Shaun Newman Podcast - #940 - Rod Giltaca & Chuck Prodonick

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Rod Giltaca is a Canadian entrepreneur, firearms advocate, and media personality, serving as the CEO and Executive Director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR), Canada's leading gun rights organization. He hosts and produces CCFR Radio - On The Air on WildTV.Chuck Prodonick spent 20+ years in the Canadian military. He is a retired sergeant who served as a member of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and served in 4 tours overseas.Tickets to Cornerstone Forum 26’: https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone26/Tickets to the Mashspiel:https://www.showpass.com/mashspiel/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCulloch. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Paredi.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Tuesday. How's everybody doing today? Let's talk a little silver gold bowl, shall we?

Well, let's start here. Okay? We'll start at the charts. Silver, or gold. that is. A year ago, it was 3809, and as it sits here recording, it is at 50591. All right? So gold, go take a look at it. She's falling a little bit slightly, but year over year, I mean, it is a big old curve. It is a mountain beak since the chart on Silver Gold Bowl goes back to 1995. You can go take a look of that sucker. When it comes to precious metals, when it comes to silver and gold, look no further

than silver gold bull. They have a wide variety of best value silver for every budget and a whole lot more I might add. Down on the show notes, you can text your email Graham. You can ask them all the questions you may have around buying, selling, storing, or using your retirement accounts to invest in precious metals. Just head to silvergoldbill.ca.com. Once again, down on the show notes, all the information is there.

Any purchases you make, just make sure to reference the Sean Newman podcast. Profit River. Well, we just got done on the weekend. The customer appreciation day, Rodgill Taka, was in. town for that. I may have stopped in. I may have shown my face. I may have bought in a firearm. And I got sucked into it. It was great. And I hope a few of you stopped in and checked out the new digs in Prova River. Man, they got a giant elephant head on the wall. You should go just take a look of that sucker. And yeah, it is, it is a big thing. You know, one day maybe I'll get to run into

an elephant. Maybe. I mean, obviously the zoo, but it's a little different if you're out in the the wild and see one. When it comes to Profit River, any purchases you make, make sure you use the coupon code S&P, whether you're online, you're calling in, you're stopping in store, that'll get you in for monthly draws. And then a shout out for Profit River. We did the shooting with Rodgill Takka, Chuck Brodnick.

We had about 30 odd-ish people there from as far away as Calgary, Saskatoon, Edson. So a pretty cool little eclectic group descended here in Lloyd Minster. got to shoot guns, it was a cool experience. And Profit River supplied all the ammo. I mean, we paid 20 bucks to shoot as much as you wanted to, and you didn't have to worry about ammo or nothing.

And they were great. Lloydminster Fish and Game Association supplied some of the firearms as well. It was all done above board. It was professionally around. It was just a great day. So showed out to everybody who helped put that on and Profit River for supplying the ammo. Of course, when you're looking for ammo,

or maybe firearms, optics, accessories. Look no further than Profit River. Profitriver.com. They are the major retailer here in Canada, so no matter where you're at, they can get you situated. Rect Tech Power Products, for the past 20 years, they've been committed to excellence

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got Alberta bill aluminum trailers. They got Lund fishing boats. They got pontoon boats. They got, you know, it was trying to snow today. I saw that it, you know, it turned to rain promptly or wetness or both. Regardless, it, proper river, they got all your snow sports covered, you know, the snowmobiles and all that good jazz, side by sides. They just got a little bit of everything and top end stuff. So if you're looking for a little power sports fun, stop into Rectec Power Products today.

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Tews loves that. Somewhere Tews is sitting there less than 22, of course. Planetcom has been here to boost your productivity by proactively managing every aspect of your IT infrastructure, both in the house and in the cloud. This ensures you don't get too tangled up in technology. get anything done. You're going, that's a mouthful. I wonder what that is. It's websites. They built my website. You can go to the shan Newmanpodcast.com. And then you might be wondering,

well, where's Sean Newman Podcast.com? Oh, it's a Chinese gambling website. They also do security online, making sure your stuff doesn't get stolen like this guys. And if you're wanting more information, go to planetcom.com.com. Talk to Carl and the team there. Well, we've rattled off a ton of events here, folks. Quick Dick MacDick live, November 22nd in Lashburn. You can go down the, well, you can go to showpass.com backslash Lashburn. That is coming. Quick Dick, fundraiser for the Lashburn Elementary School. All the proceeds going to a new playground.

We have the SMP Christmas Party December 20th. I believe. I don't want to jinx this. I think I'm sold out. I think sold the last table. But I will throw it out there. It's December 20th. If you want to get on the wait list to see if you can sneak on for dueling pianos in Lloyd

Minster. You can text me. This might be the last time I bring it up, and the next time it might be sold out. I'm pretty sure we just sold the last table. But in saying that, if you want to get on the wait list, you can always do that as well. The Mashbill, January 17th.

We just sold another team to that. Kalmar just west of Laduke. That is the Tuesday mashup. The Mashup. I don't know. I'm all over the place on here. I guess it is Tuesday. That is the mashup community event.

We had 16 teams available. Now we're down. down under 13 teams available. So make sure you don't wait on that. Yeah, you want to get in on that before she is sold out, and we've got 16 teams. The Cornerstone Forum March 28th at the Westing Calgary Airport. Tickets are available, folks. Down on the show notes, we got Vince Lanchi, Tom Longo, Alex Kramer, Matt Erich, Chad Prather,

Tom Bodrovics, twos, and we're working on more. Believe me, we're going to have that guest list popping off here real fast. We've got some exciting people that we're hoping to announce, and that's going to be in Calgary. March 28th, I hope to see you there. All the details down in the show notes. Go to the link and buy your tickets today. It's early bird pricing here for the next month.

So if you're wanting to get a cheaper ticket, don't wait, get booked right now, and make sure to book a hotel room at the Weston as well. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review, make sure to share with a friend,

make sure to rate us. All right, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Our first guest is the CEO and executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, the second spent 20 years in the Canadian military. I'm talking about Rodgill Takah and Chuck Prodnick. So buckle up, here we go. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Chuck Prodnick and Rodgill Takah.

Boys, thanks for making the trip to Lloyd Minster. Well, it was good to be here again, buddy. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Now, this is pretty cool for me because both you guys were on stage at Cornerstone this year. And, you know, so it was cool to meet Rod, you specifically in Calgary because I'd never met. And I have so many people virtually on the show. And then to like actually get to meet them and be around them. But Cornerstone, as you both probably know, my head was going two different directions, trying to keep up with everything.

And so, you know, today, you both being in Loyminster, we got to go. shoot some guns today, which was a cool experience that comes directly from you, Rod. You know, like your story of shooting guns with a military guy. You know, most people probably don't know this, but at the cornerstone, we tried pulling that off on the Friday before to, you know, like try and get it so that some civilians, to use Chuck's term, could go and shoot guns with military guys and then have yourself there because that's where the story stems from, at least from my eyes. And today, you know, in all places in the middle of nowhere, you know, east of,

shout up to the Lloydminster District Fishing Game Association. I think I got that right for putting that on. And Profit River for supplying the ammo. And they just made it to, I don't know, it was pretty cool. There was what, 30 people there. Yeah. Maybe a few more than that. And I don't know your guys's thoughts, but I, you know, like,

it's just cool when I get podcast guests in person, in studio, but then to have a little bit of a community building event where we get to shoot some guns and have a little bit of fun. I don't know. That's my own thoughts. So I just appreciate you guys making your way all the way to Lloyd Minster to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you put this whole thing together, even my connection to do the customer appreciation day over at Profit River. I mean, you made that happen. So, you know, I can't take any credit. Well, I tell you what, Rod's probably getting to know me. Don't give me any ideas. Because after our last podcast, you're like, well, you know, if you knew this person, I'm like, well, I do.

And I'm texting them as I'm on the, can we pull this off? If he comes, yes. Or absolutely. Like, do you know anybody who's got an indoor range? Yes, we do. Okay. And so that, I mean, this entire thing came together in what, three weeks? So that was pretty cool.

Okay. Chuck already knows the drill. When you're in studio. What do we have here? It's a maple leaf silver coin? One ounce silver coin. So silver gold bull, partner of the show, one of the title sponsors of the Cornerstone event,

any guests that comes in studio gets a one ounce silver coin. When we first started that, it was like, I remember having the premiere in here, and it was like, I remember 39 bucks. And we were just saying, you know, it's like $67-ish. So I don't know if you're a big silver guy or gold guy, and you don't need to tell the world

because, you know, everybody's pretty secretive about their precious metals and if they have any. But regardless, yeah, it's a tip of the cap. if you would, to anyone willing to make the drive out to Lloyd Minster and come and sit in studio. So appreciate you once again, both doing this because it's super cool for me. And I, I'm, you know, you do your own show, Rod. How much better is it having people in studio than everything virtual? Yeah, it's, it's awesome.

And so thank you for that. And yes, I do have gold and silver. And in fact, I think the first time that I bought silver, I paid $24. I was around the same somewhere a while back now. Yeah. And the gold is even worse. I don't have a lot of gold because, I mean, we're talking big money. But just recently, I guess we didn't get together to talk about gold and silver.

But it is interesting. After I showed up at the Cornerstone Forum, like I had a little bit of silver because it just kind of the, you know, preperish kind of idea. And I bought a long time ago. I never thought about it since. But then we actually did a tour at Silver Gold Bowl, right? And I was like, maybe I should buy some. So I got. So anyway, I got a fair amount.

of it because I was in a position, right, to do that, much less, you know, a lot different than when my kids were young. And right after I made a few purchases, it shot through the roof. And so I'm like, okay, well, that was good. I made 50% in, you know, four months. So that was all right. Now I don't want to buy anymore. It's too expensive. I do the same thing. Like, I'm so happy I got into it when my kids were younger and things were tighter, but it was so much cheaper. And I just found a way to do it here and there. And only a few at a time. And sometimes I'd go havesies if the boys were going in on a bigger order and I could

afford a little bit more. And I just, I can remember, I still hear it from people today that they'd get coins passed on at birthdays and Christmas time by older relatives who understood the value of that metal in their hand. And, and it's funny now, like, I remember giving my kids coins at their birthdays, like there, that you get those things from the post office. I don't even know if they're worth anything anymore. But there is something, and I say this every time I'm on here, like I'll put this in my

little hoard and I'll run my fingers through it and I'll pretend it's my precious. Chuck, you're quickly becoming one of the biggest earners off the podcast and coming to studio. I do. I am. I come here pretty much for the coin and the beer. Well, shout out to Jamie Sinclair. I haven't been drinking all year. And so that beer since the last time Jamie is in studio has sat in that fridge the entire time. Yeah, Jamie, it's as good as it was last time. Okay, so one of the things that's happened since, Rod, you specifically were on, and once again, I don't need to say this, but in the studio, if you guys want to get

talking about anything, you fire away and don't feel like it has come back to me. But we were talking about your video on Saskatchewan, and there's been a lot of people asking about that. There's been a lot of people I've watched come up. and talk directly to you about that. So I thought maybe we just start there and we'll see where we get to. But I think it's important if people haven't gone and watched your video that they should. But your thoughts on Saskatchewan and what the government's doing there.

So it's a little bit to explain. So I'll rattle it off as quickly as I possibly can. But Saskatchewan has come up with an interesting plan to push back against the feds for this whole confiscation program. as most people know the confiscation program is thundering ahead with a small scale pilot project in Cape Breton I'm told it hasn't it hasn't done that well which is which is great I heard 30 guns today yeah well 30 so far it's it's funny because I tried to find out where that came from I couldn't I couldn't find I couldn't you know so but it would be great if that's all it was I might be representative of what's of what's going to happen after it rolls out around you know across the country

but there's been two provinces primarily in Canada that have been pushing back against the feds so that obviously it's Alberta and Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan came out with something interesting and it just might work so to explain what Saskatchewan is doing you have to understand what both provinces are doing and or Alberta so there were there was one initiative where both the province's past legislation that says, if you are going to be a seizure agent, so somebody that's going to come into the province to take guns, you have to be licensed by the province so that it's done safely. And, you know, as per whatever the guidelines of the province is. And so that's fine. Unfortunately, it's, that's not going to work. And then Alberta took it a step

further and said, you know, maybe what we'll do is come out with an Alberta firearms license because the provinces have jurisdiction over property rights and the feds have jurisdiction over criminal justice. So I guess all that groundwork being laid, the seizure agent thing and the license thing works as long as possession of these newly prohibited firearms is still legal. So right now there's an amnesty, right, protecting everyone from criminal charges.

So that stuff works. the minute that the feds end the amnesty, you're an unauthorized possession of prohibited firearm, which is in the eyes of the law, a machine gun. And what that does is it goes all the way around the property rights issue, and it obligates all local police everywhere in the country to arrest everyone that they know have one of these firearms. That's an active criminal offense.

So Alberta's been trying to figure out a way around that. Saskatchewan's trying to figure out a way around it. It's been difficult because there's a lot of moving parts here. It's not an easy problem to solve. So Saskatchewan came up with this new thing where they are, it's within, this is my understanding. So we still don't know 100%, but it looks really good. It is within the authority of the provinces that if something is made prohibited or illegal or outlawed, that individuals of whatever that property is have to get paid.

full and fair compensation. And it's not even just taking the property, it's diminishing the value of property. So that's actually a little bit of a nuance in there that's important too. So let's say the example that was given to me was if you have all these farmers using gopher poison and the government says no more that gopher poison is banned, it is if there's legislation supporting it, the government has to pay for that gopher poison. The full price of it. So Saskatchewan is coming with with legislation to make that a requirement. And what that's going to do is going to force the government into basically three or four decisions. Because right now the government intends to rip everybody off. They're saying,

oh, we're going to, we have a capped program. Everybody tell us what you have. And we'll spin, you'll spin the wheel later and we'll see who's going to get paid. And they intend to pay very few people. So now, and the reason is, like a billion, multi-billion dollar program right now when Canadians can least afford it is not popular. I know I've been going on a little while, but this is important. This is a podcast. You're not going on long. Okay. Keep explaining. Well, I do mainstream media interviews. And if I say more than three sentences, they jump right. Yeah, this is as far from mainstream as you're going to get. I'm more than a bunch. Keep going. Yeah. Of course. So anyway, if even with just two provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, passing legislation like this, and if it does hold up,

and it's my understanding that it will hold up, just those two provinces, if the federal government rolls out this confiscation program, they will be obligated to pay for every single firearm that they buy back or whatever confiscate. They'll have to pay compensation for it. So the government can take the first government option is just go ahead and run the program and who cares, right? But then all of their lawyers, and I think, my understanding is they have 1,800 lawyers, the federal government. I don't know where I got that number, but I think that's what it is. They'll, they or a group of them will say, be very careful. Because if you just say, who cares and just roll this program out, you may experience 20 to 50,000 individual lawsuits, the majority of them being

and small claims court, and you will pay for these guns, the easy way or the hard way, and you cannot send us to every corner of Alberta and Saskatchewan to represent these cases, and you'll lose on top of it. And apparently there's plenty of case precedent that says that this could work. Or the government says, fine, we'll just pay for them. Well, this would probably roll out across the country, and it wouldn't be a $742 million program, like they said. it will be a five plus billion dollar program, and that could cost the liberals an election.

And of course, that's all borrowed money, too, by the way. Or they could try the grandfathering route. Well, the grandfathering route still diminishes the value of all of this property, thus they would still have to compensate you because if you can't pass it down to anybody and you can't sell it, there's nobody to buy it because they can't resell it, you've diminished the value of the property again. Or, which is what I think is going to happen, they're just going to kick the can down the road.

Which means they'll say, you know, if I know politics at some level, they'll say, oh, well, you know, we tried our pilot. We've identified some problems. We're working on those and we'll be coming out very soon with a program. We're going to be rolling out across the country. Like they've been doing for five and a half years, right?

They got that guy Gary on it, man. I'm sure he's a whiz. Once he figures out what a firearm is. Gary Aber, Cadabra, whatever his name is. He's all over it. Abercadabra. I like that better than his actual name. Anand Sanjuri?

Anandisangri, yeah. Oh, Jesus. See, I'm getting better with the names. The first time I read it, it was close to Avercabra. Yeah. Anyways, so hopefully they do that. So I guess the upshot of everything I just said is this may be a viable option to get them to kick the can down the road to enable us to get to another election. so that we could take yet another swing at it, swing number five,

and hopefully we get it right this time and get a government in that's going to say, you know what, the open secret in Canada, that none of this has anything to do with criminal violence involving firearms, we're not going to play that game anymore. Here's everybody gets their stuff back, we're going to hammer the criminals, and everything will be fine.

That's my story. What do you think, Chuck? I think that's a lot of information I didn't know till Rod just explained it. about the way Saskatchewan has approached it and hopefully. I know Alberta, she's, I don't, Premier Smith has openly said a few things about how she's going to protect it. And I don't know if she's already stated something similar to this or, or if this is a new Saskatchewan thing, but this is, this is good news.

It gives me some hope. But we were talking earlier about the grandfathering stuff and how I had older relatives, uncles who had, they were grandfathered into having certain licenses wait and we were talking 30, 40 years ago now. like prohibit stuff and dealership stuff and antique stuff that was you couldn't even fathom having today but you couldn't they couldn't do anything with it so some of it might have got destroyed some of them might have passed on anyway i don't know but this is what this grandfathering thing is still is a it's a short-term fix at least as some sort of fix if that's the way it goes i hope that it i hope that

we just get back to where they hammer criminals because i think even the police chiefs and the the the the one fellow in Cape Britain, isn't he the brother-in-law of one of the ministers? And that's basically why they decided to trial it there. And nobody was basically coordinated with in that whole province at a law enforcement level to say, we're doing it here first, tomorrow kind of deal. Well, it actually gets better than that. Because we were told that one of the other, well, you know, there's that family connection there. It's a very small place.

It's an island. And it's only half the island. but apparently economically they're struggling there on Cape Breton. And so maybe it was the liberals thinking we're going to get better uptake because guys are going to be like,

yeah, I could really use $1,500 or whatever it is that they have that they could have turned in. So that was the best case scenario for them, right? Well, and I think the fact that the liberals haven't come out with, we got 3,000 weapons or name a number that they could have flouted

as being like, look how successful we are. the number I heard and it was on Twitter somewhere got I don't even know where was like they got 30 firearms out of the whole thing I'd like to meet the schmucks that turned that decided that was a thing to do like really I'm a little more an advocate of our what I consider rights to own a weapon even though in Canada's not considered a right I understand that I get that and but I've been to places where those rights and those We're taken away. We're smothered.

And you don't want that either. Like do you only have, especially you watch the news now and the cop response time in some rural areas. They didn't show up to the next morning when that recent, there's in the news recently when dude, I was like, we've got home invaders. Okay, we'll be there at eight in the morning. This is like 10 at night. Are you kidding me? That's your response time. So should I just negotiate?

Just give them all my shit. I left my car keys at the front door like I was told by, you know, Doug four. Cops. Like, that isn't me. It's not most Albertans of Saskatchewan people. It's, it's not how I've ever been. I'm not doing that.

Well, and if, uh, you know, I think it was on the mashup where we were, we watched Australia have the machete ban. And then they set up machete drop boxes and yeah, they've had a real spree of machete crime and violence. And if you're, if I'm learning anything about any government, is it always starts off with, oh, we're just going to take this weapon. That's the culprit. And then it'll be another and then another and another.

And when they get rid of all the guns, Australia, then it'll be sharp knives and on and on and on. And they just won't stop. It'll just, it'll just go. Until eventually you'll have a spork and nothing else in your kitchen. Right. And they'll find a way to make the spork a dangerous. Oh, it's got to be this, you know, the crappy wood ones that fall, you know. Like eventually that's where it gets to.

And you go, I can't get there. It's like, well, if you go, back a hundred years and ever thought of relinquishing your firearms you would have why would we do that it's just part of life and yeah you take it away from criminals yeah you do things criminals we're just in a strange realm of Canada right now where you know like criminals are let out and then they go off to do really bad things and then they point to legal firearm owners as the culprit and I think it's becoming I think it's becoming more and more known and and pointed to you like that doesn't make any

sense. Why would you attack legal firearm owners for violent crime and all the criminal underworld wouldn't be legally firearm owners? Well, if they came for any of the three of us as legal gun owners, if they came for the three of us at some point to take our legally owned and stored and used weaponry, we would face harsher charges and sentences than the criminals you see in Toronto literally getting picked up for an attempted murder. or a murder with an illegal firearm and then being released on bail that very day, only to do it again and again and again. And this isn't a one-e or a one-z-ovi.

This is a multiple, multiple, multiple. Well, I know. On the mash-up, we've been following this since the Coots Boys got six and a half. Tamara and Chris. Right? And Tamara and Chris, 18 months of house arrest. I worked in corrections for 10 years after the Army, or almost 10 years after the Army. And I've seen murderers and rapists walk after.

consequential time as compared to what those guys got. There's nothing but a political stunt and a political hunt for those guys. But you don't even have to light guns. You don't even have to have a gun. But you'd better understand, especially if you're watching the, I hate, this is weird to say, the ostrich situation in BC, but if you're not watching what they're doing to the property rights of those people and the neighboring farm getting kicked into the whole thing too, as part of the property right thing.

You want to believe that there's a separation and mentality that we have with the Americans about guns. I get that. But we better stop poo-pooing their mentality about it and maybe adopt a little bit of a, we have a right to certain things. We certainly seem to have a lot of rights for ridiculous things in this country, you know, that people seem entitled to have. If I want to be able to go plink paper or knock down some meat in the woods for myself and my family, I think, I think as a law-abiding citizen, I've earned that plus some. Everything I have was legal at one point until the government said, no, no, no, no, I've only ever stored it legally. I've only ever done things legally with it. And if there's ever been candidates for ticking time bombs in the country, which are never ticking time bombs, is combat veterans.

I don't know of a single combat veteran that's, you know, not saying they're all law-binding guys all the time and they don't get into trouble. But you don't see them running around doing stupid stuff with guns. It's this criminal element that we all know where that's at. Rod, how long have you been in the gun world? The gun world or advocating. Advocating. Advocating 10 years. Okay, 10 years.

Chuck, you were in the military for 20 plus. And, you know, when you two look at Canada, you're 10 plus, you're 20 plus, how many times have they come for guns? Like, how many times is this, you know, like, it's on my radar now. And I'm sure if I talk to somebody older than me, they're going to say, well, actually, you've got to go back to this year and then they did that time. And how many times have they slowly chipped away at? It's every election cycle. They chip it. The long gun registry, I don't remember how.

long ago that was no. So that was that was brought into law in the mid 90s. Yeah. And then it was actually implemented somewhere in the early 2000s and was eventually ended. But it was the the early 90s, of course, after the shooting at a co-pella technique, that was when, you know, a lot of things changed and it was drastic change. But then after Nova Scotia was the and of course, every time I even say that. It just really eats at me because, of course, I was part of the Mass Casualty Commission, right? I was, I had standing in that commission. And so I got the evidence package before the public got it. And not a single firearm was used that was sourced domestically. They were all smuggled. So the, all the bans and Bill C-21 and everything else that the liberals

brought forward as a response, not a single. And I said this, I did two. presentations to the commission during that that whole thing not a single law not a single ban not a single regulation nothing would have had anything to do with what happened there like it's physically impossible it's not a political opinion or an expert opinion it's like just it just wouldn't because this was an individual that acted completely outside of the system and it's funny let me just add this i don't even know how relevant it is just kind of an interesting fact we were um we had standing as a participant in the commission. We could have applied for funding.

And I just looked at that and we're not going to do any funding. Like this is my job to be there, like flat out. So we didn't charge anything. My report was like six pages because it's very, very simple. The coalition for gun control had standing in that committee. They billed for a quarter million dollars, had a legal, you know, had a lawyer there paid by the taxpayer to come up with some ridiculous 100, some odd page report.

And all it just said was do everything that the liberal say for Bill C-21, which has nothing to do with anything that would have had any bearing on the event. It was just to support the government at the time, the Trudeau government, a quarter million dollars, something like that or 200,000. But yeah, just kind of an interesting thing. This is what goes on with gun politics in Canada. It's you would laugh if you weren't too busy crying. You know, and Chuck isn't running around here going, we all need machine guns.

No, we don't. You need, what I think we need is the stuff that we've had the privilege and what I think is the right to own for this last, you know, 20, 30, this last generation's worth of weapons. Most of these battle rifles that the liberals like to call battle rifles have never been used in any mass casualty event or legally, it wasn't some legal owner doing it in the first place. We have some, you know better than anyone, the most, some of the most stringent, you know, guidelines to getting your licensing. Anybody that's gotten a license note, we're all in a list once. If you have an R-Powl, you're pinged every day, you know, you're put through the system every day.

And I'm not, I have no problem with that. Keep it above board. But taking all the stuff away historically does not lead to a good path. And I've had the experience of seeing it firsthand. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't, I don't care about the, the gun buyback thing. They're not buying, but they didn't sell me the gun in the first place. They're not buying back something that they sold me.

No, I spent a lifetime accruing. Some of these things are things and I'm sure we're all, everybody listening, who's got older relatives who've passed on things, some of this momentos. This is a family heirloom on some level, some of this stuff. I'm not giving that up. I'm not giving nothing up. Not ever. We buy back whatever they fuck they think they want.

They're not getting nothing. That's, that's a red line. Nice going, Sean. That's a red line. It's, it, it cannot happen. This country, you know, you can, you might hate guns. If you're the one guy out there listening to Sean's podcast, it's like, well, I fucking hate guns and I don't think anybody should have guns.

That's great. You're going to wish should the government get to that point that somebody had that ability. I've been in the countries where only a handful of those people did. And they're the one still kicking after everybody else got putting, putting a, put in a ditch somewhere. You don't want the government to be the only people with firearms. And I'm not, the other people out there on the other side of that guy are out there,

let's have a coup and a revolution. No, no, no, no. That's not what Chuck's saying either. This is property I bought legally. I use legally. I'm going to continue to do that legally. Stop coming from my shit and go after criminals. And interestingly enough, again, back to Nova Scotia,

The only people to survive in interaction with the perpetrator of all the interactions he had in that 24 hours were the gun owners. The guy who had a shotgun at the ready yelling at the door when the perpetrator walked around back of their house, yelling at the door, I have a gun, you come in here and I'm going to kill you. And I'm paraphrasing. And those are the two people that survived an interaction with, you know. And I brought that up as well. but it's, you know, it's not about the truth. No.

We need Castle law as well. We need to go a step further. If the West could get its shit together and go its own way, we could have carry laws, we could have Castle laws. We could be able to actually do something instead of waiting. And sure, that's one example of the cops taking 10 hours to show up. It's not the only one and 10 hours is extreme by any measure. The further you live out in the countryside, the more use.

But even in town, even in an urban setting, it ain't quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's this perceived notion that you're safe because you have people around. Yeah, you have people around. Yeah, and even if they're showing up in seven, eight, nine, ten minutes, they're showing up after the event. Yeah. A lot of that stuff's 90 seconds.

Yeah. They're in, they're out, you're done. Talking about Nova Scotia. I didn't know, you know, like having like the briefing before the public and understanding all the facts. and then seeing how distorted they become. The only word I can think of Rod is that must make you awfully cynical when you see how the government portrays something to what it actually is. And I mean, I feel like I'm speaking to the choir.

But that's got to leave a guy awfully cynical. Yeah. I have extensive experience in that. You know, it's funny. I look at my own ex, you know, Twitter, right? look at my own X-feed. I think I've said this before. Anybody that's followed our stuff

has probably heard me say this before. So it might sound a little bit tired. But when we first started the CCFR 10 years ago, like I'm responsible for that organization, right? So we were super careful. Because back then, cancel culture actually was, it was serious, right? You'd get canceled and your credibility's gone.

So we were extremely careful and very disciplined in our messaging and all the rest of that stuff. And, you know, I would chastise anyone that, you know, represented the CCFR, you know, poorly, let their emotions get the best of them. And now I look at my X-Feed and I'm like, man, today's rod would have fired the old rod for sure, right? I would have fired me in a second because it's just I'm done with it. And oddly enough, kind of, I guess one of the, some silver lining, I think, I think most people are done with it. Now nobody cares what you get called. It's like, you know what?

You've worn it out. No, they've called us everything. Everything. You've made all of those things meaningless now. When those names or labels or whatever used to actually mean something, now they are meaningless. They're just, all they mean is, I disagree with you. Yeah.

And now I'm, you know, I look at my own feed and I'm like, A, it's negative, right? I can see it. I can feel it. So I try. I'm like, okay, maybe you shouldn't say anything negative today just in general. But just, yeah, the, I see it in myself. because nothing is real. I've been the recipient of fully coordinated nationwide mainstream media smear campaigns.

And I'm like, at the end of the day, I'm like, nobody, right? I'm like, I'm not really anybody of consequence. But I see the effort. It's like you stick your head up and you're going to get hammered down. And it's all the people that are supposed to blow the whistle when the government is misbehaving or corruption or, you know, and they're the ones that are all doing it with the government, and I've lived it. Like, it's real.

So this is why you have this plummeting trust in institutions. It's their own fault and it's for good reason. I would say you are a person of consequence. That's why they attack you because of what you stand for and how well you, you know, one of the cool things for me this weekend, right? And what I love about meeting people firsthand is you get to see how people interact. And specifically with you, you know, being a proffer river. and listening in the conversations

and even today's shooting. I'm probably going to butcher this, but what I found very interesting is people came up and just said, you're so balanced, you're so well-spoken, you don't go off the deep end, you know,

and all these are like very, you're just very good at it. You've done a very good job of championing our rights, essentially. Now, I'm paraphrasing a whole bunch of different people, but it was over and over and over again. And to me,

That is why they wait for their opportunity to attack you because you are a person of consequence and because you are balanced and because you can't write rod off. You're like, no, he may make some good points. Well, let's wait for him to make a misstep and then let's attack him. To me, that's exactly why they attack you is to try and smear you so nobody else will go listen. The problem with the smears now is people probably like myself. I see the smear and I'm like, what the heck did this person do? I better talk to them because you don't get smeared unless you have something to say. And to me, I don't know, folks, how many people have we had on this show now

that have had a nationwide smear campaign and you bring them on and they talk some sense and you're like, hmm, I see it. You're a person of consequence and they found something that you'd said and they didn't like it and they come after you, you know? The other thing I was just thinking is me and you've had this chat multiple times. I think Chuck would agree. And that is lists, right? We're all petrified of being on list.

Well, if you're a pal, you're on the list. And you're already talking about. They're pinging you all the time. They're pinging you all the time. I'm on, you're on list, you're on list. I'm on list. If you're listening, you're probably on a fucking list of some sort. Just alphabetically or whatever.

Well, and the government with all these new bills is trying to get even more of the list, right? If you're listening to X, you got to give out your, if you're, what, how are they term in that? If you're, uh, uh, I'm going to, uh, I'm going to, to butcher this is it a media and you got an email list they're they're trying to get you to hand that over they want to see who's listening who's a part of and so i keep saying to people i'm going to say it again and i heard one of the guys say after you listened to us talk last time he went and bought his ccfr membership right is we got to get on the right list that's that's part of the the the we're already on all the other list so what is it 40 bucks and five million insurance in liability

insurance yeah it's it's not a lot and you know i don't like I don't do a lot of high pressure sales, you know, because I think you should just look at our organization and go, okay, what have you done? You can just go to the website, click why join, scroll down to the bottom. That's the most recent stuff. And just go, okay, are these guys worth supporting? You know, and so I like that to speak for itself. But it's always, I think, with any political cause or anything, it's always a small group of people doing everything and the large group of people doing very little. And I just think we're so much more powerful

when you have a large group of people doing just a little bit. Nobody gets fatigued. Nobody's out too much. You know, activism takes some work and a little bit of commitment. But if a lot of people are doing it, many hands make quick work. I think we have something close to 2.5 million legal gun owners

in the country somewhere in that number. So if we could, you know, if you're listening, this is Chuck's hard sell, Get a, get a membership. Yeah, me and Chucker here with the pressure cell. Get the membership because if there was, say we got 1.5 of that 2.4 million, I don't think there's a bigger lobbying group in the country at that point. And probably our government looks down at the NRA in the states and goes, well, geez,

that is a powerful lobbying organization. I'm not just saying we need to be the NRA by any stretch. That's its own, America's its own beast. I'm just saying as a comparative, we need those numbers so that Rod then has clout to be, if he's going to get shit smeared by the met, he at least should have the clout to be able to go, okay, go ahead, you know. You also have the clout to walk in any politician. I just firmly believe, you know, the more I watch politicians,

they operate off of voting bases. And if you get to speak for a large voting base, I look at the APP. What is, you know, forgive me Mitch and others. I can't remember the number. Is it 270,000? is 250,000, it doesn't matter. I mean, it does matter, but, you know, it's a lot. And what do they get to do?

They get time to explain their case because they have a ton of people that are following what they're doing. They speak for a ton of upset Albertans, almost slipped Americans. We're not there yet, folks. And I look at gun owners and I go, a ton of you are wonderful people.

And you just haven't spent the 40 bucks on a membership so that you can give Rod the bigger voice to go, listen, we got one million people, we got 200,000, we got 800,000 people, they're upset, they want this gone. And politicians, they move by numbers. That is the game, is it not? And as an industry, the gun industry is not,

or it was not a small industry in this country until, like even where in Warrenville, the little family-owned gun store there, it went kaput, and so did. so many other little stores after this liberal stuff happened. Well, and gun ranges. Haven't we noticed, you know, like, I go back to when we were trying to get you, invited you to the cornerstone, you graciously accepted.

And then I'm like, you know, it would be really cool if we could put together a little fire rain, you know, go to the indoor range or a range and shoot some guns with some military guys, just like we did today. And in Calgary, and I'm sure I'm going to get a bunch of decks of this one's open then the one's open and everything's open. But a few closed down. And you're like, oh. So you're a gun owner.

You want your guns. But you're going to have to go on a list to me and vote and do the right things to give power to that. And if you don't want to do anything, it's like, we'll spend 40 bucks. Make the list bigger. You're already on a list of fighting against you because they're using, the government's using everything against you. Like, I mean, that story on Nova Scot. How you go? All the guns were illegal. Well, I don't know. Did we all hear that? I'm sure we did. But we didn't hear that from the government. We didn't hear that the media, right? We didn't hear that. Yeah, we didn't hear that the two that survived were the gun owners legally is saying get off my property or kill you. You know, like that is important information, I think for the audience. And I am a I am a salesman by trade and I don't think me and Chuck have any problem saying, you know what? Spend 40 bucks. And, uh, And I'll put the, where do they go?

CCFR.com. CCFr.com. Ccfr.cfr.ca. dot CA. Or we have the app. We have a mobile app. That doesn't track your information or anything, but we have a mobile app. I'll put, I'll put the link in the show notes.

That way it's just easy. You just scroll down, go click it and go sell a few more. Because, I mean, like, to me, it seems like the easiest thing to do, and you get put on the right list. That's why everybody signed up for the APP, I think. They wanted that number to be something the government couldn't ignore. And I would say Daniel Smith can't ignore. She can't.

It's that big. You look at the, just the gun community today. And shout out to Tracy Wilson. I see her on Twitter all the time. You got advocates like her who are just brilliant, you know, great spokesman for the community. But even today, at a small town, middle and nowhere, off the side of a cooley, you know, range. And there's 35, 40 people. With all due respect.

Yeah, it was a great spot. Beautiful spot. Nice to be you. Stand fantastic RSOs out there today. every the not everybody that showed up there up there today was a gun person and had a couple of them and never fired a gun they all had a great time nobody felt you know egoed out of the room or anything that's the gun community i'm used to i'm sure you're used to you're used to you're used to it's just normal people who like putting holes and targets you know showing who's a little

better that one day than the next day um i'm i'm usually pretty fantastic but like this that's what it's about that's the community that that that builds the gun community the the the the probably true it's probably true I was I was sober today that is what it's about is that and that's what I grew up with was that kind of a community who just appreciated what those tools was Terry Bryant the Alberta Chief Firearms officer when she was on the podcast that's what she was talking about was was the community that there's just this community of firearms enthusiasts that just want to get together and hang out.

It's, you know, like we keep coming back to this community thing. Firearms owners, if you're, you know, it's one big community. I look at the CCFR as just another community that's vocal for advocating for that community, right? And so we just got to grow the community. And, you know, I just, you know, the podcast and CCFR just have so many common, you know, like we're so similar, right? So like if you're a gun owner. I bet a third of the folks out there today were women.

You know, it's not some all tattooed assholes like me. It the whole community, like look at the one or so. It was quite, and we had some kids out there. There was a few younger folks. Yeah. Yeah, it was super cool. That's the community. It's families.

It's everybody like that. And that's what makes it unique and special. Oh, and that's probably why they don't want it. Yeah, it's traditional. Can we talk about shooting a handgun for a second? And how did just a confidence killer? Man, alive. I was saying this to you guys at supper.

Like, I've never, all my life, I never shot a handgun. I don't know why. I just, you know, I guess we always had rifles, shotguns, 22s, you know, I started on a pellet gun and on and on and on. And so, you know, I just assumed a handgun was going to be not John Wick. I didn't think I was going to be John Wick, but I didn't think I was going to be the guy who picks it up and can't hit the target. I was way better today. But the first time I did it, man, alive. that is that is a unique skill am i wrong in that it's not easy shooting handguns difficult right

because the barrel's so short so doesn't take a lot of variance to two millimeters in your hand equals you know two feet you know 25 meters away so it's it's it's very challenging that's one of the reasons why it's it's so much fun because you don't have to go drive drive a target out to 400 meters to for any maybe not for you but for me to drive it's to drive a out 30, 40 meters to shoot something with a rifle accurately. But yeah, you don't have to go 700 meters to have a challenge. You know, you go 40 feet. Yeah, you can do it.

You saw how close those target, they had a 20, 40, 6, whatever feet. 20 feet that's, you're looking at that going. And then you look through your sight aperture. Like, holy shit, that's way out there. You know, when it's a handgun. Cause like you, that barrel just moves a little bit. And if you're shaking a little bit or, you know, you're moving. You're moving.

It's, your breathing's not right. All of it. There's so much, all that. All that influences long gun shooting too, but it's so much more amplified with handgun. You know, and I can shoot decently, but I'm not, you know, that takes so much more time and effort than I've put into handguns in my whole life too. And I, you know, give me a rifle and I'm, I'm not going to have any issues comparing to someone. But handgun is, that's a beast. And there's a few folks out there today.

I watched the one fella, now he supported himself on the bench, but that dude was driving tax. I don't know his name, younger fella. that dude was good. You know, he was patient and good. He had it all. He had done this before, you know, a lot. And you can see that. You know, he's put, you know, where somebody's put a couple hundred rounds down range,

he's put a few thousand rounds down range. And he, he was a young guy there putting it today. He was on, I think the last relay on the left hand side, um, younger fella. And he was leaning on the bench, you know, for support, which is good. But he was tack driving. Like, I mean, he was, you know, this here, like, again, again, he was putting some rounds in that same spot. That's a skill.

Like that dude's got some skill. And he's, it's probably not natural on some level, but he's put the effort in too, and you can see it. And there's some other good shooters there, too. There are some, you know,

the two younger fellows I went out there with, um, they had some experience with handguns and they were just fine with what they're doing. You know, everybody was good. And everybody had a good time. There was no ego running around the room. I know a lot of people when they're new to guns.

Like, well, I'd like to, but, you know, it's like, Yeah, it's like going into the gym for the gym or, 100%.

It's an intimidating thing. It can be if you're not used to it, right? I've brought out a lot of first-time shooters. I'm sure you have too, and they become the biggest addict to it as soon as they realize it's not biting them. As long as they respect the tool, the tool is going to work for them. And I think that a few of the first-timers out there today had that experience. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, once again, I've never done anything like we did today.

So that is completely out of my realm. I didn't know, you know, I just sticking out. I'm like, well, I know Chuck and I know Rod and I, you know, you speak so highly of your first time shooting with a military guy. It's like, well, we could, we could do that. You know, we had a shout out to Liz and Neil who drove from Calgary. Yeah. Oh, wow. Steve and Blake and the two boys drove from Saskatoon, you know.

Kevin was in from Edson. Mm-hmm. You know, like, you think about that. There's some driving there, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there was some driving. And I, they all seemed extremely happy about it. Like, I mean, it was an interesting atmosphere. And in the gully, like, you walked out of that place.

I'm like, this is like a, in the right circumstance. That's like a $10 million of view. Oh, dude. Yeah. Like, I mean, I can't speak highly. I've lived here all my life. I've never been there before. Beautiful little range.

Great people. I've been to ranges where the RSOs are a little. Difficult? Difficult. You know? And these ones, they have. Detail oriented. Detail oriented.

Yeah. And I get it. I RSOed in the army. Anybody that did Army ranges, if you got ranked up, you RSOed. And I can get that it can be stressful. Um, I get it. But these folks were safety conscious, but, you know, also let the let it let people, uh, enjoy the moment as well. And nothing was unsafe.

Nothing was untoward. They just didn't overstep where they'd obviously had the experiences, a lot of experience doing some RSO work. And, you know, it wasn't a small crowd in there. There was eight guys on the line, eight people. on the line plus another 20 30 people in the background in the other room and they handled it like champs I thought it was very well run everybody had a great talk I mean talking to everybody there was a lot of fun so everybody I met

today again great seeing everybody and it seemed you know meeting Rod for the second time too you know it's a great privilege for me too because like we were talking about earlier at Sepronnet I I used a lot of us army guys watched you on civil advantage you know doing gun reviews and stuff like we I think kind of where you got kick started and we're all like the fucking guy actually knows what he's talking about, you know, and for, and there's a lot of, you shot with an army guy before and there can be some duds out there, let me tell you, um, but I'm glad you had that experience and maybe that prompted you to get into it because,

uh, you've done more for our side of things than anybody has. And, you know, I don't know how you're not more cynical or beat up or I'm sure you have your days, but keep doing what you're doing because you're carrying us along with you. I was going to say I don't take compliments very well I'll call you a shithead later okay I'll equal it actually

now's fine I'll equal with it I would well there's a reason why you know you know as we plan Cornerstone 2026 you know when I'm looking for podcast guests that come on

that I think would be worthwhile to have the Cornerstone there's a ton but you only get 13 speakers or at least that's what this last one was and what shocked me about your story was, you know, and people should go back and listen to that podcast if you haven't. And I'll paraphrase and you can, you can explain the story again, which might be beneficial.

But what stunned me about it was you weren't this big gun guy. You were, you know, once again, I'm sure you had shotguns up to that point, but you weren't this big gun enthusiast. Then you're down. No, I'd never shot a gun. There you go. And you go with a military guy. You have an experience.

You go to the hotel, which I think was an hour away. you sit there and you can't you can't shake it and then you go back and you keep shooting and then you go on to create the CCFR and I'm like wow that is that's a profound story

I can't quite fully understand because I come from a background of living on the farm and you know and you're probably laughing at me today as I was telling you know five grandma giving me the shotgun and you know and trying to blow away a squirrel and I'm sure he died of laughter

this little boy trying to hit, you know, it can barely hold the gun up. And so I just come from a different world. And I hear that story. And I don't hear stories like that on the podcast near enough where you're like, something profoundly changed in a very healthy way, in my opinion, from somebody who'd never shot a gun to now lobbying for legal firearms. I'm like, that's an incredible story. Yeah. Well, I, like I think it is too, because it's almost, uh, when you think of it in reverse, it's almost like a like a tale of fate. Yeah.

Like that's why I think it was just. And again, as part of the story, if anyone can ever find that episode, because I mean, it's around now you're searching for something. Oh, I thought you're going to distribute more silver.

He's just looking at his phone. If you get him drunk, he'll forget that he gave you one. Just say, hey, he didn't give me one. Exactly. But he doesn't drink anymore.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, one of the interesting parts So that whole story was that the, my liaison, my, my business liaison with the U.S. military at the time had no idea that that happened till like literally two and a half years ago when I reconnected with them.

Well, he reconnected with me just saying, hey, I haven't seen you and whatever. Like we weren't, it didn't have a longstanding relationship, but we had worked together. And then I'm like, I have, you know, I've been thinking about you. Lieutenant Major Paul Mangum of the U.S. Marine Corps. And I said, I've been thinking about you. I thought about you several times, but I never reached out. Let me know when you have a minute to talk. Did you hear the story?

No. Oh. Well, I don't want to recount it all now. No, you should. Yeah. Absolutely. So before you recount it, if people want to go back and listen to the podcast, remember I was saying it was close to the Cornerstone Forum this year?

It was December 2nd. That's when I had you on, episode 755. So if people go back or want to go back and listen to our first time we ever met, virtually, you talk about this story. And I get off and I'm like, that is, huh. Rod, you should come talk. You know, I put you in the realm of Chris Sims. The first time I ever had Chris Sims on, before she was done, I already had thought she was

coming to speak in my next event. And that was back in 2023, if memory serves me correct. Carry on. Anyways. That was not a year ago. No. I feel like that was like two and a half years ago. No.

We haven't known. Like, I had seen your stuff online. He has that effect on. But I had, I had Tracy Wilson on before you. And we, I can't remember who put us in contact. Sean Alexander, maybe?

Yes. That's exactly who it was. I think it was Sean. He said you should have Rod on. I would love to have them on. I've never had them on before. Then you came on and I was blown away with the story. And then I invite you to the.

to the cornerstone. Let them tell the Marine story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Chuck's waiting on pins. All right, all right. Well, the condensed version is... No, you can't do condensed version.

Just tell the story. I worked in business development before the CCFR. So I would work with Canadian manufacturers and build distribution channels for them in the United States. So I did that for quite a while. And I had... And there was nothing exciting. It was building controls.

Like HVAC, lighting, air conditioning, that kind of stuff. right so i was working with the u.s marine corps the air force some national guard because it's different in every state um and someone else to the navy and so um when you work with the military at least in the united states your liaison to the military usually retired military right that's how they you know help them whatever and so i was paired up with um lieutenant major paul mangum who was Marine Corps major. And we were, we went to a couple of different bases to sell stuff, right? Went to Vanneberg Air Force Base, which is part of the space wing for the Air Force.

That was the other branch of the service I was trying to think. So that was kind of cool. And we went to Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, which is in Oceanside, California, about 60 miles north of San Diego. You know, I'm getting to know Paul fairly well. It's, you know, in business, right? you know, building a relationship. We had gone out to Denny's,

and a bunch of the guys there that we were talking with, there were some other HVAC contractors and stuff, and a bunch of them were service guys. And so it ended up to be some talk about firearms, and they're like, you guys have no firearms up there, do you? I'm like, I wouldn't know that. I've never shot a gun, you know, never really even seen a real gun before,

other than, you know, on the hip of a police officer or whatever. And they're like, oh, you know, and they start hitting me up with, all these American, you know, guns don't kill people, people kill people, guns equal freedom stuff. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I know you guys, right? All your guns, right? Because I was typical.

I grew up in the city. I just never had any exposure to that. So anyway, we go do our thing at Pendleton. And he takes me to the trap range or skit. I don't know the ones where they go across. Well, this can be considered skeet, the complex ski range, yeah. Yeah, well, the old Marines are there. And so they make all those facilities available to all the best.

veteran so retired guys can just roll in onto the base and use this this awesome range and there's like just powder right like I'm like oh this must be easy so he's like let's shoot I fairly fairly intelligent I should be able to nail this so anyway I got to shoot a shotgun and I don't know and probably hit you know 5% of whatever I was aimed at and I was like my shoulder and tear rolls down but I swept it away quickly enough. And so I was like, yeah, it's all right. And then I said to Paul, you know what I'd really like to do is shoot a handgun. And he says, well, it just so happens that there's a range right outside the gates of Pendleton, you know, five minutes from the gates. And you can rent a handgun for $5. And I'm like, God bless America. Let's go down there, right? So this was, and the place is still

there. I checked. It's called iron sights. And so, wait a second. I think something they did with me might have been illegal, so I have to be careful. So I'm just kidding. Allegedly. Allegedly. So anyway, we go down there and the place is full of guns and I'm getting stressed because I'm like, this is a lot of guns around, right? And I just didn't know how to deal with all that.

Like I just never saw it. I mean, I've seen, you know, AR-15s and handguns and all the stuff. And the girl at the counter, about the size of my wife, about five feet, she was packing a pistol. And I said to Paul, like, is, I'm like, is that loaded? He's like, yeah, it's no good. It won't do anything if it's not loaded, right? And I was like, that just doesn't seem safe to me.

So we get a couple of Glock model 17s. Well, he had a Glock 22 because it was 40 Cal because he had one of those at home. But 17 for me got ammo. And she just throws the pistols in this little carry-all thing. And I'm like, what is going on? We go in there. He gives me a little safety course. And I started shooting this thing.

And 9mm is a fairly high pressure round. So, I mean, pistols jump around a little bit, right? And just sweat and like, I was under a lot of stress because it was stressful. And it took 60 rounds because I remember, I was sort of counting. And then I settled right down. And then we shot maybe, I don't know, 300. And it was just really, really interesting. And the wheels were turning and I didn't know why.

Anyway, say goodbye to my client. I drive in the rental car 60 miles down to San Diego where my hotel room was. no music on, no nothing, 80 miles an hour, just staring at the road. And I'm like, what is going on? Like I had some weird emotional response to it. Got to my hotel room. And I was allowed because I'd gone there with military to get a range ID there. Because I guess, I don't know, Iron Sight's probably going to get into trouble.

Hopefully I don't cause them trouble. But you can't rent a handgun in the state of California without, you can't rent a handgun without going with somebody. You can't go there by yourself and rent. You have to bring your own gun. Or you have to have more than one person. So they gave me a range ID. And so I could go back there.

And so I got to the hotel room and I just stood there through my, you know, my laptop down on the, you know, wherever. And I just stood there and I just was thinking. So I changed into my street clothes out of my suit and I drove all the way back an hour there again and shot another 300 by myself. And I was just like, I need to find out if I can have guns in Canada. Yeah, because you're in the States right now. Yeah, it did something to me, right? I'm like, why do I feel so different having just shot whatever, right? 400 rounds in this day.

So I came back to Canada and got a PAL. First gun was a Glock Model 17, 9mm semi-automatic handgun. I started taking pistol courses and I just got super hyper interested in it. And then, I guess, fast forward, a neighbor of mine, we bought a house in Chilliwack, British Columbia, my neighbor was an ERT team leader and had a really big resume that way. And he was also an entrepreneur. He had a training company that was law enforcement only, for which he did some munition training and all kinds of stuff.

He knew that I was an entrepreneur. He says, hey, do you think civilians would like to learn about room entry training? and, you know, warrant service and cool stuff like that. I'm like, give me a week. I scribbled together a business plan for civil advantage firearms training. We started that business together. That went, it was a hobby business, but, you know, that's where the channel first came from. And then we were running these courses and we were doing simulation training.

Great fun, yeah. Well, no civilians get that anywhere. And I still don't think in Canada. Probably not available to civilians anywhere. Well, it was a little, some kind of outlawful. days where we had that available for people. So we ran a lot of courses. I became a firearm safety course instructor just to augment the business. And then had that YouTube channel, which at one point was the largest Canadian firearm-related YouTube channel, which was, you know, these were

early days of YouTube. And then eventually, I got involved with another firearm organization. I was involved with them for about four months. It wasn't the place for me. We'll just leave that there. It wasn't the place for a lot of people actually at that time. And so I got recruited to be the first president of this new organization, the CCFR. And I said no, but the guy that was recruiting me wouldn't take no for an answer. He kept going. And I ended up accepting that. And I said I would do it for a year to get it going because I was familiar with startups, right?

Technology startups generally. And the rest is history. And then, of course, like I said, a couple of years ago, now after what should, what Sean said, it probably was like two months ago and I think it was two and a half years ago. But, you know, Lieutenant Major Mangum reaches back out and I'm like, have I got a story for you? No doubt. That guy taking me shooting the one time 15 years ago resulted in a firearm business being created. Your YouTube channel.

YouTube channel and then the largest lobby, you know, firearm lobby group in the history of the country all happening. because of him taking me shooting. And so I laid that story on him because he was a real like firearm rights enthusiast too. So he just absolutely loved it. You know, have you ever had him on CCFR? No. You should.

Yeah, it's a good idea. You know, because I sit here as a podcaster. I'm like, man, what would that look like on a podcast? I'd love to have both of you on the show together. Like, you know, because you just never know what one interaction with any one person can lead to in life. Absolutely, yeah. Like, that's the beauty of it.

And the beauty of your story is, I mean, there's multiple parts. But it's interesting to me, you had no background in guns. I've never seen a gun. No interest. Right. It really didn't have any interest. And all of a sudden, something just clicked. Like, to me, that's a profound experience.

And it changes the course of your life. And I might argue, a ton of Canadians lives. too because now you have a guy lobbying for you that almost comes from the other side, you know, was indifferent, I guess would be the easiest way to say it. And now is putting it on his shoulders, among others,

I know you don't work alone. We talk a lot on the show about Tracy Wilson. Like she's fantastic, right? But it's pretty incredible when you think about that story, right? One guy takes you out, takes the time to go out. And it's better, I think, I think it's more fitting or maybe fate driven that Rod's path was that path where, you know, guys like so many of us, that, that any far arm was considered a tool. It wasn't exciting to us as a

kid. I mean, when you're a little kid, sure, maybe for a minute, but it just becomes a tool, you know, as a kid or it's on the farm. It's just something in the truck or the tractor for, you know, if the bad thing comes, you know, comes at you. That's just the way it is. Or if you want to knock down something for lunch or dinner, you have your tool. Most of us at that point, that, you know, as that, is your, our background story,

didn't feel a need to protect something that we just thought was ingrained in us, ingrained in what we grew up with. And then you had your experience and probably better that it came from Americans, to be honest, where they're like America, you know, guns, America and the freedom of America. All that BS that they do. And I'm not, I'm saying it BS, but I, I kind of,

I rally to it as well because it's why they have what they have. You know, at this point, they're not wrong. They're not wrong. And I'm not saying we got to go full NRA and hurrah, but we probably got to get a little louder and give Rod the list support required to protect our, what I'm going to call them rights again. Because if these other. Well, we just know the liberal government or the government in general, it's probably a liberal government government. is going to continue to slow road this.

This is why you've both been in this long enough and you go, well, it started here and then a couple of years goes by and it just, oh, and then Nova Scotia happens and you go, it wasn't legal, legal firearms owner, wasn't legal guns, right? It doesn't matter. And it didn't matter.

It didn't matter. And so you go, it will happen again and they will point to legal firearms owners as the culprits. Who's the next province they're going to roll this out on? It's going to be another maritime province, in my opinion. They're not going to pick Alberta or Saskatchewan because they won't get 30 guns.

They won't get three guns, you know, they'll get fuck off, you know. But they're going to do it again with some tweaks and some massaging and say, well, let's see how this works. And Gary's probably going, what is a gun? But I'm going to now attempt to take more of your guns away. What's a pal? When you did that interview and said, you didn't even know what an our pal was or a pal or an our pal. Like, and you're the dude who's all. a list for 10 years with the RCMP about Tamil Tiger stuff that whole how is this guy is a

sitting MP is he's on a few lists himself he is but those don't matter but me you and a couple other farm it's a South it's it's a South Park episode we are I mean we do we do show up on there quite often but like we deserve to we're a South Park episode we deserve to the best meme I've seen in the last little bit tool one one one one Doug Ford being bubbles. Oh, that was a good one. Man alive. Whoever did that, hats off.

I can't unsee it now. Yeah, that's right. This is great. And the next one was Carney being in the dugout of the Toronto Blue Jays. And he and everybody started pointing to Mr. Burns in the episode where he's got all the heavy hitters and Homer on that team. And he's sitting there giving him the speech. I'm like, somebody's going to come out with a great meme. A great meme.

I'm going to be here for it. When it's Mr. Burns and Bubbles having like a, you know AI is. going to build it for somebody, right? Those two are going to come out. Because, yeah, I mean, it's just, we're a South Park episode. Just full stop. Yeah, well, that's true. We're not a real country.

Not anymore. Not right now, no. It's pretty bad. And, you know, when, you know, people like Chuck say, you know, this isn't about this or it isn't about that or where other people go, we're not the problem. Like, I'm so far past that, having been, like, when we started, yeah, that was the argument. Yeah. But it's now, now where we are is you, I've completely accepted that the, the government is hopelessly corrupt and that they, there's no lie or no,

no statement too ridiculous for them to put out there. Like it's so, it's like a parody now. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's just like it's so far beyond anything you can even believe. And they're, they're doing that for the benefit of the handful of Canadians that are so broken that they would still believe what the liberal government says seven people who still watch cbc yeah they got to pump something to them did you see well enough to win an election enough to win an election yeah but thank you ontario yeah it's so so far past any any like actual argument or oh yeah i have to be skilled to argue you know what i mean it's just now just like they just talk about some crazy idea and they're just like yep cbc says it so the government has the same story people believe it because

because they're so exhausted and so broken. And that's, that's, that's the argument today. It's, it's not about facts anymore. No. It's a new era.

Did, uh, did you see, um, the new president of the CBC, can't think of her name talking about. They've been, they've been grilling her on CBC jam.

I did see some of that. Right. How many, how many subscribers do you got a CBC gem? Same amount of firearms that they. Five point five, five million, three hundred is what she said have opened an account.

So then the guy, I asked, well, how many of them are paid while we're keeping that confidential for, for, yeah, competitive reasons. Competitive reasons. Thank you. And I agree with twos. I'm like, what is that number going to be? You know, you've ran a YouTube show, very successful YouTube channel, you know, you go like

$5 million. Heck, if I was getting $5 million episode watches on this show, I'd be over the moon, right? It definitely ain't that number. But when I watch CBC Jam, I don't know of a single person that watches it. a single person that's downloaded it. So the 5.3 or 500, 5,000, sorry. I'm like, how many of those are government workers

that opened up accounts so that they could have 5 million as the number? And then it's like, and how many Ashley have ever paid for that? I'd be very, very, very curious. The paying part is the operative one. Oh, I'll bet you. It's probably 5,000 people.

It's 40 million people here. Yeah, it's probably 5,000, 4,000 people. maybe maybe like there are some pretty crazy people I remember back in the early YouTube days when you had your first show around you were pulling huge numbers and like the only other content close to yours is like Hickok 45 we're like we're talking about you know well I was dwarfed by he's he's a America icon how many how many people did you have watching your videos back in the day right well for now I'll have to make an excuse

justification. You know, these were the early days, but I still have like 40, 40 some odd thousand subscribers today. And it's been two new videos in the last eight or nine years. But yeah, I mean, I would do a review

and I'd get somewhere between like around, I don't know, 10,000 to 20,000. I do have one just shy, like a handful of views shy of a million. I'll pump it. I'll get on there tonight. Okay. Yeah.

Is the S. S-KS, a fighting, viable fighting rifle or something like that, right? It was a good debate. Yeah, well, yeah, but I look at those videos now and they're so long-winded because back then people still had an attention span, right? Like I could not have a channel with those videos now. You cannot do a 10, 12-minute video on a gun review.

Like people just, only a handful of people will really watch them. But yeah, I had some, I had some, a few good ones, but nowhere near like the American channels. Nothing fancy was the big one. back that's another one too or instructor zero had a good channel to that crazy italian guy that could he would take a handgun yeah yeah yeah yeah he would take a handgun and he would go to the 300 and he'd gong and he would maybe not gong the first shot but he'd range himself in and gong and then he would continue to gong he's just a savage shooter just an unbelievable weird skill set don't get me wrong like to he's you know

Some strange stuff. Some weird stuff. Yeah. But entertaining stuff and that's what it took, right? But I can, a lot of army guys are like, oh, man, you see this guy on YouTube. He actually seems nobody's talking about here. And there was nothing, you know, there was, that was, that was, that was, that was, that was in the early days.

That was in the early days, you know. Of course, it's flooded with everything in the dog now, but I compare you to like, you know, the old guys will remember, uh, Hickok 45 and like that was, you are our kind of our Hickok, you know, you were reviewing stuff that was kind of like, We actually have this in Canada. And you'd be like, oh, shit, we have this in Canada. Now you can't get any of that in Canada. Chinese ARs.

Yeah. Right. Well, you can still get an SKS. I remember my first few SKS is, or my first one SKS, I should say, was like $75. I think I got a half case of ammo with the gross of shitty ammo stuff. They're $1,400 bucks now. Yeah. I bought 10 of them for $140 bucks, unfired.

$140. Still in the, uh, the packing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. I can't do that now. I sold off a bunch of them. I'm crying now because now they're worth. 15?

Yeah. Mine all fell off in a boating oxen. Some of them were here and there. Allegedly. Yeah, allegedly. Gentlemen, I know you've got to travel, and I can sit here and keep you here all night, but I do appreciate you both coming to Lloydminster.

I do appreciate, I think I speak for Proffer River. I'm sure Clay said it, you know, being at the Customer Appreciation Day, that, you know, for one of the cool things or surreal things, on this side of the camera, you know, is when I get to bring my world together, you know, like Chuck's been on the podcast a ton. And then now you've been on the podcast, I consider a ton, right? And then you've both been on the stage.

And then I get to bring that together, you know. And then for Profit River, you know, who's supported the podcast, honestly, it's pretty darn close to the early days, you know, of when I first started. And to have, you know, somebody that they know and respect and Rod to come into their store on their customer appreciation day. I just, you know, my hat's off to you guys for entrusting me with a weekend away from, you know, life to come do these things. And I appreciate you making some time for the studio.

I would hold you here for three hours, but I know you guys got to drive tonight yet still. And so just thanks for coming in and doing this. Keep doing what you're both doing. And, you know, if there's anything we can do to help, we'll certainly try. Either way, thanks for doing this, guys. Appreciate it, Sean. Thanks for having out, Sean.