.
Well, and I think that's the, again, as we go down this road of protecting these amendments, our Second Amendment rights, First Amendment rights, I've always said that you don't have a First Amendment without the Second Amendment.
And, you know, because there is this idea of our country, and by no means when I say that, is there any, you know, malmotive or, you know, any violent intent that's not there, but if you don't have the second,
which enforces your rights, you know, to protect yourself, you have the first man, you also don't have the fourth, the fifth, the eighth, you don't have the ninth, you know, and again, they all work together, and I think this is the part that bothers me about the left, In many ways is they want with limits.
And it's been said, even President Biden said this just, you know, basically just the other day that, you know, in his, and we're going to capture this a little bit.
He said something to the effect of that the amendment, the Second Amendment is an absolute.
And I love how, and I'll give you a chance here.
He went on to say that the founders couldn't envision a private owner owning a cannon.
Okay, well one, we know that was just false from the beginning.
They didn't have a limitation on what the weapon was.
Right.
So, there's another one.
He talked about the gun manufacturers not being able to be sued.
I've had Larry King National Sports Shooting Foundation.
We've talked about this.
We'll talk about it again.
Let's take the first one.
How perverted of a nuance is that view of the Second Amendment by what the President said?
It's terrible, and it shows he doesn't even know or he's ignoring the basic law that we live under.
The document that formed our nation, the Declaration of Independence, says that everyone is endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life.
Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
So, you know, the whole idea that our rights come from God, not from the government, not from Joe Biden.
You know, these are not privileges that can be restricted, can be given out or withdrawn.
That's not in their jurisdiction because our rights come from God in the same way that government You know, if, you know, Doug, I think you're married, right?
And you fell in love with the woman you married.
Government has no business saying, no, you can't marry her.
You know, I mean, that's not in their jurisdiction, in their realm, because we have a God-given right to do that.
And, by the way, the Second Amendment flows perfectly.
Perfectly with that because it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Now, that's a pretty absolute statement.
Shall not be infringed.
And so everything that proceeded out of his mouth after he said, you know, the Second Amendment's not absolute, he was talking about infringements.
And by the way, infringements that are only going to affect you and me and your good listeners, Doug, and not, by the way, the bad guys who aren't buying, as we've been talking about, they don't buy guns in stores, they steal them, they buy them on the black market, or make them.
I mean, my goodness, they make guns in prison.
How do we really think that all these rules and regulations are going to stop bad guys from getting guns when even in prison, They get guns and drugs and every other illegal thing.
It's just ludicrous.
But the point being, this is all about controlling you and me.
It's about controlling the law-abiding.
And again, you just get back to that.
That is what the left does.
Gun control was never about safety.
It's always been about control.
Well, and let's bring up that last point before we hit on a couple other things, and that is this issue of the gun manufacturers can't be sued.
Well, we all know that that's not true.
Right.
The problem I'm having lately, Eric, and not just specifically guns, have you noticed that the instrumentalities, that there's a movement right now among some of the left, and especially the media, the legacy media, the liberal media, is they take the instrumentality of the act And they want to associate, if it fits their narrative, they want to associate the instrumentality with the actual actor.
And hear me out when I say this.
How many times have you ever heard, they always tie the gun, the gun is the problem, not the person using the gun.
And then the latest just crazy example of this, but it showed me, at least it made me take pause, is when in Wisconsin, when the SUV, the gentleman drove through the parade.
And some of the media started out saying an SUV drove through a parade.
No, an SUV didn't drive through a parade.
It's almost as if we've divorced the responsibility aspect of this.
It's easy to see how they do it with guns.
It's beginning to be disturbing when they won't classify it in things like cars, which cause far more deaths than anything that guns do.
And yet, typically, they don't coin the term car violence.
Or on 9-11, they didn't talk about plane violence or box cutter violence, right?
So yeah, you're right.
Guns are treated differently, and they're treated differently.
Differently, obviously, for the purpose of demonizing them because, let's face it, the left is about power and control and they hate the fact that there are so many people in this country that can protect themselves.
Not only against the common crime type of thing, but also the ultimate reason for defense against tyranny.
This is such an important thing, and I know there's a lot of things you want to talk about here.
I just wrote a book and released a book where I really get into this a lot, just showing How important guns are to freedom and how in countries overseas where they have squelched that freedom it's resulted in tyranny and in many cases genocide but how in our own history Not only against the British,
hello, we used guns to stop attempts to disarm us and tyrannize us.
This is something that the left doesn't like to talk about.
We saw this during the civil rights era where African Americans were using guns to protect themselves against official oppression.
One of the examples I talk about in my book is that of I saw former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talking about this, how her dad would arm himself and patrol her neighborhood at night.
This is when she was a kid.
He would do this with the other dads on the block, and they did this because the Southern Police Departments were looking the other way when the KKK would show up to terrorize their neighborhoods.
And there's some dramatic cases where They shot back, in one case, shot out more than 80 cars of the Klansmen.
But see, this is good people using their firearms to protect themselves, either against official oppression or oppression that was officially sanctioned.
Everything that we've been talking about, this is why this is so important.
Because if we give up our guns, then, as you were just saying, Doug, then there's no First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment.
There's no way to protect all the other amendments.
It really hinges, ultimately, on the Second Amendment.
Well, and again, it's easy to talk about an instrumentality.
It's like you were just saying, and say that it's the gun that causes the violence.
Look, England is probably one of the better examples of very extremely You know, strict handgun controls and gun controls in general.
But however, you know, what's become the preferred violent instrumentality?
A knife.
But yeah, you don't hear, you know, let's ban knives.
I mean, just, again, it's popular.
What, the strange question is, and I just thought of this as I was sitting here thinking about this.
Isn't it amazing to me, to you, it is to me, that the left is so anti-gun, anti-violence, but yet almost every liberal star in Hollywood who does action movies uses guns.
I mean, you know, look, you remember how they, where they started, we went through about a 25-year period in which cigarettes, for the most part, were never seen in a movie.
Remember that?
And they've just started coming back.
I mean, you just see them now.
I mean, if Hollywood wanted to, quote, do it, they would do away with guns.
And, again, it's just hypocrisy to me.
And Alec Baldwin's situation, you know, it just fired.
No, it didn't.
Something happened.
You pulled the trigger.
Something happened here.
They just don't fire.
If they did, I'd have holes all in my walls in this house.
I've got enough guns.
Well, they'd just shoot by themselves.
You know, it doesn't happen.
One of the issues that is concerning as we go forward and how we, you know, I think address this is what you just mentioned in this last part.
People aren't feeling safe.
And that's not a good place to be in our country, okay?
It's just not.
That's why the police They properly do their job.
They need to be there.
Because we've seen an uptick in people buying guns.
Some buying guns to protect themselves, thinking it's simply a point-and-shoot kind of mentality, which is also concerning for those of us who've grown up with guns for a long time.
The question becomes, When is there going to be a realization that we have strong law and order based on our police doing their job, but that also that you have the right to personally protect yourself as well?
Well, if I understand your question, I think that is something that people People who haven't previously thought about their own self-protection really are coming to understand that.
I mean, in the last two years, the number I've seen, new gun buyers is 14 million people.
I mean, guns sold is up in the tens of millions, but for new gun buyers, 14 million.
And what's really kind of exciting about that is that We hear all over the place from gun dealers that the people that are buying them are not your stereotypical white Anglo-Saxon, you know, person who's always, I mean, yes, they're buying guns too, but it's been minorities, it's been women.
Also, as they have discussions with people, they're finding that people who are actually on the left side of the political spectrum, and, you know, I find that exciting.
Here at Gun Owners of America, many people, I should say a few people on our staff, started off as, you know, leftist liberals.
And they are now conservative constitutionalists, but you know what was their...
You know, kind of the gateway drug for them.
It was purchasing a firearm because they felt threatened in some way or another, you know, in their circumstances.
And once the government no longer has that Control over your thinking that they're there to protect you and now you realize I have to protect myself It's not much of a stretch then to start thinking well what other things that I used to think government should be doing this or that maybe that's Not something that they should be doing, or quite frankly, that they do very well.
And let's face it, government doesn't protect us very well.
I mean, court case after court case has said the police do not have the responsibility to protect you as an individual.
Now, we're glad the police are there, but they will tell you they are the cleanup crew.
They come and they put up the yellow tape.
They interview witnesses.
They track down the bad guys.
And so we're thankful for the work that they do.
But they are not yours and my private security force that are going to protect us.
Although, you know, there are some liberal congressmen, you know, we were talking about hypocrites, who do think that the police are their private security force.
And even while they're yelling for defund the police during the riots, They were demanding, you know, having a police car in front of their home or something like that.
Yeah.
So the hypocrisy is not just in Hollywood.
It really exists amongst leftist politicians all over the country.
I agree.
And look, I enjoy action movies.
I've always, you know, I guess it's just where I grew up.
I enjoy that.
I'm glad they do them, but it is just sort of ironic to me that it just doesn't seem to be the part.
Talking with the company, and I didn't get to go to SHOT Show this year, we ended up with some issues I couldn't get to go, but I was talking with the company, talking about this personal protection aside, this really gun but not gun.
For those who don't like guns, they sort of come out of that next level down, the debilitating but not lethal.
And Quest, there's a gentleman who actually started in the paintball industry, but he's coming up.
So there's a lot of things out there for people that are not necessarily a firearm, and I would pray the ATF wouldn't classify this as a firearm, but that are out there for people to have that protection when they don't feel, maybe they don't feel like they could buy a gun, or they don't feel like they want to, but we need that kind of protection because we're just living in a different society today.
Yeah, you know, I'm not familiar with the product that you're talking about, but certainly, you know, familiar with, you know, there's many things from, you know, mace or, you know, stun guns, things like that.
The best defense that you can have is something that is going to drop the other person and stop them from attacking you.
And this is one way that actually the media has done a disservice.
They do many disservices, but Hollywood has really done this disservice with the one shot, you drop the perpetrator.
Shoot them in the leg as they're running away.
Really?
Okay, I'm a decent shot.
I'm not a great shot, but I know people who are experts.
That ain't a shot you make with a pistol.
And if they're coming at you, you want to stop them.
And I mean, I've heard stories from police, you know, 30, 40, 50 rounds fired before the bad guy is dropped.
You know, this idea in Hollywood that one shot is going to drop the bad guy, Isn't reality, isn't usually reality.
I mean, sometimes, you know, there are cases like Jack Wilson in Texas, who is a very good shot, and when there was a guy in the church, he killed two people.
That was a heck of a shot.
And he dropped him because he hit him in the head.
But for people like you and me, Doug, who are just decent shots and not excellent shots, we may need more ammo than just one shot.
And by the way, that's the problem with this movement amongst the left to limit magazine capacity.
I mean, there's a sad case.
A woman in Texas had a revolver, and of course, everybody in Texas has a gun, right?
She had her revolver.
Well, she was facing multiple attackers in her home, and of course, she's freaking out.
She's an elderly lady.
She unloads her, goes through, fires all six rounds at one guy, hits him, does drop him, but once the other guy heard the click, And no bang, he turned around like he was starting to run out.
He came back and just viciously attacked her.
Now, thankfully, the woman survived.
I kind of had the chuckle as she was talking to the media and she said, I need a gun with better magazine capacity, but at least she gets it.
Yeah, when you're facing multiple attackers, you're going to need more than just a six-shot revolver.
Yeah, there's a little bit more.
Real quick, I want to tie one into that issue here because I think there's a lot of things in this movement toward constitutional carry, concealed carry.
This is a big deal among a lot of places so that people have it.
I don't want to get into that.
I think people understand that issue a little bit.
We can talk about it on other...
But one of the things I do want people to understand, and it's interesting for me, because I did this as a congressman.
It caught a lot of attention.
I did actual gun classes, protection class, where I had folks who were trained firearms experts come in and train and do a class saying, here's how you properly carry your gun.
Here's how you do those things.
Because it promotes safety.
It's interesting to me, though, the folks with your concealed carry, your others, Go get trained, because I see so many young ladies, I see so many even men, who will keep their, if they carry a firearm, they'll put it in their pocketbook.
It's completely, frankly, useless in a situation in which somebody attacks you.
Which again, thankfully, those are the limited cases.
But I would encourage everybody, and from Gun Owners of America perspective, on a positive note, sort of the end here, encouraging education and how to use your firearm properly is one of the key things that we need to do.
Absolutely.
We certainly encourage education.
I don't think it should be government mandated before you can exercise your right, but absolutely it is a fabulous idea because you are holding a powerful object.
Let's face it.
You know what's interesting?
Trainers, some have feared that by moving to constitutional carry and not requiring training for getting a permit that they would end up losing business.
Actually, we're finding in states where constitutional carry is passing that more people are going for training.
More people are carrying.
And more and more people then realize, hey, I want to be able to do this right.
And so they go get the training.
And that's really key.
And speaking of constitutional carry, really quick, I mean, your governor in Georgia has called for it.
We want to get it passed in Georgia.
We're trying to encourage in Florida Governor DeSantis to really make a forceful call for it.
In fact, people who are on our email alert know that if you live outside of Florida, we're encouraging those in the 49 states to say, We'd like to come be a tourist in your state.
We'd sure appreciate it if you'd pass constitutional carry.
They got so many calls.
In fact, the tourist department called us, actually emailed us and said, could you please stop it?
We're just getting hammered with people.
So anyway, they're hearing it.
And that's good because one of the lame arguments that they're even Republicans...
Are using in the legislature, I'm not sure we want to do constitutional carry, that'll hurt tourism.
Well, now they just heard from a bunch of potential tourists, we want constitutional carry.
So, I tell you what, our activists are great.
Anybody listening who wants to become a part of that, just go to our website at gunowners.org and you can sign up for free to get our emails and that makes a world of difference in putting heat on some of these people that would rather not budge.
Yeah, exactly.
Sometimes just leave it the same is just the easiest way to do it.
Folks, this has been a great discussion on one of my favorite topics, and especially protecting our Second Amendment rights.
Eric Pratt from Gun Owners of America.
Eric, you'll be a regular here.
We talk to you a lot.
Looking forward to keeping us updated on especially this ATF issue, but also the other things as we move forward.
Thanks for being a part of the Doug Collins podcast today.
No, you're very welcome.
Thanks for having me again, Doug.
Thanks.
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