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Dec. 4, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
28:16
Berner vs. California
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Sean, if you'd like to join us.
About an hour ago, 4 o'clock Eastern, our friends at Burner, B-Y-R-N-A.com, I've been telling you all about them.
You know, the beauty of Burner is its non-lethal self-protection.
We have a crime epidemic in this country, and it is out of control.
And I argue, and I believe with all my heart, mind, body, and soul, that everyone needs a personal safety and security strategy for them and their family.
Now, how does this relate to Burner?
Well, they're breaking news today.
About an hour ago, they filed a lawsuit against the United Socialist Utopia of California and its governor, Gavin Newsom, for the disarming of everyday civilians for even non-lethal forms of self-defense products.
Now, remember, all of these politicians, every one of them, and I believe they need it.
I believe they deserve it.
I don't care what their politics are.
We live in an assassination culture.
I want our politicians safe, whether I agree with them or disagree with them.
Here to talk about it is Luan Faum, and he's the CMO, CFO of Burner.
So you just filed this lawsuit an hour ago?
Yes, sir.
And Sean, always great to join you.
And Merry Christmas to you and your audience.
And, you know, we're thankful for you giving us the burner, giving Bernard the platform to talk about something incredibly important to us.
And our challenge against California's ban on Bernard's pepper rounds, which we believe affects law-abiding citizens across the state who simply want a safe and effective alternative to lethal force.
Well, you know, it's interesting because we have a story out today.
Well, first of all, we had the story that I mentioned where, you know, because of the sanctuary state policies out there, we had another rig driver, a team-wheeler driver that ended up killing a newlywed couple in Oregon, licensed from the state of California.
You know, three of my fellow Floridians died because, you know, you had a guy that couldn't read English and couldn't read road signs, and he had licenses in Washington state and in California.
Now, there's a story out today.
Federal prosecutors in California charged a 54-year-old ice-hating lunatic after he hurled, you know, multiple Molotov cocktails into a downtown federal building in an attack targeting immigration officials.
Again, what have I been saying?
The rhetoric is insightful that is being used by the elected Democrats all around the country.
It's insightful.
It's dehumanizing.
And here in Washington, D.C., we have one National Guardsman clinging to life, and he's 24 years old, and a 20-year-old that lost her life keeping the nation's capital safe.
So, you know, I think self-defense is critical and important.
Why would they allow the sale?
When I lived in California, now this goes back to the 80s, you know, so let's put this in perspective, the late 80s.
Why was I, I had a licensed carry permit when I lived in California.
Are they hard to get now?
Yeah, extremely hard.
You know, as a person that lived in California for 35 years, I never had access to a firearm.
So you really had to go the extra mile to have the ability to lethal weapons and training.
It leaves folks with a lot of less options.
And we're just dumbfounded why there is such a lack of common sense to give folks the opportunity.
If you're going to restrict lethal force and limit it to a few, then the masses need something that's effective to defend themselves.
And Bruno is that solution.
And quite frankly, we have a strong customer base in California, but they're only relegated to using the kinetic rounds, which are formidable, but the chemical rounds attack the central nervous system that shuts down the aggressor for 30 to 40 minutes.
Well, I mean, this is the point.
So let's talk about the merits of the lawsuit.
And I think one of the problems you have whenever you bring a lawsuit in California's jurisdiction, and obviously liberal governors appoint liberal judges that are activist judges.
And then I imagine you probably lose at the local level.
Then you probably have to take it to the appeals court.
Then you probably have to then petition the Supreme Court at some point.
I would like this to be a case law for the entire country because I think every American has the same right to self-defense that all of these elected officials have.
You know, I had this rather infamous exchange with Bill de Blasio when he was the mayor of New York, and he came in my studio and he came in with, you know, four, five, six, I don't remember how many New York City police officers.
All of them were armed.
Rightly so.
I think he deserved the protection.
I said, should every New Yorker have the right to protect themselves in their homes, in their lives, the way you're being protected?
And his answer was, every New Yorker has the right to be safe.
And I'm be like, that's not the question I asked you.
I said, should every New Yorker have the right to have a firearm?
You know, assume, obviously, you go through a background check, whatever the laws require.
And should they have the same ability to defend themselves the way you have?
And he kept saying, every New Yorker has the right to be safe.
It's his way of saying no.
It was his way of ducking, dodging, and weaving.
It was his way of obfuscating.
Because obviously the answer is he does not believe that every New Yorker should be protected like he's protected.
So let's talk about the merits of the suit and what you believe.
Massachusetts, by the way, used to have a similar ban, did they not, on stun guns?
Yes, back actually, the company Axon, who produces and markets the Taser stun guns, challenged the courts and won based on the fact that the stun guns are protected under the Second Amendment rights.
And so Berna is making that same claim.
As you know, Sean, we're Second Amendment supporters here at Bernoulli.
Many of us are firearms practitioners, but we also implore the use of common sense when it comes to self-protection because the laws around overuse of force, especially in the state of California, can ruin a person's life financially and take away their freedoms, et cetera.
So we just want California to participate like 48 other states in the Union that states that having less lethal alternatives is the smart thing to do.
And if you're in a blue state like California, we would think that they would be on board in full support of Burna's mission to reduce deaths by firearm.
Yet somehow they're restricting us from giving law-abiding citizens the opportunity to defend themselves without taking or having to resort to deadly force.
Here's what I don't understand because I researched this and I read your lawsuit.
The state of California allows people to buy lethal firearms and bullets, obviously, if you pass your background check, but they prohibit the sale and ownership of non-lethal pepper rounds, which is what Berner uses.
And they even allow on the state people to purchase their own pepper spray.
The problem with pepper spray is at that point, you're now close quarter.
That's called, you know, at least if somebody's 12 feet away from you and you pull out your burner launcher and you can incapacitate them, that prevents them from taking your weapon from you or having a physical altercation of which most people are not trained or prepared for.
And, you know, and the second thing that I noticed too is the Supreme Court has been very clear in their precedence that it allows for the protection that the Second Amendment protects citizens' right to carry weapons commonly possessed for lawful defensive purposes, including modern non-lethal weapons.
So when did this come up in California?
It has always been a restriction for us.
We've gone to great lengths to implore legislation and lawmakers in California.
And we are now going to the airwaves, going to court to demand that the state revisits their policies.
And we're asking all Californians to pick up the phone, call your state legislators, and demand that they give everyone in California the opportunity to defend themselves and their families.
I think this is probably an overlooked policy, but it needs to be revisited in a way where we allow Californians in the era of just out-of-control crime and homelessness, et cetera, to give them a chance to have something that doesn't lead them to resort to the nuclear option, as we say.
And for us, we're not trying to pick a fight.
It's about saving lives.
Burna is all about saving lives.
We want to work with lawmakers so Californians can legally access these tools to protect their families.
And we strongly feel this is covered and protected by the Second Amendment.
And these things can coexist.
And Berna's fighting to make sure that the Californian lawmakers understand our point of view and do what's right for their citizens.
Well, I applaud you for what you're doing.
It's unfortunate.
It's expensive to bring lawsuits.
However, I do think if you don't take a stand here, then these blue states, you know, they're going to be like dominoes and they're going to follow.
There used to be a saying, so goes California, so goes the rest of the country.
I don't think that's the case anymore because they've moved so far to the radical left.
Did you ever have a conversation or reach out to the governor?
We've, in the past, we have talked to organizations like DSIS, who manages security guards and those types of folks.
And, you know, we were essentially shut down.
At one point, we had a program that allowed people to take an online class to have access to chemical irritant rounds.
But just overnight, they changed that policy and restricted us from doing that.
And we've spoke to lawmakers in California on behalf of the citizens that we're calling in.
And their people call us and say, hey, what's this all about?
And we articulate our point of view and saying, hey, we are on the side of saving lives here.
And it just didn't lead us very far and very hard to get anything going from that standpoint.
And so, you know, we were left with no other option than to bring litigation so that someone can hear us because we believe that we're doing the right thing from a legal perspective, from a Second Amendment perspective, and to protect the citizens of California.
And Sean, you and I were both Californians at one point, and it's a beautiful state.
And so we're just trying to make it safe for everyone and giving folks the empowerment to go out and enjoy the freedoms that this great country provides.
And in a beautiful state like California, and you're afraid to leave your own home because you think you're going to get attacked, that's a travesty and it needs to be changed.
And we need to empower folks to, you know, enjoy all the freedoms that this great country provides.
Well, I got to tell you something.
It is the technology superior.
Again, I go back to, I've never been a big fan of tasers because if you're involved in a conflict and it's a taser, that means you're close quarter fighting.
I have often said, if I'm close quarters and people don't understand what I'm saying, if it's close quarter confrontation, I would prefer dealing with a firearm, close quarter.
Pay close attention to what I'm saying, than a knife.
It's much harder to defend against a blade.
And I say that.
However, you don't want to be in a position where it's that close that you need a taser.
You don't want to be in close quarters where you need pepper spray.
At that point, most people don't have situational self-defense skills.
I've been training in it for 15 years.
They're going to be overwhelmed by a lunatic and they're not going to be prepared for it.
And usually they'll end up with the weapon and not you.
And by the way, people should look at the videos to know exactly what Berner offers.
Just go to byrna.com.
And you're not only an advertiser, but I believe in the cause.
So I want people to really know what their options are out there.
And, you know, this way, somebody's coming at you, they're 12 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet away.
You can incapacitate them and you don't have a risk that they're going to be suing you after or you're going to be arrested after.
But anyway, we really appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for being with us.
Luan Fam, thank you.
We appreciate it.
BYRNA.com.
And it's sad that it's come to this, especially in California, but it's not a shock, is it?
So we're in D.C. Marco Rubio has been too busy traveling the entire globe.
And I went through the list last night of all the areas around the world where, you know, he's been able, along with the president, to secure peace.
And they're working double time, overtime, triple time to hopefully get a deal with Russia and Ukraine.
I hope the killing stops.
I hope there's peace in Europe.
I hope the peace holds in the Middle East as well.
Here's my interview with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State.
I want to start this out with a fun question because there are really serious issues involving national security, peace around the globe.
I mean, you're at the highest level of discussions.
And we're going to get into a lot of the hot spots and success and all that.
But I've got to ask you, there's a show that's come out.
It's called The Age of Disclosure.
Yeah.
Okay.
I know everyone probably, right?
Everyone asks you about it?
Sure.
It's a new document.
We had repeated instances of something operating in the airspace over restricted nuclear facilities.
It's not ours.
And presidents operate on a need-to-know basis.
Yeah.
Okay.
That is.
So a couple points on it.
First of all, I'm not disavowing that.
That was an interview that was done almost maybe three or four years ago when I was in the Senate.
Right.
So it wasn't recent.
The second point I would make, I was describing the allegations that people have come forward with.
I had people that came forward to us.
You know, some of these people were Navy pilots, admirals, generals, whatever.
They would come forward and say that there were programs in the U.S. government that not even presidents were made aware of.
So I was describing what people had said to me, not things that I have first-hand knowledge of in that regard.
A little bit of selective editing, but it's okay because you're trying to sell a show there.
But the fundamental comments, I haven't seen it, but the clips I've seen and people have shown me are fundamentally true.
And that is there are things, we know this, this has been documented.
There have been things that fly over the airspace, restricted airspace, be it where we're conducting military exercises or the like, and everyone in the government says they're not ours.
And so what I worry most about, just me personally, is that some adversary, another country, for example, has developed some asymmetric capability for surveillance or the like that we just are not prepared for.
You know, we're looking for missiles and fighter jets, and they're coming at us with drones and balloons.
The one observation I had is we had people that did very important jobs in the U.S. government who are saying these things.
So we have people with very high jobs in the U.S. government that are either A, liars, B, crazy, or C, telling the truth.
And two of those three options are not good.
But I don't know three answers.
I don't know the answer.
I don't have any point of, you know, I don't want to call them liars.
I just don't have any independent way to verify everything they said.
I spent time, I've been talking to the mother of the National Guardsman that's in a hospital here in D.C. who's clinging to life.
The issue of the vetting of Afghan nationals, you know, we learned that so many of them had so many warning signs.
And I'll put up on the screen the statistics.
We took in 76,000.
There were over 5,000 that never should have made it into this country.
We were assured repeatedly by the Biden administration that they had been vetted.
There's no way that many of them could have been vetted.
886 of them, I'll put that on the screen, also are at large in the country as we speak.
You put a pause on this.
The State Department has.
The President has.
Christy Noma has spoken out.
Where are we with all of this and how dangerous is this?
Well, the pause is actually, you know, we've announced it, but in fact, we've been much more careful since we took over with a lot of pressure on us, by the way, to let more people in.
Many of them served as interpreters alongside us in Afghanistan, and so their lives were at risk.
So we had a lot of pressure to begin with, but we slowed that process down from day number one to take an extra look at people.
Here's the problem with vetting people.
You can't have a perfect vet no matter who that person is for a couple reasons.
The first is we don't, you can only vet information that exists, right?
So it is possible that in many cases there are things about these people you just don't know.
No matter how much you vet them, you just don't have certain information.
And in some parts of the world where there's very limited documentation, very limited, you can't just go out and interview people in many cases because of the presence of the Taliban, et cetera.
It becomes very difficult.
The second thing you can't vet, you can vet what people have done in the past.
You can't vet what people might do in the future.
There's another dynamic at play here, and that is you could allow someone into our country who has no history of radicalization.
Perhaps they even have worked with you in the past, but they are susceptible to radicalization once they enter the United States because they don't assimilate well, because they fall victim to some of this online propaganda and efforts to radicalize people.
And two or three years later, you find that they have radicalized.
That is a threat.
That is a real threat.
It is a threat for everyone.
We have homegrown people, people in the United States born here that have been radicalized.
But I do think it is a higher threat among people that come from cultures and backgrounds that make it harder for them to assimilate once they get into the United States and that make them vulnerable to Arabic language, for example, propaganda by ISIS or al-Qaeda or any of these other groups that are looking to radicalize people.
So it's look, the bottom line is there is no effective way to allow hundreds of thousands of people to enter any country in the world and not face consequences.
You take 100,000 people from anywhere in the world, and you're going to have some percentage of them that turn out bad, either they turn into criminals or potentially terrorists.
I think that threat is heightened when you come from places that have terrorist movements that would target these people for radicalization once they enter our country.
You know, there seems to be some misunderstanding.
I call it the Trump Doctrine.
I have my definition of it.
Okay, I agree with the President.
I don't want America involved in forever wars ever again.
I agree with that part.
But that does not mean isolationism.
There seems to be a group of Americans that misinterpret what the president means as examples.
In his first term, he wiped out the ISIS Caliphate.
He took out Soleimani on that tarmac.
He took out Baghdadi and associates.
He dropped the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan.
You know, I don't know how anybody could think the world's not a safer place by taking out Iran's nuclear sites.
That's not isolationism.
That is American force used for good.
And 12 days later, Israel and Iran stopped fighting.
Well, the way I would describe it, it's not isolationism.
It's also not adventurism, which is this argument that others have fallen into, that somehow there's a problem in the world, and the only solution to it is for the United States to send military assets to go solve it.
What the president has done is he has, number one, he defines what's in the core national interest of the United States.
There's a lot of terrible things happening in the world.
Not all of them are at our core national interest.
Number two, he defines what the outcome he wants.
And number three, he takes actions that are very specific and limited to getting the outcome that's good for our country.
So the case in point is Iran.
Iran had these nuclear facilities.
We know what they were.
We've known what they were for a long time.
And the president conducted a precise campaign.
It wasn't a prolonged war.
It was a 24-hour operation.
B-2 bombers left the mainland of the United States, came over a defined target, dropped payload 14 missiles or 14 rockets right into the holes of the facility.
Debunker bus turned around and went home.
And that's it.
It didn't involve five days of fighting.
It didn't involve 15 days of fighting.
It didn't involve ground troops or six months.
He had a goal.
The goal was we were going to destroy this nuclear facility.
We were going to obliterate it.
He went in.
He did it.
He got out.
We were done.
We achieved our objective.
The objective was the destruction of the nuclear facility, which was achieved, without entangling America in something broader than that.
That's a great example of the limited and strategic and focused use of American power to achieve something that's in our national interest.
It was in our national interest not to have Iran have a nuclear program that can be turned into a weapons program that could one day threaten the United States.
And the president just found an opportunity to do something about it, and he did it.
We talk a lot, and a lot of people talk in the Make America Great Again movement about America first.
And I believe in America first, but I also believe that we have to have insight, wisdom, understanding that goes along with that.
And it seems like every one of the examples I just gave you, where the president did use the might of the U.S. military, it's against radical Islam.
And that threat, I think, you know, when people are chanting death to Israel, when they're chanting death to America, specific threats against our country, I have not forgotten 9-1101.
What is the nature of radicalism that maybe some people don't understand why it's in America's first interest?
Because ultimately, all radical Islamic movements in the world identify the West writ large, but the United States in particular, as the greatest evil on the earth.
And every chance they have, the notion that somehow radical Islam would be comfortable with simply controlling some province in Iraq or Syria is just not borne out by history.
Radical Islam has shown that their desire is not simply to occupy one part of the world and be happy with their own little caliphate.
They want to expand.
It's revolutionary in its nature.
It seeks to expand and control more territories and more people.
And radical Islam has designs openly on the West, on the United States, on Europe.
We've seen that progress there as well.
And they are prepared to conduct acts of terrorism, in the case of Iran, nation-state actions, assassinations, murders, you name it, whatever it takes for them to gain their influence and ultimately their domination of different cultures and societies.
That's a clear and imminent threat to the world and to the broader West, but especially to the United States, who they identify as the chief source of evil on the planet.
The reason why they hate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the leadership of the UAE of Bahrain, is because they've allowed the United States to partner with them.
That's why they hate them.
They consider them infidels for it.
They hate Israel.
But they also hate America.
And they hate anywhere in the world that we have influence.
They seek to attack it, including here in the homeland.
If you look at the domestic terrorists, at the attacks that have happened here domestically, the overwhelming majority of them have been inspired by radical Islamic viewpoints.
Let me move to Venezuela.
In Venezuela, it seems like America is showing its military presence.
We've been taking out narco-terrorists.
A conflict about that Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Ward, addressed us earlier today in terms of the chain of command and taking out the right decision to take out these boats that are bringing drugs into our country.
They're killing Americans.
Maduro has been basically told by the president to get out.
Are we on the verge of a possible conflict here?
No, so there are a couple things that I would say about it.
The first is what the president has authorized as a counter-drug mission in the region.
The fact that Maduro is upset about it tells you the drugs are coming out of Venezuela.
If you look at these boats today, the Maduro regime is not a legitimate government.
What it is, is that it's a transshipment organization.
It allows cocaine and other drugs that are produced in Colombia to be trafficked through Venezuelan territory and with the cooperation of elements of the regime are allowed to sail on airplanes and leave Venezuela on airplanes and ships headed towards the United States.
So they openly cooperate with the drug dealers.
In addition to that, the Venezuelan regime is a source of instability in the entire region.
Over 8 million Venezuelans have flooded into neighboring countries as a result of the regime's activities within their own country, including into the United States.
They also happen to be the foothold of Iran.
That's not spoken about enough.
Iran, its IRGC, and even Hezbollah has a presence in South America, and one of their anchor presence, especially for the Iranians, is inside of Venezuela.
So we just finished talking about Iran and the hostility it has towards the United States, where they have planted their flag in our hemisphere is on Venezuelan territory with the full and open cooperation of that regime.
So the fact that Maduro feels threatened by the presence of U.S. assets in the region in a counter-drug mission, it proves that he's into the drug business.
And by the way, we don't, it's not me saying it.
I'm not just making this up.
This was an indictment that came out of the southern district of New York back in 2020, an indictment.
It was undisputed until the president decided to do something about it.
No one disputed that Maduro was in the drug trafficking business.
No one.
Now that he's doing something about it, you have all these people on the left and others that are coming out saying, well, it's not true and it hasn't been proven.
We have an indictment by a grand jury, not by politicians, by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York that indicted him and a bunch of people in the regime.
So that's what's important to point out here.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Back in the free state of Florida tomorrow.
Thank goodness.
Loaded up tonight.
You know, Scott Besson is going to explain the economy to everybody.
It's important.
Also, Senator John Kennedy will join us.
Also, we'll check in with Steve Miller.
He'll be with us tonight.
And Christine Ohm will be on set because we're in Washington, D.C. We're going to have our own little cabinet meeting, basically.
Set your DVR, 9 Eastern from the swamp.
Hannity, back in the free state of Florida tomorrow.
Thank you for making this show possible.
We'll see you tonight.
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