It Could Happen Here - Talking About Guns and Culture

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Robert and Karl from InrangeTV discuss gun culture and the politics of weaponry. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, 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. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, the only podcast you are legally allowed to listen to right now. I'm Robert Evans. We talk about things falling apart, putting them back together, all that good stuff.

Talk about things falling apart, putting them back together, all that good stuff with me as, like, 70% of the time, is my co-host Garrison Davis. Garrison, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. This is early for you. Yeah. They had to drag me out of bed, but I made it, and I'm excited to talk about our topic. A hair after three. A hair after three. I have my second coffee already.

So, yeah, our topic is gun culture. And to discuss gun culture with me and a number of aspects of it, including how to maybe make a better one, is Carl Casarda from InRange TV. Carl, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really stoked to be here. And it's a topic, as you can imagine, with my work on InRange TV is near and dear to the program. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really stoked to be here. And it's a topic, as you can imagine, with my work on InRangeTV is near and dear to my heart because it's a challenging one. We've got a lot of great things in this community and a lot of challenges, too. Yeah, Gun YouTube has gotten some really interesting places in the last, really, it feels like most of the growth happened like the last five, six years.

Like there's been a real significant increase in, yeah yeah i feel like there's been like a wave i feel like there's generations of gun tube there's like gen one gen two gen three and they're yeah you had fps russian back in the day and stuff totally yeah and so there's a whole thing there there's there's generations of what was addressed in the conversation and the cultural significance as well as the gear impact i think we've got different kind of generations of it was addressed in the conversation and the cultural significance, as well as the gear impact. I think we've got different kind of generations of it. Yeah. And I think the stuff, obviously, when aspects of gun YouTube go viral, it tends to be stuff that's like particularly problematic. But in my experience, most of it is just dudes shooting stuff to see what happens or, you know, trying out different guns and stuff like it is mostly

if you're someone who you know believes in the right to bear arms it's mostly pretty much just like people trying out guns uh and stuff with guns yeah yeah when things go viral it's like my my experience with that there's a number of reasons all right one is that it's particularly gross yeah someone does something or says something fucked up somebody's out there dressed as a rotation you know right stuff like that that tends to tends to push the buttons but yeah most of the time the stuff that gets the largest volume of viewership are quite honestly more banal it's things like a 50 caliber 8k exploding or shooting a gallon you know a 55 gallon drum of gas that kind of stuff is the that stuff that appeals to people that aren't just gun people, so they're like,

oh, I want to see shit explode, so let me click on it. One of my favorite things is to look at videos of people destroying safe life vests. Yeah. One of my favorite ways to watch gun YouTube, but I guess this is probably, we'll probably talk about this as the episode goes on, but once you watch enough of those

from like one channel, you'll get to a video where they fantasize about like shooting Antifa or something you're like okay well yeah that yeah that's that's the way it goes sometimes and it is you know the thing that my first i guess the first time i became aware of like online gun culture um was a site that's still really near and dear to my heart i'm sure you're familiar with it carl the The Box of Truth. And it was like, and I think this is like 15 years ago or something like that is when I started reading their stuff.

And it's just like some kind of bubba-y dudes in Texas who will take different, who will try out like, hey, there's a myth that this specific round in Korea got stopped by people who were wearing multiple layers of like clothing in the cold. Can winter clothing stop this bullet?

And they would, they would, you know, mock up the clothing on like a target and they would shoot it. And, or like, how many books does it take? Like if you have a full backpack, how many books would it take to stop a round of nine millimeter? If I like, it's, it's all very much like practical. Hey, people, you know, say this works this way or this works that way. Well, let's go out and shoot some stuff and test how it works. And, um, I think was like, it is, as you said, the kind of thing, I think even if you don't own guns, you might find interesting just because like a lot of it is dealing with here's things you've seen in Hollywood, what actually happens.

So I do think like fundamentally, there's always going to be a place for that kind of content because it's not just like stuff that people who like guns are interested in. It's just stuff that has kind of content, because it's, it's not just like stuff that people who like guns are interested in. It's just stuff that has kind of objective value. You know, you're trying to expand what people's understanding of things. Yeah. I call that gee whiz content. It's like gee whiz, what happens if, right. And so on in range, the closest equivalent to that, which are the videos that get the most views are somewhat now infamous mud tests. Um, and it started off six years ago and it was literally, it was gee whiz, let's go do this.

And of course there's this longstanding lore everywhere outside of the gun community and in it about the AKM being this undestruct, indestructible unicorn. You're right into combat that no matter what happens to it, it fires. And they are 15 being this fragile piece of shit. And in our mud test of which we've now done multiple of it, while initially it was just gee whiz over time in aggregate, it turned out to actually have really interesting data points in that the AK doesn't do well in mud and the AR excels in mud, which is completely against the lore about Vietnam, which is a different problem.

But that kind of thing extends beyond the gun community because people are like, guns and mud, what happened? It's gee whiz, it's Mythbusters kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting how you can learn from it yeah and i i think one of the problems that is uh we we could say like has is an issue on on gun youtube and one of the things that has become an issue in this isn't just within the gun culture it's everywhere is that like if you're into that stuff and if you're if you're coming into it like i want to see people people do this gee whiz stuff, or I just want to see reviews of different guns because I might be buying one. Google's algorithm is going to feed you a lot of stuff. And some of that stuff is going to be people who, yeah,

are preparing to shoot folks at protests and are filming videos about that and stuff. And that, it has this radicalizing effect on a lot of people. And it also has this kind of, can have this kind of radicalizing effect on a lot of people. And it also has this kind of, can have this kind of radicalizing effect on content where, you know, most political stuff you see isn't kind of that overt, but it does, if somebody has a video where they're being more explicitly political outside of, you know, arguing in favor of gun rights,

but if they're getting kind of political in a broader sense, and that does really well, the way that content works is other people might be like, oh, well, folks want me to do a political video. Folks want me to talk about, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi or whatever. And that's not just a problem with gun culture or gun YouTube, but it has increasingly become a thing.

And in the NRA, kind of very famously, there's a good podcast on how that organization has kind of gone from where it started to where it is that talks about like NRA TV. But they their YouTube channel had some pretty outrageous shit for a while. And I think it left an impact, even though it failed initially, eventually. Well, the NRA is a total. We can get into that later. The NRA has changed so much since its origins to what it is now. It's not even the people have found that it wouldn't recognize it, I don't think at all. But you're touching on a topic there

that's also near and dear. And I'm not trying to promote in range here. That's just, we're having a conversation. But years ago, I decided to proactively demonetize. I turned off my AdSense and I take no money from any views. So it's not like, advertising doesn't drive what I do. And I feel like the reason I did that was partially just fuck you, YouTube.

It was the hacker manifesto of, you come watch my content. I cost you money versus make you money, which is kind of a statement on my part. But additionally, I do feel like whether it's firearms or any other content that is completely advertiser supported, there is a dangerous thing there in that you have to pursue the clicks like a heroin addict and the clicks make you the money. And therefore, you're going to make the stuff that's going to make the clicks because that's how you make your income. And even if you don't want it to, it can affect you. Yeah. And I'm curious, like, how do you kind of how do you how do you how do you approach sort of dealing in this space where it is so easy for things to become politicized? Like do you – is that a kind of thing that you have to be consciously sort of picking your battles I guess?

I'm just kind of interested in how you – because you definitely have been more open about having kind of more on the left libertarian side of things politics than a lot of people talk about in that space how do you decide kind of what is worth inserting and what is worth kind of just you know no one needs to to hear that within this context oh yeah i don't think that that's an easy thing to answer right it's hard like there's a lot of landmines but when um introspectively for me the answer for me at least was i'm just going to come to this content as my honest self like if i'm just going to produce what i want to produce it's and since i don't have to worry about advertising dollars i'm just going to make the shit i want to make and as a result uh i i guess it's sometimes considered an alternative voice but i don't think it really is i think that the loudmouths have made it sound

like there's only one voice in this community, but there isn't. And so by just being legitimate and honest and being me, there's turned out to be a lot of groundswell, if you want to use grassroots type people out there that want to hear something that's not just evangelical American Taliban. But in terms of where to put your foot on what landmine, I guess I did for me, my decision has been to do topics that have been intentionally ignored that shouldn't have been like, I've done a bunch of videos about the confluence of civil rights and firearms ownership, which there's a lot of it. And it's, it's really amazing how much there is and no one talks about it. Yeah. I mean, we, we, yeah, we've chatted about that a little

bit in some of our episodes. It was like 1919 when there were all those like race riots around the country, or even if you're looking at like the post-construction period, there's a history both of like gun control being used for racist purposes, but also just of communities arming themselves, black communities arming themselves that is woefully undertold. Although it is people are starting to deal with it more, thankfully. I'm kind of interested in talking to you about sort of the culture jamming aspect of we have this huge gun culture, aspects of it are very toxic and becoming politicized in a way that is aggressive. How do we have a positive influence and kind of hopefully pull things back?

Because I do think within kind of the issue of gun rights, there's more actually more possibility for people to sort of come together and reach an accord than there is on something like abortion. And I think a lot of that conversation is going to start in spaces like the one you inhabit. conversation is going to start in spaces like the one you inhabit yeah no i yeah i like what you said culture jamming because another term i've heard is subversive well that's not the intent but like you mentioned the red summer of 1919 and uh yeah i talked to when i i talked to a lot of people that that are really historically interested and minded and i was astonished how many people had not even heard of it never mind the only like the explicit realities of it. And so when it comes to the culture jamming thing, there's one video I did about one or two of the events of Red Summer of 1919, one of them here in Bisbee locally. And it's an interesting problem to someone who normally would be considered a very standard issue firearms content creator.

In that particular Red Summer 1919 episode episode it turned into the local police attempting to disarm the 10th cavalry soldiers who are off you know military soldiers in bisbee on recreation and so you've got this interesting cognitive dissonance do i support the cops that a lot of firearms people are like just blindly support or do i support the military which a lot of firearms people blindly support when both of them converge and the, and it's a racist agenda in it. That poses a question that I like to do with like this kind of content, because it means that the viewer has to really, if they get through the video, have to introspectively go, holy fuck, which do I support or do I support either?

Or is there a problem here? I haven't been considering. I think asking questions like that really matters. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal 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. I know you.

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makes it most likely that you're going to be able to have a positive dialogue that actually moves forward as opposed to kind of getting bogged down in the in the things that cause people to just kind of lock horns generally when you we start getting into these areas yeah you know i don't know it's totally possible you're going to have that problem no matter what right i'm sure you see that with you see that with your work for sure absolutely yeah when you take an honest approach to history and just be like here's the facts um there's going to be people that are just going to be completely resistant to that they're not going to take it. But I think the best way to do that is to just be that honest approach to it. Like one of the things that I think we do with firearms content, gear is cool. Tech is cool. Guns are neat. They're fun. I enjoy shooting with guns. I like the sport of it.

I like going to competitions. But one of the things that gets left out of the conversation a lot is what are the implications of firearms and the sociological economic environments that we live in? And I think that's one of the things that doesn't get talked about. And so if we talk about it fairly and also tend to, I think it's hard to do, but have people from all sides of this perspective, as long as they're not completely dangerous and toxic, being part of the conversation, we can have a better middle ground. That's the hard part. So being inclusive, ironically, even of views that aren't necessarily your own, as long as the person you're dealing with isn't. My line is if you're actively supporting bigotry or the harm of other people, there's a no-go. We're done. But if we have different views, but we realize that that's not the intent, then we should have a conversation. I think

that that's a big difference. Now, I think one of the areas in which this can get murkiest is when you are talking to people, and I've had a few of these conversations, who are convinced that they're kind of on the precipice of a violent conflict sparked by someone coming to take their guns, right? And, you know, there's the version of this that is like, I'm worried that the ATF is going to do some fuckery and a bunch of my shit's going to be illegal, which is pretty reasonable. And then there's the, I'm worried Antifa is going to come to my small town and take my, you know, guns or do whatever. whatever, like, because there are often people in that who are just kind of tragically misinformed and radicalized in a way that they're not so much eager to harm people as they are just like broken and frightened because of the things that have been fed to them. Do you have any kind of best practices when it comes to sort of approaching those conversations

and trying to improve the information those people are getting? I guess for me in that regard, when I see people like that, and I think all of us have those people in our world, whether it's your aunt or your uncle or a friend, right? We've seen that over the last couple of years for sure. I think the best thing you can do there for me, and again, I'm just talking to my approach, is break the echo chamber if you can. And so the echo chamber is the problem. When we suck from the fire hose of only one source, like nonstop, yeah, that's going to be dangerous. That's the kind of stuff that pollutes your mind to the point where you can't think outside

of that box. So like being more inclusive, and that word is kind of a trigger word, a catchphrase, but being legitimately more inclusive and presenting a lot of different diversity that really is part of the firearms community can, in some circumstances, break the echo chamber. I'm really happy with this one project on the channel where I'm working with Annette Evans about specifically a female or woman's approach to self-defense with firearms. And you don't really see that. You'll see channels that are only for women. And you'll see like all the majority of gun channels that are only for gun fascinated dudes. But like throwing that into the mix, there's going to be some subset of people that will click in and watch it out of that gee whiz level.

And that kind of stuff can break a paradigm in terms of, well, I never thought of that or never looked at it from that perspective. And that's at least that's what I think is the right answer is do your best to make sure you're approachable and try to break the echo chamber. Yeah, that makes complete. Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I think the other side of this is also worth talking about because we've kind of been focused on how do you break the echo chamber? How do you get people who are in the gun culture on the right to be more open minded? The other side of this is you have a lot of people who are kind of gun culture on the right to be more open-minded the other side of this is you

have a lot of people who are kind of liberals um or on the left who have a really reflexively negative um opinion to the reaction to the the very idea of gun ownership or gun rights and have these you know you will generally see there's there's a mix of people who can come to it from a very reasonable and argued point in a mix of people who can come to it from a very reasonable and argued point, and a mix of people who are just going to like, in the same way that folks on the right do, throw out a handful of quotes that they've seen on memes that they can use to kind of, you know, shut down debate. How do you, do you have a lot of those conversations where you're kind of trying to make people at least more open to, because this is something my work has dealt with a lot, is kind of trying to sit down to like, I get why you don't think these things should be illegal. Obviously, I see the same mass shooting news that you do.

There's a problem, a deep problem with guns in this country. I don't deny that. But like, let's also talk about the idea that the state should have an absolute monopoly on the ability to do violence. Let's talk about the ability of marginalized groups to defend themselves. Let's talk about the history of gun control and how it like it is. It is. There's a lot of conversations that kind of get wrapped up in that. I'm wondering, do you have thoughts in terms of like how to kind of broach those and progressive avenues to go down to when you're having that side of the conversation? You know, it's totally interesting. I think I feel like I'm curious what you think about this from your work as well. I feel like over the last. For good reasons, over the last couple of years, more than a couple of years, I think I've seen maybe it's just my own echo chamber. I've seen a lot of people on that side of the political spectrum coming more and more around to being pro-gun.

Yeah. Then the statistics back that up. Support. Yeah. And so in the United States is the lowest it's been in quite a while. they saw and went, whoa, these aren't going away. And if you're willing to have a rational thought about, at least in this country, the reality of firearms ownership, whether you like it or not, it's not debatable. This is real. It's what it is. We're not like, they could ban everything tomorrow and there's going to be AR-15s in this country for the next hundred years. So that ain't going to change.

So with that realization, maybe the better idea, which I think is with all technology, is instead of being afraid of it, is to actually learn about it and understand it, whether you want it or not, it's up to you. But learning and understanding it is at least a step further forward than just complete abject fear. Yeah, that is often kind of where I start the conversation with just like, we have to deal with the reality as it is on the ground, which is that there's 400 million firearms in private hands here, which is not all that far from half of all of the guns in the world. So any sort of like plan you have, it's the kind of like one of the things that often comes up in those conversations is Australia. And people say, well, they were able to do it after. Now, Port Arthur was Scotland. I forget the name of the massacre. But there was

a massacre in Australia that they banned most kinds of firearms after and confiscated them. And it gets brought up a lot. We're like, well, they did this in the short frame of time. And there was this impact on gun violence deaths. Why couldn't we do it? And the reason is that they had to confiscate a total of 200,000 arms and there's 400 million guns in private hands in the United States. It's a different scale of problem and that's before we get into sort of the legal barriers because Australia didn't have a second amendment obviously. Like whether or not you like it, firearms have a level of protection that is equivalent to the protection free speech enjoys in this country and you can't just pretend that's not the case. There's a tremendous body of jurisprudence around it. Yeah, no, totally.

And like, so that that's, that's part of it is the reality of the Australian here is completely different beast as well as culturally, like the people that were into guns there. And I don't mean to offend any Australians listening, but it wasn't like here, like in a place like Arizona, like a place like Arizona, guns are just, if you're an Arizonian, they're just intrinsically part of life. Whether like, they're just constant, they're everywhere. You go to like, you see them open carry, you not always do she open carry either. Sometimes it's like reasonable open carry. Sometimes you see the other side of it, but they're just everywhere. It's just part of the deal. And it's like a lot of that in a lot of the country. And so, um, I actually think that that fear based ignorance of them is more dangerous because then we don't teach people what to do around them or how to be safe around them.

Kind of like abstinence, like education and school teach people not to have. Yeah, that's fucking dumb. That ain't going to work. And guns exist in this country. Just be afraid of them. That don't work either. be afraid of them that don't work either so in that regard i think that the um reality is it's much better to um to approach this what i think i guess the way i try to deal with that is if you don't fetishize them people that are more afraid of them are less likely to just click away if you talk about them like this is a thing here's what they are they're not a totem against evil they're just a tool and here's a historical story or narrative or sociological impact of this that's not fetishizing it as some religious item. I think that that helps break that barrier a little bit. And I think that that does bring me to something I think about a lot, which is the how we are in.

And actually has, I think, gotten a bit better than it was prior to Sandy Hook. But the very sorry state in a lot of cases of advertising of gear and guns. I think the most famous example was a, I believe it was a Bushmaster ad that got pulled after Sandy Hook that was like an AR-15 that came with a man card that you would get like with your gun. Get your man card back, I think it's. Yeah, get your man card back. Your man card has been reissued because you have this gun here. And that I, you know, I've seen a lot of different gun cultures because it's actually like we've just talked about how unique U.S. gun culture is. But a lot of people actually own firearms around the world. There's a lot of even like in Europe, like France has a very significant gun culture.

And in Germany, you'd be surprised like people can own a lot of the same weapons you can here. There's a lot more hoops to jump through to get access to them. But there's still like, there's gun cultures all around and especially places like Iraq and Syria. It was really going to, when I saw kind of the gun culture that I most wanted to port some things over to hear from there, it was in Northeast Syria, in Rojava, where like damn near every, not every individual, but every like family had an AK. Because in part, there was this understanding that you have a duty from time to time to like patrol and watch your neighborhood and not in sort of this like, I'm going to set up a checkpoint for Antifa, but in a like, hey, ISIS just carried

out a big attack. Let's get some folks out into the streets to like watch our neighborhoods, because that's just the reality of the world. And we don't just have like a group of militarized police rolling around every neighborhood. Like we also are responsible for protecting our communities. And so we train with weapons. And there was a lot of conversations I had with women about like, well, the fact that I have this and know how to use it now means that things can't be done to me that were before. Because I have an AK-47 and that means something. I would like to port the kind of, like what you were talking about, not just seeing it as a tool, but seeing it as a tool with societal responsibilities. You don't just have a gun

so you can hole up in your house in the zombie apocalypse you have a gun because you're part of a community and because there's there's some value that we see in members of the community being armed and not just the state yeah no totally so i mean that goes that kind of goes way back to the old like now sort of silly sounding thing but like god made man cult made them equal right so yeah before that like if you were a frail human being for whatever reasons um you really were sort of defenseless especially in places like the frontier but skill at arms could change that and yeah um and that it puts it can put a more balanced power infrastructure in place um not that i want to live in a world where we're always like at this point of um mutually assured destruction but it is much better to have more power balance than power imbalance and firearms absolutely provide

that in trained responsible educated hands um and that's what i think the story should be right that's the emphasis like when when the whole thing happened went down in iraq like you're describing i think it was ironic one of the things that that the u.s military did was allowed every home to have an ak like because you get to keep one gun and it's one of these and uh and you talked about gun ownership worldwide like um once you jump through some of the hurdles in some of these countries it's actually easier to own certain things than you can like like a machine gun for example yeah like a machine gun in the u.s is highly regulated since 1934 and pretty difficult and highly expensive because of a specially closed market.

But like bloke on the range, one of the guys I work with on, on, on YouTube, once he gets his permit, like he's like, I'm just going to go buy a fully automatic Sten. And he just does.

And it's not at an exorbitant price. Like it would be in the United States. So it's not apples to apples, like these controls, whether we like them or not, some of them are actually more liberal than we have in the United States. united states yeah i think a good example of that and an example of where like a lot of folks who might kind of reflexively think this is insane but like it's silencers you know suppressors being the more accurate term but silencer is what you call them it's the thing

you see james bond screw on the end of his gun to make it quiet um and there's the like this attitude that they should be heavily restricted because there's this misnomer that for the most part, they make things sound like stuff in James Bond. Now, there are some ways to get a firearm that is incredibly quiet, particularly using like a smaller round and subsonic ammunition. There are some weapons you can effectively make quiet enough that people won't notice it. But when you're putting a silencer on an AR-15, it is not quiet. No one will miss it firing. But what it won't do if you have to defend yourself in your home is shatter your eardrums forever, right?

Or, and this is honestly the bigger case for suppressors, if you are hunting with an animal, as a lot of people do with your dogs, you can have a suppressor on your shotgun as you're bird hunting or whatever, and you will not destroy that dog's ears um you know it's the same thing like hunting for deer you know it's it's it's easier um it's like less dangerous for you potentially like i one thing you notice if you've spent a lot of time around hunting dogs they don't have good hearing by the time they get older because they're hunting ducks you know it's funny suppressors like everything that's that's more controlled it's got a allure of magic around it right like oh a suppressor a silencer or or for that matter a machine gun and like therefore it is the forbidden

fruit and everyone wants it more than they ever would have once you own i have one transferable machine guns with tax stamps the whole nine yards yeah and i shoot it like once a year because you shoot it and then you're like wow that was expensive and yeah it was 150 bucks and it's like oh wee that was fun and then you put it away and the truth is the semi-automatic stuff is far more interesting and actually generally more effective once you use full auto fire it's got very limited use um fully there there i mean there is like if we again are being complete there's one mass shooting i can think of where a fully automatic weapon made the shooter more dangerous, and it was the Las Vegas shooting. Because he was in a set fixed position, he was holed up, and he was not like moving and standing.

He was like braced while firing into a crowd from a building. As a general rule, if you're talking about like what's someone going to be more dangerous with, if they're somebody who decides to shoot up something, it's a semi-automatic weapon because an automatic weapon, number one, going to jam more often requires a bit more understanding and know-how on behalf of the user and also is a lot harder to hit with and will run out of ammunition very quickly as opposed to a semi-automatic AR-15. The reason they are so often used in mass shootings is it's kind of the best weapon to use for that. It's also prolific, right? Yeah, and it's so easy and available.

AR-15s are cordwood in this country. They're literally everywhere. The Las Vegas shooter, though, I don't know that he had actually any truly select-fire guns. Weren't they mostly bump stocks? Yeah, he was using a bump stock. I think it's close enough to, yeah. Well, no, it's a good analog. But it is interesting to note, and that guy, what's interesting about that guy is um well of course his act was horrific and evil obviously

yeah he used a bunch of ar-15s with like shitty bump stocks and he had planned something like this for years apparently yeah and he had tannerite in the setup too which is yeah no one knows i mean as we know no one currently i don't know anyone knows what his motivation was at least it hasn't been released but he had been planning something like this for a very long time and what's ironic about that is that if he had bided his time he could have actually had a real select fire like belt fed machine gun he just didn't millionaire yeah he could have done that and uh um this is could but he just went with this bump stock kind of garbage which is weird um that's a whole nother topic but it isn't yeah but and it is like that is one of those cases when you talk to people on the right where it's like after that shooting um donald trump and his administration

banned bump stocks um which is more gun control than we got out of eight years of obama that's like you know oh boy you point that out at least on the federal level you know in fact um uh there's always this narrative that you know this political party will take your guns and this polarity party evolved but the truth is statistically and historically speaking both tend to err on the side of trying to add more restrictions over time like if you do it over time like obama didn't in fact obama opened things up i think he liberalized uh concealed carry of pistol or firearms in national parks yeah he actually made guns a little easier to deal with um but then via essentially executive order edict you got trump banning bump stocks which whether you like bump stocks or not i think the way that went

down is questionable legally speaking but that's another topic it and and obviously bump stocks were also somewhat questionable yeah right right totally totally but yeah but that sets an interesting precedent with what he did with just like fiat edict um but that that said like historically over time there's always been more restrictions not less from both sides and And when you point that out, the people that just kind of drink the Kool-Aid from one side or the other want to just immediately knee jerk on you. And you're like, no, this is weird. This is coming from all directions, really. Yeah, and I think it is a big part of it is just that, like, as a general rule, people who are rich and powerful do not want poor people to be armed. It doesn't tend to work out in their favor.

The only time they want poor people armed is when they send them to a war they've decided to have. Yeah. And obviously the history of gun controls would have really tied to racism, and the Black Panthers, and a whole bunch of stuff around California's gun laws being started to curb Black people from owning firearms.

And so it would be, we would be remiss to mention that fact. I mean, you could argue in some ways that reagan had a big role in inventing our modern concepts of like what gun control means and what kind of gun control laws like liberal states tend to go after absolutely on open carrying bans on you know concealed carrying of arms that kind of stuff yeah it's deeper than this there's always nuance to obviously really hard right but like um like california which is kind of one of the flagship states of gun control.

And I think that their methods are bizarre to me and almost not understandable. But like you talk about Reagan, pretty much they were like, guns are cool. And then the Panthers walked around with some guns. They're like, whoa, fucking scary.

We better do something. And of course, the image of the Panthers with their guns out walking down the street, which was their legal right. Yeah, absolutely. And it was rad. And it motivated, of course, a lot of things in California, which now we see where that has led in California gun control laws, has also changed the narrative for so many people that are unwilling to look at things from a truly broad historical perspective. That's only one tiny thing the Black Panthers did. And the rest of their actions are so lost to just the pictures of them standing around them

on carbines. And that's another example of leaving out the sin of omission. We'll talk about one thing, but not the rest. And therefore, the historical narrative is only one thing. And it is also, there's a lesson in that for people who are on the left and who are advocates of gun ownership about what happens in terms of media and in terms of how your movement is thought about and remembered when guns are a part of it. Because that's always going to, for a variety of reasons, and we can say a lot of those are very unreasonable reasons. But if you are a political group who is armed and makes that a visible part of your activism, that is going to really dominate

a lot of conversations. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be, but it means you have to go into that understanding that like, that's just how it works in this country. Yeah, you will immediately get, you will immediately from at least some part of the perspective, whatever side you're on, you will immediately get someone slinging extremist militant at you. Yeah. But by the way, I mean, those are real things, too. There are those. I'm not saying there aren't extremist militants. Well, sure.

Yeah, we talk about them all the time. Yeah, this country is full of them, as is the world. So that's not an unreasonable thing that does exist. But the minute you go ahead and stand with that gun, you're going to get that label, whether it's truly something you earned or not. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal 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. I know you.

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while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Every Thursday. it's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. There's a very deep conversation that we've talked about and we've had in pieces on this program and other shows that we've done on Cool Zone

about when it makes sense to be openly armed. in pieces on this program and other shows that we've done on Cool Zone about like, when makes sense to be openly armed? And when makes sense to be openly armed as part of a group? Because that is a very fraught question as like the what happened in the Chaz in 2020, made abundantly clear, but in you know, a bunch of cases, you know, Kyle Rittenhouse and whatnot, there's a ton of different reasons why choosing to be openly armed. Um, there's a debate to be had about like how that influences everyone around you, how that influences, it influences the demonstration. And I, I've seen and heard it used in, in good ways and in irresponsible ways. I've seen people carrying guns at political events in order to intimidate others. I've also seen people carrying guns at political events to create essentially a buffer where it's like, okay, there's going to be people fighting at this event. There's going to be clashes. If we're standing here as a group with

guns, there's a place people can run back to and the fighting won't continue because nobody wants to push that. And that's- Yeah, without talking about specifics of intent for any of those situations you already talked about, because I can't, but I think, I think it does. Like I, it always comes back to this thing of intent. Right. So to me, you're right for the firearm. Absolutely true. Regardless,

like, even if I disagree with you, this is a right, like we said, it's protected like the first amendment. It's the second. But I think the, the problem starts to come when you've decided to bring the firearm.

Solely for the intended purpose of intimidation like that's that's where i start getting like this is this is troubling right but if you're bringing it for personal defense or community defense or there's a need because your community is really at risk i mean one of the examples of a civil rights one was um this is um someday i'll do a video about this a community knew that the clan was coming to intimidate them and they armed up with surplus M one Garen's and, and steel pot helmets, literally dug fighting positions and fought them off.

The clan ran for their lives. No one was killed, but they literally used M one Garan's to, to stop the clan from infiltrating their community. That was not used as a weapon of intimidation. It was used as a weapon of community defense i think that's intent goes everywhere yeah that's fucking dope too um and yeah i uh i think um one thing that that that kind of

i i think there's a conversation that needs to be had when we start talking about when is reasonable and what situations are reasonable to carry a gun open or concealed about also what should be carried. I've certainly seen because I don't I think that the most harmful thing is certainly people carrying a gun to intimidate. I've also seen people carry guns as a fashion statement, which is not the same thing, but is bad. also seen people carry guns as a fashion statement which is not the same thing but is bad for example people on the left people at a protest bringing a loaded mosin um to because it was the gun the communists use which is like you don't you don't want to be in a firefight in a dense urban environment with a mosin-nagant did you bring your rubber mallet to beat the bolt open when it gets stuck? Yeah. It is a gun that doesn't function without a sizable hammer, you know? Not generally speaking, yeah. And of course, people on, like, I remember outside of this anti-mask rally, these two guys who were up and carrying ARs, one of whom had an AR-10 with a 100-round drum, was talking about how he had like 400-something rounds on him.

And it was like, in case stuff pops off. And it's like, what are you... Number one, like if you're talking like that, you've spent no time thinking about what actually happens in the situations in public areas in which gunfights occur, because none of them that have happened in any time in the recent future have involved people needing 400 rounds of ammunition or drum magazines or whatever.

Like you are, you are not in Fallujah. You are in Salem, Oregon. The extent to which a firearm can be useful for self-defense. And that does not like bragging about the number of bullets you have is just like weird and gross. You know,

this is going to come off maybe a little strange or even counterintuitive. But when I hear someone like that, what you just described in that particular person, first of all that gun's barrel would burst in 400 rounds but that's a whole nother topic probably but that said um when i hear that i almost have like um it's kind of sad because the reason that's sad is that person is doing that one because they've been sold the idea that the firearms talisman like that to me that person's acting like that's a talisman secondarily the reason they have 400 rounds is because they've been sold a pretty big bill of fear and that's

that's sad for anyone to live a life based on fear yeah yeah i would agree with that entirely um do you have anything else you wanted to get into in this uh this conversation well i don't know i mean we're just here to talk about like community i just i i i think one thing that's really important and it's something that um is is is a positive and i'm happy to see this is that it was kind of a happy accident with my work i didn't even think about it it just sort of happened but this is a much the people people that love first of all just the sport there's a lot of us there's a lot of us of all spectrums across the board absolutely people that believe in the right from the person the purposes of personal defense and community defense they're across the board and i think that one of the things that we need to do is not let

the narrative be only one which is we see so much of um uh very much just like right wing i'm gonna usually say christ Christian white males, like completely dominating this conversation as though, and they think they owe as a result, own the space. Now, it would be in their interest too, from the perspective of preserving firearms rights to be inclusive and have everyone that believes in that a particular thing, work together to make sure we don't lose a right because a right on exercise is lost, right? So even if I disagree with you on economic policy, but we agree on firearms rights, we have an agreement there. And that makes us somehow, interestingly, in the same space,

we have something in common versus something diversive. And I think that part of the conversation, at least within reason, I mean, there are people that are legitimately dangerous, you don't negotiate with them. But within reason, agreeing on that topic means well we got something in common here there's probably other things too and maybe that could be a place where we kind of try to make that conversation better not worse and so by being more open inclusive and saying hey there's people here and people there and here we are all together doing this together um perhaps conversation can be had that's better than what we've been having maybe it can be actually a community builder versus a community destroyer yeah yeah i would like to see that

um well i think that's as good a note as any to uh to close out on carl you want to you want to throw your pluggables up before we we right out of here yeah sure i mean so i run in range tv you can find me at in range dot tv um completely viewer supported like i said i don't want any sponsors or anything i like i like the idea of the people liking watching it support it so if you like it cool come check it out all over the place youtube bit shoot decentralized video contradistributions another thing i believe in strongly the corporate oligarchy but yeah come out if you want to have a little bit different take on firearm stuff or you're interested in the confluence of civil rights and guns

and stuff, come check out InRangeTV. I'd appreciate, I always appreciate new viewers and thanks for checking it out. Awesome. Alright. Yeah, check out InRangeTV and check us out somewhere. We won't tell you where, but

you can find us if you keep us in your hearts. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio 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. 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 Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th.

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