The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW Law Protects Self-Defense Gun Use Against Civil Suits

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

After successfully protecting a client from a civil lawsuit when the use of lethal force was legitimate, attorney Guy Relford (relfordlaw.com) worked with Indiana legislators to create a law that should be in YOUR state if it isn't already. And, Guy has successfully used the law to defend another client. Guy is also a firearms instructor and podcaster Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

Happiness. We all know what it feels like, but sometimes it doesn't come easy. I'm Garvey Bailey, the host of Happy Enough, a new podcast from The Globe and Mail about our pursuit of happiness. We know people want to live more fulfilling and positive lives, but how do we actually do that? Is there a happiness code to crack? From our relationship with technology to whether money can really buy you happiness, we'll hear from both real people and experts to demystify this thing we're all searching for and hopefully find ways to be happy enough. You can find Happy Enough wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah, you bet.

All right, joining us now is Guy Relford, and we've had him on several times. Guy is an attorney, as well as an NRA firearms instructor and other things like that, but he focuses on the Second Amendment. His practice is in Indiana, and there's a couple of very interesting cases that he was directly involved in, as well as a law in Indiana that helps to clarify what our rights are when we have to use deadly force and self-defense. And so we want to talk about those two cases with him. Thank you for joining us, Guy. It's always a pleasure, David. Let's talk about this. There's a couple of different cases.

Christy Phillips was one that you got involved in. And tell us a little bit about the facts of that case and then how that got you to get involved in changing the law. And then now you've had another second case. And you've seen how important it is that that law was changed. But first, tell us a little bit about Christy Phillips and what happened in that particular case. You bet. Christy is a very heroic young lady who lives down in southern Indiana in a situation where there was a traffic stop right in front of her house. And it being a very small town, the officer who had pulled over this guy for suspicious activity in the neighborhood, that officer's son was actually at Kisty's house because he knew Kisty's daughter. And so they're watching it basically as this kid's

dad and their fellow community member, this police officer had pulled this person over. Person turned out to be on drugs, on methamphetamine, as well as other illegal drugs. He immediately got out of the vehicle. He's screaming profanity. He's screaming, uh, undecipherable, uh, gibberish. Um, the officer tells him to get, tells him to get back in his vehicle. He doesn't, he ends up running up on the officer, tackles the officer and is trying to get the officer's gun. The, the person, uh, was a former high school wrestler, pretty stocky guy, and he's winning the fight and, and the officer's losing control of his firearm

they're still wrestling over it to some degree um but uh but kisty realizes this is about to turn very bad very quickly she grabs her gun she runs out to the front of her house and she's yelling get off him get off him stop stop bad guy doesn't stop the guns literally seconds or milliseconds away from being aimed at the police officer's head and she shot the bad guy and uh and ended the threat and that person ended up dying but the that officer actually later on told me uh he said uh he said you know when i heard that gunshot i really thought it was me dying and i was and i was saying a prayer that i just hope my son didn't didn't watch me get killed um but in fact the gunshot was kisty uh which is like christy without the r um it always sounds like people are mispronouncing it yeah i see that i thought it was christy i don't like that really quickly yeah

well it's not as weird as guy but it's a little bit of an unusual name. But at any rate, the local prosecutor's office called her a hero. The local police officers called her a hero. This particular officer definitely called her a hero, saying that she clearly saved his life. of two years later, just before the statute of limitations would run, she gets sued for millions and millions of dollars by the family of the deceased bad guy, uh, saying that, uh, she was just a hysterical female who had overreacted and, uh, and, and there was never a reason to use deadly force. Uh, and this was wrongful death.

And she now owes uh the family millions of dollars wow did they not have a was there a police officer's body camera or and our camera in the uh in the police car that recorded yeah there was not there was no video there was no video of the event but everybody there everyone who witnessed it including the officer told the same story i mean there, everyone who witnessed it, including the officer told the same story. I mean, there was really no ambiguity about what happened, but because this was something that happened literally in her front yard, her homeowner's insurance was implicated. And what's really interesting about homeowner's

insurance in this situation is there's an exclusion for intentional acts. Like if I intentionally hurt somebody on my property, but there's an exception to the exclusion, which is if I acted lawful and justified self-defense or defense of a third person. So her insurance company sent her a letter and said, well, we're going to defend you, but one, we have the right to settle if we want. And two, if it turns out you were not justified, you have no coverage as against any verdict that might be imposed against you. So the local police officers, the fraternal order of police down there looked at this whole situation and said, we don't like anything about this. The fact she's being sued, that the insurance company has the ability to control the defense and any potential settlement.

And they actually called NRA at the same time they set up a GoFundMe account and raised a bunch of money, almost six figures. And so we want to hire the best self-defense lawyer that we can find in Indiana. And they called NRA. NRA, thankfully, at least I'm grateful, they recommended me. And she hired me. And I told her two things when she hired me. I said, Kisty, we're not only going to win this stupid case because it's a frivolous lawsuit but we're going to use this case to change the law and that's exactly what we did um we got that case dismissed but in the meantime we had a bill pending in the general assembly in indiana that says there's complete immunity for the lawful and justified use of force and self-defense or defense of a third person, you can't file a lawsuit if you were injured by that justified use of force or if you're the

family of a person who dies as a result of that justified force and self-defense or defense of a third person. And if you say, damn the torpedoes and file a lawsuit anyway in the face of this immunity, there's a mechanism to get the case dismissed early on what's called summary judgment, and there's a mandatory attorney's fees provision that says that the plaintiff then has to pay back all the defendant's attorney's fees for having brought that frivolous lawsuit

in the face of the immunity statute. Oh, that's excellent. That's what we did. You were involved. That is an amazing case, the facts of that and then the follow-up to that. And then you were involved in that legislation. Is that correct? Yeah, I was.

Because I'm real active legislatively. I started a group called the Two-Way Project, which is focused on Second Amendment rights. As you mentioned, my law practice is focused on second amendment rights. And so I've always been very involved legislatively and I've helped write other bills or written other bills. And so here I wrote a self-defense bill that laid out what we just described and then took it to some legislators here in Indiana and said, hey, we want to get this thing passed. And I was able to do that in the context of Kisti's story, which made it that much more compelling. And by the way, I mean, I always like to brag that I wrote this thing

and then helped to get it passed. But Kisti came in and testified in both the House committee that heard the bill and the Senate committee in Indiana. And there wasn't a dry eye in the room because of how compelling her story was, that she really was forced into this to defend a neighbor and a police officer, and then her life basically could have been destroyed by her being sued for millions and millions of dollars, and it was very compelling. So, Kisty Phillips is the reason we have that new statute. Well, that's great. I'm

glad to see a happy ending to this. And it is a happy ending. And, you know, she went through this, but it's going to be something she can be proud of. You know, this wasn't pointless suffering, and it had a good resolution in it. You know, you talk about her particular testimony. It reminds me of years and years ago, luby cafeteria situation we had a woman who was a dentist and she was there with her parents and she was you know that at the time she wasn't allowed to carry her firearm so she left it and you know she was worried about the legal implications of it so she left it in her glove compartment you had a somebody drive through and into the building with his car and gets out, start shooting people.

And, and, and her testimony, she later became a legislator. And I remember seeing her testimony many, many times. Terrible testimony of how, if she had had her gun,

she could have saved her parents. But she was told that she couldn't. And that made a big, big difference. Unfortunately, you know, it was a very tragic situation for her because she lost both of her parents. And a lot of people were killed in that.

The good thing in this one is that even though Kisty went through a real ordeal with that. And it is an ordeal whenever you have to use your gun to kill somebody. But it is preferable to seeing your loved ones or friends or someone killed, murdered unnecessarily. And so, you know, for all the stuff that she went through, it had a great outcome. That's a super story. Well, you know, and what really hit me hard and meant a lot to me is in one

of the committee hearings, it was in the House Judiciary Committee, one of the legislators seeing that Kisti was very emotional about this and was obviously putting herself through the trauma again by coming in and testifying publicly about it when she didn't have to do that. She could have stayed home and avoided having to relive that whole traumatic situation, including the trauma of being sued,

where she was worried about losing her kids. She was a single mom. She was worried about losing her daughter's college savings funds and her house. But at any rate, one of the legislators asked her and said, you know, what made you come in and speak to us and support this bill. As you said, you know what, without an immunity bill like this, if these people were able to successfully sue me, for instance, then I'm worried that the next person won't run out their door and save that police officer or the next person won't, you know, take their gun into Libby's and have it available to them to save innocent lives. And I'm worried about the negative effect that a lawsuit like this has. And I'm willing to put myself through this because I think that we need this law for

exactly that reason and as a deterrent to those lawsuits so that the lawsuits aren't a deterrent to law abiding citizens defending themselves or defending other innocent people. And again, I, that was incredibly compelling. Oh yeah. Yeah. And of course the insurance company, if they didn't throw her under the bus, they wouldn't have thrown everybody else under the bus even by making some kind of a settlement. You know, that's probably what these people had calculated. She's got deep pockets because of the policy that's there and uh and and you know

that that would have established uh that kind of precedent that you talked about for everybody else and uh put a lot of people at risk it would have raised everybody's insurance premiums because that's why the insurance company doesn't care about that kind of stuff it's like yeah we'll make a settlement with them and we'll just uh raise everybody's premiums so it helped in so many different ways. Um, it truly is amazing. And that's something, uh, the law getting passed is, um, how long ago was this a case? You said they weighed two years before, uh, they came after KISTI as it was.

Um, and then, uh, when did this law get put through it? Did the law just get passed through recently? Actually the law just, um, the law went into effect 2019. Okay. Um, so I guess the event with KISTIISTI was perhaps a little earlier than what I described. But the law was passed in 2019, and that was a little more than two years after the original incident. And it was kind of neat because we had the NRA annual meeting here in uh, that year. And, uh, and our governor, governor Holcomb actually signed the bill into law from the, from the main stage at the NRA leadership conference, uh, which was a big

event. So it was, uh, it was, uh, it was very satisfying. A lot of work went into it. Um, but I was able to be there with KISD, uh, when the governor signed it. And, and so it was, uh, it was a, it was a big event, but it but it's a it's a it's a really important change and and i'm proud that it happened in indiana but one of the reasons i was so enthused about talking to you about it david is there's no reason why this shouldn't be the law in all 50 states now we know there are blue states out there that would never consider it in a million years because they despise our ability to defend ourselves. But for the majority of the states in this country, there's no reason why there shouldn't be a similar law out there

protecting people. And I'll tell you, I mean, for instance, I'm not only an instructor, but I'm kind of a training junkie when it comes to firearms and self-defense. And I go to multiple classes every year. And I bet I've been literally, I bet I've been to three or four dozen cases, classes where at some point there's a lecture that says, Oh, by the way, um, if you use force, even if you're completely justified, you just better count on getting sued. The bad guy is going to suit on me. It doesn't matter if he breaks in your house, if he gets hurt, he's going to sue you. Or if he gets killed, his family's going to sue you. And i would always sit there listening to that lecture especially as a lawyer going

well why is that why is that okay yeah you know what and and let's fix this thing you know we got this nail that we've been the old sleeping dog has been laying on this nail on the front porch and it's just too much problem to get up and do something about it you know let's fix this problem exactly and and by the way kisty at the time was the seventh person that I had represented who would lawfully and justifiably use force and self-defense and either got prosecuted

or got sued or both. And I looked at that and said, you know, that's just not okay. I'm not trying to cut into my own business, but I'd rather have citizens have immunity. And that mandatory attorney's fees provision is so important because that's a big deterrent. Because before that mandatory attorney's fees provision is so important because

that's a big deterrent because because before that plaintiff's lawyer I mean how many times have you heard the commercial of well unless I recover for you you don't have to pay me any attorney's fees right I mean you see that commercial all the time well now they can say well you'll have to pay me any money as your lawyer as the plaintiff's lawyer unless we recover but by the way, there's this immunity that we probably can't defeat. And if we can't defeat it, the case is going to get dismissed. And once the case gets dismissed, you have to pay all the other side, their attorney's fees back. Yeah.

Yeah. After recovering nothing. So it's a huge deterrent and we're really proud of it. That's good. Yeah. People need to look at that. And, you know, we, we see these types of things going around there, the gun control laws, some, you know, California will come up with some idea, New Jersey, and they'll start passing that around. But it works the other way as well.

You know, we've seen the increase in constitutional carry bills going around and increasing in states. And this is the type of thing that really does need to increase. I've heard all the commercials about, you know, well, if you, if you carry concealed, you know, you need to join this organization. We've got like an insurance policy here to defend you, but, you know, cut it off at the beginning, you know, don't clutter, don't, don't expose anybody to this jeopardy. If it is justifiable and the law enforcement people realize that it's justifiable, you should not have any legal jeopardy over some kind of a civil action that is being taken over that. That's that, you should not have any legal jeopardy over some kind of a civil action that is being taken over that. That really is the right approach. You're correct about that.

And that's how our statute works, actually, picking up exactly on your point, David, which is that if there's no criminal prosecution from the use of force where self-defense or defense of a third person is claimed, that lack of criminal prosecution raises a presumption of justification, which implicates the immunity. And you can use that presumption of justification to get the case thrown out early based on a lack of criminal prosecution. So it really works exactly like you suggested. And that's how we wrote the statute that we've had for a while. And here just recently, what was really satisfying, I know you've seen this opinion, is we were able to use that statute

to get a case where I represented two homeowners who defended their home against somebody trying to break in in the middle of the night and then got sued for it. We were able to successfully have that case dismissed here more recently. And that's a compelling story too. Yeah, yeah, let's have this story.

So you were involved in the landmark case that pushed through the legislation that you helped to write. And now you had somebody who decided that they would, they felt lucky. So they were going to go against this law, even though, and you got that shut down. Tell us about that particular case. Tell us the details of that. Sure. That one, much more recent. In fact, it's really still pending over a couple of administrative issues, but this is one where two homeowners in Indianapolis were asleep in bed at three o'clock in the morning. The dog starts barking. They realize someone's pounding on the front door. They ran it out, or the man did, and someone is kicking on their front door.

Then he's putting the full force of his weight and his shoulder into the door, trying to break the door down. He's screaming, let me in, let me in. The homeowner yells, I don't know, you go away. And the guy outside is cussing a lot and doesn't make a lot of sense. But he runs around to the back of the house, tries to get in the back door. It's locked, thankfully, but then he breaks the window next to the back door in an apparent attempt to reach in and unlock the door. And the homeowner at this point has retrieved his handgun and he said, listen, go away. I have a gun. And the guy that responded by saying well then you're gonna have to shoot me

word i won't use it starts with a b um you know you're gonna have to shoot me and uh at which point he tried to gain entry and the homeowner having no alternative shot him and exactly the same thing that in the sense that the prosecutor's office looked at it the police investigated all the physical evidence matched up with what the story that both he told and his wife told. It was a clear case of castle doctrine where you can defend your home, including with deadly force, the way our law is written in Indiana against an unlawful entry. And even to prevent an unlawful entry, you don't have to, they don't have to be in your house. If they're trying to get in your house, you can prevent that unlawful entry,

including with deadly force. And that's the way the law is written, that's the way it should be written. And we included in our immunity statute, we defined as a forcible felony, someone trying to break into your home in violation of the Castle Doctrine, committing a crime. A lot of states call it breaking and entry, they're breaking and entering. In Indiana, we call it residential entry. But anyway, we said,

if you're trying to commit residential entry, that's a forcible felony. And in Indiana, stopping someone from committing a forcible felony is also justified in terms of the use of deadly force. So again, no prosecution. And we raised this new immunity. I put it in my answer to the plaintiff's complaint and said, you can't file this lawsuit. We have immunity for this. And there's going to be an attorney's fees award. They said, damn the torpedoes. No, no, we think we can defeat it. We think we have evidence that wasn't justified. And just a couple of weeks ago, we went in and had a hearing here in Marion County, which is Indianapolis. And just a matter of weeks ago, we went in and had a hearing here in Marion County, which is Indianapolis. And just a matter of days ago, got the judge's opinion where he said, nope, the law is clear.

There's immunity under this situation. The presumption that arises from a lack of criminal prosecution could be used to get a case dismissed. When the plaintiff has no affirmative evidence to rebut the presumption that the use of force was justified. And here they had speculation. They said, well, he was just asking to come in. He wasn't trying to break in. Really? What about the broken window? I mean, it was really kind of silly.

But I give judges a lot of credit because judges don't like to dismiss cases early. If you look at when judges get reversed on appeal, dismissing cases early is fertile ground for getting that reversed. Not here because it's very, very clear cut, but generally speaking, judges are reluctant to grant summary judgment or motions to dismiss. And this judge had the fortitude to do just that and said the law is also clear that the plaintiffs have to pay the defendants back their attorney's fees. And so ask me to submit my final statement on my fee, which the court will review, and then they're going to award attorney's fees. So my client doesn't have to worry about paying me any money because they're going to get that paid from the plaintiff. And you deserve it.

You've done a great job. You defended that other person. You got a law run through there, and that law has held up now. And for a second time, you defended some. Of course, you said you defended a lot of people like that. But that's exactly what we should see with that. And, of course, I did mention at the beginning of the program, you've also got a radio program besides being an NRA instructor

and besides having a law firm that specializes in the Second Amendment. Guy Relford, R-l-f-o-r-d if you want to find him on facebook if you need his help uh but um you also have a radio program uh the gun guy i love the title that yeah yeah yeah again the radio station likes making use of my odd name but um, um, uh, but yeah, it's just a weekly show, David. It's, uh, just on Saturdays in Indianapolis, but they also put it out there as a, as a podcast, uh, as well. So a lot of people who, um, can't, uh, listen in live from five to seven in central Indiana, we reach, I think 52 counties. So it's a, it's a good size radio station. Um, but, uh, people that can't listen in, uh, can go to wibc.com and find the podcast as well. And we just talked about second amendment issues and it's, it's kind of fun because it's a call-in show for the whole two hours. I'm on the

air and that's my favorite. I, my actual, my very favorite is when people call in and want to argue with me because I, I do this for a living right and uh but but it's uh it's a lot of fun and uh but you know people call in with everything under the sun um from legal questions i don't give legal advice on the radio but i can explain what the laws say um and to technical questions gun questions you know i mean how do i fix this problem with my trigger on ar-15 i'm just it's really interesting i never know what i'm going to get which really makes it it's fun for me to do oh of course i always have somewhat of a of an agenda in terms of what i want to get into but the listeners often take us in different directions based on the calls we get which

make it makes it a lot of fun i bet it is fun especially when somebody calls in they want an argument that when you said oh yeah when you said, that made me think of the old Monty Python skit. You know, where he goes, you want an argument? Okay, he starts arguing about whether he's going to do an argument with him or not. But you've got more substantial arguments to talk about. Let me ask you this, because we've had some interesting things, as you point out. It brings up a lot of different interesting points of law. And we've had an interesting back and forth i talked about um last week

about uh the fact that trump went to south carolina and they had a commemorative gun that had his face on the handle and it's like oh yeah i got to get one of these and everything and then his assistant said yeah he bought it and then he had all these people say wait a minute he's indicted for a felony he can't buy buy a gun, which is very similar. As Reason pointed out, it was exactly the same type of thing that they're coming after Hunter Biden. You know, they're saying, well, you know, you're not allowed to buy a gun if you've if you're a drug addict or drug user or whatever. You know, both of these things are nonviolent issues. You know, Trump hasn't been convicted of anything.

He's just been indicted for something and indicted for something that is not a violent crime even. And so, you know, they were looking at this and they said, you know, we need to look at these laws and not be so colored. You know, you've got people who were cheering the fact that, oh, maybe we've got another thing on Trump here or other people saying, yeah, let's get Biden on this thing. But, you know, maybe the law itself is the thing that needs to be changed as to whether or not the atf has it and then i saw another issue where they said it looks like hunter may wind up trying to use bruin and that decision to say uh you know this is an unusual restriction that's been put here that is not doesn't really have doesn't fit in the historical context of what was meant

by the second amendment and so according to bruin uh maybe you know he gets off he still has an issue i would imagine of lying on a form but um nevertheless uh you know what do you make of that of those two juxtapositions i thought it was an interesting juxtaposition of those two that you might have actually the biden family supporting the Second Amendment and some freedoms involved there unintentionally. Yeah, war and litigation make for strange bedfellows. But yeah, I mean, if anybody would have ever asked me, I would support a legal argument that Hunter Biden was making. I would have doubted it.

But here, you're wise and you're dead on, David, to focus on the Bruin decision, because both in the Trump scenario and the Hunter Biden scenario, that's exactly where they're going. In fact, the exact law that you mentioned relative to Hunter Biden was recently found to be unconstitutional. This is in a district court case in Texas Texas so it has no direct bearing on his case um but I can see um it it it it really snowballing because you know as you said and as you know you know Bruin says look we look at text history and tradition and we look at the text of the second amendment but does this does this law implicate a protected right or not if it does then we say all right does the long history and tradition of the regulation of this right support this particular limitation in the in the sense

that it's been upheld and it's been found to be legal and allowable under the second amendment historically and traditionally in this country and that's going back to the founding that's not since the brady bill in 1994 i mean that's all very very you know recent stuff it's all you know going back to the founding and even to some degree looking at English law that U.S. law is based on and and in this case that found the the law that says if you're a user of or addicted to any illegal drugs you can't possess a firearm and makes it a felony to do so this court in Texas looked at that and said hold on you we can find historical restrictions on saying someone can't possess a

firearm if they're currently intoxicated or you know inebriated impaired um but we don't see anywhere just the occasional user and important distinction that was a case where this guy was an occasional marijuana user and he admitted to authorities he yeah he said I you know I'm a recreational marijuana user I said oh well marijuana is still illegal at the federal level through the controlled substances Act of 1970. so therefore it's it's illegal under the under federal law therefore you've admitted you're a user of or addicted to an illegal drug therefore you're going to prison for 10 years or at least a maximum and that's what they found to be unconstitutional under the Bruin analysis. But the very similar thing, and in fact, Amy Coney Barrett, now on the Supreme Court,

wrote an opinion that said just this, it was a dissent, but it was at the Seventh Circuit, that said laws saying even people convicted of nonviolent felonies should not lose their rights. And the law that says that if you have any felony conviction, even a nonviolent one, I mean, you could have an accounting conviction based on tax fraud or something. And suddenly you're being likened to a violent criminal we can't trust with a firearm. And Amy Coney Barrett wrote an opinion before Bruin, obviously, that said this is unconstitutional. There's no history and tradition of limiting nonviolent people just because of a criminal conviction. And then compound that and say, well, here, Trump hasn't even been convicted of a nonviolent felony. He's only been indicted.

So the law that says if you're just under an indictment for a felony, even a nonviolent felony. He's only been indicted. So the law that says if you're just under an indictment for a felony, even a nonviolent felony, to say that's unconstitutional under a Bruin analysis is not a stretch because we're seeing these different laws, a lot of these very recent laws, a lot of them part of the Brady Bill, some of them part of the Gun Control Act of 1968, but a lot of these are following one after the other. And, and I'm somewhat expecting the pendulum to swing back because for instance, there's a, uh, there's a case in front of the Supreme court right now, uh, that involves the law that says, if you are under a domestic violence order of protection, you can't possess a firearm. And that, that doesn't mean you've been convicted

of a crime. Uh, that doesn't mean you, you know mean you you know you've been it's been proven that you are um you know a violent person based on your criminal history it's just a judge found enough of a threat to say you ought to be under this domestic violence order of protection the fifth circuit again another case coming out of texas found that law to be unconstitutional to say wait a minute there's no criminal conviction here there there's a there threat, but we don't take people's constitutional rights away on that basis, at least not historically and traditionally under the Bruin analysis. That is in front of the Supreme Court right now. And it doesn't feel very good, I will tell you, because the guy- Do you think they might take the gun and do the due process later, as Trump said?

Oh, yeah. But this one had been under multiple domestic violence. This particular litigant had been under mutual domestic violence, whatever protection involving multiple women. And he does appear to have somewhat of a criminal history. Now, there's a reason the blindfold is on lady justice right and the judges aren't supposed to look at the facts of any individual case and be and be and be uh influenced by that they're supposed to do a strict legal

analysis uh under the concept that justice is blind but i think anybody who wouldn't think that these particular facts uh wouldn't leave the Court to go, well, maybe we ought to roll this back just a bit. I think it's probably being a little naive because there's no saying among lawyers that bad facts make for bad law. And these facts are not great. It's not the case I would have wanted to have taken up on that issue. But anyway, but based on the analysis that's out there right now and based on Bruin as it exists, these laws, you know, the fact that an 18 to 20-year-old can't buy a handgun in a gun store under federal law. What's the history and tradition of having to be 21 to be armed in this country when if you join the militia, quote unquote, in 1791 at 17 or 16.

So there's a lot to talk about for a lot of these laws. Where you get drafted in modern America at 18 and sent to Vietnam, right? But you can't buy a gun. And, you know, that's the kind of stuff that, you know, we see. And, of course, you know, that was even, you know, when I mentioned, you know, take the gun and do the due process later with the red flag stuff and everything. At that same meeting, you know, Trump was pushing the idea of let's raise the age that people can buy guns. It's kind of interesting because this whole Bruin thing, I think it's going to, you know, hit a lot of these different issues.

Again, you know, the bump stock, for example, you know, what's Bruin going to do to the bump stock? We've seen a surprising number of losses in terms of the challenges against the bump stock. And to me, that was a very, very big precedent because it established the fact that not only could they infringe against our constitutional protections of a God-given right, but they could also, it could be done not just by the legislature but it could be done by the bureaucracy or by a president that's running the bureaucracy now we've seen you know biden exercising that as well and so when you go back here look at the bump stock thing we got this i think it's the fifth circuit talked about it just last couple of days yeah uh the fifth circuit court

where you got um i know a michael cargill back at central texas gunworks who's running that through he's had a victory there but there's been losses on the other side of this with a lot of other courts. What do you think is going to happen with that bump stock? Because that is a big precedent. We've never had regulation of attachments and things like that before, especially by executive order. It's such an important point, David. I'm glad you raised it because I said when it happened, you know, Trump, you remember the news conference? He said, well, the bump stocks are gone. Right. He's responding to the horrific shooting in Las Vegas.

And he said, well, he said, I can do that. I don't need to have you guys. It's like, well, that's exactly that's exactly right. And and so many people on on, you know, our side of the Second Amendment debate said, well, you know what, if we give them bump stocks, then maybe they won't come after so-called assault weapons, semi-automatic rifles. And so nobody really cares about bump stocks anyway. So, you know, even the NRA came out and I strongly disagreed with the NRA on this. And I said this publicly, huge mistake. NRA came out and said, we invite the ATF to re-examine the legality of bump stocks. And I'm saying, I'm sorry, you're inviting the ATF to rewrite laws written by

Congress? And simply because the president tells them to do so doesn't make it legal or constitutional. It's an inappropriate use of the legislative power by an executive agency. And that's what we need to reel back in this country. But when Trump did it, and people say, well, guy, do you really care about bump stocks? I go, no, bump stocks are stupid. If you come to my range where I'm teaching a class and you got a bump stock on your rifle, I'm going to make fun of you, even before the ban, because you're trading accuracy for rate of fire, which is typically stupid. So at any rate, I didn't care about bump stocks. Bump stocks are dumb. I would never own one. But the precedent, and that's why the point you made is the important one, the precedent he made by saying, I'm going to snap my finger.

Well, what did Obama say? I got a phone and a pen. Yeah. Well, he never much delivered on that, but President Trump did. And then now, what are you seeing? ATF on so-called ghost guns. ATF on what they're calling forced reset triggers, ATF on short barreled rifles, where they're saying, oh, well, we told you 10 years ago that if you put a brace on your pistol,

it doesn't make it a rifle, but we changed our mind. So now we're going to rewrite a definition of short barreled rifle as written by Congress. And all that's based on the bump stock precedent. And now I think we have a great shot at destroying a lot of these not only under the Bruin analysis but because they are in effect unconstitutional in the fact that their legislative uh authority being exercised by the executive branch and and and we even had an important decision that had nothing to do with guns of the second amendment came out of the Supreme Court here a couple years ago was a west virginia and it was a an epa regulation case i think it was a clean water or clean air case i don't remember now but they said hold on

you know the epa just going out there and making up its own rules without an express delegation of authority from congress uh doesn't doesn't fly anymore we're reeling back on that uh fourth branch of government that's become so danger in this country so dangerous in this country that our founders never intended yeah for for you know for the IRS and the ATF and all these executive agencies to be able to to have the power they do and a bunch of armed agents running around putting people in prison um that's not we ever envisioned uh from um in terms of of enforcing rules that they've written and that they've created without Congress.

That's what was never intended by our founders. And so hopefully we get that reeled back. And ATF is fertile ground for that right now for all the reasons you mentioned. Yeah, that really, it just, I couldn't believe when that happened because I've talked for the longest time about the power of the uh bureaucracy of the regulatory state i said you know we had uh this the slogan for the uh for 1776 was you know no no taxation without representation well we have now taxation without representation because these people can fine us but we also have regulation without representation and what's even worse is they say well because this is a rule and not a law, you don't get due process.

You're going to get the presumption of innocence and you don't get protection against excessive fines. And so we've seen this metastasize. Originally, I think it was the IRS that was doing it predominantly. But now it's metastasized all these different agencies. And so now they're going to just do gun control by doing that as well. That's a really, really dangerous thing. And it was not just the bump stock. It was also the pistol brace under Trump. And that got put in in 2019. Then they pulled it out in December

of 2020. But then Biden puts it back in. Lala Harris, when she's running, said, yeah, I'm going to give Congress 100 days to do all the gun control stuff I want if you elect me as president. And then I'll just do it by executive order if they don't do it at that point. It really is a horrific thing, and it is a much bigger problem than even just the Second Amendment to try to get this regulatory state under control. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with the Supreme Court decisions on this. And again, I think the bump stock issue is such an important thing, even though the bump stock itself, as you point out, is a total piece of garbage. You know, everybody says it's a piece of garbage, but it's an important principle, even though the bump stock itself, as you point out, it's a total piece of garbage.

You know, everybody says it's a piece of garbage, but it's an important principle. And that's the key thing. Uh, the principle is so important, even if the item isn't. So, uh, well, it's always great talking to you, guy. And again, um, people can find a gun guy and they can find that at, um, what's the call letters for the radio station again, where they can find that podcast? Oh, it's WIBC. Yeah.

You can find me at wibc.com or my Twitter or X, I guess we're calling it now is just at Guy Ralford. Great. Great. Thank you very much, Guy. Always a pleasure to talk to you and thank you for what you've done. That's a great example that you've got there and other states do need to implement that. That is an important law to protect people who are

doing what they can to protect themselves and protect other innocent people at the same time thank you so much thank you david always an honor the common man. They created common core to dumb down our children. They created common past to track and control us. Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future. They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take away.

Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know everything about us while they hide everything from us. It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find at thedavidknightshow.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. Thank you.