Colion Noir and Joe Rogan dissect the COVID gun-buying surge, exposing how crime spikes in cities like NYC’s Harlem and Chicago aren’t solved by restrictions but by addressing systemic poverty. Noir’s pragmatic stance—empowering individuals through responsible ownership—clashes with anti-gun rhetoric, including shadow bans on platforms like Instagram for pro-firearm content. They critique BLM’s leadership ties to Marxism while debating mass shootings, linking them more to mental health than gun access, citing stolen firearms and politicized narratives. Urban decay in Seattle and Minneapolis defunding chaos highlight power vacuums; Noir argues suppressors and laws fail low-income communities, while Rogan praises independent platforms for honest dialogue. Ultimately, they agree: real solutions require nuanced conversations over emotional policies and systemic fixes. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah, because you're out there beating the drums and sounding the alarms.
And all these people that are anti-Second Amendment people were a lot of these motherfuckers that were lined up in California trying to buy a gun last minute.
Because as soon as the lockdown hit people started getting really nervous When people started getting locked in their homes and then people when they realized they weren't gonna work People started worried about people stealing and things along those lines.
I heard about people getting carjacked and Or get their groceries jacked rather where they're headed to their car from the grocery store things got real weird And then you saw these giant lines at these LA gun stores and that's when I got ahold of you because I Think it's very it's a really important conversation I think you're the best at explaining it from a very rational perspective that people during the times before COVID, they didn't think that this was important.
But you were always one of those guys where it was like, hey, what if shit goes down?
And it's not much of an encumbrance on my life where it's like, okay, it's not worth the day-to-day of me carrying a firearm, but if I ever needed it, That's going to be the most important thing I have on me to protect that life.
So it's a small price to pay for something that has such a huge upside if it ever happens.
Once we move past that understanding of, so, you know, you have the best case scenario, which you pointed out was theoretically me, so to speak, and then you have the worst case scenario where you have, you know, criminals, you have crazy people, mass shooters, things of that nature.
Once we get out of that realm, so let's talk about the reality because, you know, there's overlaps, right?
So I usually ask people, well, what law are you going to come up with that's going to completely stop that?
No one knows.
Now, I'm not saying that because I have the absolute answer, but what I can tell you is this.
We don't know what law we can come up with that's going to completely stop that.
Because you can ban all the guns tomorrow.
You're still going to have crime.
You're still going to have those crazy people doing those same things.
We have over 300 million guns in this country.
Not going anywhere.
You can ban them from law-abiding citizens, and we'd have to deal with that as it comes.
But at the end of the day, criminals are still going to get their hands on guns.
And so what you have to understand and accept is, from a reality standpoint, if you know that, When all the barriers that are placed to prevent these things don't work, the only person that's going to be able to do anything about it is you.
And you want the best thing possible at your disposal to contend against that.
And that's what the firearm does.
Do I glorify firearms?
To a degree, yes, but that's because I'm a firearm enthusiast.
And even from a sports, entertainment, all of those things, right?
It's very holistic in that regard.
But for people who are just understanding it from a practical perspective, like, okay, from self-defense, if that's the only box you want to live in, that's perfectly fine with me.
I just have a problem where people say things like, well, no one needs to have a firearm.
But then you're perfectly aware of all the violence and everything else that goes on in this country.
And you understand the limitations of the first responders that we have in place to be able to prevent it.
And if you understand that, theoretically speaking, you're on your own.
And I don't mean that from the very sadistic kind of, you know, no way out kind of perspective, but it's just reality.
The reality of the case is, and we just learned, and we're learning it now with the whole COVID situation.
And it's Fucking bonkers like I mean just look look at what just happened Father's Day.
I think it was like a hundred and two people shot.
Yeah Fucking ridiculous fucking crazy and but here's his thing about that, too There's there's a consistency in a pattern behind these types of shootings It's not even like so usually when you deal with a problem The first thing you do is you try to look for a pattern to see if you can figure it figure out a pattern So you can try to solve it.
And you see, OK, what's the common denominator of all these things?
And then you can figure out start to figure out why it happens.
The idea that we're going to create laws is going to stop something that's so centralized.
And it's so it's it's there's a fundamental cause for the types of violence that we're talking about right now.
now, because they're happening in very specific areas of our country.
This isn't widespread.
It's not like it's like we just have this mass violence across the country.
On the contrary, violence, violent crime is actually going down, if you look at it from a statistical However, there are pockets within our country that have this violence, and there's consistencies within that pocket.
The idea that somehow not being able to buy a gun immediately to commit that crime, I personally don't think it does anything.
I don't.
I think if I've set out to commit some crime against someone and I go try to get a gun and I can't get a gun, I'm going to try to find another avenue by which to get that tool that I need to commit that crime.
And so, however, in the alternative, I can tell you actual stories about people trying to get firearms who needed them immediately but couldn't get them and thus probably died as a result of it.
And so, and I know other people, people, like, I've had, hell, I've had girlfriends in the past who have dealt with situations with stalkers who were like, okay, I need a gun for tonight because this person showed up at my house.
So right now, if you go and buy a gun from a dealer, someone who has a license to sell firearms as a business, you have to have a background check.
And the background check's instant.
But I think a lot of people misconstrue the fact that the background check is instant as being insufficient.
And that's not the case.
It's just that we live in a technical, you know, we have technology now, so it allows us to conduct a background check a lot quicker than we probably would 30, 40 years.
Now, I'm at liberty to say, hey, Joe, how about you meet me at this gun store and pay for a background check on top of the price of the gun and then conduct a background check, which a lot of people do.
That's wise.
But I don't like the idea of mandating private background checks.
So like if you had a friend and she had a stalker and the stalker was going to break into her house, you could legally sell her a gun to Texas right there and then.
And again, I bring this back to you are best case scenario.
For a guy like you to have a gun, I don't worry about you having a gun at all.
I think what I'm worried about is, again, people that are psychotic, people that are on medication, people that are dangerous, people that are criminals, people that are thugs.
That's what everybody's worried about.
As am I. Yeah, as are you.
And when you're talking about giving your friend a gun, again, that seems completely reasonable.
You're a reasonable person.
I know that if you're going to give a gun to a person and you think they need it, this is going to be a well thought out decision.
Do you feel like, because you have this pro-Second Amendment message, do you think people fuck with you?
Because, like...
If I was someone who had an anti-Second Amendment message, you're the biggest nightmare.
A lawyer who's a friendly guy, good-looking, articulate, really good at media, you're always doing things, and you have a passion for these guns, and you talk about them.
You did this thing where you're walking around, there's a bunch of tires around, and you're smiling.
God, I love this gun!
And you're shooting it, and you're talking, and that motherfucker loves guns.
This isn't a joke.
But you love guns the way I love muscle cars or bows.
I mean, like I remember, I went to Exotic Racing in Vegas.
Oh, that's a great place.
Yeah, it's like my first time ever driving a car around a track like that.
And I got to drive pretty much anything I wanted.
And the car I walked away from that was like, I mean, anywhere from like a Ferrari Pista to a 911 GT3. And the car that I walked away from, like, yeah, it was actually the Porsche 911 GT3. Yeah.
And we're talking about a $300,000 to $400,000 car.
And one of the writers basically said his justification for it was, you know, during the time when they were working on the actual cartoon, it happened really close to the Vegas shooting.
And so they were like, everyone in the media wanted to stay away from guns.
So I'm like, but the scythe and explosions are okay?
Sometimes I look at stuff like that and I look at the decision behind why they removed the firearm.
And I hear you, the whole Vegas thing and just the sensitivity to it.
But I'm like, but your alternative was just as, or if not more, violent.
Then the gun.
So my mind goes, okay, this is more of a cultural thing, right?
I think there's an attempt to be made to erase the idea of firearm ownership in this country.
Because I think there are a lot of people like me, like we grew up, even though I didn't grow up with firearms, I still grew up with an understanding of the Second Amendment.
I was taught about the Second Amendment to a certain degree in school.
I guarantee you they're not teaching about the Second Amendment in schools now.
I'm assuming the demographic of people that are going to be watching that would be largely you and I who kind of grew up with it in the past for the nostalgia effect.
But then also a new generation of kids are going to be watching that as well.
And we all grew up with Elmo Fred having the shotgun.
You know, when it comes to the issue of firearms and the gun debate in this country, you get people like Joe Biden talking about, you know, all you need is a shotgun.
You don't need an AR-15 shotgun.
Who needs an AR-15 for hunting?
Yeah, you castorize Elmer Fudd and you take away his shotgun.
There's a video of me right now on YouTube where I was hunting hogs at night with an AR. And the funny thing is, a lot of it too, for me, I mean, we have cougars in Texas.
So people don't think about that component.
So I may be hunting one animal, but there may be another animal hunting me.
I got a lot of messages from cops that think that I had a bad take on the Atlanta case because the guy stole a taser and then they shot him.
And they, you know, what they were saying to me is essentially that this guy had a criminal history and that just because someone is being compliant doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have an evil intentions.
They're just waiting to do something.
And then this guy got in a tussle with the cop.
I understand what they're saying.
But given the current climate, shooting a guy with a taser that doesn't work, you know, because that's, Jamie, that's the case, right?
And so, like, cops that I know personally, they go...
I go to courses...
Training courses and these cops are there paying for it themselves.
It's not even like the department sent them there or they're subsidizing their training.
They're there by themselves paying their own money to go to these training courses so that they can be more proficient and better at firearm handling, safety, so forth and so on.
So when I'm saying I have two positions, my one position is that I think cops need way better training.
I think it just it should be a higher priority for us to have like elite people like Navy SEAL caliber people as police officers and people that are trained to defuse situations and people are trained and also people that live in the community and people that have a relationship with people in the community so that there's more of an investment.
And I think the time we spend on the national stage arguing and debating gun control, we have over 300 federal gun laws on the books.
We have over 22,000 on the state and local levels.
We're past the point of gun control laws solving these issues.
I think where we're at now is the same way we want to teach kids about sex at a certain age.
Because it's inevitable.
It's the same thing with firearms.
You're going to interact and you're going to come across a gun at some point in your life in this country.
And so as a result of that, we should be talking about, all right, maybe we subsidize the idea of mass distribution of knowledge with respect to firearm use and teaching people to be responsible gun owners so as to create a culture.
That looks at firearms, one, under the guise of the Second Amendment, but also knowing how to operate them safely and responsibly.
It's so funny because people have this contradiction, right?
Part of them does not want that because they don't want to encourage firearms because they think that'll create more firearms.
I see your point, too, that the firearms already exist, and at least this will give people an understanding of the safe way to use them, the proper way to use them.
I mean, how many people have guns and they've never even fired them?
And so now what's let so who but see who has to pick up that slack?
Us in the gun community.
So now people like me and other content creators are now we're scrambling trying to create videos to teach people what they need to be doing in order to use and operate that firearm safely.
Because right now we have a culture in a society that is so anti gun.
We rather try to scare people away from guns instead of teaching them how to use them safely, even though we have a second amendment, which allows us to own and operate these firearms.
People have to go to your Instagram page to be educated in how to...
But there's good in that, too, because you do have a large following on Instagram, and a lot of people are going to go, and they're going to learn some things from those videos.
I can tell you, if I brought my business partner here right now and we talked about that, I'm telling you, you saw what our numbers were before in terms of who we were able to reach and what they are now?
It's weird because like you're not doing anything illegal.
Everything is responsible.
Everything is intelligent and you're clearly well educated on the subject both in the arguments against gun use in the Second Amendment and also the correct way to use them.
Because I'm very much of, look, you do what you want to do with your life as long as it doesn't interfere with mine or step on any of my rights, we're good.
I gotta get this off because this is something that pisses me off a little bit.
That is a nuanced perspective.
However, on social media and in general, the idea of having a nuanced perspective on a particular issue is so far gone now that you can't even really have a conversation.
I can say in one breath, I am pro cop.
I am pro cop.
I have a lot of friends who are cops.
However, there are also a good number of them who are evil as fuck, probably racist, and need to be fucking dissolved from the unit.
I think we can also say in one breath, I'm pro-cop, but I'm also pro these peaceful protests.
I think these peaceful protests are important.
Maybe I did a bad job of explaining what I was trying to say, but whatever basketball player was mad at me the other day, because it was something I said that I think a lot of these people are fighting like an invisible enemy when they're protesting.
What I mean by that is Yes, we need bad cops.
Yes, cops should stop shooting, whether it's black people or white people or anybody for the wrong reason.
And there's definitely bad cops, and bad cops that shoot people, whatever race they are, are fucking terrible.
Clearly, there's a problem with cops shooting black people.
Clearly.
There's also statistically not even just shooting people.
If you look at the death statistics for cops and black people, there's a thing that people like to do where they say, well, actually cops shoot more white people than black people.
There are more white people than black people.
But the other thing that I think is as important if not more important is cops are physical with black people more than they are white people.
Cops are physical with brown people, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans.
They're physical with them more than they are white people statistically by as much or more than 25%.
There is a problem.
Also, there's a problem with people that don't know what they want.
They just think that defunding the cops are bad.
This is what I meant by fighting an invisible enemy.
I just did a shitty job of explaining it.
The thing we should want is...
A safe community, including people that get pulled over by cops.
So that's the one thing that needs to be addressed first, right?
Get rid of the bad cops, fund them better, train them better.
And I always hesitate because, like I said, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to call a spade a spade.
There's a subversive group in this country that wants to topple the current structure of the United States so that they can gain power because they think they can rule better.
And a lot of those people, generally speaking, are Marxist.
The leader, the founders of Black Lives Matter, like, the founders of Black Lives Matter literally just came out and basically said she's a trained Marxist.
She didn't basically say, she said blatantly, she's a trained Marxist.
And this is what I did a shitty job of explaining.
There's a lot of people that are out there protesting.
I don't necessarily think they understand what needs to be done.
What needs to be done to keep us safe is not defunding the police.
What needs to be done is, they need to go through the fucking police department with a fine-tooth comb and every one of these motherfuckers that has multiple complaints, just get rid of them.
Just get rid of them.
Find out what the fuck is going on.
If the multiple complaints don't make sense, then leave them alone.
But find out, like that guy, that guy that killed that guy, or anybody who could do that to a person, who could lean on a person's neck like that for eight minutes.
Something's fucking wrong with you, and you should have never been a cop in the first place.
And we all know that there are people like that.
When you talk to people that are in the military, there are folks that they have to work with that are fucking sociopaths.
And they hope that BUDS training and that SEAL training is going to weed those guys out, or that Ranger training, or whatever the fuck it is that they have to do, but it doesn't always.
And sometimes they get in a situation, and Jocko was talking about how you'll get an entire SEAL team that they have to disband and reset up, because they have bad leadership.
And so you did these same guys, and they come in with good leadership, and they get trained correctly, and it turns around.
And it turns out, you know, if we join some sort of a military group, and you're being led by some fucking piece of shit commander, what do you do?
Where do you go?
And your faith in the entire organization is fucked.
So a lot of this stuff is top down.
So you have a lot of these cops that are in these bad neighborhoods and they've been dealing with corruption.
There's a movie called The 75, and it's about the 75th Precinct in New York.
And Michael Dowd, who is one of the guys in the movie, was a bad cop.
And he's out now, and he did Time and shit like that.
But it's a fucking crazy movie, and I had him on the podcast.
But his first day on the job, didn't they throw a dude off a balcony or some shit like that?
He was told to shut his mouth.
Something happened, like first day on the job, he witnessed some crazy shit and he was basically told, hey motherfucker, this is how we do shit.
Like get all that fucking goody-two-shoes dragnet bullshit out of your head.
This is how we do things here.
And so then you're indoctrinated into this force that's already compromised.
And so at that point, if you can't really reasonably justify why this person is getting a lot of complaints, and like you said, if it doesn't make sense why they're getting complaints, then okay, cool.
But if you're like, all right, this just seems real suspect.
Yeah, and there's a problem with most people when you give them ultimate power over someone else.
And it's not just the power of having a gun, it's the power of being able to tell someone, do what I'm telling you to do.
There's a crazy video I watched the other day of a white guy pulling over another white guy, and he's telling the guy, get out of the car, and the guy's going, why do you want me to get out of the car?
He goes, because I'm fucking telling you to get out of the car, and he pulls out his pepper spray.
And he goes, hey man, I'm speeding.
I'm going five miles an hour over.
He goes, stop filming.
He goes, I don't have to stop filming.
And he goes, and why are you pointing your fucking pepper spray at me?
And he goes, if you don't get out of the car, I'm going to hit you with it.
And so there's this back and forth with this guy.
And he goes to hit it.
He goes, it's out.
You're lucky.
This is your lucky day.
He goes, no.
He goes, you're fucking crazy.
He's like, you're going to pepper spray me because I'm going five miles an hour over the speed limit?
So this is an example of a person who should never be in a position of having ultimate power over someone like that.
If a guy was a really good cop, was a veteran, he would have been able to defuse the situation.
He would have walked up to you, how you doing, sir?
You know why I pulled you over?
You're going a little bit fast.
You're going five miles an hour over the speed limit, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was.
You don't point fucking pepper spray at a guy just because he's filming you.
The relationship between community and the police should be a symbiotic relationship.
That's what it should be.
Because even to the same degree, there needs to be training.
I think there needs to be training.
Not mandated training, but people should be cognizant, especially if I as a gun owner.
Someone who carries a gun on me 99% of the time in my car, on my body, on my person.
I should understand the dynamics that a police officer is looking at me from.
And dealing with people who carry guns and vice versa.
So the officer needs to understand and be aware of the fact that, okay, you're living in a population where people carry firearms.
So the ideal or the presence of a firearm in the hands of civilians should not terrify you that much.
It just shouldn't.
Now, I get it.
There are bad apples all over the place.
Thus, that brings it full circle.
Me as a citizen should understand that because there are certain people who are bad apples, who carry firearms, that are interacting with the cops and may want to do ill will towards the cops, that I as a citizen should understand and have the responsibility that says, all right, there are certain things I'm going to do whenever I'm interacting with a cop that signals to them, hey, I don't mean you no harm, I mean you no threat.
I get pulled over, the first thing I do is I pull over, roll the windows down, I have my ID, and I have my concealed carry license in hand, right?
Everything I'm doing is just to put the cop at ease.
I'm demonstrating to the cop, look, I understand.
You don't know who I am.
I don't know who you are.
So we're going to give each other this mutual respect that says, all right, as long as you respect me, I'm going to respect you.
So you think that the leadership has almost like a secret motive that the people that are involved that are doing all the groundwork probably aren't even aware of?
Because I remember Black Lives Matter, and it was a video I did, I think, two years ago.
And this is when I was with the NRA. And Black Lives Matter was attacking the NRA, basically saying that they don't really care about black gun ownership, so forth and so on.
It was like an attack piece.
And I think it was the branch of Black Lives Matter that's here in L.A., actually.
And so I did a response video.
And it was like...
15-20 minute video.
And I broke it down systematically.
I'm like, alright, well, okay, we started off with Black Lives Matter because of police brutality.
Cool, I'm all for it.
But what has happened now?
All of a sudden they get this massive wave of funding and their whole direction shifts into some other stuff that I have no idea what it has to do with anything.
Like what?
With respect to.
Now it's become this kind of like all-encompassing umbrella of LGBTQ and some other stuff.
But then even aspects of, I guess, I don't want to say Antifa is under the umbrella, but the whole Marxist kind of communist socialist aspects of politics kind of creeping into that as well.
And then when you couple that with the idea that you have the actual founders saying that they're trained in Marxism, and then you have what you see now playing out where you have these very peaceful protests being co-opted by violent people who are now just engaging in rioting and looting and then branding it Black Lives Matter.
But the crazy thing about New York is a lot of it was apartment buildings filming down on the streets.
Because, you know, in New York everyone's in...
Yeah.
So they're filming.
There's so many videos of people filming on the streets where all this madness is going.
This one crazy video where all these people are breaking into shit and this guy runs in the street and another guy hits him with a car and he goes flying through the air and the car takes off.
Bro, it's mad.
And then they're just smashing through Soho and breaking into art galleries and stealing everything and like...
From my understanding, I mean, I didn't get anything clearly, but from my understanding, it was supposed to be a constant thing, and it didn't happen the way it happened.
But it should demonstrate to a lot of people You're going to take the same government and put your safety completely in the hands of the same government?
The unfortunate thing is that some people are not gifted with a parent that gives them the sort of perspective that your mom gave you.
That life is not fair, deal with it, and then you go forth with that knowledge.
There's a lot of people out there that unfortunately, they're born into terrible households where they're abused and there's crime around them and violence and they never get a chance.
They never get a chance, and I get it, because they've developed in these abusive mentalities, these mentalities that develop in this fucked up situation.
And that's the thing, too, that I think that's a problem with the conversation that's going on.
Too many people are too dismissive of that reality, right?
Because even though I can sit here and tell you, basically what I'm saying is pull yourselves up by your bootstraps.
That's essentially what I'm saying.
Or at least that's the way I look at life.
I'm like, figure out a way.
I don't have boots figure out we get the boots so I can pull my ass up.
But to completely ignore the circumstance like you talked about, you have to talk about a kid who's a who's a child of somebody who grew up in the 80s crack epidemic.
Yeah.
Right.
Two parents who were crackheads.
You can't look at this person and like, you know, like a little baby.
Lil Baby just came out with a song, right, called Bigger Picture.
And in it he was like, I'm just a product of my environment.
Nobody taught us any better.
So as a result of that, I look at that, and I understand what the 80s crack epidemic did to black families during that time period.
So now you have crackheads raising crackheads and then having kids.
That's essentially what happened as a result of that.
So to ignore that and to say, nah, nah, nah, you know, everybody has it hard, which they do, but you can't discount it and say that it doesn't have an effect.
Because there is an aspect of being so low, you really don't stand a chance in hell.
And to dismiss that wholesale, I think is disingenuous.
Yeah, I think the conversation should be, how come you guys had trillions of dollars to bail out these corporations during the COVID lockdown, but you didn't have trillions of dollars to fix these impoverished communities that have been in the same situation for decades?
It's like there's so much money that you can spend to avoid an economic collapse, but yet there's no money to fix what's been an economic collapse forever.
If you want to make America great, you would want less losers.
How do you have less losers?
Give people more of an opportunity to get better.
Give people more of an opportunity to succeed.
They should look at all those spots, whether it's Baltimore or Detroit or South Side of Chicago, look at all those spots in this country as places where people have much less of a chance.
So if you give them more of a chance, you're going to have more productive people, you're going to have a stronger country.
But what's interesting is what Brett Weinstein's...
What his theory was, or his thought was, he's a biologist, and he was on the podcast last week, and one of the things that he pointed out was there's all these indications that this is something that escaped from a lab, like very specific indications.
Yeah, and these indications are basically the way it evolved.
It evolved far too quickly.
And then he pointed out some things that I'm not going to remember because I'm a moron.
But he said also it seems like because of the fact that it dies in sunlight, but it spreads very easily without sunlight, it's very contagious.
He thinks it may have evolved in this laboratory environment to be more contagious while indoors.
So his thought is that this is something that they probably had created in order to test various antiviral medications and all these different things, and that during this process somehow or another it got out.
And it's one of the reasons why this thing spread so quickly to people indoors.
Have I maybe shot my mouth off a little bit beforehand before I should have?
Yeah.
But I try to learn from those mistakes.
And then another thing, too, because there is no nuance, most of the people who are mad at me, especially with the Black Lives Matter aspect of things, I don't have a problem with the Black Lives Matter sentiment.
That's where I look at the disingenuous nature of the conversations that are being had.
It's as simple as this.
Like, I don't see why anybody would get mad at Black Lives Matter, and I don't understand why anybody would get mad at All Lives Matter.
But I can see why somebody would get mad at someone saying All Lives Matter in response to Black Lives Matter, because what it seems like it's doing is just undermining and just kind of tossing aside the aspect of the complaint.
And if it is, because people do make the argument that, well, all lies matter and more white people are killed by cops.
And you're right.
And I think you should be as equally mad.
I do.
Police brutality should not stop at a race.
Police brutality is police brutality.
So my thing is this.
If we live in a country and we're supposed to be all one, all lives do matter.
We do.
However, if there is a particularized group of people within that inclusiveness that feel like their lives don't matter, At bare minimum, we should have that conversation.
We should just at least have that conversation and say, alright, why do you feel that way?
What is it exactly that makes you think that your life doesn't matter?
And then when we go through the particular points and address each one, you know what?
It may be coming from nowhere.
It may be delusion.
Or it may be completely, utterly valid.
But at bare minimum, if we can't even get to the point where we have the conversation because our instinctive gut is to say, no, all lies matter.
What are you talking about?
It's not fair.
It's not fair.
I'm not saying one side is right or the other.
What I'm saying is we're going to be a country that's all one people.
And there's a part of it that's telling you, we don't feel like we matter.
I think we're doing better at it than we ever have before, though, just because of the fact there's been these gigantic peaceful protests and the conversation is going.
And also because, look, I don't think it's good that people get fired for saying all lives matter, but they do get fired for saying all lives matter now.
Well, I do too, but it's fascinating to me that there's these fearful people that want to cancel people for every mistake and everything they've done wrong.
One thing that I had a conversation with somebody about it when they were saying, like, what's wrong with saying all lives matter?
I'm like, there's nothing wrong with saying all lives matter, but here's the problem.
The only reason why people are saying black lives matter is because there's people out there that don't feel like they matter.
If you said white lives matter, people would be like, duh.
You couldn't have a movement in this country that says white lives matter.
People would be like, what the fuck are you complaining about?
He'll see it and won't really investigate it any further.
And then he'll just and then he'll kind of take whatever confirmation bias he may have over here and over here and just kind of throw it together and then he'll say something.
But to be in that position and do what you have to deal with, I have no choice but to respect it, which is why I will always respect the office and who's in it.
And so it's like, and it sucks, because here's another thing, because people always like to say that, man, people are dumb.
And I'm like, I don't want to think that.
More and more I start to think that.
But what I think a lot of it is, is man, we have so much information now, and so many people are angling for their own agenda based on the same information.
You don't know what's what.
And so we were getting these bits of it.
If I'm worried about raising my kids, working, providing for my family, it's going to be hard for me to intellectualize.
I mean, we do this for a living.
So it's going to be hard for somebody who's just trying to raise a family.
Hell, it's not like you don't have a family to raise either.
But it's hard to be able to parse through all the information we have at our disposal to come out with what's actually true and correct or full context.
Yes, if I'm if I was just out here acting and just saying shit because you know just Feeding my bass whatever they want to hear right then that'll be a different story But I challenge I challenge my bass all the time Well, I think that's one of the reasons why you resonate because you are a genuine person like you're It's very obvious that the things you say you say them because you mean it and this is your perspective and this is your well-thought-out perspective on things and I think that that's There's a big difference between that and someone who just says shit because they think
that this is their brand, and this is their audience is going to respond to this, and this is probably going to get me more likes.
And then on top of that, I still got to review guns and do all the other stuff.
So it frustrates me.
But like my mom said, you made your bed and I lay in it.
I'm not complaining about it, but I just need some people to understand the perspective and where I'm coming from and why I'm not quick to talk about a lot of stuff.
Because sometimes I just need time to figure out what the hell is going on.
Because there are a lot of people, I get messages, who rely on my information to make their decision.
They don't just follow what I say.
They just use my information to make their decision.
So I want to give them the best piece of information.
It's like putting gas in your car.
I don't want to put shitty gas in the car.
I want the car to run functionally.
So I'm going to try to give it the best gas as possible.
And so that's what I try to do, especially when I talk about the gun issue.
Because right now there's so much misinformation on the gun issue.
And a lot of times people don't even know what they don't know.
For instance, when you had Alonzo Bowden on here, I could tell a lot of what he was saying was coming from a good place.
There were some things he just didn't know he knew or didn't know.
And so that's kind of where I put myself.
I said, okay, how do I tailor and craft videos in such a way that somebody who isn't necessarily a gun person can understand it?
Some of the misinformation with respect to background checks.
The background check aspect of it, where he kind of talked about it from the standpoint of the waiting period, the questionnaire that you filled out in the beginning, before you submit yourself for the background check, that that was the background check.
And it wasn't.
Because a lot of people think that.
A lot of people think that, oh, you just go there, fill out a yes or no questionnaire about whether or not you can own a gun, and then you get a gun.
And that's not the case.
And so I corrected that.
And then also what I did, I just critiqued his position on a couple of things.
Like, for instance, high-capacity magazines.
Because he says, he's like, you don't need 50 rounds in a clip, so to speak.
Well, it's actually a magazine, but that's neither here nor there.
But I disagree with that.
Now, in that regard, he's not wrong.
That's his opinion.
My opinion is, I think I do need a magazine that has 50 rounds.
I think a lot of the kind of project, not so much the politicians, I think the politicians are by and large very disingenuous, but a lot of people who support these ideas, who are just regular people, I think it's their way of trying to figure out some way of control.
Because mass shootings terrifies because they're so random.
They're like tornadoes.
See, hurricanes, you can kind of prepare for a hurricane.
You kind of have an idea of where the path is coming, where it's going.
Tornadoes, they just touch down and destroy shit.
And you don't know when it's coming.
Same thing with mass shootings.
Mass shootings are terrifying because they just kind of happen out of nowhere.
It's like, whoa, okay, what can we do?
Because you feel helpless.
You really feel helpless.
And even though they account for almost a statistical zero of gun violence in this country, they still terrify us because we don't know when or where it's going to happen.
See, the other gun violence stuff doesn't really terrify us as much because we know where it happens.
It happens in inner cities.
Don't go to any cities.
But mass shootings terrifies from that standpoint because we don't know when it's going to come.
So we think, okay, well, if we limit this and we restrict this, then it'll minimize it even more.
And it's like, no, it's not going to happen.
We have to deal with the reality.
And the reality terrifies me just as much as anyone else.
But what are you going to do?
You're going to lay down and die?
No, you fight.
And that's it.
And I remember when I was on Bill Maher and we talked about arming teachers, right?
The idea of arming teachers.
And he was like, I was like, well, if a teacher is willing to sacrifice, we have teachers that have sacrificed their lives for their students during school shootings.
So I'm like, if a teacher is willing to sacrifice their life for their kids, why not put a gun in their hand to give them the power to fight for their life?
And he goes, because they're teachers.
He's like, they're there to teach.
And I'm like, Well, they're already dying for the students.
Well, it's also a long conversation, and this is my problem with any of those shows, is that you've got like three minutes to discuss something that should be three hours.
And at the end of three hours, you're probably still...
It seems like it's a very particularly human problem.
You know, the problem of gun ownership in this country.
You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
You know, it's...
And I think, again, one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on right after this COVID thing when I contacted you, because I think that people are now understanding that, hey, this police thing that you were counting on to protect you, Well, there's a lot of people that are trying to defund them now.
You're not going to get them in certain places because they're in conflict with the state and the government, like in Atlanta, or in New York, where they're quitting left and right, and in California, they're trying to get the sheriff of Santa Monica to step down.
I mean, you've got a lot of problems with the police.
It's not as simple as, call the police, they'll be there for you.
And this is what you and I, and I know we talked about this before, that this idea that you shouldn't be self-reliant, that you should be dependent upon the government.
This is what the Second Amendment was written for.
People say it was designed like a well-armed militia.
It was designed in case, you know, someone was coming and attacking you.
They just want to throw things on the wall and hope it sticks.
Let's ban these guns.
Let's limit this capacity.
Let's do this.
Like, you do that.
You don't get it back.
So even if it doesn't work, you think the government's going to say, well, better yet, this whole idea that they're going to have a gun buyback program, the voluntary buyback.
You think they're going to give you your guns back if it doesn't work?
If the crime rate still stays the same, which it has in other places that have done the same thing...
And there's some concern that this might have been some sort of intelligence operation.
That there's something more to this story.
Because they were talking about the way he got that money that it very well could have been that he was involved in something on a totally different level.
The Nova Scotia shooter case has hallmarks of an undercover operation.
Police say the killer's withdrawal $475,000 was highly irregular and how the RCMP agent would get money.
How NRCMP. I don't know what that...
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I think that is.
Withdrawal $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method.
That is Royal Canadian Mounted Police, right?
Use this to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say.
Gabrielle Wattman, who is responsible for the largest mass killing in Canadian history, withdrew the money from a Brinks deposit in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, March 30th, stashing a carryall filled with $100 bills in the trunk of his car.
Sources in both banking and the RCMP say the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP funnels money to its confidential informants and agents and is not an option available to private banking customers.
The RCMP has repeatedly said that it has no, in quotes, special relationship with Wartman, which means the regular relationship.
Court documents show that Wartman owned a New Brunswick registered company called Berkshire Broman, the legal owner of two of his vehicles, including one of the police replica cars.
And there's no reason to believe that it also would require him to handle large amounts of cash.
If Wartman is or was an RCMP informant or agent, it would explain while the force appeared not to take action on complaints about his illegal guns and his assault on his common law wife.
Alright, so assault rifle, and assault rifle is, to put it simply, And I'm trying to explain this in plain language for people who don't know any different.
Most people think when they hear assault rifle, they think a machine gun, which is fully automatic or semi-automatic.
Not semi-automatic.
Fully automatic or burst.
Basically, it's like three rounds at a time each time you pull the trigger.
Well, because that's language used by the anti-gunners who are pushing an agenda.
So what they want to do is they want to closely tie the idea of a machine gun that people largely see being used in movies to what's being sold on the streets.
Because the pharmaceutical industry has a shitload of money, and there's a lot of these politicians that are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry.
Yeah, and they also don't want all the other people that are on these psychotropic medications to feel bad that they're on them, that they could be lumped in with these same people.
Like, imagine if we just started Like if it's SSRIs or antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication, imagine if that becomes the narrative in the news.
Like that people on SSRIs are fucking dangerous because all these school shooters are on SSRIs.
That would almost be a better argument than the NRA. Because if you look at the NRA and you look at NRA members and the amount of NRA members that have Actually done these horrible mass shootings.
It's like none.
Yeah.
It's crazy that the medication is a better correlation than the NRA. Saying that, people's fucking heads are gonna explode!
Rogan, you shill!
You government shill!
They have information on you!
No, I'm just saying the facts.
Responsible gun owners are not the people that are doing these things.
It's crazy people.
And unfortunately, crazy people are oftentimes on medication.
Now, that's like a correlation causation argument as well.
I'm not saying that the medication is forcing these people into doing that.
But I am saying that I've known people that have taken SSRIs and have taken antidepressants and a lot of different psychotropic medicines.
And one of the things that they've said is that it makes them not care about things.
And it could speak to the notion that when you hear people describe the account of interacting with a mass shooter, them having this kind of stoic, motionless face.
But I mean, it's something that needs to be talked about and explored.
Now, I sit on the board of Walk the Talk America.
Which is a mental health, a 2A mental health organization, whose goal basically is to address the correlation, if any, between firearm ownership and mental health.
So the catalyst for it was to say, because a lot of gun owners will say, well, it's a mental health issue.
And we'll always say that.
As you and I agree, we do believe that is the case.
So what Walk to Talk America does is it says, okay, so let's walk the talk.
Let's try to figure out how to fix or deal with the mental health issue component.
If we're going to say that's what it is and it's not the gun and we do believe that, so let's start having that conversation and doing what needs to do.
So what the organization does is it crosses the aisle with people in the mental health space and brings them over into the gun side and vice versa.
And so we can have those conversations to figure out a way how we can kind of balance the firearm ownership with mental health.
Because that conversation is not being had.
And so I think if we're going to talk about it and say it is a mental health issue, okay, so let's start this deep-sea dive into the mental health issue and see if we can come up with a solution that speaks to why we have so many people that have these mental health issues.
And then how do we exist in a world where this many people have mental health issues in a world also where we have this many guns.
And so that we can better solve whatever problems we think we have instead of just throwing around, well, we need to ban this.
We need to come up with this stupid law, like, instead of doing that.
I don't think it's as simple as banning things because I think there's a lot of people that are responsible gun users and gun owners, and I don't think you should do anything to take away their rights.
Well, it's divisive because we're divisive about everything.
It's true.
There's certain topics like, here's a good one, global warming.
I guarantee you, man, if you had across the board how much of climate change is natural versus how much of it is man-made, and just a simple question and you threw that out there, I guarantee if you looked at the numbers and you could get a real accurate assessment of how many conservatives and how many liberals responded.
And I think that if you said, is it a hoax, when you went to the yes side, yes, it's a hoax, it's overwhelmingly conservative people who think it's a hoax, or that it's not an issue.
Basically, they're trying to replace all of our kind of conservative means of production with respect to energy and replace it with green energy.
And I don't think it's completely sustainable.
And it's not even like it's progressive.
It's a complete turnaround, 180. And I just think that's irresponsible.
Now, here's the thing about that.
From my standpoint, I consider myself just right of center.
As far as ideology.
I have not done enough research on climate change to have a definitive opinion about it.
So what I'm telling you is what I'm seeing other people say.
And that's why I think there are a lot of people on the conservative aspect of it that are like it's a hoax because they see it as basic economic conversion.
Now, as far as climate change in and of itself, I don't know.
I'm probably the last person to talk to about that because I like my cars to destroy the environment.
They have an independent front suspension, so it handles really well.
By the way, none of these fucking suburban housewives are ever taking those goddamn things off-roading, so I don't even know why it ever had two live axles, right?
It's like, most of what it is, is like, moms are picking up their kids in these fucking things.
Because it was something that Jeremy Clarkson said on Top Gear, that when the exhaust that comes out of a 911 turbo is actually cleaner than the air in a polluted area.
Because in Dallas, they did the reveal, and I was there.
That thing's dope.
Oh, man.
I'm not going to lie.
I was like, okay, so now this is where we get the marriage between the practical efficiency of electric cars and then the sensorial effect of having the old world cars.
Now it's starting to get that marriage and that balance right.
Porsche states that under normal driving conditions, this car exceeds 31 miles per gallon and does indeed only produce a maximum carbon output of 300 units.
So in retrospect, Jeremy Clarkson's conclusion upon the heavily polluted cities is plausibly correct and therefore quite amazing.
Well, there's a friend of mine who is buddies with this photographer, and this photographer is like, he, whenever shit goes down, he goes out and gets photographs and videos, and he got this insane video of Hollywood the very night where everybody was smashing and burning everything.
It's so crazy.
It's so crazy, this video.
I mean, I don't want to share it because it's his personal video, but he's walking down the street, and he's panning, and it's just people smashing windows, and things are on fire, and people are running out of stores with packages, and it's all happening on the street in front of them.
The streets are covered with debris and dirt, and he's just panning back and forth with his camera.
Yeah, they're ridiculous, and they look ridiculous now.
I mean, again, I'll say it again, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on right after it hit.
When I contacted you, I was like, this is the time to really talk about this stuff because this is where people are more open to this idea.
We live in a messy world, and I know that there's a lot of good people that don't want guns.
I had a conversation with this comedian friend of mine when one of the mass shootings happened, and he was like, we just got to take away all the guns.
I was like, okay.
I don't know what to say, because you're so off base, I don't even know what to do with this conversation.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist in the fact that I had a really dumb person tried to explain to me that they think that George Floyd was murdered so that the riots could happen.
Oh my god, that's the dumbest argument of all time.
Like, yeah, you got a fucking sociopath who's a known sociopath who just happened to have him arrest a guy that he's already had a personal beef with.
It's a dumb conversation.
But if it wasn't, god damn, it's like, it's perfect.
It's the perfect storm.
You have this Polemic, sort of polarizing president, right?
And then you have this disease that comes from another country, and he's calling it the Chinese virus, and you know, we're already in trade war talks with China.
So you go, wow, imagine if China, like, released this virus.
There's all these crazy, if you're one of those people, there's all these crazy conspiracies you can come up with.
Then the George Floyd murder, which is months into this horrible lockdown where everybody's losing their fucking money, nobody has any money.
Because when people start losing money and there's no way to get it back and they're just losing their businesses through no fault of their own.
And then on top of that you see a video of a guy getting murdered by a cop and it's a slow torture murder and it's horrific and then the fucking city explodes and then what's unprecedented is that the whole world responds.
Yeah, if you hate me for this now, like, come on, man.
I've been a hunter for eight years, and I've had guns for more than 20. I just...
I don't want anybody to die.
I don't want anybody to get hurt.
I don't want anybody to cry.
I don't want anybody to feel bad.
I don't.
I'm a sensitive person, whereas it sounds.
However, I'm a realist.
I understand humans, and I understand that we are a strange animal, and we live in this bizarre state of civilization that has a thin veneer A thin veneer that protects us from all of our survival instincts and chaos and all of our tribal instincts and our brutality that we have just under the surface.
And I'm very aware of that.
I'm very aware of the propensity that human beings have for violence.
And that's why I'm a gun advocate.
And that's why...
I support people like you, and that's why I want to have these kind of conversations, because I don't think there's enough people looking at it realistically, and I think there's more now.
And I think having a conversation with someone who's so well-reasoned about this is very important right now.
So basically, yeah, you can take whatever cars you have...
I've heard of this.
I've heard of this.
So I found the most remote diner in San Francisco I could possibly find for my hotel.
I rented this 911 GT3, and I drove about an hour and 30 minutes to this diner.
Had some eggs, had some oatmeal, ate, got back in the car, drove back down the mountain, went back to my hotel, and then the next day, I plotted out another course, and I did the same shit.
I drove down to 101 and just drove.
And it was the most exhilarating, awesome shit I've ever done in my life.
Why can I have that type of reaction to doing that, but not to shooting a firearm?
The people that do have a problem with it, it is this emotional, in my opinion, narrow-minded perspective.
I think it's narrow-minded in that, well, okay, it's...
I think, in one way, it's not narrow-minded.
In one way, if you would want to look at it with the best perspective possible, you would hope that we have evolved to the point where we no longer need guns.
No one needs guns.
All across the land.
Everywhere in the world.
And that might and strength are no longer factors in the way people interact with each other.
People will no longer threaten people's lives or break down their doors or rape people or murder people or steal from them.
I would love that.
I would love that.
Look, I think if the three of us lived in a world, it was just you, me, and Jamie, we wouldn't need guns to protect ourselves.
I mean, there's different kinds of success, too, right?
There's the success of someone who built a business versus success of someone who's doing some shady shit with loans and fucking over people with subprime mortgages.
There's different things that make you successful.
There's the Wolf of Wall Street money that you get from ripping people off and scamming people.
Or it means find the strength within yourself to overcome an issue that you're dealing with.
The gun showed me, and not only taught me that, it taught me responsibility.
Because now we are talking, however I want to Disney-fy it, as far as the sporting enthusiast aspect of it, it's still something, it's life and death.
That is a tool of life and death.
That can be used to take a life and can be used to save one.
So because of that, that was a big responsibility, especially when I'm carrying that very thing on me everywhere I go.
So it had me really appreciate life more.
I started to value life a lot more.
Most people think you get a gun and all of a sudden you just want to take life.
No.
I tell people this all the time.
The day I have to use the gun to defend myself, I'm going to need therapy.
Flat out.
I'm going to need therapy because it's made me value life.
Not that I didn't value life before, but it's something that brings it to the forefront of your consciousness when you have a gun and you understand what that gun can be used to do.
And so that happens to way more people than people realize.
Most people think that people get a gun and they just become reckless murderers who want to kill everybody.
When in reality, there are a number of stories of people out there who...
I know a guy who the firearm helped him get out of his depression.
He was young and he was depressed, but when he got into firearms, that allowed him to deal with his depression because he found something he was passionate about.
That is crazy, but that's something that does actually work when you find something you really love and pursue it.
That's one of the problems I have with the term depression.
Boy, that's a blanket that you throw over so many different...
Factors.
It's almost like the term drugs.
Like if you say, are you on drugs?
Yeah, I drank a cup of coffee.
I'm on drugs.
I mean, really?
Or are you on heroin?
They're both drugs.
It's weird.
But depression is in many ways like that in that there are people, and I know these people, that have a real problem with their brain and the way their brain produces chemicals.
Same way some people have problems with their liver.
Some people have they're born with ineffective lungs.
These are all just parts of being a person.
And some people have like legitimate issues that I think they need medication for.
And then there's other people that they just don't feel good and they call it depression because their life sucks and their job sucks and no one wants to have sex with them and they don't have any money.
So they're depressed and they say I'm suffering from depression.
And so what do you do with that?
Well, some of those people get on medication, and I don't know if that's really the answer, because there's a lot of those people that I know that have discovered jiu-jitsu or discovered other things, yoga even.
Physical things often, because they release endorphins and because they're actually healthy for you, but also you get passionate about something and you see this improvement.
And when you were talking about that with guns, I was trying to describe to someone why I like shooting guns, and I said, one of the reasons why I like it is because I'm not very good at it.
And there are some people, and it's hard, I'm not gonna lie to you, it's hard.
Because I do so much shooting, now there's an expectation that I should be good.
So, when I go out and do a gun review, and I'm missing with a particular gun, and then I see comments, man, you couldn't hit shit with that gun, man, you don't know, it does hit my ego a little bit.
It might not feel as bad as it will for someone who's mentally unstable.
And I've seen some comedians who just get really crushed by comments, and it's horrible.
Yeah, man.
Like, they come on the show, and then they read.
I go, don't read the comments.
Donnell Rawlings!
When he was on with the RZA from Wu-Tang, I said, well, Donnell is just, he's a wild motherfucker, and he's funny as shit, and he's always loud, and he's just crazy.
Donnell's crazy.
But he was talking over the RZA a bunch of times, and people, I know they were gonna get mad.
And he, I love Donnell, so when he was doing it, I was just laughing my ass off.
I thought it was awesome.
That was a great podcast.
And then at the end, I said, don't read the comments.
Because I have a problem in that I don't want to say I'm too driven, but I get very focused on things, especially things that I'm trying to get good at, and things that I take seriously, whether it's stand-up or whether it's doing this podcast or other things that I do, UFC commentary.
I mean, I can have any type, and this can't be healthy, but any type of thing I succeed at or anything that I do that is a milestone that people are like, oh, this is awesome.
It lasts maybe 10 seconds, and I'm like, alright, you need to do better.
Yes, but that's also why you're really good at things.
And this is another thing that you see from people that are mediocre.
It infuriates me.
Where they come up with excuses for why they fall short.
They come up with excuses for why they didn't succeed in their chosen profession.
They come up with excuses for why other people do well, but they've been ostracized, or they've been cast out, or they never were accepted, or they were treated like a second-class citizen.
No, you're mediocre.
You're mediocre, and you're not critical on yourself.
And the thing is you have to get past, I call it the eagle wall.
You have to get past the eagle wall because there's just some shit you're just not good at.
And so it's either one of two things.
You either pivot, find something you're good at and go that direction, or if you're willing to put in the effort, figure out how to get better at what you're not good at.
And then apply those things.
Now, it's going to be hard.
It's going to suck.
You still may not even get to the same level or degree as somebody else who's naturally talented in that sense.
When I see people, particularly this happens, when you see people who are not very good commenting on people who are successful, they start saying, this is one of the reasons why I could never make it, because the people that made, they're sellouts, or they're this, or they're that, and like, okay.
And I said it with Bill on the show when he was trying to talk to me and doing the show and I think I agreed to it but then I found ways to get out of it.
This is why, man, talking one-on-one is hard enough.
Like, you have a thought, sometimes you're expanding, and I have a thought, and I'm holding onto it, but then you keep talking, and I don't know when to get it in there, and I lose it.
Now, when there's three other fucking people, and they're all trying to get sound bites they're hoping are gonna be on YouTube...
Now, I will forever, ever, ever be grateful that he gave me the opportunity to go into that lion's den.
Because it's a place that I think a lot of pro-gun people haven't been able to go into.
Hopefully I communicated in a manner that resonated with a lot of people.
In the same way here.
It's...
I'd be lying if I said I did not value the ability for the time being within this two-hour, three-hour space to have access to your audience.
At the same time, because I don't understand why.
I mean, I understand why, but I'm just passionate about this.
In a way that sometimes even I have a hard time articulating.
And so when I see all of these new people, because I know your audience is very vast.
Like, I have a base.
There's a base in my audience, right?
Gun people.
And a lot of them very conservative.
And with your audience, it gives me the ability to speak to a wider gap of people who would otherwise never even look in my direction because of what I talk about.
And there aren't that many platforms that are available right now that are willing to open their doors to the opposite perspective.
Because you're a smart guy, you know this.
This puts you in a very peculiar situation.
You can end up looking really bad because you're literally confronting and testing out all of your ideas in front of your audience that thinks that you know everything.
Right?
And so many people aren't willing to do that because they're worried about looking bad, which is why I give mad props to Bill Maher as well, because there aren't too many platforms.
Most people just want to sit in their echo chambers, yell at their audience and say, all right!
Right?
Yeah.
So I'm hard-pressed to think about any other type of platforms that may have a different perspective that would let me come on like this.
Yeah, but I think the problem is some people have this expectation where they tell themselves, well, I have to know this because people expect me to know this.
And if I say that I don't know, then I'm going to lose.
And look, I made, I don't know, maybe there's some diehard climate.
You know, somebody can make an argument that says, okay, well, yeah, that's because most people don't follow you for climate change.
The climate change argument, to me, is one of the things that's really fascinating about it, is I think, and I mean this in a very...
This is a hard way to grasp this, but this is the way I'm going to try to parse this out.
I think it's a control issue.
And I don't think it's a control issue in meaning that people are trying to control people, and that people are trying to gain control of one very small factor in our mortality.
And I think it's good to do that.
I think it's good to make the world cleaner, and I think it's good to use clean energy, and I think it's good to use solar.
I think all these things are good.
But I think we're fucked anyway.
I think we're fucked anywhere because of solar flares and volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and asteroids and pandemics.
I think we're fucked anyway.
And I think if you look at the history of the world, there's been radical changes before we ever came about.
Whether it's asteroid impacts or massive fucking ice ages or all kinds of crazy shit that's killed off people from the beginning of fucking people.
There's been a lot of them.
And if you think that switching totally to solar is going to stop all that other shit from happening, you got another thing coming.
It doesn't mean that solar is not good.
It doesn't mean that cleaning the air is not good.
But that's why I say I think, based on my limited knowledge, with respect to the New Deal and things of that nature, I think some of it, if not more of it, seems to me economically subversive.
It's scary the strong leader, the amount of power a strong leader has over whether it's Kim Jong-un or you know any that's the thing I would keep saying to people when they don't think that all that shit can happen.
I'm like listen, they're human beings in 2020. Human beings in 2020 are under the control of a military dictatorship.
That's happening right now.
It's happening in more than one country.
It's a style of civilization that exists and has existed since the beginning of time.
I've told this story, forgive me if you've heard it before.
I used to work as a security guard.
For a short period of time, when I was 19 years old, I worked at Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts.
It's this Mansfield, Massachusetts amphitheater that all these concerts would play at.
I saw Jon Bon Jovi there, or Bon Jovi the band.
I saw Bill Cosby perform there.
When I was working there, I saw a lot of shit.
And I developed, in a very short period of time, most of the guys that I... I got the job because one of the guys that I trained with at my Taekwondo school was a security guard.
Develop this us-versus-them mentality almost instantly we'd yell at people when they were doing things wrong We treat them like shit and I recognized that I was like wow, this is weird like instantly I'll become like I've developed this attitude that these people because they didn't want to listen They kept doing things they're not supposed to do and you're supposed to enforce it and you get mad and you do have some power Because you have the security jacket.
I'm so stupid.
You have a walkie-talkie the first day I was there this kid stole a golf cart First day.
And this guy who was the head security guy, his name was Ali Tatt, tackled this dude and beat the shit out of him with a walkie-talkie.
He beat this guy in the head with a walkie-talkie my first day on the job.
I was like, oh, okay, so that's how we're doing it.
It's just funny because it's like, how quickly, how quickly they relegated themselves to doing the exact same shit That they were critiquing and criticizing.
And funny, we kind of talked about this the last time I was here.
And the problem is that when you only watch the end result of your repetition and getting to where you are now, people oversimplify what it is that you do.
And so what happens is they think they can do it better, even though they haven't engaged in the same level of repetition or thought process to really think it out.
So what I think is happening is you got all these kids with these grandiose ideas, right?
They go to these schools and teach them these grandiose ideas from professors telling them, like, this is the way we can do it.
This is the way we can do it.
And then they're like, yeah, yeah, give us the country.
The Founding Fathers understood that human nature, that if there's a vacuum of power, there's always going to be someone or something willing to fill it.
And if left unchecked, it will become a black hole of power, which is why they tried to organize our country the way that they did, by separating the powers to serve this check against other entities.
People don't really appreciate the beauty of that because they think that they can go into things altruistically and think that, okay, no, I'll get the taste of power.
And then what do we do about the places where they want to defund the cops, where they're voting overwhelmingly in Minneapolis to defund the police department?
And you're right, because there's a lot of people that, like, in the gun debate or in the gun discussion, you know, when we talk about places like California and people are like, oh, it's not fair.
The gun laws here suck.
And a lot of people who, like, live in Texas or live in more freer states are like, well, move.
And I used to say that when I was in law school and I talked about the law, the practice of the law, and the idea that I was like, theoretically, the justice system is perfect.
It's just executed by imperfect people.
The concepts are perfect.
They're just, when you add the element of people who are imperfect, Then that inherently is what creates the imperfection in the system.
Now, like I said, people do fall through the cracks, and there are some things that are deteriorating as a result of it, and those things need to be addressed.
But, by and large, people need to understand that.
Like, they're not really a corporation that's like free and independent like Apple or, you know, I don't even know how independent they are when you get to a certain size.
Well, especially when you're dealing with information, like with Google and Apple, and you're collecting so much data, and the government would love to take a look at that stuff.
We could save a lot of lives.
We could just see what this man's browser history is.
So when you put a suppressor on it, people are surprised because once it mitigates the noise at the muzzle, all you're hearing is the sound of the action if it's not a bolt action.
And then you're hearing the bullet break the sound barrier.
So you have all of these little fees and taxes and all this stuff.
You and I are not going to have a problem paying for them.
But you know who will?
People who live in shitty environments and don't have a lot of money.
That's who's going to have a problem buying guns for protection, who arguably probably need them more.
And people don't understand or think about that.
Or people don't understand, oh, well, these are just reasonable laws, and there's nothing unreasonable.
Yeah, but see, here's the problem.
You stack them on top of each other, it just becomes more of a barrier to firearm ownership.
A lot of times, a lot of these laws are designed to make it so hard and annoying to own a gun that you just don't want to do it.
It's just too much.
And people are like, why don't you like mandated training?
Well, because I've already seen what they've done with other laws.
So all that's going to happen is they're going to start off with saying, okay, you need three hours of mandated training.
Then it's going to be four.
Then it's going to be seven.
Then another shooting will happen, 20. Now, as somebody who's an entrepreneur who can, generally speaking, make their schedule, maybe they may be able to do that.
Somebody working two jobs?
Or five to nine.
There's no way they're going to be able to satisfy that.
And people don't think about the real implications of that.
And even then, even from an inner city perspective, people who are talking about policing that we police the inner city too much, well, where do you think they're going to go and enforce these laws?
If we have more of them, where do you think they're going to enforce them?
They're not going to Malibu to enforce gun laws.
They're enforcing them in South Central.
Like, I mean, that just is what it is.
So people don't think about the actual real consequences of these laws.
They look at them and say, oh, well, it's not that bad.
It's pretty reasonable.
No?
Okay, what about the other 10, 11, 12 other laws on top of that that were considered just reasonable?
But I just want to say, I think you're doing a great job.
And I think, you know, out of all the people that are promoting guns, and you do it in, in my opinion, the most reasonable and well thought out perspective.