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Jan. 29, 2025 - The Roseanne Barr Podcast
15:08
PAP PAP PAP With BRYNA CEO | The Roseanne Barr Podcast ~BONUS
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Hey, hi everybody.
It's Roseanne Barr and we're doing a bonus interview today on my favorite subject, non-lethal firearms, which is fantastic.
And I have as my guest Brian Gans, who is the CEO of Berna Technologies and has brought me a great, what do we say, not firearm.
We call it a launcher.
A launcher.
Yeah, we used to have these signs all over the office, don't call it a gun.
But we sort of gave up on that.
So it's a non-lethal gun.
But the technical term for a non-lethal gun is launcher.
But it is a weapon.
It is a weapon.
And it's a powerful weapon.
So you can really stop and assail it.
And as you know, and by the way, I was really impressed with your shooting.
You caught me a little bit by surprise.
But as you know, it's some...
It's very hard, you know, to use a gun in most situations.
I mean, most situations really don't require lethal force.
Right.
Well, you hope not.
Yeah.
But, you know, if somebody does, say, break into your house, you don't necessarily want to kill them because in the way things are in this crazy country, people have been going to jail for, like, you know, shooting the assailant that broke into their home and threatened them.
And then things go crazy, and that person is in jail for murder by protecting their own home.
Yeah, and we always say, look, less lethal before lethal, because I'm an attorney by training.
You shoot somebody coming into your house, your life is changing forever.
It's changing legally, financially.
Honestly, it's changing psychologically.
For sure.
If you use non-lethal force first, and then you're forced to resort to lethal force, you know, I would love to be able to say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client used non-lethal force first.
They researched non-lethal.
They practiced with non-lethal.
They used non-lethal, but there was just too many of them.
Or this guy was hopped up on drugs and he just kept coming, and they had to resort to lethal force.
There's not a jury in America that would convict you.
Right, because it shows intent.
There was no intent.
There was no intent.
You really did not want to harm him.
Yeah, I think that that's really good for people because a lot of people won't buy weapons to defend themselves because they've been told or they think, well, that means lethal.
You know, if I even have a gun, the bad guy will take it away.
I've heard this a thousand times.
The bad guy will over...
Power me and just take my gun and shoot me with it, which that has happened too.
Well, you also have to be prepared to use it.
There's a psychological term called trigger hesitancy.
And when we were developing this company, I would go to gun shows and we'd take a table there and I'd have the orange launcher that you just shot and a crowd would come around.
And I would say, look, I've been a gun owner my entire life, but I don't know how quick I would be to pull the trigger.
And I would see a lot of people nodding their head.
And it was clear to me that I wasn't the only one.
And I know you know Sean Hannity.
When I was at Sean's house, I was saying to him, Sean, look, I don't know if I represent 2% or 5% or 10% of gun owners.
And he said, no, Brian, I'm a gun owner too.
In fact, I've got license to carry in New York City.
He said, but you and I? We represent 90% of gun owners.
90% of gun owners live in mortal fear of ever pulling the trigger.
And I think he's right.
I do too.
Yeah, because no one wants to kill anybody unless they're psyched out and crazy.
Yeah, unless they're Luigi Mangione.
Right.
Otherwise, nobody wants to take a life.
I mean, people that are just over the brink.
Yeah.
But people do want to protect themselves.
That's why I just love this.
Legal, what are we calling it again?
Launcher.
Launcher.
The non-lethal launcher.
Yeah, but it is, it'll stop them.
Oh, yeah.
Because it's like, you know, well, tell us about the stuff.
I know there's CO2, and it's like a paintball.
Yeah, we use CO2 for propulsion, and we fire two different types of rounds.
One is a hard kinetic round that's made from a high-grade polymer, so it's like a marble.
And when you get hit with it...
It hurts a lot.
And there's videos of people getting hit with it.
There's a video of me getting hit with it.
I get shot in the thigh.
And I am jumping up and down yelling some really choice curse words.
And then they show a picture of the bruise on my thigh.
I mean, it would stop anybody.
But we also have chemical irritant rounds.
We've got burn-up pepper, which is OC, or oleoresin capsaicin, which is...
Natural pepper.
And then we have Burnamax, which is CS in pepper.
And CS is tear gas.
And when you get shot with these rounds, what happens is immediately it bursts when it hits you.
There's a cloud of this chemical irritant powder.
It gets on your skin.
Your skin is on fire.
You breathe it in.
You're in respiratory distress.
And your eyes shut involuntarily.
So we refer to it as temporary blindness.
But most people drop whatever they're holding.
They grab their face, their throat.
They fall to the ground because they can't see.
I don't care how tough a person you are, Roseanne.
If you can't see, if you're struggling for breath, you're not going through with that assault.
So, you know, and that lasts for 20 to 30 minutes.
But the interesting thing is because the effects are neurological, not physiological.
In other words, it's tricking your brain into thinking it's on fire.
When you recover...
You're not burned.
There's no burn on your skin.
There's no burn on your throat.
So 20 minutes later, you're perfectly fine.
And I always joke, if I make a mistake and I shoot the paperboy coming up the driveway, well, you know...
Thirty minutes later, he'll be fine.
Nobody's going to jail.
Nobody's going to the hospital.
And I'll leave a bigger tip at Christmas.
Well, I hope you don't shoot the paper, boy.
I try not to.
But who knows?
I mean, sometimes he throws the paper in the bushes.
Yeah, you're talking about lethal, though.
Because it is off-putting to think you're ending someone's life.
Especially when you can see they're all crazy and hopped up and just out.
You know, I was mentioning to you before.
I got the idea for this about 10 years ago when I found myself in a road rage incident.
I like fast cars.
I was driving my Audi R8. Admittedly, I was driving kind of like a jerk.
And some guy really took offense.
And he got right on my ass.
And when I sped up, he sped up.
And when I slowed down, he slowed down.
And I really got scared.
So I pulled over thinking, okay, he'll just go around me.
But he didn't.
He got out right behind me.
Now, as I said, I'm a gun owner.
I had my Glock 19, my 9mm in the glove box, and I'm thinking, do I get out with my gun or not?
And I said, nothing good could happen from getting out with my gun.
So I got out without my gun, and it was a mistake, because this guy was angry.
He was bigger and younger and stronger than me, and he came after me, and he took me down, and he hurt me.
Now, even to this day, I would not have shot him.
I was not going to kill somebody over a road rage incident, but it was when I knew that there had to be something that you could use.
In between zero and 60. Exactly.
So how did you start developing it and coming up with the idea?
You know, there was an inventor in South Africa who I had met at SHOT Show, which is the big industry gun show, and he had something similar.
I called him up and I said, Andre, I'm really interested in licensing your technology.
And I said, are you interested in working with me?
He says, yeah, I am interested.
So I said, there's a plane ticket at the Joburg Airport.
Come on up.
And he came out to Boston and that week we ended up doing a deal where I bought his company in South Africa.
He had a design studio.
I bought his patent portfolio.
I hired him and his team.
And we started developing the Burna.
And this was April of 2018. And we sold the first Burna on June 1st of 2019. And I think that first day we sold one.
And the next day I think we sold one.
I think the third day we sold none.
And now I'm thinking, oh shit, what have I done?
I put millions of dollars into this.
But slowly the word started to get out.
And, you know, it's been growing ever since.
That year, in 2019, we did 924,000 in sales.
We just reported on Black Friday, we did a million in sales.
On Cyber Monday, we did 1.4 million in sales.
And this month, we're running at, you know, a $15 million clip.
So it is clear that there's a need for this.
And you found a niche market, too, right?
It's kind of surprising nobody thought of it before.
Isn't it?
I like that you have one for the cops, too.
That's so great because then maybe they can subdue people without lethal force, too.
At least more.
I think that cops are really in a very difficult situation now.
Of course, yeah.
Because they can ruin their career with a justified...
Right.
And I think that if they have something non-lethal, something that really works, they can stop a situation.
We've got a lot of videos on our website, but one of the most dangerous things for law enforcement is when they come up on a car, the windows are blacked out, it's shut, you don't know what's inside.
So now what they can do is with the hard kinetic rounds, they can shoot out the glass.
And then they can fire the pepper inside the car, and all of a sudden you see people coming out with their hands up, coughing and choking, and they don't have to get up to the car.
That's great.
And I think, you know, when somebody's running away, they could get them with the Berna too, instead of like having to actually shoot them.
Yeah, when you see those pictures of the cops shooting an unarmed person, it's just, you know.
It's horrifying.
And it's a $7 million cost to the city or the county.
So, you know, there have been...
I think, you know, what about women buying your product?
Because, you know, it is like...
We were doing business with a store in Kansas City, actually, in Lee's Summit, Kansas.
And it was a...
Female-owned store.
And it catered to female customers.
And their goal was to try to get women to become gun owners.
So they had a shooting range there.
And they would start with the most powerful gun.
And someone would say, no, that's too powerful.
And they'd go from a Magnum to a.45 to a 9mm.
And then they'd finally, for a lot of women, end up at the burn.
And they'd say, okay, that I can do.
Because for a lot of women, the gun is intimidating.
I mean, not for you.
I'm telling you, it's going to be a new accessory.
It needs to be with stuff as crazy as it is.
You should put it on a real pretty Gucci-like chain and we can wear it around our neck to go just to the mall.
Hey, I told you not to butt in front of me in line.
Now we'll get too aggressive.
But I'm just kidding about that.
Well, you're sort of kidding.
Can I say something?
One thing that's really important to note that didn't come up when you guys were shooting is, you know, women do carry, you know, tasers or pepper spray, but a lot of those you have to get really close contact.
Yeah, this one you don't have to get close.
No, it's a projectile that shoots, just so everyone understands it.
But you shoot this thing, this pellet that has the gas, the tear gas in it.
You can probably shoot at, what, 30, 40 feet?
60 feet.
60 feet.
How far away was I when I was shooting?
You were about 25 feet, 30 feet?
25, 30 feet, yeah.
And you were dead on.
So you can actually shoot an assailant coming at you with tear gas and not have to worry about it spraying on you.
You don't have to get close.
You don't have to be in contact.
It's not going to get, it's not going to spray on you.
It's not going to get on you.
Remember that famous scene when the woman's plane, it went back.
And safety, what law enforcement says, safety is, a distance is.
Distance and safety.
Yes.
Distance and safety.
That's why I love it.
Not just for women.
For me, too.
I don't want to have to reach in a taser and say, come here, buddy.
I can just pop them out 20, 30 feet away.
As I mentioned, I've got three daughters.
My youngest daughter is a doctor.
When she was in medical school, we came up with the Burna, and I gave her a Burna with a laser on it, like you had.
Because she would get out of the hospital late at night, bad parts of Boston, walk into her car, she was scared to death.
So I said, you know, have your purse in front of you, have the Burna in the purse, your hand on the Burna.
If at 2 in the morning somebody is following you and you feel uncomfortable...
Turn around, turn on the laser, put that red dot on their chest.
You know what?
If that guy means you no harm, he's going to turn on his heels and he's going to apologize.
And then, honestly, you should apologize because he probably just shit his pants when he saw that red dot on his chest.
But it gave her a sense of freedom that she didn't have otherwise because she had always had pepper spray.
But it's a close-quarter combat weapon, and she's 110 pounds.
It's hand-to-hand combat.
Yeah.
And then they tell you, okay, go on the ground then, because the women's legs are strong.
That's what they tell women.
Go on your back on the ground and use your legs, which is so stupid.
What I tell women is get your Burna and take out this thug.
Yeah.
Incapacitate, not murder.
Incapacitate.
Disarm, deter.
Disorient.
Yeah, it's great.
I'm very happy to talk to you today and pass on this information.
I think it's groundbreaking for women everywhere and, you know, everybody.
For men, too.
For the police.
For everybody of good intent that doesn't have a murderous heart but wants to protect.
Theirselves and their loved ones.
Roseanne, thank you very much.
It was just a pleasure meeting you.
It was great to see you shoot.
You're pretty impressed.
Say that again.
I was rusty, too, I've got to tell you.
If I had been doing it for a few days.
I'm going to come back in a few months, and we'll see how good you've gotten.
Okay.
You want to put money on it?
Yeah.
Say I would improve by 50%, we'll bet $100.
$100.
It's a deal.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
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