It Could Happen Here - Let's Talk About Guns

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

We sit down with Paul, a reformed cop who volunteered as security for the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, about buying and training with firearms. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And, you know, folks who are regular listeners who listen to the original scripted episodes of It Could Happen Here, the first 15 episodes, which I certainly recommend to everybody, know that one area in which I kind of separate from a lot of particularly more liberal folks and even some folks on the left is an embrace of the fact that firearms are sometimes necessary tools, especially in times of collapse when things get bad. Now, that said, we're also not kind of gun culture people here. We try not to, for one thing, recommend that everybody necessarily pick up a gun. There's a lot of people, perfectly nice people who shouldn't have them, who don't need to have them, you know, if you're dealing with suicidal

ideation or whatever. We're not, the point is, we try to be very careful about how we talk about firearms as a potentially useful or even potentially necessary tool in the times that we're in. And today, since we're a few weeks into this, we've covered producing food, we've covered some medical stuff, we've talked about community organizing and a number of other things that I think are priorities for most people before, you know, getting strapped. Today we're going to talk a little bit about getting strapped. And my guest today is Paul. Paul, do you want to kind of introduce your background in brief so people know why you're on here? Sure, Robert.

background and brief so people know why you're on here? Sure, Robert. I was in the Marine Corps and infantry. And after that, I went to security consulting and then to the Federal Protective Service and finally the ATF, some of our funnest agencies. Yeah, all my favorite organizations there. Well, they're better than the, what is it, the FDA. Yeah, they beat the FDA. I mean, in terms of body count, they're certainly better than the FDA. Yeah. And what do you do now, Paul, that you're out of that line of work? Well, I do two things.

I got a day job at Disney World. I got a day job at Disney World. And then the side gig is we run a explosives and machine gun supply company, also body armor, a handful of people, particularly on this side of the political aisle, lack. One of the downsides of kind of rejecting the federal government and the military in all its forms is that there's a lot of people who may accept the validity of being armed and don't really have much in the way of practical training. And firearms are tools that to use most efficaciously do require training and practice. tools that to use most efficaciously do require training and practice. You can't just, um, you can pick them up and be dangerous, but not in a way that is particularly protective to you and your community. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, so I wanted to talk about kind of recommendations and, and everything we talk about nothing, we're, we're not talking in the context of forming a militia, uh, or in the context of, you know, showing up with guns to yell at people at a protest, if that's the thing you're choosing to do, that's a whole different ball

game. We're talking about kind of responsibly arming yourself and your community in a way that is not going to get you in legal trouble and is also not going to endanger them. Because one of the things you have to accept about firearms is that there's a risk, you know, related to owning a firearm, not just the risk that like, you know, suicide risk raises if you have a gun in the house, but just if you don't use them properly, even carrying a gun, you know, it's not unheard of for people carrying guns to have those weapons taken from them and used against them. It happens to police and it happens to armed citizens. So it's a matter of, you know, I think when you accept that you're going to be armed, there's something incumbent upon you to understand the risks of being armed. And I guess that's kind of where I want to start. Like, what are some of the big pitfalls you see people fall into, like, that I think traditionally training is supposed to, uh, uh,

help allay to some degree. Uh, well, probably number one is, uh, grandpa's gone in the closet. That's been there for 40 years on fired and somebody just picks it up and throw some ammo in it to go hunt a deer. And, um, you know, it's got a barrel obstruction or something. It just blows up, you know? Um, but number two and, and the one that can be mitigated by training rather than just general, uh, not being stupid. Cause it's kind of stupid to pick something up. That's really old and just try to shoot it is, um, not shooting yourself. And when you do go out to the range, not shooting other people and then not shooting people in your own home.

Um, you know, you don't, as much as you might want to say, defend your own home. Do you want to, uh, shoot your wife when she comes home at two 30 in the morning, uh, after work and wakes you up. Um, and there are ways to mitigate that and, and it's really easy and it's really cheap. So, yeah, let's, let's, let's start with some of those. Just if you're, if you're new to, if you've decided I need a gun for whatever reason you purchase a gun. Um, you know, I, I think the most basic first things are, are in terms of like actually making that relatively safe is number one, knowing which, which kind of firearm to purchase. And number two, and these are not an order of importance. These are both very important. Number two is securing that weapon properly as opposed to just having it laying loose in the house, uh, which is never the best place to best way to store a firearm. is never the best place to best way to store a firearm is it um yeah i mean i i own a number of personal firearms um you know i'm in my office right now where i got a locked door nobody can get in and i got a gun safe back behind the monitors um and you know i'm comfortable with

that but if if it was in a place where kids could get at it, you don't want to just stuff it in a sock in the closet, which is actually what my mom did when I was a kid. biggest preventer of like uh inter-family accident because i know you know we do talk about safe storage kids and all that but um back to the wife coming home if you just put a light on your gun a hundred dollar light you can look at the thing that you're shooting in the middle of the night and uh not shoot someone you don't want to shoot yeah i would go so far as to say that like if you've got a home defense weapon without a light on it um you don't fully have a home defense weapon no no yeah no you don't um it's going to be useless in roughly half of the situation statistically like if you're looking at when people are actually tend to be endangered in their own homes the vast majority of the situations in which you might be in danger.

When it comes to weapon selection, this is another area where like if you go on maybe one of the worst places in the world to have this discussion is Twitter, because everybody has their opinions on Twitter. I tend to say, because I think most people, when they're looking for a first gun, if they're committed, just like thinking of personal defense, they're going to go for like a Glock or something and I think unless you're planning on carrying a gun and you can correct me if you disagree here but I I tend to think a hand gun again unless you're intending on carrying a concealed weapon is is the last thing that you should own as a gun owner um I got a mixed opinion on that. I mean, yeah, I, I think that, uh, the handiness of a handgun can outweigh some of the issues.

I know you guys dealt with fires up there. We have hurricanes. Yep. Um, being able to stick a handgun into a backpack, you know, it can go a long way or being that is a good point um keep keep it on you in your car because i uh here we're and that will depend on state laws yeah everything we say depends on state laws yeah there are states where you can yeah yeah if you're in uh california and you're in one of the counties that it doesn't issue a concealed carry of license like at la

it's really hard to get one from what i understand yeah you gotta get the san bernardino if you want to get one of those yeah i mean first off like two i got a short list of guns and like two-thirds of the list illegal in california they're they're not on roster but for what's most usable against or most handy it's probably a handgun but if you're expecting a threat more than like 30 feet away, have something other than a handgun. Handguns, they suck at hurting people. They suck at killing people. Yeah, they're ineffective. They're hard to use.

I mean, 30 feet away. But if you're not training regularly, hitting something reliably in a stressful situation at 30 feet with a handgun, it can be difficult. It's not easy. Yeah. Um, it's not easy. And I,

I tend to recommend number one, there are some options. Like even if you're sticking with a handgun, there are different kinds of, um, like, uh, uh,

options for that. Like I, I, I'm a big advocate of pistol caliber carbines, which is essentially cool as fuck the size of a small rifle so you can fit them easily in a backpack every backpack i've owned you can you can stick something like um like a cz scorpion in without much difficulty and because they're so when you're talking about what makes a weapon easier to use number one of the number one things

is size so the longer the barrel the more accurate it is the heavier the gun the less recoil is a problem the easier it is to use at range um and a pistol caliber carbine you know you stick a light on that that's a really good home defense weapon oh absolutely yeah i mean especially uh people will argue about the different types of magazines but if you buy one that takes a glock magazine yep and you have a glock you can build a full little loadout that just takes all the same magazines. One is more accurate. One is a handgun. And, you know, all the same ammo. You're not having to figure out and read a bunch on what kind of ammo you need and stuff like that.

You just buy one and it works for everything. Yeah. And when you're talking about ammo, I think one of the most important things, especially if you're worried about a survival situation, is availability, which is the nice thing about what we call the NATO caliber. So the NATO calibers are 9mm, 7.62x51, better known as.308. Your grandpa's hunting rifle is 7.62x51. Or it's.30 30 out six but whatever um and then 556 slash 223 and those are the rounds that's like 556 is the standard that's

what's in your bog standard ar-15 um and so almost no matter what happens um including you know ammo crunches you will be able to find some amounts of those calibers generally. Dig through your neighbor's drawer and you're going to find a box of bullets. They might not even own a gun and they got a box of nine millimeter. Yeah. Everybody's got nine mil there. And so, yeah, I think that the basics of like what to get if you're looking at kind of just

a basic defensive arm, you know how to store it safely you know those kind of questions are important um when it comes to training uh what are some of in your opinion like the the mistakes that you see people make when it comes to kind of of practicing training with their weapon um going to an nra basic like-hour class and thinking that you are a god. There are people who have spent five days a week going to classes and doing training. Because there's practice and then there's training. Training is where someone teaches you something. Practice is where you go with what you're already taught, right?

you something uh practice is where you go with what you're already taught right um so there are people that spend all that time and they're still not uh the best in the world um there are people who do a ton of practice jerry micklick you know i don't know if you've ever seen him shoot but he's uh he's like the fastest gun in the world or something like that um yeah his videos are crazy oh yeah yeah i mean he'll he'll out shoot a full auto gun yeah with with revolvers uh and it's just like you know it's just absolutely mind-blowing um but no he's like uh he's like he's like michael jordan or something you know you just get oh yeah people who have uh almost it's just natural ability um certainly married with a practicing But yeah, continue. If you had a fight, a gunfight, which they really don't happen that much.

But if you had a gunfight between a guy with a high point C9. Which is one of the cheapest, ugliest handguns you can get. Cheapest, quote, reliable handguns on the face of the earth. quote reliable handguns on the face of the earth if you had a guy with that that had had paid 500 for a training class over a weekend and still went and uh went to the shooting range every week and practiced and um or not even every week just every month and then did dry fire drills once a month in his garage or whatever versus a guy who went out and bought a Wilson Combat $3,000 1911, but had only taken the NRA class, I will bet on the guy with the C8.

Yeah. Or the C9. All day long. Even if he's only got one bullet. Yeah, don't care. He'll win. And often, for all of the guys you see in all of their tactical gear and whatnot,

and their spare mags taking 300 rounds out. Oh, God. If you actually look at most defensive shootings, it's very common. It's like three to five rounds. Yeah, three to five rounds. Yeah. Three to five rounds, generally closer than 30 feet, sometimes closer than like 10 or 15. This sits in my pocket most of the time.

Is that a Glock 19? No, it's a 43. Oh, Glock 43, yeah. So tiny. It has more bullets than I'll ever need in a gunfight, probably. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

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Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

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and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. that you spent some time in the ATF, spent some time in the FPS. I haven't had any personal interactions with the ATF,

but I have met some FPS guys on the streets of Portland. I'm kind of curious, especially as, because I came in contact with you through your Twitter, where you're very vocal. My personal Twitter. Yeah, and you're quite politically active now in a way that i think is surprising to people for someone with your background are you comfortable with kind of tracing uh sort of the broad strokes of your journey there because i think that's instructive um for folks oh at fps

specifically well just kind of what brought you from there to here oh um so i got kind of, oh man, what's the word for when you just get a, I don't know. I just, I got to a point, I showed up for work at 4.30 in the morning and I was literally shuffling through some paperwork and was getting ready to file a warrant and just kind of realized I didn't think that it needed to happen and you know I I talked to my supervising agent about it and was kind of told too bad and and I put in for some vacation time and ended up putting him a resignation while I was on vacation. I mean, that's the gist of how I became not a cop. Yeah, and I'm wondering kind of what, do you think, is there anything that kind of, I don't know, what looks different to you now as you've kind of left that behind? Was it like sort of a, I'm guessing there's like a period,

like a goldfish, you know, in a new bowl of, of acclimation to, to life outside of being a cop. Um, like what, what were the first kind of things that started to shift in your perspective when you left that, that thought space? I'll tell you what, uh, watching, uh, or reading whatever an article or a youtube video especially now that body cams are more and more uh prevalent it is watching something reading the uh the press release and going but that's that's not what happened like i just watched it and and and going from being able to justify it in your own mind and literally argue with people and be 100% convinced like that was a good shoot. Castillo, what was it?

Philandro Castillo? Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, God. I mean, if you've gotten lost track of this shooting in between all the others, Philando was a a black man a legal gun owner with a legal concealed carry permit who was pulled over with his girlfriend and child in a car and uh hands on the wheel told the officer he had a gun uh and got shot um yep you know and did the thing you're supposed to do although now actually since then you will get like some states will and some training

classes will recommend if it's not legally required and you're carrying a gun. Don't say anything for that reason. But I mean, he went, yeah, the command to not reach for the gun to being shot multiple times in the chest was like under two seconds. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, the decision was already made as soon as as soon as he gave the command, the decision was made. So, I mean, the decision was already made. As soon as he gave the command, the decision was made. Here's what that brings me to in terms of a question that's relevant to the topic of community self-defense, of potential community armed self-defense. Because that's not – that is a cop problem, but that's not just a cop problem.

And what happens in the – That's an everybody problem. In the CHOP, in the CHAZ in Seattle, the autonomous zone is evidence of that. You had this situation where people after nights and nights of mostly inaccurate warnings about Proud Boys coming to attack got amped up. They had guns. Some kids drove by in a car and they fucking shot them to death. And it is the same. It's the same mental thing happening. You don't have to have a badge for that that mindset to to infect especially when you're carrying a gun um how do you in your opinion fight back against that be fucking chill uh you know

like like honestly um if you were a teenager which we grew up in almost the same place, you're from Plano, I'm from Capelle. Yeah. So. I would have argued with you about them being the same place when I was in Plano. They're the same place. But they're the same place. Yeah. They're the same place.

They're absolutely the same place. Yeah. One has Woot.com and the other one has Raytheon. Yeah. So, you know, and a bunch of hospitals um but uh uh it you and i grew up in the same time same place same types of schools how many times did you see in like high school or even middle school just a guy hit on a girl and then the girl's boyfriend comes over and just starts fighting him yeah like like the guy had no reason to know he didn't know he was doing

anything wrong um and and i'm not suggesting uh or i'm sorry what i'm pointing out is that Um, it's almost ingrained in, uh, us at a societal level to, to react violently, to maintain like our personal position. Yeah. And if that means that I'm in my neighborhood and I, I don't recognize someone, it may seem like violence is the right way to go. That's actually what, what you're doing doing when, like, what's it called? Cairning? You know, where you call somebody? The black kid selling water bottles or whatever. I know that was one in New York where the police came and harassed, you know,

some, like, 12-year-old black kids because they were selling water bottles. It's the same thing. I mean, you know, in that case, you're not personally doing the violence. You're just calling somebody else to do it for you. Yeah. about that is the idea of um violence is like like when you when you're willing to accept violence to kind of maintain your your your social position or something um and i think that has a huge amount to do with with the kind of violence you see um at protests with like we've had you know protests quote-unquote security here in portland people kind of declaring themselves security and yeah what the fuck does that mean shooting other kids with know guns for graffiti like but it is it is a matter for it's they're not doing it to protect anybody they're doing it because they've declared themselves security somebody doesn't listen to

what they say and their ego is hurt it's the same thing that again cops do it's this it's a human mindset it's not just a a cop mindset and um i think you when you're talking about like i think there's a couple of things number one if you're going to be armed and if you're going to be armed in a community self-defense role one of the things you have to accept is that like you're not as a person who is armed and cares about the defense of your community you're not a separate thing from them i think that's one of the areas where in policing goes wrong. You can't view yourselves as separate. the same here yeah yeah they don't even not just the city they don't live in the whole county um and that's despite uh they get a living allowance if they'll live in the city and there's a bunch of uh if they live in the city they get a take-home car there's a bunch of incentives to try and get

people to live here and they still won't do it they want to go uh live in the next sheriff over the next county where uh yeah we have a very vocal sheriff the next county over who's who's really racist and all that shit um and i yeah i think if you're if you're talking about like the potential of of uh again of like armed community self-defense um you almost I almost would prefer phrasing it differently. Community self-defense, you know, which should be the entire community. Yeah, yeah, it should be the community. And you're not, the gun isn't what you are.

You're not security. You're not self-defense because you're armed. You're self-defense because you're armed you're self-defense because you're a member of the community and if you personally choose to be armed that is an option that is expanded to you specifically because you're armed but it doesn't change fun it shouldn't change what you are and if it does there's a phrase that i think is really useful um the finger pulls the trigger and if you want to avoid or the trigger pulls the trigger. And if you want to avoid, or the trigger pulls the finger, sorry. And it's this idea that when you show up armed and you're showing up armed as

someone like your purpose, there is to be armed. You're at, at heavy risk of the weapon guiding your responses. Um, and that's the most important thing in any circumstance to avoid. If you're carrying a weapon, if,

um, if you got a hammer, everything's a nail. Exactly. Yeah and and uh the last 20 years we've had kind of a with the war on terror you've seen a proliferation in media around um making navy seals and all that shit look really really cool uh every other movie is about that even though like really they're just drunk guys who um yell at people a lot and who occasionally commit murder to protect or was that was that the seals or is that the green berets who killed that guy to protect a drug trafficking rig i mean probably both that, that was the green berets at North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it crosses all, all borders. Um, but one thing that's come out of that is, uh, we, we've started to call those guys operators, right? that someone trains there to use to they are merely an operator of a weapon system um and it it's kind of dehumanizing like it allows you to get out of the thought on that um it's exactly

what you were talking about where where the trigger is really pulling the finger at that point um yeah and it's it's i i think there's a number of I don't know, there's a number of tactics and more than we can get through. And we'll be talking with some other community self-defense people at some point in the near future about this, because this is a big topic. Right. And it's not one. I haven't seen anyone do it super well yet in the United States. Like we anytime you have kind persistent right-wingers do every once in a while. Yeah. They, yeah, they take over BLM land. Yeah. Yeah. But then they die. I forgot about that. Yeah, they did die killed. Um, and I, I think that, uh, it's, it's a, it's a really messy topic because of, you know, what you brought up is is a valid point all the everything that all the kind of social baggage there is around weaponry in this in this country and in our in our culture this kind of like worship of the gun and if you think like the left is is any more immune to that than the right you're wrong you see the same you know toxic

behavior all around you have to be extremely cognizant of it, even if you know it's something to risk for. There is, weapons in general have a mental impact on us carrying them. And there is a level of just like being around weaponry that is entrancing. It's a human thing. We make weapons. We're tool using apes and weapons are some of the first tools that we made that are responsible for why we get to tell the dogs and the cats what to do. And you have to really approach being armed from a standpoint of rejecting a lot of that if you're going to do it responsibly. lot of that if you're going to do it responsibly i mean among other things the idea that you might have to use a gun um has to be your your work very close to your worst nightmare yeah um because it would be it would be if you ever actually had to use one um at minimum you're talking like when you actually look at like legal self-defense shoots you're talking minimum the next if you

kill somebody at least minimum the next year of your life is is dealing with the legal consequences of that sure and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars yeah i mean if you're having if if if file if charges get filed you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a capital defense case if not millions yeah yeah and and that's in you know there's one of the gun youtubers that i like to uh push people towards for this kind of stuff is a guy named paul harrell who is certainly more on the conservative side but who actually killed somebody in a self defense sure and went through the whole legal process afterwards and he has a couple of videos where he talks about it and he gives i I think, pretty good advice on that. That is, that is completely without ego. Cause it was a

nightmare for him. It was the worst experience of his life, which is what it's going to be. If you ever have to use a gun and that should be like, that should be the top of your, that should be the top of your mindset. You know, I've been in this situation a couple of times at protests where like someone pulls a knife and starts lunging at people, and I have a gun, and I'm 15 feet away. And I never drew in part because it never quite crossed that line for me. And I knew that giving people the chance to de-escalate was vastly more important than introducing a second weapon to the situation immediately. Sure. more important than um introducing a second weapon to the situation immediately sure and if things had gone differently perhaps i would feel differently about my choices in that moment but um they didn't and nobody got hurt and that's always the best case scenario even if it's somebody you really dislike uh who is who is threatening people with a weapon i i swear that

happened up in olympia like two weeks ago yeah, the shooting in Olympia, which was a guy named Tiny who got shot. And there's video of it. It's absolutely not a legally justified shoot for sure. Like, yeah, he was he was like 40 feet away, you know? Yeah. But he's really tall. He is big. He is.

I think that counts for something. Yeah, he was tall he was tall he was chasing them he was armed um i'm not making a moral case here i know i know i think legally they would have had a trouble had they stayed around now of course they've got uh i believe they've been arrested at this point oh have they i i just heard yeah i didn't visit i think so so sorry i don't mean to crash it for a second i i think i saw uh our best friend andy post something about it oh yeah yeah yeah three days ago three i must have missed this yeah okay so they did they did arrest the guy yeah and it's you know it's another thing if

you um if you feel if you're involved in like a shooting that you feel is a justified legal shooting, you don't you don't leave the scene. And in fact, one of the better videos you'll get on like what to do. And this guy's life has gone to shit because of the political nature of the shooting. But the guy in in Denver who shot that dude at a protest, the Pinkerton fired that dude. I'll tell you, you know, no matter what you want to say about whether or not it was a good shoot. Yeah. He dropped that fucking guy. He dropped that gun.

I mean, he dropped him. Hands on his head, down on his knees. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, you know, again, the court case is not settled out.

So I don't know if that guy's story is going to end happily. But in terms of if you want to not get shot yourself and you want to have the maximum chance of defending yourself, if you have to shoot somebody in a situation that's legally justified, what that guy did after the shoot is how to handle it. Yeah. And I mean, the evidence for that is he did not get shot. And obviously your mileage with that's going to vary depending on your skin color. Yeah, that's a big factor. Yeah. Welcome.

I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Son enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. In terms of actual training people can pay for if they want to take that step, which I think is a good idea, do you have broad recommendations for how people can know if something's... know because there's this is certainly a space where there's a lot of grifters and whatnot um yeah i mean most of the uh beginner level uh how to fight with a gun classes are two to three days long like that that's a good starting point is the fact that you're gonna pay probably three to five hundred dollars per day and it's going to be multiple days long you can't because you're going from a baseline you know they know you already know how to appoint and shoot a gun but they're gonna go for everything on how to draw how shoot a gun, but they're going to go from everything on,

uh, how to draw, how to move, how to reload. Um, you're going to have some classroom time going over their specific safety instructions and stuff like that. Um,

but anything you can do in one day or four hours or, uh, 40 rounds or whatever, it isn't going to cut it. Um, you need to go get something and you need to listen because they're going to ask you to do things that might not be the way you want to do it you might say yeah that's not the way my dad taught me how to reload a handgun um uh a good

example is actually umical Response in Tennessee. A lot of people hate them, but they have a very specific way that they say, everyone reloads this way in our class. You put it in and you slingshot the slide. And people argue and go, well, I want to just press the button. Well, the button's cool and all, but we want you to slingshot the slide. Just do it for this class. Sorry, I got a little off topic there.

No, no, no. That's a good point, too, because, I mean, a lot of people— Just go in and listen. Yeah. And you don't have to take everything away. You take what you saw as good, usable information and merge that with what you already know. good usable information and merge that with what you already know maybe throw away some of what you already know and you got this ball of goo that you can work with uh for practice um yeah yeah and yeah it is and to that point when you're talking about like training one of the differences

between handguns and rifles like all all shooting as always there's a degree of perishableness to it but shooting a handgun is a much more perishable skill than shooting a rifle um and it's it's so if you're going to be armed with a handgun um it really behooves you to take to train you know um because you're only as good as how often you've been out there really um and having a state a good foundation like taking some real professional classes will help a lot in that as opposed to just kind of going out to the range every now and again but yeah um let's talk at the ass the last little bit of this here about kind of the gun that's always on the tip of everybody's tongue when you start talking about being armed uh and armed self-defense is you know the ar platform um it's

a gun with a lot of baggage a tremendous amount of cultural baggage and it's it has become vastly more than just a firearm in our culture okay um what uh what what do you what are kind of because i i am a big advocate of people who uh who are open to being armed getting an ar platform i think oh yeah it's a great gun to learn i mean it goes yeah it goes bang really well almost every time as long as it's from a reputable manufacturer um despite what some people say they're very reliable yeah um they're easy to clean literally as long as you keep them lubricated even in the field you keep it lubricated it will just just keep banging out rounds um it functions and you know we talked about this during the episodes on like you know food storage and and and whatnot like where there's

a there's the there's the cheap version i i like stuff where there's there's the cheap version that works and there's the expensive version that works and there's the expensive version that works. And you have that with an AR. You can get a very inexpensive AR and you can replace every part of that AR over the next five years and have a $6,000 gun. I did minor price checking last night because I was like, you know, I haven't checked the retail prices on stuff, right? I was like, you know, I haven't checked the retail prices on stuff, right? So in like your budget tier normal price that's out right now, you got like a Ruger AR-556. They're 700 bucks.

That's dirt cheap and it's going to go bang. And it's a great gun. Yeah. I have a friend whose AR is a Ruger 556 and they're very solid. Yeah. They just, they go bang every time. You're not going to break it. I mean, as long as you don't use it go bang every time uh you're not going to break it um i mean as long as you don't use it like a baseball bat you're not going to break it yeah especially now that the russian steel case ammo has been banned

but then like the the other end of the spectrum is you got a sig right yeah i've got a couple okay so you know what the rattler is oh yeah that's a fun one yeah i do not own a rattler but they are they are cute do you know how much well first off uh the the rattler it's a short barreled five five six it's not really an ar-15 but like technically it kind of is yeah um and it it's well how about this how much do you think that the rattler costs right now don't don't go look it's just probably 2,500 bucks would be my guess 2,800 2,800 yeah 2,800 yeah now it's uh now i actually put it in my category of honorable mention slash meme because it's kind of a meme gun. It's so tiny.

But I don't want to get shot with it. But that's kind of the spread we were talking about, which is, you know, you can get a $700 gun and it'll go bang the exact same way as the Rattler. It fires the same bullet. um it fires the same bullet um and you can build up to something not like a rattler but you can build up to um a bunch of noveske parts you can throw a bunch of noveske parts into that ruger lower and upper that you bought and build a really awesome gun that will be you know 99.9 reliable uh yeah yeah and you can uh you know i think.9% reliable. Yeah. Yeah. And you can, you know, I think generally if you're buying like a, again, you're getting kind of a bargain basement AR.

One of the first things that it's going to behoove you to replace is the optics. You know, it'll probably start with iron sights. Shit, these don't even come with anything. Yeah, usually they come with nothing on them and you have to stick the irons or you stick a reflex sight. There's a whole world of optics. And I think one of the websites I recommend people check into if you're looking and kind of reading up on this and doing your due diligence is Pew Pew Tactical. Oh, yeah. They do not written from like a super, you know, chuddy or whatever.

Like you get a lot of very political gun websites that may have some good information, but are frustrating to read. They're not that way. They're written, you know, for people who are not super aggro about guns, but who are interested in guns. And you can find really good reviews on stuff. But as a general rule, modern optics beat iron sights every day of the week. Like you may prefer, and i do in some

case on my aks i vastly prefer using irons but that would never be the weapon i would pick if i was in a situation where i needed a weapon you know yeah i mean i i think everyone should learn how to use iron sights absolutely but if i can hand someone a $450 Aimpoint Pro, which is the budget version of a high-end optic. If I can put a $450 optic with the mount and everything onto a rifle and just go, hey, just put the dot on what you want to shoot. You're done. Now, there's a lot that goes past that, but we got rid of the entire proper site alignment and all that. They just got to put the dot on the box and squeeze.

Yeah. I mean, even, even the Marine Corps famous for, for fielding marksman has gone. We're going to switch over to optic based training. Yeah. They're just, I mean, you look at even guys in like idlib province which is like one of the rebel provinces in syria that's been persistently under siege for most of the last decade um they're all using fancy optics now

like that generally alphan alibaba versions of like yeah brand optics but it does the trick you know i mean it's a it's a sig romeo that never got the role market for sig on it yeah exactly and they paid 100 bucks instead of 450 yeah um all right well i think that's most of what we can responsibly get through i do want to end on the caveat we started with this with which is that um deciding whether or not we advocate firearms as an option, both as a legal option and something that can be for your community and for you as an individual, potentially practical. I don't blanket advise people to buy guns.

I think in many cases, it's going to be counterproductive. I think you should not own a firearm. Again, if you're someone who struggles with suicidal ideation, they can be a very dangerous thing to have in your home if that's something that you battle with. I do think that they can be owned and used very responsibly in addition to I think shooting can be a really enjoyable pastime. time. And I think more than anything, when a whole bunch of people who are talking about killing you all have guns, it can behoove you to own a firearm as well. If you're a member of one of those communities. So please don't take any of this as Robert Evans says, everyone go buy a gun. But if you're going to buy a gun, there's a right way and a responsible way to go about it. And there's picking up a random 12 gauge and shoving it under your bed which is oh god no no no more shotguns for home defense yeah they're

not they're not ideal um yeah i mean we can we could talk about over penetration and stuff but yeah yeah i mean just being able to move lead in a direction. They're very bad at it. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. They,

they're, they're not, they're not, I mean, again, something like, uh, uh,

an AR or a pistol caliber carbine is in a lot of situations going to be a much more practical and, and have less risk of hitting stuff. You don't want to hit necessarily get, get the high point um yeet the the yeah the yeet cannon yeah we'll discuss that on our whole episode of about high points uh so you've shot yourself in the dick the high point story uh all right well um do you wanna paul you got any got anything to plug before we roll out here uh give food to homeless people well houseless houseless i think is yeah um and if you're in an area with a based dsa join the dsi and then vote out the shit lips um that's what's happening here in orlando um but yeah embrace anarchy

well i'm uh robert evans this has been a podcast and uh and remember as we sail out there's a reason the episode talking about guns came after the episodes talking about uh storing and growing food. She's got a GoFundMe. If you go to SaveRuba'sHouse, R-U-B-A, on GoFundMe, you'll find it. SaveRuba'sHouse on GoFundMe. If you've got a few bucks, she could really use it. Again, SaveRuba'sHouse, R-U-B-A, at GoFundMe. Thanks. podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Wrath. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him.

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