Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Josh Castell - DoubleCheck's Mission to Protect Communities

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Josh Castell is the founder of DoubleCheck, a software platform setting new standards in risk management and firearms safety. DoubleCheck empowers businesses by providing risk analysis tools that help identify potential threats before transactions are completed. Focusing on privacy and the Second Amendment, Josh shares how DoubleCheck's innovative solutions support firearm retailers, shooting ranges, and live-fire trainers, helping them safeguard their communities against preventable tragedies. Learn more about DoubleCheck's mission to protect communities at: https://www.doublecheckprotect.com/  

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. It's Monday morning. I hope you're getting ready to kick your week right in the dick hole. To help do that, maybe you need to fuel yourself up with some coffee, which, as you know, this podcast is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Let's head over there right now. Gothic Serpent. I think I touched on this last week. This was the actual operation name for Black Hawk Down, which was the name of the movie, not the name of the operation. You get it, though. honors U.S. Delta Force in Army Rangers who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu, ECS Evans Coffee subscription. You can subscribe now. It's my understanding that there are a limited amount of those that the ECS subscriptions, they're pretty cool. You get a unique bag of coffee every month. I try to drag it out to make it last the entire month. It never happens. It usually get through a week. But they're actually really good. It's very diverse. So that's at the top right now. Again, you can go left to right, light, extra dark, look at everything. You can go apparel gear, coffee bundles, coffee sampler.

Hunting season is in full swing, so hopefully you have what you need for that. At this point in time, in early October, I am going to start saying, think about Christmas. I've had a few years where I actually got ahead of the game and had all of my stuff done, and it felt kind of awesome. So, I mean, again, do you have somebody who likes the brand itself? Get them some T-shirts. Do you have somebody who's a coffee nerd? Get them some of the gear in different ways that they can make coffee. Bundling their coffee is a very good way to, you know, kind of batch their favorites.

And the sampler is a good way to expose somebody to the brand who perhaps doesn't know much about it. And yeah, that's how this podcast is possible. This is through my friends of Black Rifle Coffee. My guest today is named Josh Castell. And I'm going to tell you right now there's a group of people who are going to absolutely hate this episode. And that is because we are going to be talking about topics peripheral to the Second Amendment. And there are people who are clearly absolutionist when it comes to that. Anything that could be viewed as a restriction or a regulation, they're dead to it immediately.

They're not even interested. And, you know, live your life how you want to, have the beliefs that you want to have. Josh is, I'm going to call him an entrepreneur. And he has started a company. There's two of them. One is called double-check. The other one is called Train Safe. One is a product for ranges, and the other is a product for people who are

selling firearms. We talked about both on the show, so I'll let him unpack them to that degree. In my opinion, and I think I can speak for Josh on this as well, when you're filling out your firearms purchasing form, if you're at the point of sale and you are buying a firearm, the forms that you're filling out, one, you're required to self-report, everything that's on the form. And you're looking at it from a legal perspective. What I think is really missing in that transaction is an assessment of risk. And those forms, again, in my opinion, that's all I speak for is myself, they are not designed to determine risk. The federal government, I don't think, is capable of determining risk when it comes to firearm sales. Do we live in a world where technology

can exist and can be applied if you want to, optionally, where risk could be assessed, analyzed, and potentially mitigated? That's where a program like double check comes in. And again, we get into it in the episode, so I won't break down exactly what it does. But it's an interesting conversation, and I like it because I don't look at it as an infringement in any way, because the use of the software is optional. For people who wanted to use it at their businesses or point of sales, they can. And for those that don't, they don't have to. You, as the consumer, get to vote with your dollars.

So if you like the idea of something like this, you could be a patron of somebody who uses this type of software. If not, feel free to live your life however you want to. I've rambled on enough. Let's get into this. Episode number 355 with Josh Castell. Enjoy. Okay, copy. Wists of the smoke.

I'm looking at danger close now. Listen, blink twice if you need me to get you out of here. So listen, scale of one to ten. I have some questions. It's your first time meeting, Michael. Let's play a game. Okay. Wood Michael.

It's called Wood Michael. Scale of one to ten. Uh-oh. Zero to ten. Zero, no chance in hell. 10 definitely happening. Would Michael get into a van if somebody had puppies in there and asked him if you wanted to pet the puppies? Just on your snapshot assessment.

My three seconds. That's all I need. Yep. Debate. Would the guy, does he look like the kind of person who's like, I like puppies? I'm going to go with yes. Yep. That's actually where he sleeps at night.

Not the puppy, but Michael. Would Michael get in the van if he only had ice cream, though? Michael Lice Popsicle Pulls up next to him He's on this and this is maybe 12 year old Michael He pulls up Oh, we had to do that now

Yeah 12 year old Michael Stakes are a lot higher It's the guy's got a A lollipop Maybe it's a jolly pop We don't know You know what I mean Michael

Not that I know what a jolly pop I don't either I thought you knew What do you think? Snapshot You think you'd get in the van? I don't know if you're lactose intolerant I don't know if you're lactose intolerant

This one is not a milk based It's just a straight popsicle It's soy soy popsicles are a thing first of all there's your there's your sound now my head just i was going to say that my head just blew up i don't know if you can make a popsicle don't get in that van yeah uh zero to 10 do you think he'd be susceptible to joining a cult i'm gonna put him at a seven yeah i think we're all at a seven maybe not you no but i think we're all more susceptible than we think we are to influence i don't know if i'm susceptible to joining a coin i might just do it because it sounds awesome

listen i've said for years and i've never found anybody i've never found anybody will do it with me If you're the guy, I want to go down to the Church of Scientology. I want to enroll. I want to get ingrained there like a tick, and I want to see what, I want to know the secrets. What's going on? I can't. I am already a suppressive person. Are you?

I have hosted people on this podcast and on Change Age. It's actually the same guy. Aeron, Aaron Smith Levin, grew up in Scientology. They don't like it. So they actually, they came after him. Man, they play dirty. They'll go out and they, you know, if you part, or a member of, of a gym or you spend your money in their business somewhere, they'll start going there

and saying, you know, oh, really, you allow people to be a member of your gym that abuse others, that beat their, like, and they'll just, and that pressure you in that direction, not directly to your face, but, but, this is because he was critical? Because he left, because he was on. He left, and for years has been openly very, very critical of the Church of Scientology. Well, this is the only organization in his. history to bring the IRS to its knees. So the way they did it, we were just talking about lawyers. I mean, I'm going to give credit where credit is due.

Multiple thousands of individual lawsuits filed against not only the IRS, but individual IRS agents. I mean, not a bad move. It's probably the only time in history that you'll ever hear me root for the Church of Scientology. It was a... I support that tactic. Still, fuck those people.

I agree. But what it did to the – putting the fear of God into the IRS itself, I've been audited. I don't know. Have you been audited? I haven't. I mean, you'll get through it. It's fine as long as you're an honest person. It's just – How did you land on their radar? What'd you do?

Well, if we really want to get into that, I mean – I've been far away. Well, so I learned a valuable lesson, right? So over the past few years, my life has shifted where I used to make all my money off of consulting. I used to have jet normal income as a consultant. And I had expenses. 99 income. Yeah, but I had like services related income tax like normal income. And then I sold a company. And so my life changed, right? And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't in a hurry to be working doing

consulting services anymore. I didn't need to do it. And so things shifted where now my income began taking the form of capital gains. And I essentially started acting like my own one-man private equity office, whereas what I do now, I'm running my own startup, which we'll get into, but I go around sourcing deals and in making investments in real estate and companies, right? And so there's expense in doing that and running around and acting a private equity office, deal sourcing, and all of that. So I have all this expense over the past couple of years and I don't have returns yet. Or I have some returns where it's capital gains. Okay. Not regular income. And in their world, it's an automated flag, period, if a company has expenses, but doesn't show that regular

income. Interesting. It automatically flags it in their system. How was it actually interfacing with IRS personnel? They're people. I don't know if I've ever actually met. somebody who works for the I have gone through this is my second audit they're normal people like you and I yeah that for the most part have a stack like this that they're just trying to get through and let me guess if you were to take a grip of them there's probably somebody who's just going to right back on top so they have a perpetual stack it's yeah okay yes they're never getting through that pile it's it's you know inbox zero conundrum they're never getting it down and so you know again if you're if you're doing bad stuff yeah but if you're just an honest taxpayer who maybe put a

schedule C item on a schedule E or whatever you know again it's not like it's easy they don't make it easy for us yeah right but if it's just that kind of administrative stuff I'm not going to say it's a pleasant experience but it doesn't have to it's not a whole thing it's just cooperate yeah like look honestly does this belong in this column or this column you tell me if I got it wrong we'll get it right as long as you're not you know I'm reporting all my income you know it's the folks who literally don't report their income, right? That's now a different problem. Or fabricate expenses. Like, I've actually, here are the receipts. I actually spent this money, right? And where we put it, how we realize that expense, I'm not claiming I always do that right because, again, they change the

rules every year. Can you expense meals and entertainment? I think so. You couldn't two years ago. Now then it was 50%. Now it's back to a hundred. Like, who knows? So if they want to decrease the amount of us that are running a foul, stop making it so complicated and changing things. It's literally a year over a year. All that said, if you're open and honest, you can navigate it with them. They're just normal people looking at close a case. How long did it take Flash to Bang to get through it? First one was ungodly long. First one was actually dragged on for, I don't know, six years. What? Yeah, because I moved from New York to Texas, and that triggered a jurisdictional change, which further just mucks things up. And I didn't accept their findings. I was still challenging it,

and they just took a very, very long time while assessing interest to give me a ruling. And so it finally got settled after like five or six years, the first one. And now I'm in the throngs of the second one that should be closed out by November. What do you think triggered the second one? Exactly what I just, the same thing I just laid out. Yeah. Even though it's associated with the same business that they can already show that they had an audit with. Well, the last one was like 12 years ago.

So I don't think there is any. You know, they might have a note on my account that I was audited once and with the fun. But like there's no real connection. It's a new 12 years later. Yeah. You know. What do you think it would take for the IRS to pull the tax exempt status from Scientology? Impossible.

I kind of land on that too, and that seems to suck because there is a treasure trove of information. And again, I'm not here to define what religion is or what it isn't. Sure. But it seems to be different than other things that qualify themselves as a religion. I don't know. How do we gauge that? Fuck if I know. Is it based on just what you believe, how our perception of the level of ridiculousness of it is?

Yeah. Is it just how old it is, right? Yeah. If we think about religious beliefs, a lot of them sound like fairy tales. Is it just a question of one that's- Only all of them. Yeah. So, but if it's a thousand years old, does that give it inherently more credibility than the one that's 50 years old?

I don't know. It gives it more real estate, I think. I don't know. Is that you knocking, Michael? No. What was that noise? This? I don't know.

Oh, you did that. Sorry, that's my foot. No, it was okay. I was just like, fuck, did I just get, was I just wrong by leaving that door open? I just want to make sure that I was still in the right. No. Yeah, I don't know if you're ever going to get your tax exempt status pulled from you. Well, you and I can.

You and I could, but that would be like a constitutional lawsuit involving Scientology and the IRS for sure. And they've already displayed with flying colors that they have the might to take that battle on. And cash. Yeah, and that's what that's all. So the IRS, I don't think, is ever messing with them again. If you were going to join a cold, what would be your flavor? Are you a Jim Jones kind of guy, a doomsdayer? Are you more like the Rush Nishi up from the, I don't know.

Have you ever seen Wild Wild Country on Netflix? Is that the Holmolt County crazyness? Oh, no, it was up in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, specifically. Antelope, Colorado is where they, I mean, the guy from, India came, they only wore purple fucking roll voices everywhere. Is that your flavor? No. No.

What are we talking about behind some false yogi, guru, at the end of this conversation, we're going to agree upon what cult we're going to go join. So we have to figure out, we have to, we're at the buffet table. Do you like olives on your salad? Are you more of a sunflower? You know? Or both? The Rasnishis were.

No, I'm not into that. Rast Nishis seemed to be, let's, hey, hey, I'm not into that. Rast Nishis seemed to be, let's, hey, out party and bang everyone. Jim Jones, let's drink Kool-Aid and fucking die. And there's the people that like the rock, the comet is coming. Yep. And the alien ship is being covered behind the comet. That was another, I think that one was in the L.A. area. They drank the poison and like, they all wrapped themselves up and they found themselves in the bed. What's your flavor? What do you like? Do I have to opt into any of this? Yes.

What's happening here? I mean, this is probably a terrible one, but you know, given how it ended, but like I would, I, of all of the crazy crap that you're laying out, I think I would identify most with the folks in Waco, right? Okay. Because they weren't really trying, they weren't, they weren't suicidal. It wasn't about ending their lives. They weren't even doing anything that crazy, were they? They just run afoul of the federal government.

They hit the radar, yeah, the government. And they, and they stood their ground. And we all know how terribly wrong that went, you know. But I could identify with those, I guess, libertarian at heart folks that just got together to live together, more than any of these lunatics you're talking about. I mean, you'd have to let David Koresh bang your wife. Never happening. No.

That was a requirement. Yeah, no. Because I think as oftentimes happens with cult leaders, there's a direct path to God of some kind that it's channeled through them and specifically through their dick, it seems like, if you're a dude. Yeah, that's how it works. or they're licking his lips for those of you who don't see him on video. He's looking at them cookies. Yeah, that cookie tastes is really good. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the day of Chris Cole.

That's for you? No, he was banging everybody's wife. Yeah, no, you're not doing that. I don't see you do it allowing that. I would know. I would 100% that's a hard pass. Yeah. All right.

So, okay, but I like the libertarian aspect of that. Leave me the fuck alone. Let me express the freedoms I have. Well, do I have it wrong? What? Let's make sure I don't, like, I didn't just endorse as my understanding of the Waco situation, that's what it was. It really, they weren't like...

I mean, there was some crazy going on there for sure, but again, I think people should be able to believe what they want to believe, live their life the way you want to live your life, until you start harming others. I mean, I think, man, I don't know if the government has ever been open and transparent about exactly what happened. I think that they said that they got their attention due to illegal machine guns or machine guns parts or explosives or something like that.

That was the justification that they used to look into it. The raid went catastrophically wrong for everybody involved, federal agents as well as everybody there. And yeah, by no means endorsing David Koresh or what he stood for. But I like the idea of libertarianism. Yeah. You know what I'm hooking on to that particular sentence. Yes. Was any of their stuff tax related that brought them down in Waco?

Oh, man, Michael. This is what the beauty of having you in this room. I don't think it was. I think it was ATF related. Yeah, the main thing I'm seeing is stockpiling illegal weapons and also they thought there was child abuse going on. Okay.

But I'll keep looking. I think that they thought there was child abuse going on. Yeah, they weren't sure. That's a very catch-all claim to make to justify doing anything. That almost everybody would get behind, especially parents. Are you rocking an android over there? I am.

I'm that weird. with the green bubbles. I'm sorry. I get wrath from everyone. Can you not be another guy giving me grief? I just, I mean, I've come to the realization that means you're just a different type of person. That can mean a lot of things. Have you ever had an iPhone? Big fella. No. Ever. I'm vehemently anti-Apple my entire life. I'm sorry. Tell me more. What do you want to know? Why? Where did it begin? Have you ever used an Apple device to like, yeah. Yeah, of course. You can't escape them. Yeah. But I just think, look, I mean, I believe in the free market.

believe in capitalism, but it only works if we all make sort of, we use discretion in our purchasing choices, right? Support who you want to support. It's why I'm going to black rifle coffee and not Starbucks, right? If you treated your customers in any other business the way that Apple treats all of us, you wouldn't, you'd be on the receiving end of wrath and you wouldn't be in business very long. What would it look like if a coffee shop did treat somebody in that ecosystem? Essentially it would be there would be coffee and then you could be charged like coffee pro, but it'd be the same. Even worse than that.

For a little bit more money. Even worse than that. Imagine you buy an $8 cup of coffee. Yeah. That is engineered that by the time you get three quarters of the way down, the bottom disintegrates and the coffee falls out and it's forced you to go buy another coffee. And it only tastes good in their cup and you have to upgrade the cup halfway through. Yeah. We can make all kinds of goofy, goofy.

But that's really what it is, man. I mean, their products are engineered. They were caught. They were found guilty. They had to pay huge fines. You know, there's no reason why your iPhone can't last. many years. There's no way that it accidentally, or intentionally, I should say, the battery life just

seems to start decreasing more as the new ones coming out. That's an accident. There's no way that's intentional. Yeah, of course not. When of corporate entities ever pulled shenanigans like that to drive, you know, bottom line. Yeah. I wish we actually had more discretion in our spending because people, I think, oftentimes think that they have that and they don't look behind the scenes and realize that almost everything

is actually controlled by quite a few people. Yes. And so that's why you should, look, I'm not saying that me buying a Samsung on Google's OS is really that much better than alternative. You know, it's giving of, you know, I support communism vibes, things like that. But I mean, that's fine. Wait, my purchasing choice are yours, or yours? Apple, man. I feel like you're directly giving money to Xi Jinping.

You know what I mean? It's fine. I didn't buy a Hawaii or however. That you know of. Maybe the go. I mean, I don't know. Here's a new conspiracy that I'm making up right now. The Chinese government owns Android.

You know, it's hard to say. They don't own it. But the same reason why I like it, because the freedom that it gives me as a user, it makes it susceptible to a lot of shenanigans. Absolutely true. I don't know if you saw this, though, the new phone, the Apple phone comes out today. And just so you know, there's a lot of freedom, you can move the buttons anywhere you want to on the screen, as long as it stays in the grid format.

It sounds like you're already in a cult, my friend. You've already joined the cult of jobs. Sometimes you have to sit back with your coffee and just laugh at the shit that goes out in the world. Here's the freedom to move your icons inside of this. grid that's still essentially locking them in the same place. Look at this revelatory technology that other phones have been using for a decade. And like, how about like I heard, oh, hey, we're going to, we're going to gift you back a headphone jack now. Sorry, we took it away for eight years. We're going to give you one back. Now, after you've thrown away all your headphones. Yeah, so you got to

buy new Apple jacks, branded headphones. But like, so on that note, I'm going to plug a friend and company. If you don't know about it, check out unplugged. Are you familiar with those phones? Is this Eric Prince? So I've heard about them a little. bit. I actually considered trying to buy one of those. I didn't realize they were a small batch. Yeah. Harder to get than I thought. Oh, we'll get you one. So does it interface with any care? Talk about, I mean, you seem to know more about it. Unpack this. I saw him giving one to Sean Ryan. Yep. He gave one to Tim recently. Yeah. I lost him to give me one. He said, you can buy one. I mean, that's a good friend. Yeah. I'll say I get it. And I'm more than

happy to buy one. Let's just say when I tried to, there was none available. But that will change. Unpack it. Because I like the idea of this. Well, so I don't work for the company, right? I haven't built their tech stack. I don't, but in statement, what they profess that it is, that certainly resonates with me and probably with you. It's truly the world's first unplugged cell phone. You have no ad ID, no advertising ID at all integrated into the phones OS.

Which is going to infuriate any and all brands that play in the digital space. Oh, yeah. Because, my God, the amount of, I was having this conversation. I was sitting down with people today and all of our phones started blowing up with political either text messages or phone calls. And we started having the conversation.

Where the fuck do these people get this number? Dude, you are just a bin of data to people that you interface with online and they will sell that. I was going to say to the highest bidder, I think it's just to anybody who will pay. They do all day every day. Every single thing that meta

and all these companies claim that they're never doing, they're doing. They do it by two or three degrees of separation. Once the data has been touched and processed and then spit back out with whatever additional layer of processing that's been done by another event, by somebody two, three steps down, they have total plausible tonight. Like, they didn't do that. They didn't use it in a way that they never said they would, but they monetize the heck out of it knowing that somebody was going to use it in that way. And so, yeah, I mean, look, it's to the point where like none of us can pay attention anymore because it's so stressful. but like there's there's major major data breaches every week for major companies your your data is out there right

like and that's actually a good segue into the rest of our conversation probably yeah no it well it does tell you but i want to talk more about the unplug phone because i am fascinated by it so it has no digital id it has no ad id ad ad sorry does so it obviously would have to connect to the normal cell towers and things like that if you're going to make calls does it have a way to anonymize you on that i believe so but you guys everybody i mean mike can take a look now. I don't, again, I don't, I'm not, I'm not a supposed person. Yeah, pull up the specs. I believe so. And I also believe this phone has a very easy way to actually just brick this thing out as well too. Yes. Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. It's all of what you want in security. Nobody's

listening to you. Nobody's hijacking your microphone and using, and literally listening to your conversations. You're not being tracked. The absence of that ad ID means that there's no tracking. Okay, so they call it the up phone. It's just under a grand. The ultimate privacy focused smartphone engineered by top cyber security experts, powered by the exclusive of Libert. That's the play on Liberty. Libertos. Liberty. I like it.

Liberty OS. Design to protect your conversation, everyday data, secure private, exceptional experience, the freedom of true digital safety. Keep going, Michael. Let's look at some pictures of this thing. I love it. It's got Blackberry vibes. It's making me feel good about it.

No, that's giving iPhone right there. Wow. I learned that term for my 16-year-old daughter. On the back. Wait, what was that term? Giving. Low key. It's low-key giving.

Don't you think, Michael, low-key giving iPhone vibes? I would agree with that. Yeah. I mean, look at this. Where could they possibly have gotten this three-camera idea? Because this was obviously apples. Okay. Yeah.

No, I mean, it's a normal phone that does everything a normal phone can do except surveil you. Let me ask you this, though. Are people, I mean, I think people like the idea of being protected, and they also like the idea of being on social. media. Does this thing firewall you out from putting those apps on there? And it's in it, I don't think so. God, it is almost a contradiction, if not a direct contradiction in terms.

I need a secure phone to do my Instagram. Like, fuck. But there are people who will, there is. And they will, people will justify it. Like, you know, I need to get this secure phone. But let me put my entire life and where I am and what I'm doing and who I'm with on Instagram. This is not for those folks.

I don't think this is for folks, you know, operating at a fairly high level in business. and various other endeavors, public-private, that are tired of being constantly surveilled and exploited by the big three phone and ad tech companies. That's what this is for. I don't think this is for your TikTok Instagram junkie. I don't think so either. I mean, they're kind of living a different lifestyle

and again, live however you want to. I am, God, one of the most unpatriotic things that has ever happened to this country is the Patriot Act and the loss of privacy and security. and how that shit has been weaponized and can be, and I personally believe, is probably turned back towards us. It's at least being gathered and collected

so it could be sifted through some other time. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan. That's interesting to me hearing that from you. Well, I didn't realize how much privacy and security we were losing, and I don't think anybody did. And maybe most people don't understand that that has been re-signed forward and forward and forward and forward, and still going on administration agnostic.

Oh, for sure. But, I mean, what do people in power one? They want to stay in power. I don't give a shit if you're team red or team blue. You just don't want the other color team, whatever your palette is, to be in there. But as somebody with your background, like, how do you reconcile? How do you balance those concerns with, like, as I understand, a lot of what we were able to do to literally prevent the next 9-11 and deploy you, point you in the direction that you had to go?

It comes down to, though, what the Patriot Act allowed us, the latitude it gave them to work with. Is that not an accurate understanding? think it's an accurate understanding, but the powers, and then this is my understanding, and I've read the Patriot Act itself as a long time ago. The powers of the Patriot Act were supposed to be pointed external. Not use for internal use. But there's bullshit ways around this. The government, you know, do some, God, the intelligence gathering apparatus in the United States has been busted so many times. Back at the other in the, and I think there still is hardwire telephone lines. There's a huge terminal on the west coast and a huge terminal on the east coast. And like the agencies

had literal equipment in those rooms intercepting shit going out hard, completely caught and fucking busted. And I think that was probably pre-imposed Patriot Act. But they're bullshit ways that they can get around it. These tools, you know, we have allies around the world. So, you know, the agency is not supposed to look internal to a U.S. citizen. But that doesn't mean they can't ask an ally across the pond who has access to the same data stream. Hey, can you guys take a look at this? Right? And then there's no violation of a U.S. intelligence entity operating under Title 50 authority looking internal into the United States.

I hear you. But at that point, if you're just pointing it off to one of the five eyes partners to do it, isn't it really all the same? That's what I'm saying. It's a bullshit way that they get around doing it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They're like, oh, we would never use that to look in turn. I'm like, motherfucker. That's like saying.

It's the same Facebook meta conversation we just had about how the data ends up. It'd be like you having somebody else on your side of the table. And instead of asking you, Josh, I'm like, hey, Frank, I'm going to hand this to Josh, but I need you to take a look at it. You know, it's like, what do we got going on here? Yeah. So I don't think people realize, and I don't know if they care how little privacy they have because they say this. Well, what does it matter? I'm not doing anything wrong.

And that is a dirty, dirty, slippery slope. It is, but I, and I'm constantly having this conversation with people. My background, I came out of the social media world and I helped get launched all of that, like, and take brands on social media for the first time. And I actively promoted all these platforms as a partner, certified like partner. So I was part of it, right? And so I, um, I get it. Like I, I see how bad it is.

But if you don't have that inside perspective, if you're just your average teenager, you're your average 20 something. in the private sector workforce with no visit, like, how do we expect them to have any concept? How do we expect them to understand that, like, no, what, like, it's not this, it's not innocent letting the Chinese government literally hold all of your data, all of your content, all of your media that you put on TikTok on servers over in mainland China. Yeah. It's not innocuous.

There are 50 million different ways where that can go off the rails and actually affect your life, financially or otherwise. But how do you get them to understand that? I don't know. You know, I was doing an episode for change agents, and we were talking about a company, a third-party company that scrapes social media platforms. All of them. They have a database that's in the billions of, and they have pictures of you and I. And they use them with police agencies. It's an online 24-7 lineup where they're looking for and masking people do facial recognition. Are you not naming the company by design? I can't remember it off the top of my head. It was an episode I did on, I mean, I do a couple of those per one. week as well. But it's third party, right? It's not the company, I'll say meta, even though I'm not specifically talking about meta, but I'm damn sure they participate in this. And by participate,

they know that somebody else is doing this and they're not stopping them. It's not meta giving them the information. It's this third party that's scraping and scraping and scraping. And then they go to the law enforcement and say, hey, I mean, here's, you know, look at all these pictures. You get facial recognition. Let's, boom, let's go. Yep. There's a, you know, I'm in a unique position to speak more on all that. That's like, well, please do. Yeah. How did you? Talk to me about your professional background. Like what led us here today, and then we'll talk about, you know,

what you're working on now. Yeah, sure. Where did you grow up? I grew up in New Jersey. Okay. In a town called Marlborough, just like the cigarette. Was there any tie there,

or is that just accidental? Are they, is Marlboro started in Marlboro? Were that, I don't know shit about the smoking industry? No, no, no, I did nothing to do with that. Did you get, like, a pack for every birthday, though, since, like, from Marlboro?

The first time my father ever caught me smoking at, at like 15 years old, he bought a pack of Marlboro Reds. Smoke them all? I don't remember he said that or just smoke one. Finish it in front of me and that was it. Did it just crush you? Yeah, 15 years old smoking. I can't smoke a Marlboro Red now.

It's wild that people still smoke. It is. And I bummed a cigarette from somebody last night. I understand. I've struggled. I've never been like a heavy smoker. I've never smoked a pack a day. But I'm one of those guys who in times of stress is like, can I bum a cigarette?

And I'll do maybe two of those a day or whatever. Okay. But it is disgusting. And every time I finish a cigarette, I feel bad about it. So it's like we know. Like I can't, again, with me as an example, I cannot believe any of us still light up cigarettes. That, I mean, that seems to be at least you're managing it. I mean, there are people out there like every day pack of cigarettes.

Oh, yeah. Two packs and new ports a day, like stripping life off your lifespan. Yeah. Yeah. But no, nothing to do with the cigarette company. Nerd fact, if you want to remember it. Marl is apparently has something to do with the soil. So it's the borough of Marl, because the soil was rich with Marl, whatever the hell that means.

And I think that it's the same kind of route of Marlborough from somewhere in North Carolina, the cigarettes. So there's a little town, New Jersey with the same name. How we ended up there, which is what I thought you're asking is just, my family's from Brooklyn. All first, second generation immigrants came over after the Holocaust came over from Italy, et cetera, et cetera. Russia, whatever, like all grandparents merged in New York, like it happens. everybody just merges together. And pretty much that area of New Jersey is almost exclusively nothing but transplants. You know, like all these towns in New Jersey are essentially, there's a line.

And it's like north of this line, it's all New York transplants. South of this line, it's all Philly transplants. Like literally it goes from giant signs in the bars to Eagles. And so I grew up in a New York satellite community. And then, you know, and then spent most of my adult life and some of my former teenage years living in the city, living in Queens and Manhattan. When you were grown up, what do you think? your life is going to look like? What occupation were you going to pursue?

So my dream was to be a fighter pilot as a kid. Saw the first top gun. Fuck yeah. You know, it doesn't get any better than that. I heard that movie did nothing for naval recruiting. Yeah. But then I figured, then I realized I was blind, you know, so very quickly. Like blind blind, not legally blind, but my vision's shit. Have you had to correct? No.

You ever looked at Lazic or PRK? I did. I did. I elected to not do it. At the time, I was boxing. and they told me then you can't do LASIC because the flap can come up. Correct. Yeah. And then for PRK, they actually dissolved the front of your eye. And when they described to me what that PRK thing looked like, I was like, you know what? I just wear my glasses.

I don't need you taking a blade and scraping my... Yeah, I'm not like, I was like, I don't need my vision corrected that bad. It's fine. I'll put my freaking glasses on. So, and then, you know, I don't know. Over the years, I wanted to be a boxer. I realized pretty quickly that that wasn't going to happen, you know, getting laid out a couple of times. Like I was decent enough moving around in gyms, but very quickly, that's not a career path.

How do people as a hobbyist, I mean, Michael and I both do jiu-jitsu. I love grappling. I love striking as well. But how do you, I mean, there's obviously professional boxers, which are, you know, the fraction of a percentage, just in any other professional sport. how can you how do you do hobby boxing without having too many ballistic head injuries do you just spar lightly do you only is mostly bag type work because i feel like part of that you want to you know square off with your buddies well yeah but that's you know sparring is never it's no different than jiu jitsu well there's no intentional strikes in jiu jitsu so it's i would say the ballistic likelihood of your brain slopping around inside of your skull you're just talking straight c t versus matwork like the impact and i'm saying like i mean people who love boxing and they want to be a

hobbyists, it might at some point in time involve a lot of you being hit in the head. How do you do that? How do you manage that? Headgear. I mean, I used to help that much. So I don't know. So the argument about CTE is no. Helmets, headgear, it doesn't matter. It's not about what's visible. It's about the rattling. So maybe I am affected. But in theory, in theory, you know, you wear the headgear. I wore my mother, God rest her soul, used to say to me when I first told her I was boxing, oh my God, your face, you got to mess up your face. So I went and I got the headgear. You know, there's various degrees of headgear. I had headgear with like a big bar here.

Okay. So like you literally can't even make contact on my face. Yeah. And I don't know. But, you know, you know, I'm not doing it anymore. You notice I'm not getting punching the head at 40. Yeah. But I bet you there are people who are though.

And I wonder if they think about that. There are and I have aspirations. Like, I'm in terrible shape right now. I have aspirations of getting back in shape. And kind of I need some kind of motivation of a goal to do that at this point in my life. So I would like to do probably masters or I don't know if I can qualify. but something, you know, there's a, there's a... Master's boxing?

Yeah, for older dudes like me to do some amateur fights. Because if I'm not competing, I'm not... I have trouble finding the motivation to push myself. You should tell our mutual friend Timothy that you want to fight him. That would be... So I did jiu-jitsu with Tim one time. How'd that feel? I got her in your surgery three months later.

Ah! So... All right, so your experience tracks. What happened? I don't know what happened. I just was doing what they told me to do on the mat. And next thing I know, I was like, ah! And fuck, he's...

a gorilla man. He's the scariest human being I've ever been around. He's just thankful he likes me. I know. Yeah, he's, but he's awesome. He's one of my favorite people on Earth. Same here. We get to see him next week. We're going hunting in Utah. Oh, that's awesome. I'll see him Sunday for a week. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. I told Evan, I'm like, or actually

wasn't Evan. It was a media guideline and I'm like, please pair me up with Tim. So it'll just be me and Tim and my wife in the back country for like five days. That's amazing. So that's another thing that I'm working up my man Linus card to get to do. Like I've never, I love the second I'm shoot, but I've actually never gone on a real hunt. I've done like a rattlesnake roundup with snake shot and blown them away. Uh, what would you want to hunt? I mean, you live in Texas, right? Yeah, but so here's the problem. Tim and all these guys are always trying to get me to do these, these chopper hog hunts. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm just not into it. Okay. To me, it's the least

sporting thing I've ever seen. Like, I'm, let's go out. I don't even think they're trying to make it sport. No, they're okay with it being wanton slaughter. Yeah. To me, it just doesn't sit right. It's like, there's one thing for me, you and I to go out, you just show me how we do this. Yeah. Track an animal. kill a singular animal and take it home and eat it. I'm all about that. But my experience on the chopper hog hunts, just something in my soul is like, wait a minute.

You're just leaving a field and you're not, and you're just leaving the carcasses just to rot a field. But the farmers are thanking you for that, and you're actually not even denting the population. The gestation rate, I get it. I didn't realize how much damage hogs did until I went to a place where they were out overnight, and it looked like craters on the surface of the moon the next morning.

And all my, I just recently bought my first ranch, although Texas, it's not a ranch. It's a ranch at for real Texans. It's not a ranch. Where's the delineation size? Size. Yeah. For me, six acres is like a, you know, Jersey boy. It's like a gentleman's ranch.

Nice driveway. Yeah, they're like, that's cute. Like, you know. Yeah, but what do you have on there? Your pool house? Yeah. But so I, but so when I talk to those guys who have real ranch, like, yeah, it's absolutely valid.

The hogs are a nuisance. They cause a lot of damage. Shit, they'll, they'll go after your dog. They'll go your dog. dog or a small child. I get all that. You have a lot of other hunting opportunities in Texas, though. Oh, yeah.

You're going to encounter, there will be some fencing involved mostly because there's not a lot of public land in Texas. It's a lot more private. Tim would actually be a great intro to that for you. So you have non-native species that will have a year-around season. Yep. But also, he knows the right people. I mean, we can easily get you on like a white-tailed deer hunt, a muley deer hunt, or a bigger game. associated with the Rockies, elk, stuff like that.

Not that hard for sure. Oh, yeah. I would love to do it. Yeah. But so far, all I've been invited to is chopper slaughter. Which, yeah, and honestly, that's a super easy one to do there. So, I mean, yeah, that's a low lift. But the other ones are possible for sure.

All right. Well, let's get there. I mean, so there's a lot coming from me. I get back in shape. I am going to take up Jiu-Jitsu again with those guys, you know, probably after six months of being in shape when I feel like I can maybe do it without. getting injured. Yeah.

But here's the thing. I don't know how about you feel. Like, it looks to me like everybody who's doing jujitsu regularly has also just regularly injured. It just is what it is. I've navigated my way through a few. Michael, you hurt your knee recently, but that was more judo, right? Yeah, that was for judo.

Have you hurt yourself jiu-tzu-wise? I mean, your feelings, obviously, almost daily. Yeah, my feelings, that's, there's not help for those. Yeah. Like, once or twice and... Like, bad that it got you off the matter? You had to work around it. It's just been minor stuff.

Okay. Yeah. I think it really more depends. depends on the headspace that you go into it with. I found jiu-jitsu and started when I was 40. So you're, you just have to look across at the 20-year-old dude who wrestled in high school and be like, listen,

like, we're about to participate in the same thing, but I get it. And like, please also remember I'm two decades older than you and I'm a professional. I actually have to do shit after this. Your version of life is that you think maximum male age is 23, so can we fucking tone this down.

Yeah. Yeah. You can do it safely. I have, I've been banged up a few times. spent some time off the mat. Most of those injuries that were me taking it too far and being unwilling to surrender a summation

and try to gnar your way out of it. The alpha and you refused to the yield. It's in everybody. And sometimes though, especially earlier on, you don't really know where that limit is. Sure. I think I can get out of this. No, I should not have tried to get out of that.

Two pops later. Never got that bad for me. I've had some strains. Yeah, I've had some strains, but it's doable. I've found it to be rewarding. but I also get it's not for everybody either. I think it is necessary for anybody who wants to be able to protect themselves, right? Like boxing is great, but in the real world, right, sure, I have a chance to maybe knock you out before you can shoot on me or get close to me.

And if I don't take, if that doesn't go well, we're on the ground, right? That's where every real world situation ends, right? And most people are not even going to shoot. The number one thing you're going to see is they put you in a fucking headlock. It's the number one bar move, like backyard barbecue fight. somebody reaches over and grabs and it's so easy to get out of headlocks and just turn that back to somebody.

You can just dump stuff after this. I mean, Michael can. He teaches children and... Thank you. Participates in the women's class, but... Gets paid... You get paid in cookies? Yeah.

Cookies all right. It's another word for it. No, it's... I mean, I'm not a coach. My wife is a coach. She can show you stuff. I love doing it, but I also... I don't know, man.

I don't feel like I know enough to teach people, to be honest. Yeah. Well, luckily we know a few guys who do. We do. Yeah. Maybe I'll tackle Timothy in the woods. I've actually openly said this to my wife and that she goes right back to what she

normally does with me at least once a week, if not daily. She says, what the fuck is wrong with you? Because Tim's going to bow hunt. And it is my goal to have an animal at bow range and him draw back and me to scare it away. And hopefully he shoots and maybe wounds it and he feels terrible. if he has the capacity to feel. I'm not sure. You and I have very different goals in life.

Yeah. I just want to fuck with Timothy. Yeah, you can do that. I can't fucking do that. Right? You know, the worst I can do is give him a little rib here or there about he's old. Which is true. He denies it, but I think that's how calendars work.

Yeah, it worked. Wow, but yeah. Look at all this. I know. Same here. I can't say much anymore. Three kids. My oldest son turns 21 in two weeks.

Holy smokes, dude. Congrats. Yeah. That's awesome. Wild. I got an 18-month-old. How old are you? I just turned 40.

I started a little late. Thank God I did, because I don't think I- You'll be all right, though. You mean, you know, I started when I was 23, and I'm grateful for it now because my daughter is essentially a junior in high school. My middle son is off in college. My older son still lives in town. My daughter was working at the coffee shop,

and then my older son was working an opening shift today. You didn't even tell me that was your daughter. Yeah, that was my daughter. I mean, you got to be a little bit, you know, protective of... Yeah, you want to see how I acted? No, it's just, I mean, also, you know, I am resoundingly the most boring person that she knows. So she may not even like me introducing her as my... She'd be like, Dad, I have an idea.

Maybe you shouldn't shut the fuck up, okay? It's pretty amazing how that works, right? No matter who you are. So I kind of just leave her alone because I feel like if I do any of that, I just end up embarrassing her. Sure. But that's kind of your God-given right and responsibility. I know. But starting younger, I mean, I can still do really cool stuff with them. You're not out of that window either. You're going to be just fine. In, in 2024, yeah. Being 60 with a 20 year old is not the same, you know, or when 20 years from now than it was. Like, when I think about our parents.

I was talking with my dad about this because he is 76 now. And I'm taking him on a hunt to Wyoming in late October. And I mean, I really want to do it now because, man, I mean, I don't know how many use. full years he has left. I think a lot because that dude is at the gym, four to five days a week. He's crushing weights. He's walking. And I asked him the other day. I said, when your parents were your age, did they work out? Resoundingly no. They just sat in chairs and fucking died. They waited to die. Yeah. And I mean, for me, that's not the way to go. That's no interest at all. But I also have been working out and more active in my life longer than I started earlier and then I'll continue just like my dad did. It's not the same thing to your point. Like, you're going to be fine. It's not remotely the same.

Yeah. Like the everything. The medical systems around us are all, like it's not. Even just staying moving and not accepting a sedentary lifestyle, I think makes a huge difference. Well, that's what I love. I mean, that was the best thing for me getting out of New York years ago was just the Texas, Montana lifestyle. Like, you know, I got friends that are like 98 years old and still active every day doing ranch work. And that's why they're healthy.

And that's why they're strong. And that's just something you don't really see up north. It's not the same when somebody's like. literally maintaining their own property and outdoorsmen and all that and carrying that on into old age. And for me, it resonated right. Like, that's the secret. That's the path, right? That's what, that's what I want to be. It's time to get the hell out of New York City and stretch my legs out in Texas. Yeah. All right. So you're back in Marlboro, though. You're looking at, you see Top Gun. Yeah, wanted to be a fire pilot. And then I wanted to be Rocky Balboa. That was actually probably the

longest dream I had, you know, watch Rocky at like six years old, weep. And that's what I wanted to be. But again, not good enough, not smart or not, my eyesight's not good enough to be a fighter pilot. Definitely not going to be a pro boxer, right? So then what? And I think that that's a question a lot of us ask and you answer it in a big way by figure out what you don't want versus what you know you want to do, right? And so that was kind of my career path. I ended up falling into my first opportunity to get into like marketing, advertising, digital media in New York. I was working for a small agency, very entrepreneurial, not like a big company, and it was basically like I was going around convincing all sorts of different companies to let us basically build their websites, build their Facebook apps, create all sorts of unique things for them to promote themselves.

And it wasn't long before I realized how much money I was making somebody else that I could execute on these similar things. And I went off and did my first startup. And then I just spent a long time in New York in the media advertising agency world doing various things. I had mentioned you that my first startup was social media before this stuff was a thing. I was getting laughed out of, you know, CMO's offices that were telling me like literally, my daughter uses Facebook in college. I don't think our organization is ever going to need to communicate with consumers via these channels. What year was this? It's like 20, maybe 2009, 2010.

Oh, how the tides have turned. Oh, within two years, that same executive was out of a job, and I was back in there getting the contract to do that brand social media. And so I did that, and I evangelized, and I helped get everybody on the social media teat, exited that thing, and then the next sort of thing where there was a opportunity was mobile. So smartphones were just proliferating in a big way. And you remember when you used to go like text, 453, whatever, to get a crazy frog ringtone. or wallpaper and all that old stuff.

So I found myself in a unique position to build sort of an ad network around a company that had a database and had people that had done that, that had engaged with them in that way. And so they had cell phone numbers and stuff. But they had no plan for what to do when smartphones now replace feature phones. And that business literally overnight just ended. It went from being millions of dollars to being over. Yeah. Right?

When you could just download your ringtones of wallpapers on your phone. And so we created an ad network that was like, one of the first of its kind where goofy shit, play a video game, playing a mobile game. In between levels two and three, you watch a video to get the gold coins to do whatever you got to do. Still a strategy used to this day. Oh, it's a huge business, yeah. Was that jump between, I'll call them dumb phones, even though that's not what they are, and smartphones? Was Blackberry kind of the one that smashed through that wall?

No, because Blackberry, I mean, I'm trying to remember. I know they were just designated for, you know, the businessman, but shortly after Blackberry, then the iPhone came out, love it or hate it. And that's really just started this acceleration of... Yeah, it's really the iPhone. That's the first true smartphone as we're talking about. Which was post-Blaugberry. And I only know that because I watched the Blackberry movie.

How great was that? God! Yeah. It's just amazing how the rise and fall so rapidly of what's possible in our economy. It's just bonkers. They owned it. They were it. And now they're completely irrelevant.

And the smartest dude and all of that was that, like, founding, partner that kind of got pushed out and became one of the wealthiest dudes in the world because he sold at the peak. Yep. Hey, like that's, hey, like, he didn't have to deal with any of the bullshit on the way down or rounding the top. He's just like, I'm going to watch the world burn and cook marshmallows. That's the right, that's the right attitude, right?

But so the iPhone, yeah, that, okay. It changed everything. Yeah. Like it just rapidly, every, smartphone's just changed everything on so many levels, right? And so I did that for a little while. We were actually focused on Latin America. I was living in Puerto Rico. I had partnered with a company that had that database.

They were the biggest like smart, not smart, feature phone ringtone wallpaper company in Latin America, based that of Puerto Rico. And so I was a single guy at the time and it was like, oh, I can go live on the beach in Puerto Rico and do this. That sounds good to me. Yeah. I did that for a few years. Exited that, came back to New York, did some other little stuff, and then started the last thing that I sold that sort of brought me to what I'm doing now. I'll pause and see if you got any questions for me on that before I keep blabbing. I just, I wish I knew how to build and exit businesses.

I think you're doing pretty good, man. I mean, I have a coffee shop. I'm a partial owner in a coffee shop. Maybe one day, I mean, I think the only way I'd be able to do that is if maybe one day Evan wanted to sell black rifle and they realized it would be a more valuable entity if they brought in the shops that weren't corporately owned, in which case, full disclosure Evan I'm going to present to you an unacceptable multiple and when that happens if it ever does I will send you this episode after you've signed on the paperwork yeah I mean so maybe I'd be able to exit that way yeah you know a podcast for better for worse it's tied to me so I don't know how I would exit this particular platform right because you'd have to if you over time if you develop and build the audience a part of what you're selling I guess would be the process even though it's free and it's monetized through advertising revenue that comes to me through ad reads and stuff like that.

A part of that project is kind of me myself, right? So I don't know how you exit that. A large part of that. I was going to say, I mean, I don't want to overstate my role. It is you. But so how do you exit that? I mean, I think that you're not alone and so many of people in our ecosystem are asking that exact question. Yeah. And I'm not saying I want to, but I mean, listen to somebody like yourself, you know, I built this and then I left. I'm like, fuck, man. How do you, like, I'm sure there's essence or portions of that that were horrible. But it also, very horrible. Yeah, but also selling a company, I'm not a shark.

I've done a right for myself because I think I have a decent brain for, for seeing where there is value that can be created and something new sort of that can be, that there's a need for. Yeah. But I am not a business shark at all. I am not that guy. I'm not a predator. I'm not always looking at deals as if there's a winner and a loser in my goal in any business conversation. as you know is not to extract maximum yield for myself out of the other party. It's just not how I'm wired.

But that's not what drives business. And at the high levels, the guys that are, you know, the sharks, the bankers, that's how they operate. That's how their program. That's what they do. In some cases, borderline sociopathic, right? And so being somebody who's wired like I am, going through crazy deal negotiations, corporate due diligence with these sharks is extremely stressful. Yeah.

The yield is great, but some of the darkest times of my life were navigating that because you're on a knife's edge. Either my life's about to change. Like I'm literally about to have this exit or nothing, or it's going to fall apart. And literally every day is an exercise in that limbo. And it's super stressful. Yeah. And I'm sure that there's great aspects to it as well. And again, I mean, I actually really celebrate other people's success.

I think it's amazing. I was having this conversation with Evan the other day. actually. It is interesting to watch people tear each other down because they were able to achieve something that you haven't maybe been able to yet. Maybe it's not your time. And I listen to you talking about exiting companies. I think that's awesome. And I hope you've done well for yourself. And broadly, though, like, let's say you had become that shark. I wonder if a larger dollar figure would have brought you any more happiness. I'm not so sure it does. No. I, I, but again, I'm not wired like your usual person. I'm not like, I care about money. Yeah. I want money.

Well, money helps make the wheels go around. I mean, there's a minimum economic amount you need for life. Exactly. But for me, I've always said, like, dude, I'm happy with $20 million. I don't need $20 billion. I don't need $2 billion. There is a point of diminishing returns where if your goal, if you're not trying to be a supervillain, right? If you're a normal person, there's definitely a point, I don't know, let's call it, I think, in today's economy, $3 million, where when you hit that point, if you're smart, you can be okay.

You can be more than okay by most people. Well, I mean, but I mean like okay in terms of like not working anymore and just focusing on your family and living your life. Like that that's attainable. There's a point where and then there's another point where like even like let's say $5 million, you're more than okay. You can do whatever you want. You can essentially now, how much more do you need, right? It becomes like, is it really about the freedom that the financial end of it brings or is it just about this constant endless pursuit of more, more, more endless growth? It sounds like hell to me.

Well, and it's easy to fall on that trap. I've been there, but you have to, like, talk to yourself, like, no, what am I, what am I doing, whatever it is I'm doing for? What do I want out of it? And, like, when is enough enough? And I'm not money motivated anymore. I know a few people with some high net worth, as I'm sure that you do. And it comes with some problems.

Oh, yeah. That I'm sure are managed via some of that money, but also, shit, I don't want to deal with. I'm operating at a fraction of the level of they are, and I can tell you that, you know, I've been dirt broke. I know what it is to be broke. my whole I don't come from money. Listen, living paycheck to paycheck is fun. But I can tell you, on my low level, the change.

You don't know who's really... That's the biggest thing I see with people when their net worth explodes. Trust. Who can I trust? And you very rapidly start to feel like an ATM machine for those around you. You very rapidly start to feel like everybody's just pulling.

Everybody just thinks it's free lunch. You know, even in business, like, you know, you see folks just are everybody from your contractor, you're a landscaper, you're this to or that, just assume that because it looks like this, they can take liberties and take a piss and just extract maximum dollars out of you, right? That just is not a good feeling when you feel like every interaction you're having with folks is like that. Also, at the same time they're doing that, you'd have to imagine that if somebody were to do that to them, if the rolls are reversed, they would fucking hate it. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Not my jam, man. Yeah, man. So,

what got you to move to Texas from New York? Well, so I was doing that other business, right? And the last one I sold was, again, about like creating value, being in the right place at the right time. Streaming was becoming a thing, whatever this was, circa like 2016, 2017. And, you know, Netflix had done a pretty good job at proving the streaming business model. And then everybody in their mother that has content decided to distribute their own content. That's why now we have 85 billion streaming services.

Paramount. Just as bad as, yeah. Now all of the savings and the efficiency that was there is now all gone. It's no different than the old cable. It's the same crap, right? But everybody was starting to do that. And so the sports leagues, MLB, NHL, all the big sports leagues were getting into that game themselves with their dot TV products and distributing their own content. We were just in a unique position to get into that mix and broker some of those ads.

ad deals to get for folks to be able to advertise on those platforms regionally. And we built a whole bunch of technology to be able to serve those ads and do all that. And so that was awesome. I exited that mostly. I'm still a minority shareholder. And then that led me down the path of going to Texas and where we are now. I had always wanted to get out of New York. I don't like a lot of the political climate.

I am someone who knows what it's like to be mugged and jumped and beaten up pretty badly. Really? At the corner of like 34th and 7th. walking home from a hockey game at Madison Square Garden at like the busiest intersection on Earth to get literally by two guys just jumped and beat and not have a cop and nobody help you, right? And in a state...

You mean, surrounded by people and they all just watch that. We just watched it. Just watched it. Fuck. Because, you know, that area, we were literally walking by bars and it's just a shit show. It's a fiasco and they just watch it. And when you need a cop, right, they're not there.

Every other time I've ever been on that intersection, there's 52 freaking NYPD officers. right? But that one night it wasn't there. That's not even about an indictment of New York. That's more of like it got me thinking really about like, do I have a right to defend myself? And to two guys jumped me. And imagine for a minute that I was carrying or even that I was carrying a prohibited a blackjack or a knife or any, if I did anything there to defend myself, in that state I'd be a criminal, right? A lot of things, seeing my tax dollars get wasted, having the roads be not service that, you know, it was just, I was done. I wanted to get the heck out of New York.

Business then supported that. It became clear that we were going to sell that company and we were going to have an exit. And that was, you know, and there were some other personal things. My mother just passed away, which was one of the only things keeping me. She would give me that guilt about leaving New York. The mother's guilt. Yeah, it was so powerful, effective. So with that relief and all of these things converging, it was like, all right, it's time to come a Texan finally and moved to Texas. Had you spent time in Texas before that? I had started coming down to Austin for South by Southwest in ACL a few years prior. A mentor that lived down there was bringing me down. I just was like immediately in love with with it. I know what South by Southwest is.

What is ACL? It's the music festival, Austin City Limits. Gotcha. Okay. It's a beautiful place. I've been there a few times. I have not spent an extended amount of time there, but I have enjoyed the time that I have. I know how you feel about the heat. You know how I feel about the cold. Cold's better because I have nice jackets. See, I'm more of a flip-flops shorts and tanks. I want to get super hot. I mean, you can get totally naked if you want to, and then that's basically the limit of your ability to cool yourself. Well, you know, we have pools. We have bodies of water. That's true. Shade. And I'd rather do that than bundle up and stop myself from shivering. That's fair. Teach their own. Yeah. Some people like ice cream. Some people like gelato. I'm still not sure the difference.

I don't know what the difference is other than price point. I think one's Italian or claimed as Italian. All right. So you landed in Austin. Yep. But did you know what you were going to be doing in Austin? Or was that just kind of the next landing pad? You were going to figure it out from there. I was still operating that company. Okay. So we operated out of Texas for like another year or two, whatever before we had our exit.

But the writing, I knew that we were working towards an exit. And so I was still at first running that company. And then we had that exit. And I began, like we were talking about with the audit conversation, I began acting as like my own private equity office and being an active investor. And sort of then double check was born, which is something I'm invested in, but I'm also actually running that startup. Yeah.

And that was informed out again. Like I come from this background where what we were talking about earlier, there's data everywhere. And for the purpose of showing you ads, right? At any given moment, I'm doing like millisecond. We built these engines to do like millisecond decisioning to show you the right ad. And I can analyze your sentiment. And I can know and there's platforms out there that at any given moment can just scan your

stuff on social media and say and generate a report, your sentiment. Like how are you feeling? What's your emotional state of mind? How fast can they do that? I mean, at the time that it was a little bit delayed. Now that's that's a minute and a half report that gets run. Zero to a hundred, zero being inaccurate, 100 being fucking perfect. Where would you put those reports at?

Well, it depends with the provider. Not all companies are created equal. Like best case. Like the best out there. 90% or more. They're pretty damn good at this point, scarily good. I do like some of the ads I get. They know what I need.

and they know how you feel about it. I know. And they catch me at the right time. Those sons of bitches. So how are we doing all of that shit? How am I doing all of that perverse stuff with data? Yeah. But when it comes to firearms, right, which I moved to Texas.

First thing I did was I went and bought my first gun. I immersed myself in gun culture. What did you buy? A 1911 has always been. Okay. That's America to me. I get it. I've never, they've never fit great in my hand.

I own some. You have giant hands. dude. People always ask me, you know, what gun should I buy? Go to a gun store and pick up a bunch of guns and start with what fits in your hand. Every time somebody asked me that, I'm like, would you, would you buy a car without test driving it? Like, go to the range, take out your usual suspects, your Glock, your SIG, you're this, you're that. They don't all fit in your hand the same. Whatever you were most proficient with and feels best, that's what you should buy. SIGs have always, again, I did most of my military time with the SIGs sidearm, the, you know,

primary weapons platform changed from time to time. But so much. time on it, it's like putting on an old glove at this point. What does that mean? That's the 226? Yeah, that was the traditional one. I mean, and it's still, I tell you what, I was shooting a 25-year-old 226 last week. Yeah. Against, name it. I'm not going to name anything, but new. Yeah. New. And I don't know, I might still take that 226. And you could use it as a framing hammer afterwards. I mean, throw it out of your car while driving. I mean, go back and pick it up, obviously. It's going to work. Just fine. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. But so 1911 is it for me.

Yeah, I get it. There's people. My grandfather came home, you know, one from World War II, the other one from Korea, took it, brought it with him and wasn't supposed to, you know. We don't even need to worry about it. It just, it showed up. And we, you know, and I grew up like that was the. Yeah. The penultimate American thing. That's America personified, right? But before Texas, no real toes in the water when it came to the firearm industry community. I couldn't. No, I mean, I, again, that's part of why.

why I left these non-free states where you're telling me that I have no right to defend myself or my family. What are we smoking, guys? How do they justify that? I don't know. You've got to ask some lunatics. I mean, they have, I don't, I don't understand it at all. I really don't. I can't even try to suspend my disbelief and characterize what logic is driving that. Has it always been like that in New York? For as long as I've been alive, and I think as long as my parents have been alive. Michael, well, you Google, and I don't know the term for this necessarily, but, you know, in New York State or even the city specifically, when did the gun laws drastically tighten? I wonder if there was a catastrophic incident that caused it,

or it was slow and insidious over time. I mean, in the city itself, I think it's always been extremely restricted. It was like if you're a business owner with a brick and mortar business that keeps at least 20 grand on cash, that's basically your only, and even that, it's not guaranteed. And that was for a conceal permit, right? And that was for a conceal permit, right? Yeah. And so New York and all these states, you know, they're not shall issue. They're may issue states. Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with the... I live in California for years. So you can satiate those thresholds. You can check everybody. And they still can just say, no, sorry. Montana shall issue. Yeah, Texas shall issue. Yeah. That's what it should be. Montana is now a constitutional carry state. Oh, I watched a man yesterday. Michael, you'll like this because I feel like you would do something like this. He was on a skateboard. I'm going to estimate his age at...

just over whatever the legal threshold is in this state to carry a firearm. External carry, wheelgun on his right hip, but with the handle facing forward. I'm not joking. Dude, there's one block from the coffee shop, Michael. This guy rolls by, and I see him coming out, and I'm thinking to myself, is that dude skateboarding with a pistol? My first thought it was, fuck yeah. Like, why have I never thought of skateboarding with a pistol? But fully open carry, huge fucking wheel gun with a fabric holster circa Civil War, in my opinion, and the freaking handle sticking forward. So he would have either had to like completely contort and likely to blow his shoulder out to try to grab it or quick draw.

I think he must have been one of these guys. I don't know. But I think I should have looked at the flap that was holding it down. I felt like there was a locking mechanism of some kind. That'd be the most fucked up draw you'd ever have. Yeah. And just, oh, and Michael, he was standing on his skate. but like this with his feet.

They were both together facing forward. So he was just like, just burr. Yeah, you see some interesting stuff when this open carry. What did you find, Michael, for New York? Without doing too much digging, this was just comes up immediately. Solven Act of 1911

requires a license to possess a concealed firearm. Safe Act of 2013. Redefined assault weapon and required residents who lawfully owned an assault weapon before 2013 to register it with the state police. What did they define an assault weapon as? It's probably not one.

Does it defer to a federal definition? Long, or so non-assault weapon, long guns. So I think hunting rifles are not an assault, obviously. But they don't really define it. But I'm not sure. Vertical grip? Pistol grip. It'd probably be that.

It'd probably be selectable fire. It's going to be, you know, you know, a buttstock that's going to be potentially collapsible, high-capacity magazine or magazine well that can, you know, insert a high-capacity magazine. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a, there's a federal definition of an assault rifle. An assault weapon is an interesting one. I just found it.

What do we got? Assault weapons. Okay. State law defines, and this is New York state law. Yes, I believe so, yes. Semi-automatic rifles. It's their definition. Able

able to accept detachable magazines. And one or more of the following. A telescoping stock. Folding or telescoping, I should say. Pistol grip. There's your vertical grip. A thumbhole stock. Interesting.

Okay. Which I guess could provide for a stronger grip. A second hand grip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand. So that would be like a four grip. A bayonet mount. Yeah, you got to watch out for those bayonet attacks. A flash. A grenade launcher.

I mean, oh, we're going. A flashpresser, muzzle brake, muzzle compensator, or a threaded barrel designed to accommodate one. A threat of barrel. Just having a threat of barrel means it's now an assault rifle. Wow. According to the brilliance of New York State. I mean, I know they actually don't even mention a vertical grip.

Pistol grip is one thing. They don't even mention, which the ATF tries to make it all about the front vertical grip. A grenade launcher. I mean, I don't want to tell people how to live their lives, but probably best not to have a grenade launcher. But they're unlawful to begin with. I know. Like, it's just nonsensical. Okay, hold on.

Let's check this out. semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and one or more of the following. A magazine that attaches to the outside of the pistol grip. A magazine that attaches to the outside of the pistol grip? Like a double mag? Or like one of those barrel mag? Okay, whatever. Threaded barrel to attach a barrel extender flash.

Man, you can't even have a threaded barrel? Shit. That's what I was saying, yeah. A barrel shroud that could be used as a handhold unloaded weight of 50 ounces or more. A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm. Huh. A folding, telescoping, or a thumbhole stock. Wow. It's just lunacy. It's just arbitrary lunacy that makes no sense. Even if you agree, which we don't, which I don't, right, with what their intent is, this is not the way it acts. This is just stupid.

It just creates so much headache and noise. A threaded, I mean, that is crazy. I mean, there are things on there, sure, I mean, a direct thread suppressor. That's what I have on my hunting rifle. It allows you to do that. You don't need an adapter. It's like you don't have to feel like an asshole at hunting camp. You're like, okay. guys, check out my suppressor that I can't use because I forgot this piece of gear. But also, you know, like an M4 platform. You could use different flash suppressors. And some of those things are just to help you increase your accuracy, which I feel like they're trying to say that you would only want to do that

if you wanted to, you know, conduct mass murder. Yep. Yeah, it's a lunacy. It's just a lunacy. It makes no sense. And so let's compare and contrast. Michael, can you find out what weapons are illegal in Montana? Yes.

I feel like the list might be a little shorter. You know, a tactical nuke, maybe. That's it. I don't know of any, like, requirements. Explicitly scheduled. I, yeah, I don't know. You can have suppressors here, high capacity magazines. I don't think there's any restrictions on any of those things.

Muscle compensator, thread of barrel. You can have threaded barrel. I don't think you can have a grenade launcher, I'll be honest. No, that's at the federal level. Yeah, I was going to say they're federal. Yeah. So it looks like Sadaaf. firearms and machine guns.

And so, but even that's, people are enthusiastic about that or those are legal here in Montana? Those are illegal. Well, because that's, that's, that's federal.

Yeah. That's the, whatever act, NFA act of that's. 86, right? Something like that. Well,

so I think it's actually even older than that. Yeah. But they, but somehow anything machine gun, pre 86 is grandfathered in and doesn't apply. I think that's for fully automatic capability. Yeah. Yeah.

But in terms of like the sought off ban goes back to like the OG NFA act of in the 30s directly because of like the Bonnie and Clydes of the world that were concealing sought off shotguns and then rob and banks. So they moved to ban those at the federal level. But it's all nonsense because what's what's a Mossberg shockwave? Shotkin way? Shock was a Mossberg shockwave. I mean, there's a Remington tack. What are those guns? What are they? They're shotguns, aren't they? They're sought off shotguns. Yeah. But they're not. They're other, other firearm unclassified by the ATAP. That's how they're so lawfully,

even though like it's clearly a bird's head grip, sawed-up shot gun. Interesting. So it's like, again, like our gun laws and this is a good say, like they make no sense. It's all arbitrary stuff passed by people who have very little understanding of even what firearms are and how they function. And they vary wildly. And they make no sense. The way that we do all of this, it makes, it just makes no sense. If you could change, let's let's put you a king for a day and you were able to write in some sweeping legislation.

What would you do? Well, so I don't think the answer is legislative. That's partly the whole point. It's like the government. Well, and this you could remove some if you wanted to. You could do what you want to with the legislation that exists. Well, so let me ask you a question. Sure.

We'll arrive, I think, at the answer, right? How is it that a guy who got in a bar fight 30 years ago and has been a model citizen, model father, model husband ever since is a federally, it's prohibited for life for a moaning a firearm, you know, federally, right? How is it that a guy who suffered from PTSD 15 years ago battled a little bit of depression? went through it is now lifetime banned prohibited person from getting a firearm, right? How do those things occur far more regularly than any of any of us realize, right, with hurting good guys, while at the same time the real bad guys just keep passing these checks, these school shooters, the guy who, you know, the Trump assassin, these are all guys who should not have been able to pass, which is what we're going to talk about, the deficiencies in the process.

Did the Trump shooter, did he buy that firearm or was it bought for him? So which Trump shooter? Well, I don't think the other guy got the rounds off. He had an AK, I believe, or a AK-style platform. The one that actually got rounds off. Did he purchase or was that purchased by his father? Yeah. Okay.

So that's an issue in and of itself. Well, that in and in and of itself is a straw purchase and it's ill and lawful, period. Yeah. Or the fact that so many people have guns and they treat them like they're just this inanimate object. Like, for the love of God, fucking locked the thing up. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah. Again, I love the Second Amendment.

And I think that there's a lot of people being super stupid and sloppy. they're mucking it up for all of us. Like, I take it very serious. Like, what happened during the pandemic, right? In the state of Texas, the governor declared that gun shop, shooting ranges are where essential businesses to remain open during the pandemic. It's a very Texas thing. It is.

And I agree with it. But there's, to me, there's another side to that. With that power, corny as it's going to say, comes responsibility. You're an essential business, right? There's a responsibility there then to conduct yourself and, you know, in a responsible way. I say the same thing about the private sector. If you're going to purchase a firearm, do it right. Period.

How hard is it to secure it at home? It's not. How difficult is it to make sure that your child can't go into and draw and pull out a loaded weapon? Yeah. And it's funny. The arguments people will make against that. Well, what if I need ready access to it? Their biometrics exist and there's ready access to, yeah.

Well, what if I'm in the shower? Do you normally now shower with your pistol? Is that what you're saying? you're in there with a pistol belt on in the shower, hitting all the bits and parts? I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't fathom the level of... I actually don't know why they argue against the safe storage. Because I think there's just this current now that I find very off-putting where I don't think it's you. I don't think it's me. I don't think it's our parents. But there's like a younger generation that has grown up sort of thinking that anything that we can talk about, regarding gun safety is gun control. Anything that we could discuss regarding...

They see it as an immediate grab. It's just all bad. So even, you know, you could talk about like if you could warn someone that a school shooter is standing in front of them and you could tell that store owner that that's about to happen, that that person is right there. They just said they're going to do this. They posted a manifesto and now they're standing in your shop. That that's overreach, that like that we just, all of it means government cooperation.

betrayal of the Second Amendment, and that there's nothing we should be doing, and that we should roll back even what exists, which I don't necessarily disagree with because we just talked about how woefully inadequate it is, and it keeps failing us. It fails the firearms industry. It fails us as the people. It fails across the board. But I'm saying it because we can do better. Their mentality is there should be nothing. Anything is infringement. And I think they look at gun safety storage conversations as corny, lame, and just more of that stuff. I mean, I guess you could feel that way about it until you come home and your house has been broken into or you see people, God, the fucking pistol in the cup holder in the truck.

And you come out and your window's smashed and your pistol's gone. And then you think, I'm hypothesizing here because that's never happened to me, but I would imagine they think, hmm, maybe I think I shouldn't have done that. I'm sure hope that doesn't get used for something that I didn't want to get used for. Sorry, buddy. That that horse does not go back in the barn. Yeah. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle once it's out. So isn't it worth having a vault tech, you know, in your car? And like, I mean, in 2024, like so many things. Like there's just no excuse anymore. It really is just no excuse. Secure your firearms. What are your thoughts on, click me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Trump shooter's father also charged? Or was that, no, that was a, recent school shooting. Yeah, that was two. What are your thoughts on that? A hundred percent valid. I agree as well. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's not a societal failure. The gun company didn't do it. The gun didn't do it. That's a, that's a household breakdown. Yeah. Somebody's responsible they're in. Yeah. Like, that's craziness. These weapons are designed to take life. And what's interesting, and this is my opinion of it. And people will push back on that.

No, they're not. They're designed to protect life. I'm like, okay, listen, how do they do that by the of taking your life. And they either take life or compel action because people are afraid of the consequences of around being fired at them. And it doesn't diminish an argument on either side of what you believe. If we can just admit that these are designed to take life, maybe it's hunting life, maybe it's human life, whatever it is. But can we just treat them like that? With a little bit of reverence. Seriously. I agree. And I think that that's lacking. And I think that I see in the younger generation that missing. And I think we need to, you know, I think we should be teaching marksmanship in schools

in high schools again and getting, you know, now. Very Boy Scout of you. But without the diddling, though. I don't know. Have you watched that documentary? What are we talking about here? Well, this just went in a totally different direction. Michael, you weren't a Boy Scout, right?

I don't want to trigger you. Oh, boy. More cookies. Okay. There's like 82,000 pending cases of sexual assault inside of the Boy Scouts of America that then filed bankruptcy protection. I like documentaries. Clearly.

Fuck, my wife comes home and it's like, I'm watching fucking Epstein swing from a rope or fucking Bernie made up. She's just like, what are you watching? I'm like, this is called the worst exes ever, and they all end up trying. She's just like, fuck! Boy Scouts of America. Did you say 82,000? Yes. Okay, so that's a lot.

I'm not endorsing that organization. So they did some marksmanship there as well. I'm pro that anti-diddling. Well, but, okay, let's remove the dittling and the dittling organization. Wasn't once upon a time the NRA and the CMP. themselves, the Civilian Marksmanship Program, right? I've heard of that. CMP is awesome.

Again, we should be celebrating these great American institutions. I got my 1911 and I got my M1, both actual World War II use, from a CMP auction. They sell all that surplus stuff. And that's kind of all they do now. Or they still do some trainings and some whatever. But once upon a time, that organization was in schools and communities teaching firearms, operations, safety, and marksmanship. We need more of that.

We need to instill a respect and appreciation and an understanding of these things from early on, in my opinion. Yeah. Right? You got a kid who's done nothing but play call of duty his whole life and never been exposed to a real firearm. And he's on TikTok and Instagram and all that and has never been taught response. And then all of a sudden he gets his first gun. You know, what are your plans with your kids? I have one right now, but if you have more, what are your plans with them when it comes to firearms?

I cannot wait to get my daughter her first 22 LR and take her shooting. Yeah. I always tried to demystify guns. I've had guns since before my children were born. They're safely stored, but sometimes, like, I'm going to be going to the range. And obviously, my old job as well, too. So I'd have kit around. Anytime they ever asked, I was more than happy to sit there with him and explain them.

We would talk about it. And I would have conversations when they're younger, frame more around like, hey, what are you going to do if you find a gun? You're with your friends. And one of your friends, you're at a friend's house, and all of a sudden they had come out with their dad's, in the blank. 357,

dirty hairy, right? What do you do? First off, let's make sure nobody plays with that. Let's find an adult, all of these things, walking him through firearm, you know,

principles. Anytime they ever wanted to touch a gun, I would let them do so, but I would sit there and have this conversation. What do we point this at? We don't point this at anything. We always treat it like it's loaded.

We never put our finger, like all that. And it really, really demystify it. Exactly. Exactly. And that's what it's all. Like, you know,

like I can't tell you how many, it's a point of pride for me to introduce people to firearms for the first time. when they come visit from up north. Yeah. And if they had a little bit of that earlier on, it would be a lot easier because they just, you know, even just...

They're not the boogeyman. No, but even just understanding, like, literally your average person's first exposure, that's I know, right? That's an inert, that's a clear, visibly clear, lockback weapon. It's an inert object. It's just a piece of metal or, you know, polymer metal at this point. And folks, they can't even rationally see that and break it down when they're early on exposure because they're just so nervous of this boogieman city.

Yeah. Right? And I think that demystifying it is a big part of overcoming that and fostering a whole new generation of responsible. Yeah. It doesn't help, you know, when you hear in the news often to assault rifle, weapons of war. That's one I always, I sit and I think, what the fuck is a weapon of war?

I mean, I carried a leatherman that had a knife blade when I was overseas. And I know I'm getting to the fringe of what's, I mean, even remotely would be considered, you know, germane to the conversation. But I'm thinking, like, well, I guess that could be a weapon. I carried a pistol, which is not often considered to be a weapon of war. Generally, it would be your main weapons platform, your primary weapon, a rifle-type platform. But those are the same weapons that oftentimes police have or the Secret Service. Now I'm of the belief, or at least it's an interesting thought experiment.

Maybe the weapons of war are the people themselves that they taught to use. use them. And the rest of it are just tools. Well, and again, how successful, even if you agree with that agenda, which obviously we don't, but let's just suspend your disbelief for a minute and say that you're more on the left side and you do agree with the idea of limiting the proliferation of various kinds of weapons. It doesn't work. Legislating, bureaucratic classification of objects applying arbitrary definitions to be able to ban specific items. It doesn't work. You know what the private sector does way better than the public sector is innovate.

And so to our point about like how is a Remington Tack 14 or a Mossberg, clearly a sought-off shotgun, but not. This is this game. Anytime you're going to introduce something, right, the private sector and the fire, if you've never been a shot, so I encourage everybody to get out there. The firearms industry innovates like nobody else. It's incredible what they can come up with. They're always going to be one step ahead. Oh, and I feel like if the legislation was going to work, it would have worked.

No, because it's not, again, this is what I'm getting, it's not focused on risk. Instead of trying to focus on, like, whether it has this grip or that grip, right, or in all of the other nonsensical ways that they're trying to come at this problem that infringe upon our rights, focus on risk. Those of us that there isn't risk that are good guys with guns, normal law-abiding citizens, I'm all for removing some of the limitations on what we can even own. and focus on honing in as long as you have safe storage

and are responsible for the weapon at all times. Have a bazooka? Have you ever been around a bazooka? No, but Tim talks about it a lot and it sounds pretty cool. I don't know if I would trust him with a bazook if I'm being honest. That's probably fair.

I would take it from him and say that I would let him see it if he asked nicely. It can be his, but it's in my possession. Okay. I mean, yeah. I don't, I mean... But I mean, look at the bumpstock ban. Yeah.

So, like, how many, and people don't even talk about this, this, like, look at the amount of taxpayer dollars wasted. Yeah. So we all agree what happened in Las Vegas. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

And here you have Mr. Trump, who you wouldn't expect, does something and actually because, you know, he was in a position where he felt like he had to do something and they're not many good options. Yeah. So they try to just ban this object without even understanding what it is a bumpstock. Now, you and I both know that it's actually doesn't even make you a better killer. It actually makes you less accurate. If you gave me a choice.

And so for people listening, a bumstock, my. description of it is, I mean, I know by design and the way that they pitched it, it was to help those with disabilities to be able to shoot. You're talking about a bumpstock or a pistol stabilizing brace? Bumstock. There was an essence of that. And what it does is it will allow a drastic increase in the cyclic rate of fire of a weapon. You know, in a fully automatic weapon, you know, there's a selectable firing. And the sear is what is allowing the firing pin to.

And so a bumpstock is kind of potentially by a design. taking the place of that sear that would normally be limited to a single action and allowing it to cycle. If you gave me a choice of somebody shooting at me with a well-aimed shot or fully automatic, I will take fully automatic every time and hope that their first shot, which is going to be their most accurate, misses. Well, the problem with Vegas is you had a contained and constrained group of people that had limited exits in an elevated firing position. So you didn't need to be accurate. You could use area fire instead of point fire.

Sure. Yeah. And it was horrible. It was fucking horrible. But to the point of... When I first heard that audio, my first thought was, I think that was a saw, a squad automatic weapon. It had the cyclic rate that reminded me of a saw. Well, you know that better than I do in terms of just by ear, so sure. You're around them a lot. But I mean, again, I was wrong. But I'm like, God damn, that sounds eerily familiar. So to that point. So what should we do? Is that object the problem? Should that object be banned as Trump did? Do you agree with that or not? I don't, you know, I don't agree with it. but I don't agree or disagree with it. I would like to have an honest conversation about what the item is trying to do. If it is legitimately and truly seems to be trying to get around the limitation of fully automatic weapons fire, let's talk about that and why.

And then I'll have a little bit more of an ability to say I agree with it or disagree with it. What I don't like are items that are created and presented is one thing where clearly they're solving another technological problem. You know what I mean? Well, but that's back to. to what I was saying, but you can't, the private sector is going to do that.

They're going to be able to do that incredibly effectively, right? So where should we put our focus? Because like, even if you were to say to me, I agree the bump stocks should be banned. It took, it took, you know, courts take a little while, but that didn't stand. The pistol stabilizing bracelet thing didn't stand. And why? It's important for people to understand why those things were shot down. It's not because a judge just said, I like guns or I don't like guns.

The way that they tried to ban the bump stocks was to say that, to your point, that modification turned it into a machine gun, which is unlawful according to the NFA act of what a 1930, whatever. And in that situation, unfortunately, because he wasn't an elevated position, it could use area of fire, it was more lethal. If you were, let's say he was trying to clear the hotel that he shot from,

it would actually probably have been far less effective. Sure. And that narrow focus of the elevated shooter with a constrained group of people that he's shooting at, it fucking sucks. Absolutely. But I would argue that he could have all, also probably caused the exact same carnage,

just being an accurate shooter, you know, flapping, and flipping mag dumping and flipping mags. You know, anybody who trains can. Yeah, he was not, he didn't need to be a sniper up there. He wanted volume of fireplace from that element. Yeah, but so the point being on all of that is that, um, it did, but it didn't. So that's how they tried to do it, but when you get down to the minutiae of the paper

and the legislation, the definition of a machine gun is what you laid out. And it doesn't alter that. It doesn't alter the trigger mechanism. you still get one shot per trigger pull. I think on a machine gun, it actually has selectable fire up to fully automatic. For a machine gun. Yeah, but the way that it's defined legally

is at the point of the trigger. So it's literally like in the documentation, right, from the federal government, from the NFA Act of whatever that bans machine guns, it defines a machine gun based on that trigger mechanism and how many shots per trigger pull. Yeah, that's the definition. That's the definition.

definition. Okay. Bump stocks do not binary triggers. They skirt that definition. A binary trigger is one pull on pull, one shot on pull, and then another on release. It's still one shot per pull. A bump stock, as we just doesn't mechanically alter that trigger. It alters the end state, but not the trigger itself, correct?

So it doesn't, it doesn't satiate the definition of a machine gun thrown out. Bump stocks are now legal again. And my point is that that's what goes on in mass in the, in our industry. We have folks that are trying to ban things as a solution that even if you agree with it, it's stupid. It doesn't work. Let's focus on risk. Do you think it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle in the U.S. with guns? Because there are legitimately groups of people who think the answer is you're going to-

Disarm them in? Yeah. They say Australia. It's a ludicrous proposition. They say Australia did it. And my first response to that is Google the population of Australia and the number of firearms that were in circulation at that time. which I'm not, I'm just saying, you need to understand that there are orders of magnitude differences in that. Yeah, I don't think it's viable either. And, and, and, and, and, and not, nor is it

desirable to me. To some people. To me, it's not, like, I, I, I have plenty of, look, I come from New York, my lawyers in San Francisco. I have plenty of people in my orbit that if it were up to them, they'd want to see a society devoid of firearms completely. Would they still want to be protected by people who had them, though, police and military? This is the hypocrisy. And this is, the conversation I always get in. I'm like, you know, don't you think it's a little weird that what you're really saying is that unless you live in a building with a security, a dorm man, and even some of these folks, their own private security detail, you don't have a right to defend yourself. You're saying that anybody who can't afford that. If it's a question of you taking your

own destiny in your hands and being armed, nobody's allowed to do that. Fortunately, there's no historic examples of a population being removed of their firearms and then being taken advantage of, though, you know? It's almost the first step of every dictator. It's, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, I had a grandfather who was in Auschwitz. So I grew up hearing this, and I grew up very cognizant of how quickly stuff can go south in a society. Like, it's a narrative that's enforced. How often would your grandfather talk about Auschwitz?

Never, because he was dead before I was born. But even when he was alive, he never spoke about it. He did not want to. He had the tattoo on his of the numbers covered with an eagle or a robin or a bird. Like, as soon as he got to America, the stories are that he would wake up in the night with night terrors frequently, but he never spoke. How could you not wake up with Nighttheras? My God. He's 16 years old, dude, the only surviving member of his entire family.

They were all murdered. They were all gassed or cremated. And he literally at 16 was liberated with his two other 16-year-old best friends. They went to Italy first, and then they made it to America. Just three, like, 18, 19-year-old kids at that point. And went on to create a life and create a whole family line in mind. And I just... Human beings are the fucking worst, man.

But to your point, like, I don't understand how people don't try at least to meet us halfway and realize that all firearms aren't the devil, all people that believe in having firearms aren't evil or trying to hurt anybody. And, like, is there a way to protect the Second Amendment, but also maybe decrease the amount of kids that are getting shot on the news, right? In schools. I know that there is. These are not mutually exclusive aims.

And you and I have talked about this offline. And I definitely, I mean, it's a perfect way to enter into what we're talking about. It's interesting to you. You come from a tech background and you look at the velocity that tech is accelerating. It is unbelievable. Why isn't this industry, this segment of our society, at least trying to match that innovation and evolution? That's what we're trying to kickstart, man. I don't know why.

The industry has been traditionally reticent to adopt anything new. Again, because of what we're talking, that consumer attitude where everybody's afraid of backlash. Like, you know. And I think we've been. little lax in overly throwing around demonization terms of like gun control that has yielded that climate. We need to be able to have the conversation, right? And so what we're trying to do a double check is have that conversation and let us, let the firearms buying community and the industry itself decide where the parameters are. What's our appetite for risk? You don't want the

federal government deciding that. Who better than the businesses that stand to live and die, right? in the communities that stand to live and die by what goes on. Like, I don't even know of the word risk really being used in the firearm space right now. It's not a thing. There's legality, right? You fill out your form, your background check. You know, there still is, you know, in Montana, if you get your CCW, it's, and you already have got a background check associated with that. So it's, it skips the 15 seconds you would wait for the phone call.

Not that much of a difference and a benefit. But, you know, I'm trying to think, I own a good amount of firearms. I don't think, and I'm hypothesizing on the person on the other side of the counter, I don't think they're thinking about risk when they're in the middle of that transaction. Not at all. They're thinking about the legality, right? Let's make sure we cross our T's, dot our eyes. And it's a gap.

It's a huge gap. We need to educate the sector. Yeah, but they do. I've seen firsthand when you get, they're a weirdo, a guy asking some real squirrely questions, behaving strange. You see then recognition. The ATF coaches these guys in the gun stores on what to recognize, what to look for, how to de-escalate and get that person out of the store. I've seen it one time here in Montana, actually, of all places.

The person behind the counter refused the sale because they thought it was a straw man purchase. And for people listening, don't know that that is. That is somebody who comes into a gun store with the intent to buy a firearm for somebody else. And that's what we're talking about, the first Trump shooter. Yep. And Sandy Hook shooter and a lot of the, you know, those were, like, I made the mistake, too. When I first moved to Texas, I walked into a gun store after I had bought my first few guns. and I said, I want to get my lady a gun.

I'm buying this for my girl. The guy looked at me and was like, no, you're not. And I didn't understand. So everybody, you cannot purchase a firearm on behalf of someone else. You cannot get a background check done on you. And give it to somebody else. And you're not the intended energy. That's like question number one on that laughable self-reported form 4473 on the honor system.

That's question one is, are you the actual, right? So people might think, oh, a parent for a child, no, it's a straw purchase. And all straw purchases are not supposed to go on. Yep. So, you know, and there's a great deal of liability that the stores face if they do make a straw purchase. That's why they try to be diligent. But, yes, how come every other industry on earth has some, forget what the government tells us, forget what's regulated, the industry itself, from banking to home improvement, you name it, have established their own guidelines for risk. They have their own mechanics and thresholds by which they evaluate risk.

and decide who they're going to transact with, right? And that's sort of what informed all this was I'm coming from this background. There's so much data, and we're using it for so many different things. And I can tell you tomorrow, I can tell Chevy exactly how you feel about their cars. Like really, really detailed. Like, he hates them. And I can't tell a gun store owner. Or we can't.

We weren't. When a kid is standing right in front of him, right? Who literally within the past 30 days published a manifesto of open intention to commit mass murder and or has been booked, has been arrested three times in the past six months. That is right there. That's it. Low-hanging fruit. We don't need to go deeper than that.

We don't need to do insidious profiling and minority reporting. That's like 60 to 70 percent of your mass shooters right there. If we just look for that risk. It's right there. It's all right there. And I think an important aspect of this too when we had talked about this offline. What you're talking about is not the organization. that sell firearms or even ranges themselves,

because I don't think people understand the amount of times that people actually use gun ranges to commit suicide. Yeah. What you're talking about is not regulation. It is optional. It's private sector. It is if your organization wants to view this issue

or this, I don't want to say, maybe issue, or just this sector and recognize that there is risk of involved with these particular items, that there are additional steps that you can take. And if you don't want to, you don't fucking have to. You don't have to. have to. Exactly. But the idea is that the risk is not limited to the risk of the actual community damage of the loss of life. That should be enough for all of us. But what we try to get

through that's clear is, no, the risk is also your livelihood. You will not survive. No business that has sold a weapon that was used in a mass shooting, a small to medium-sized retailer survives. You get sued into oblivion. You're done. Manufacturers, all the major manufacturers have just annual budgets allocated for settling wrongful death litigation. How is that the reality we're living in? They're not responsible, right? So we're talking about if we elevate the standard of care a little bit, now we believe we can defend successfully against those lawsuits and set precedent and end them, right?

Because right now today, the only thing you're doing, gun store owner, gun industry at large, to protect yourself is using a deficient tool, forced on you by the federal government that when it goes wrong, they don't, they're not insulating you. You hold all the liability. Yeah, transaction occurred across your country. counter. And you're the one that's going to go out of, you're the one that's going to bear all of that fiscal fallout. So it's not just about the loss of life, doing a better risk assessment, you know, some level of know your customer risk assessment by our own definition of what that looks like is how you protect your business and ultimately, in my opinion, protect the second

amendment. Well, break down what it is. And like, and I'm curious, too, how did you first hear about this concept? Because I know you said that you're running it, but was it originally your idea? No, I made it. Yeah, because it got informed again. I come out of this world where there's all this fucking data in the air everywhere, and we're decisioning on you as a human being in everything that you do. Whether you know it or not. Yeah, exactly.

So they didn't sell a lot of unplugged phones yet. It's still a very limited batch. So even your most outspoken, you're carrying a phone that's listening to you right now, and they're decisioning based on that, right? I'm just kidding, NSA about most of the things I say. So that's what informed it. It was really just, again, I came down, I bought my first gun, and I immerse myself in gun culture,

and I beat my head against the wall saying, I don't get it. How is everybody on the national level arguing and fighting, and it's vitriolic, yet, I talk to barely anybody that actually understands what's happening. What is a background check? What do they do? How does Nick's work? How does Form 4473 works? What is all the details of what we're doing and where the wheels come off where it fails?

And how do we get at this? The only way we can get out is by having the conversations to start. I also think that the government is not tooled to solve this problem. You know, they can have their forms and they can have their background check. That's great. I'm not saying stop doing that. What I like about this idea is that it takes it out of the hands of the government. That's, and we go one step further.

So again, we've thought this through as gun owners, right? We're not even like, so we're first piloting. We know how controversial it is, right, to get to the retail counter and inject any more scrutiny there. I know. There's no misconceptions about the sensitivity. there, there should be. The public should be very, very conscious of what we're doing. They should hold us to a high standard. Again, everything we talked about in the past, about what data companies do. It's not what this was founded to be, but the public keeps you honest. They should feel

that way. We structure this so that the requester, if you walk into a shooting range or a training facility, which is where we're starting, because they don't even have access to Nix. I walk into train at Sheep Dog Response, right, tomorrow. What tools do they have available to them to make sure that when I'm, my daughter's in that class, the guy to the right of me isn't a lunatic, right? Nobody's given that whole training and shooting range, a vertical, any sort of tool that makes sense. They can buy traditional, commercially available background checks, invasive. Why the fuck does a shooting range that need to know about your litigatory civil history

or your divorce? None of that has any place. It's literally just, is there a clear and present risk here, right? And what are those things cost? I don't know, but I can't imagine they're cheap. It's not cost effective. You can't spend $100, $80, even $50 on a commercial background check for somebody who's taking $100 class or using your range for the day, right? So we have tried to solve those problems.

And what we're doing is what I was getting at it first is when you walk into the shooting range and they request a check on you, it's not going to them. We've built this whole thing in a way where it goes to you. You're going to get the request on your own personal mobile device. you are going to steward yourself through that. You're going to enter in your information. We don't take age. We don't take gender. We don't take race.

We don't any of that, right? Very limited. And you're going to see your results first. And you explicitly have to accept these results prior to the requesting retail partner getting them. There's a dispute process. Again, there's a benefit here. Most of us don't even really know what's out there. You fail that Nix check.

They're not really going to tell you why. Good luck writing that letter and request. that information and playing that out. Have never met anybody who actually did fill one? How do they action that? Did they just say, hey, we're not going to do the sale, and it ends right there? So the ATF gives you coaching as a gun store on how to deliver that messaging. And it's not we're not selling you a gun.

It's this transaction can't complete today. And all the other, you know, they have a whole handbook that they teach you. Probably anything other than like, hey, fuck, are you just failed the background check? Yeah, it's not that. No, it's just, here's the number for the FBI and it would be the same for us. We don't want to create friction at the gun store. That's not on you. And if they want to dispute something, it's with us.

Direct with us, very quick 48-hour resolution to get it right so that you know, you should probably know if there's a criminal record out there being associated with you when you're applying for X, Y, or Z, and it's not you, right? That's a hidden benefit of what we're doing of showing consumers exactly what, again, whether they wanted it or not, every other company on Earth is seeing when they run checks on them, both on the social media side and on the criminality side. And again, the social media side narrowly focused. I am not looking, we don't look at your posts and just all of it. It's like the language is, it's literally just looking for, did you say you're going to commit murder? Did you say that you're going to kill yourself? What percentage of people that do action that have actually posted things like that publicly? So suicide, it's so, it's tough.

The date on suicide, you know, both in the civilian world and in the military is spotty. It's hard. With mass shooters, 60 to 70 percent, the data is pretty clear. What proximity do they usually post that to the event? Because I've heard of times before where it's years in the past, but also this string of just horrible pearls and dots that lead towards... It can be. It depends. It's case by case. I'd say like, you have stuff where it's literally the night before or on the way. The school shooter that you were referencing who the father is getting. charge, I believe, like the morning of, put something out there, right? Two, 90 days, six months.

But it's, you're talking about, like, I think we all need to step back and really, do you know how fucking disturbed you have to be to shoot up a school? I don't care. I try to wrap my head around it and I can't, I mean, I think I'm a logical, sane, non-sociopathic person. Shut up, Michael. And, uh, yeah, so reaching for his microphone. I can't wrap my hand around it.

And you are someone who. who's fought. I have killed people. You've taken lives. And yeah, I cannot wrap my head around. Exactly. So are you really going to suggest to me that somebody could be in that state and there's not digital breadcrumbs, there's not digital indicators, there are.

Well, especially in the digital world that we live. And we, but we, and we don't have to go crazy. We don't have to get insidious. We don't have to profile. Like, we just have to look at what are you fucking openly telling us? Have you run this software and done reverse? engineering tests on historical acts? Yeah.

What kind of, well, and maybe break down, so we're talking about an app, essentially, that the consumer would interface with. It's a web-based platform that the consumer and the retailer, you know, in their own way, both directly interface with. So what has the software caught when you look at post events? Obviously, there's nothing you can do about it in real time because it's happened, but what kind of stuff pops up? Well, so keep in mind that it's, you know, running at post is always tricky because there's so

much noise on the internet in the wake of a mass shooting. There's so much coverage that it tends to make the results a little. But, you know, like there's been a number of these guys where we know beyond a shadow of doubt, we would have caught their manifesto. We would have caught a YouTube comment. One of the most prolific ones was, I'm drawing a blank if it was Sandy Hook or it was, what's the one in Florida? Parkland. Yes. So I believe it's the Parkland shooter. Literally just posted on YouTube comments, on YouTube videos. within a few days or a couple months, I'm going to shoot up a school verbatim.

Location, TBD, somewhere in the state of Florida, sometime this year, I'm going to shoot up a school. And about 14 other inflammatory comments like that, not hidden, we don't even have to go to the dark web. You're talking about YouTube commentary. Would the software pick up that stuff? Yeah. So that's what we're saying is like there's a baseline.

There should be a baseline that you and I and all of us should be able to discuss healthily. The firearms industry should be able to lead what are our criteria, right, and how do we detect it and what do we do? And we're in a position where we can do that, where I would hypothesize it at the very least, what we've defined is our baseline. If we just look at taking people at their word, and if somebody's openly saying they're going to do something terrible, and if we look at criminality, not just convictions, but has somebody been collared, been picked up a lot, right?

That's all we need to do to take a bite out of 60 to 70% of these guys. Isn't that worth doing? And it's innocuous. It's not invasive. Well, it's voluntary, too. What is the feedback from the industry when you pitch this to them? I would imagine the answer is going to be varied. The answer is, without exception, we get it, we like it. We wish we could publicly support this.

We will one day when you prove to us XYZ. When you make us feel safe and secure that the internet folks aren't going to go mental and boycott us and create a shitstorm, we're on board. because they're the ones paying the settlements. They're the ones going out of business. You know, like they understand it. How about to consumers or gun ranges or gun store owners or even consumers when you've pitched this idea to them? What kind of feedback do you get?

Overwhelmingly positive. What's the arguments you get against? What's the hesitation that people have? It's, well, they don't trust. So the most common one is that there's just, if they're not that fringe group that we were talking about, that truly unabashedly believes that there should be no screening of any kind, If they're not that. Which, that is a fringe element, I believe, of gun owners.

I hope so. I think it is. Again, I love the Second Amendment, but I don't know how you, how could you say that? I don't know. How can you, like, we all know someone who definitely shouldn't. We all know at least one person, right? Statistically, in this room, one of the three of us is fucked up. And I feel good about you and me, you know.

It's them cookies you've been feeding. I know. Slowly over time, Michael. I can feel it working. I'm sure you can. So if we all can like baseline agree on that, which I think most of us can,

then the question is how? How do you hone in on that and make it actionable for these businesses without government overreach, without all that banned bullshit, and without big brothering the heck out of people? What do you think somebody, and again, this is a tough one

because you have to get in the mind of somebody who would want to commit a mass murder. Let's say they go to one of these places and they have this additional layer that is looking at risk. And they're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to totally pass this, right? And so they actually participate and they get their results back. Do you think it would stop them or do you think they would just go find a path of least

resistance elsewhere? They will, of course. But that's... That is in and of itself a proof of concept to the store that was able to... They didn't technically deny them that transaction, but that person sought a layer of... It's not even a layer. They sought the path of least resistance. They sought a path that has...

had less barriers to getting hold of the firearm that they wanted. Exactly. We know that your average mass shooter and bad actor, as soon as this is presented to them, they're going to leave the store. They're not going to go through with this knowingly. How quick is the turnaround time from when they get? So right, our goal is to get that to be a 30 second turnaround. So they literally would be in the store at that time.

Yeah. That's why I asked that question. We're not there yet. So right now it's more, it can take up to five minutes. we buy ourselves up to 48 hours at this juncture to be thorough, so we don't, we don't want to flag false positives, right? So we're really doing this aggressively. It's about a 48-hour turnaround time right now, which is why we're starting with shooting ranges and training facilities, not doing walk-ins. We're just not equipped to do it yet and deliver, meet what I consider

appropriate for accuracy, right, in that kind of an immediate time frame. But if you're registering in advance, take a class next month, we've got all that's... yeah, we've got all the time in the world to now do this correctly and make sure that you're not being falsely flagged and also make sure that, you know, you're not about to slap a cleared hot training shirt on a foreign agent or somebody who is openly, you know, suicidal or a homicide. Yeah. And so to your other question, the public response has been good. Overwhelmingly across the aisle, people get it, they like it. the minority of people that are against us, if they're not that extreme fringe that you and I both don't get, it's that they just don't believe me. They don't believe us.

They don't believe Tim. They believe that all of this is a lie. And ultimately, we're somehow, some way, either the federal government itself or we're a shill who's going to feed them all of our data. Those are healthy concerns. However, there's no factual basis to any of that. And having a constructive dialogue to unpack that is difficult. folks don't even want to do that. They just want to go right with this, this, this, this.

Yeah. And, you know, and get the torches. And you might never be able to, for the fringe of the fringe in any community, I don't know if there's anything you could do to actually get them to change their mind on whatever their belief is. That might kind of be largely true also for the ones who are just, have that deep level of distrust. Maybe over time, if they were able to watch it from a distance and recognize what it was. But man, that's an uphill battle with that crew. I think every, but let's call it.

the other 90% of human beings in the U.S., I think they're far more reasonable than that. And I don't know anybody who is jumping up and down and swinging pom-poms around after one of these things happen. I don't know, a single fucking person that wants to see more of this. And isn't it not incumbent upon us to try every possible solution? At great personal cost to do, that's what we're trying to build. You know, that's what we've been working on for the better part of the past two and a half years. And, you know, I don't know how else to gain the trust of the folks that we're trying to gain other than to say, like, look, we're literally inviting you to help govern how this comes together.

That's the idea. I want to be accountable as a company, not to the street, not to a share price, right? Not to a group of private equity investors who have other, you know, not to a giant, you know, I won't name it. who, but you know I'm talking about, you know, a private equity company that will do what you're worried about, right? We have built this thing to be accountable to no one, but our people, our customers, right? That's the idea. That's how you keep it honest.

And when it's the firearms community itself, regulating itself. Yeah. I mean, I think the, oftentimes it's the communities, they look existentially or externally for this threat, and oftentimes they're the greatest threat to themselves. but they also are the ones who are the most educated about the particular topic. So I think you could also find the solutions inside of those communities too. What do you mean? Just, I mean, they just, you know, like the gun owners know more about gun ownership in that ecosystem and that environment.

And the vast majority of them, I think would agree that, yes, we have to do everything possible. And then the threat to that community is the people that are on the fringe who say, if you say or do anything, you know what I mean? Like they're the absolutionist, which again, believe whatever you want to believe, we, for those people out there, no problem having a philosophical disagreements with you on that whatsoever. But sometimes the way they act and behave can become the actual greatest threat to the gun community and industry in and of itself. I would. So I think the solution and the problem is actually found generally in the community itself. Agreed.

Not some external organization. Agreed. Specifically the government. Well, 100% the government. But agreed. And that's where I think our challenge is, if it was just as simple as building a cool piece of software that works, I could do that. Yeah. This is an educational, you know, evangelism, kind of rethinking how we think about these things.

And a lot of the things that you might think are protecting your rights, to your point, like, you're actually hurting us. Yeah. You know, those claims, after a bunch of kids are dead, claims that they were crisis actors. Fuck. Which I, you know, I can't stomach. Like, you took, like, even if kids fucking died, parents lost children. Like, how could you? I don't even understand if somebody did believe that.

How would you let that escape your fucking mouth? Talk to yourself in the mirror in the basement while you're wearing panty hose over your face, whatever the fuck you're doing in there. Yeah. Like, shut the fuck up. Yeah. And that was, that's an extreme example, right? Well, the person we're talking about peripherally is extreme person.

Yes, but I would say that even the run of the mill, not that extreme response of, of our side, which has basically just been no response, has basically just been chirp, chirp, there is no problem here. Nothing to see here. We have no problem. Move along. I don't, I don't think that's helped the cause. I think that you have moderates who we should be ushering into their first time gun ownership. You know, some of the data, I believe that there's 20 million Americans who are just waiting to buy their first gun if we can make them feel good about it, waiting in the winds, if we can usher them into it in a way that they feel good about, right? Or at least wouldn't feel demonized. Exactly. But what's happening? All of those people are going the other way. They get swept up in anti-gun hysteria when they see dead children on TV. It's hard not to. Yeah. And this is how ridiculous, stupid legislation ends up getting popular support. What does it look like for you guys to scale? Does it just take time and adoption?

It's so we're laser focused on getting it right. And so we're starting in the training and range area with a few select pilot partners to get it 100% right. And then we want to scale rapidly from there and become the standard. Become just a new standard operating procedure for this industry and rapidly, you know, end wrongful death settlement payouts. Yeah, or end wrongful death. Yeah. Yeah, as well. Yep.

Fuck, man. It's a heavy task for sure. Yeah. Like I said, not money motivated, right? If I was just trying to make money, I'd be doing anything else than this. You certainly have selected an uphill battle. You are assaulting this objective from the low ground, for sure, which historically is a tough fight. It's slog uphill.

Not that it hasn't happened before, but yeah. If it starts gaining traction, how long do you think it would take in a perfect world to get, you know, U.S. wide adoption? And again, it's optional. So it's hard to say, like, what is that? even necessarily me, but maybe half of the ranges in gun stores in the U.S. using something like this. I mean, you know, our business modeling has its projections of what we are attempting to do. I mean, we think that we can get like 70% of the market over the next few years. Okay. So that's rapid.

Yeah, but to your point, there's this dirty secret nobody talks about, about suicide happening on shooting ranges. Often enough. And so, and for people who don't know this, that you can rent guns at firearms rangers. And to what I was saying before, you walk in to rent a firearm, you take the lane down at the far end. You sign in.

There is no screening. Yeah. Yeah, you take the lane down at the far end and they're not exactly walking up and saying, hey, I'll take that box of 50, but I only need one. No. And I know, I know gun owners, I know multiple people that own ranges and facilities in Texas and they've all had it happen. Yeah.

The trauma of that is terrible enough. for everybody. But there's also a financial real fallout to that, right? And currently you have no way to protect your business. So again, I say to that point, if you're worried about a suicidal person purchasing a weapon from you or taking a class at your facility or using a renting a gun for the day or whatever, what's the best way to detect to hone in on that, right? Is it, and you don't have access to Nix, but is it the way that Nix does it, we're essentially, again, just a military veteran who once was depressed is just forever banned or is it literally in a recent period of time did somebody just publish that they intend to kill themselves what's a better indicator of that risk of suicide

in 2024 the latter so that's and it's really not a heavy lift yeah for us to be able to just start there dude is a guy about to rent a lane and a firearm who was openly suicidal on social media wouldn't you like to know that i would like to wrap my arms around that person well all of that can flow from also what we hope, like, like where this could go, right? Yeah. You know, you know, go let Tim take you, do a run in a workout when he identifies that and straighten you out, right? That actually could, that might increase suicide numbers.

Tim's idea of a workout is the worst thing on Earth. Yeah. That's as polite as I can describe his idea of a workout. Have you ever noticed he uses really partial range of motion accounts it as complete, though? I would never say that, even if. I'm saying it. You can. You can fight him.

He would beat my ass. I think I can run faster. You'd have to. We were in France. He's like, I can out sprint you. I'm like, Tim. Oh, I forgot you. The Normandy stuff?

Dude, I'm so bummed. I missed that. I just couldn't get out there. It was amazing. It was amazing. I heard it was like, yeah. I've been in Normandy once when there was none of that going on.

And I just stood there and wept. Which might actually be the better way to see it if I'm honest. Really? I want to go back. It was moving to see. the level of buying and patriotism from the French people. But there was a lot of people there. If you really wanted, I think, soak it in.

I would go in a non, I don't want to say holiday. I would go in a non-remembrance time period because the crowds will just be less. And some of the stuff won't be there. Like there was a paratrooper suspended from one of the churches. So that's not going to be there, but the church is still there. Paratrooper suspended from the churches? Oh, yeah. The dude, I think they exited the aircraft, not where they were supposed to.

Pretty common story and theme that particular day. His parachute gets hung up at the very top of a church. Wait a minute. We're talking about D-Day? We're talking about this, this. Oh, okay. So he's hanging there. This church is amazing.

There is blood stains on some of the pews still. In the stained glass in the church, there are fucking paratroopers. It's like Jesus and paratroopers. Classic pairing, I suppose. not a lot of places where you're going to show this. I'm pretty sure that this is a story. So the guy gets captured, escapes, fights the war, comes back to the village at some point in time,

falls in love with one of the women there, marries the woman, and I think spent a lot of his life over there in that city. So fuck, all sorts of stuff. If you were to go there in a non-remembrance time period or on a non-anniversary, that guy won't be up there, but everything other than that will be, like the church, and you don't have to deal with the crowds.

Well, and my one takeaway, when I did do it, was what you're saying. It's stark contrast to Parisians, right? The people in Normandy, it's like this shit happened yesterday. They still very much, you know, have this reverence for what went on there and all the lives lost in the Allied forces. And it was really magical. It was really special for me to see that. Like, you know, the French people don't always get such a good rap from us, right? And people in Paris seem to be a little bit more of the asshole version.

Yeah. I was just like New Yorkers are assholes. but if I take you down to Texas, you know, you're going to meet some nice or up here. I was just in New York not too long ago. Honestly, I got no issue with New Yorkers. I don't really ever leave my hotel room, though. Well, that. Did you ride a subway?

No, but I have. Yeah, so do that again, and then let's talk. Like, don't tell me about the dearth of no terrible people when you haven't got on a subway. No, I don't get out of my hotel room. DoorDash is the thing in New York as well. Yeah, that's rightfully so. Yeah. Listen, I love it.

Don't get me wrong. It made me who I am. part of who I am always. But I think there reaches an inflection point in all of our lives where if you don't realize that it's time to get out of there, you'll never get out. And it's not an ideal place to, I think, age, raise a family, and all the rest of them. Yeah, I agree. Where can people educate themselves more and actually just do their own research on what we've

been talking about? Well, you can check out the unplugged phones on unplugged.com. And I double check. You can go to doublecheck.com. You go to trainsafe.com. Pullup doublecheck.com, Michael. Trainsafe is the launch product for ranges and training facilities. This new forest we live in with the screensaver.

I like it. It's an Apple update. It's not a big deal. I can get you one. I don't like it. I think this is Sequoia. That's the name of the operating system, which actually ties kind of in the tree. Well, that's what they call the operating system.

Actually, as I was saying, I was like, you know, kind of makes sense that we're looking at trees. There are lots of double check protect double check protect.com. My bad. Yeah, we couldn't get that other one. We couldn't get doublecheck.com. What do they do? I don't remember. Some banking thing, probably. Yeah, finance thing. Yeah. We couldn't. Yeah. Is it this one? Yes. Yes. Yes. This is us. God damn it, Michael, you're just all over the place. There we go. Is that, what, what is this? Is that an iPhone in somebody's hand? Are you promoting Apple? Well, shit talking.

Somebody's getting fired. Is this an iPhone? Actually, I don't know. Those are circular buttons on the side. No, that's definitely an old-ass iPhone. Yeah, I think it is, too. That's fine. Note to self.

Update. All right. Double check, protect, normal spilling on all of that.com. Okay, cool. And then what was the trainsafe is real? Trainsafe.com. You know, the product that we're rolling out for the shooting ranges and the training facilities. God damn it, Michael.

Click the buttons. TrainSafe.com. There you go. Sweet. That's it. Hell yeah. And, you know, we'll be around talking. We're doing a series of town halls all over the country.

We'll be, you know, talking about that. Me, Tim, some of the other guys will be hosting those things. What, I mean, if people are listening to this and they're stoked about what they hear, is there a way for them to support externally? Or can they, would it be just, like, facilitating a town hall? I mean, what opportunities are there for people if they want to get involved? Well, so that's a great question. I should have a better, more immediately actionable answer.

We definitely have a sign up form on both of these pages. I would say, give us your email, right? I'm not going to abuse it as much as we're talking about as data, like we talked about. At least with email, you are directly opting into something. If they provide it to you, like, hey, I am interested. Yeah. And the problem I have with the other shit is I am also, although I do like some of the targeted ads, I am not interested in most of the shit. Yeah.

It's not, for all of its intelligence, it's not always social. smart and what they show you and relevant. But my point is like getting that email address is registered, right? That helps us. It helps us validate and say to the industry in the market. Like, look, like I was saying, like we can turn on XYZ new buyers. There's real market movement here and people that support this. And so definitely go to trainsape.com, go to double checkprotect.com, sign up to learn more. Where is it somewhere in there? Probably up top right, join us. Yeah, that's for if you're a business owner, but, well, that's for TrainSafe only. Yes. So if you own a shooting range or a training facility, go on to TrainSafe.com, sign up, and we will contact you when we're ready to expand out of our first pilot.

If you're an individual, go to double check protect.com, and there's going to be a commensurate. Yeah, click on that one. And that's open to consumers and retailers. Tell us, yeah, this is the best thing that you can do. And then we will invite you to various town halls when we're holding them in your neighborhood and communicate with you henceforth. And then when we're ready, we'll open it up for you to participate. I like it. What else you want to leave people with? I mean, I think we cover it all that we can just, I mean, I'm a father. I'm an American like you.

And I just know we can do better. We have to do better. My daughter and your kids deserve better. Right. And then the Second Amendment and this sort of idea of a little bit of better safety for our kids. Again, these are not mutually exclusive. We can do both. But you have to be part of the dialogue.

You have to weigh in. Otherwise, other people are going to make these decisions for us? And that's what we don't want. I agree. That's a good ending, actually, man. And plus, we've been out for over two hours. Anything else you want to close with? I really enjoyed being here.

Do you want to publicly declare that Tim's a Pussy, perhaps? Jesus. Do you want to put any statements out there? that could be used against you by Timothy? Anything Andy Stumpf says regarding Tim Kennedy, I disagree with vehemently. I do think he's a handsome man. You know?

I thought you didn't comment on other men's looks. I am secure in my sexuality. I'm less fluid than Michael, secure and rigid in my sexuality. His generation is just more like the wind. How old are you? 24. Oh, wow. Wait a minute.

The last time I asked you, were 23, when was your birthday? November 4th. That was a while ago. Coming up a year. Are you getting ready to turn 24? No, no. You're not 24. Yeah, yeah.

I've thought of you as 23 years old for like the last three years. I know that's not how math works. Wow. Interesting. What do you want for your birthday? A day off. You get plenty of this. This poor guy.

I'm going on a week long hunting trip, but you're getting a day off. I'm joking. What do you want for your birthday? I don't know. Would you like a firearm? Sure. I'm not going to go buy it for you because as discussed, that would be a strongman purchase.

I would never advocate for that. So Michael is the coffee shop security sometimes in the morning. For anybody listening, if you come to the shop, please thank him for his service. He loves that. What he loves even more than that is if you ask him for a picture. That is his favorite. Now, you carry a firearm there.

What are you going with? You have the Cig 365? Macro. Macro, good choice. Yeah, I mean, what do you want for your birthday? I don't know. Put it out there into the universe. I don't really want it.

I never won anything. Have you seen the Legion 365 that just came out? Yeah, that's pretty sick. Andy let me hold it. I have one. Oh, I did let you hold it too, but then also the firearm, yeah. Have you seen the, the, the, I was setting you up for that. I just got it.

You're a bad man. Have you seen the Legion Flux Rader? I don't even know if I have seen that one. No, but I've seen the, oh, what's the new, there's a new, there's a new, they, just release a new 365 model fuse. Really? They've got like 48 of them at this point. They've got so many.

God. But the fuse looks. I do like the, I have the P, what I have the 365 macro XL, I think. Legion. I don't fucking know. It's in that Fannie Pack.

Dude, you're not getting out of this without telling me what you want for your birthday. I never know what to say to this. What's lacking? Well, what's lacking in your life? Like,

you're 24? What's lacking in the life of a 24-year-old? these days. What do you, what do you want to do? I just want to, okay, I guess I want to travel more, but I'm already working, I've already done some of that and I'm working towards it. So I kind of, I will buy you an airplane ticket to anywhere you want to go for your birthday. Really? Wow. Yeah. That is generous. All right. Uh, SpaceX. Probably Tokyo. Yeah. I mean, you're going to be riding in the shitter, potentially the luggage compartment. I will not buy you a fucking international. I just said,

You just said. Okay. Let's put some boundaries on this. I'm not going to buy you a $10,000 fucking ticket. But I am happy to facilitate and, like, support your traveling. Like, I was telling you that he just went to Italy. And you were originally only going to stay for like a week, right? It was nebulous.

It was nebulous. He was going to get shorter him. Great word. And, like, you need to stay longer, man. Travel, see some of the world. I wanted him to stay longer. Was that your first time over there? Yeah, out of the country.

It was his first time. country. That's what I'm saying. I want him to travel. That's a pretty good boss you got there. I know. I know. I'll get you a plane ticket.

Okay. Sounds good. Where do you want to go? To Bozeman. That actually sucks because you've got to go through Salt Lake on that one. Do you really? Yes. That's really funny.

Yeah. Let me think about it. Okay. Have you been to Austin, buddy? No, I kind of want to go to Austin, though. I will buy you ticket to Austin. Okay. Cool.

I actually have a few friends in Austin, too. That part's a lie, but. You're right. First off, you've only left the state like twice. How do you know anybody in Austin? That's not true. They were actually originally from Montana. And they sprouted their wings.

They flew. They flew. I will buy you a birthday airplane ticket, Michael. I got you. Witnessed. Yeah. I'll send you Austin. We'll get you to Austin.

How does that sound? Birthday flight to Austin. That sounds good. Okay. Come down with him. I should. Yeah, I'll hit up Timothy. Yeah.

I'm going to let him know all the shit talking that you basically said you could take him jiu-jitsu that you would out-shoot him, you're better at workouts. He is such an animal. I have a week alone with him to just nest these ideas in his head, and he's not going to be able to communicate with you. Then he's going to come home. He knows damn well. Skinny Yaggy Boy would never challenge him in any capacity. It's rough what you do. He's such a good dude, though. Well, cool, man. Dude, thank you for coming out. That was fantastic. Man, thank you for having me. I appreciate you. I even appreciate you, sir. I can't wait to see you down in Texas. We'll get them down there.

That's a guarantee. Cool. All right, man. Thanks, guys.