The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 155: Guns

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Larry Keane and Mark Oliva of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, along with Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: Negligent discharges and the dark humor of the Marine Corps; button bucks and the Doppelkopf syndrome; the Colorado runner who choked-out a mountain lion; illegal ginseng harvest and methhead bears of Tennessee; the fatal grizzly bear attack of a Wyoming hunting guide; SHOT Show; on not shooting old appliances; both sides of the suppressors debate; background checks; who hates Sunday hunting?; arguments around lead, or “traditional” ammo; keeping a finger on the pulse of gun legislation; gun safety around kids; and more.Get your Sabertooth Cat T-Shirt here.For more on the ideas discussed in this episode check out the show notes at www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Okay, Larry Keene from National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Larry, are you cool if we go through a couple things here first? Sure. They don't necessarily involve you. That's all right. But- I'm along for the ride. Feel free to weigh in because we got to do a couple of things, like some listener email. Got to take care of some business.

Yeah. House cleaning. Giannis had used the word- Uh-oh. Yeah. He had used the word accidental discharge. And a lot of people, particularly service members, wrote in to say that you can't say that. Negligent. They go by negligent discharge.

There's no- There's no accidents. Yeah. Military dudes, very emphatic on that point. Due to your own negligence. Yeah. You don't get to say that. They just cut right to negligence. Yeah. You don't get to say that. They just cut right to negligence.

I like it. In a prior life, I defended gun companies in product liability cases. And so the term accidental discharge or AD was used in those cases. And that was often the firearm discharged because of the negligence of the owner or the user, not because of any design defect or manufacturing defect. But they would typically be called in the legal part when it says ADs or accidental discharge. But I think the point is well made that it's really negligence on the part of the person using the firearm. It doesn't go off by itself.

Somebody has to pull the trigger. Several Marines wrote in about it. Yeah. It must be something they talk about a fair bit. Ask the Master Gunny Sergeant. It is drilled into your head in boot camp. Is that right? You are responsible for the terminal resting place

of every round that leaves your rifle. And you are a maggot. You're a maggot. I like that, the terminal resting place? Of every round that leaves your rifle like that, the terminal resting place. Of every round that leaves your rifle. Yep. Terminal resting place.

That sounds macabre. We have a very dark sense of humor as Marines. Another thing we got a lot of people writing in about. We're talking about button bucks.

And people asking like, does a button buck shed anything? Meaning an antler. Yeah, good question. I have no idea. Yeah. So typically not, but we had read this thing where,

we had read this thing where they're saying like, it hasn't been known to happen in the state of Virginia, but it's known to happen in other but then we had people including a lot of biologists and deer specialists write in to say it certainly happens it happens in virginia and a lot of guys emailed us i shouldn't say a lot a handful of guys emailed us photos of buttonbuck sheds, which looks like a little bone disc. Kind of like a button. Some guys actually wrote in who were doing a deer trapping study while listening to the podcast

and started examining some buttonbucks and they had some findings too. But it says that like early born fawns who have very good nutrition and tend to be the larger size button bucks will actually form a little thing that they cast off. But the antler, I don't even want to call it an antler, the little nubbins, the disc that is cast off, it doesn't seem to cast it off in a way that's tied to photo period.

It's like photo period is length of day and photo period drives so much of nature's day length. Like things are gonna happen within a window of time centered around day length and then like micro factors will come in. Micro factors can also influence timing, but there's a lot of natural cycles that happen in accordance to length of day.

And he said, normal bucks seem to lose their antlers due to photo period. They think it's linked to photo period changes, but this is just linked to whatever's going on in the growth and how much gets there and when it starts growing a new antler for button bucks. And he said, this guy also talked about, you ever hear of the doppelkopf syndrome?

Nope. That's a new one I made. Nope. So a deer biologist has talked about this. He says, unlike adult antlers, which are grown and shed based on changing photo period, infant antlers are controlled by maturity and hormonal development and not tied to photo period.

If any antler ever fails to shed, doppelkopf syndrome. The new antler grows around the original antler from the outside rim of the pedicle. He says, picture your meat grinder plugged up with silver skin, squirting meat out around the blockage. The resulting grossly misshapen antlers would be obvious on any deer that failed to shed those antler buttons. Look at that. I like it.

Good analogy. Another big thing in the news, tons of people wrote in about, is a guy, a jogger in Fort Collins. Did you guys hear about this? Yeah. A jogger in Fort Collins. Did you guys hear about this? Yeah. A jogger in Fort Collins. Strangle the mountain lion.

He's jogging along, senses something coming from behind him. It's an 85-pound juvenile mountain lion. It attacks him, and the guy chokes it out. That is a will to live. Strangles it. Walks three miles down to a trailhead, drives to a hospital, talking to the police about what went on.

They send, he's got stuff that he wanted them to retrieve. When they go up to inspect the site, they go up there, dead mountain lion laying there. Wow. Every guy likes to think he'd do that. Yeah. But most wouldn't. Strangled it. I like to think he'd do that yeah but most wouldn't strangle it i like to think he

was listening to stranglehold come on come on come on come on baby uh speaking of all that a in the great smoky mountains national park in tennessee you guys hear this story nope Nope. Bear. Yeah, crazy story. So you guys know what ginseng is, right? That's my question as we get into the story. Is this now considered an edible for the bear? That's, yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot. This story is one of those stories that makes its own gravy, right? Kind of. So Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Tennessee. Some guys are out. It seems to be. I don't want to like, I don't want to, you know,

I mean, the guy's dead, but I don't want to condemn the guy without knowing, but the insinuation is that they were hunting ginseng, digging ginseng illegally. Ginseng is like a medicinal root. Daniel Boone was in the ginseng business and once lost a fortune's worth of ginseng is like a medicinal root. Daniel Boone was in the ginseng business and once lost a fortune's worth of ginseng and it was one of the many things

that seemed to routinely destroy Daniel Boone financially. But anyways, these guys are hunting ginseng or digging ginseng in a national park where it's illegal to dig ginseng. One of the guys goes missing. There's two guys. One of them goes missing. His of the guys goes missing. There's two guys. One of them goes missing. His buddy can't find him.

They find him later eaten by a bear. Turns out that he was scavenged by a bear and had actually died of a meth overdose. Pretty badly scavenged by the bear. They had to identify his body by his tattoos. He had a skull and crossbones tattoo, an ACDC tattoo, a Confederate battle flag tattoo

that said it's a redneck thing. But I wonder if the bear was shrewd that he would place the needles as a cover-up don't know and then Marcus brought up the idea like some people brought up was like what happens to a bear

who's ingested is the bear tripping now is it an edible oh is it an edible can we talk about one more thing in the news, Larry? Absolutely. Okay.

I'm still trying to get my mind around a meth head bear. Yeah. On a not nearly, on a not at all funny note, but speaking of bears, Wyoming just released a really extensive report on the death of an elk hunting guide in Wyoming who was killed by a grizzly bear. A guide, a Wyoming guide was guiding a client from Florida for elk. And while they were butchering, while they're butchering an elk, a sow, grizzly, and a male cub charged them, charged them coming uphill at them.

And the bear grabbed the first attack, the guide, the Wyoming guide, who had bear spray on his belt. He had a bear spray canister on his belt, and he had a 10-millimeter pistol on his belt. He had a bear spray canister on his belt and he had a 10 millimeter pistol on his backpack. The client had a bottle of, a can of pepper spray in his backpack. So they get attacked. Suddenly the guide gets in a skirmish with the bear. The client tries to retrieve the guide's handgun, but doesn't know how to operate it.

The bear turns and bites the client on the foot. They get into a struggle. The client tries to throw the handgun to the guide. It falls short. The bear then turns back and attacks the guide. This is where the story is so strange, is that the client's all, but he's been bitten on the foot. And the last he sees of the guide, the guide is still on his feet, struggling with the bear, and the client leaves. Goes to the horses, rides a horse 400 yards to a hilltop to make a phone call,

waits for a helicopter to come and he never goes back. Wow. Yeah, it's a, I mean, the report doesn't draw, you know, the report, it's an exhaustive report, but it doesn't say things that you imagine it might say about what that means. The next day they found the guide and he happened, empty bear spray can and his body and other things, they believe that the guy did spray the bear with pepper spray. It ended the attack, but then succumbed to his injuries. Wow.

Just a heart, like kind of a heartbreaking story. Wow. Okay. Some lessons to be learned there about, we always talk about where our bear spray is located on our body, where the pistols are on our bodies, where you lay your rifle down, as you're doing something like that in grizzly bear country.

Yeah. I just ordered, am am ordering what's the one you you have the airframe yeah an airframe oh yeah i was just ordering one of those we got into talking about um got into talking about revolvers versus semi-autos. What I was saying is like at work, we got a lot of guys who don't have a lot of familiarity with firearms. I feel like anyone who's watched a Western can understand the basic functioning of a revolver. Right.

You know what I mean? Definitely. This is before I even read the report, but I was like just articulating this to john edwards over at his gun shop over at schnee's it was like my sort of i'm like i just feel like for us when we're out working um up in alaska it's just like a thing that it's just easy to explain to people who don't know who don't shoot. So that's what I'm fixing to get.

Now, Larry, sorry. No need to apologize. NSSF. Like when someone, like you're at a party or you're at a cocktail party and someone says, what's that? What's the NSSF? What do you tell them? We are the Firearms Industries Trade Association.

And then the next question is, what's the difference between you and the NRA? And the elevator speech is, the dividing line is the checkout counter. As a trade association, we're focused on the bar stock being delivered to the factory to make the firearm, to the sale to the consumer at retail.

And that's what we're focused on. That's our core mission to help the industry grow and prosper. And the dividing line between us and NRA is the checkout counter. They represent gun owners, consumers

from the industry's point of view, end users. And we represent the industry. Do industry people are members of the NSSF? The companies are members. So in our membership, we have about, I think the number is about 10,000 members now. You know, it ebbs and flows, goes up after a lot of people join when they come to SHOT Show.

So our members are manufacturers, distributors, retailers, firearms, ammunition, scopes, and basically anything you can put in, on, around, or through a gun for hunting, shooting, increasingly for personal protection, self-defense, big part of the market. Big companies, the biggest names, you know,

everybody knows household names, to smaller companies, smaller manufacturers that, you know, most people have never heard of. They're the 10 by 10 booths at the SHOT Show. You see the small little booths, but, you know, all the big guys started out as small companies at some point. I think a lot of people's familiarity comes from SHOT Show. Yeah, I mean, it's a huge event.

As you know, as we were talking before, it's 2,400 exhibitors, 13 miles of exhibit space. And if you went to every single booth at the show, you could spend 22 seconds at each one. So it's a massive, whenever people go for the first time, their reaction is always the same.

They're blown away. They're shocked. They cannot believe the breadth and scope and size of the shot show. Oh, it's overwhelming, man. Yeah, it's big. You feel like you can never, there's so much,

you feel like you can never get, like can look at something because there's so much, you know, you almost need to like force yourself to focus for a second you do yeah yeah i mean we tell people you have to have a plan yeah and we have like apps for people for the attendees or you know dealers buyers plan your show plan who you want to see. You can schedule it. You know, the app, you know, is a digital map. It will tell you how to get from point A to point B. You just plug in the booth and the booth number, and it'll tell you how to get there.

And you've got to plan your time. Otherwise, you just, you'll get lost, you know, in all of the stuff you see at all the various booths. But we try to segment the show. We have the law enforcement tactical section. We've got firearms and ammunition. We've got other areas where we have a new product center. So if you're looking for new products, that's where you would go, and that's a big popular place.

And then we have areas where it's hunting clothing and things like that. So we try to segment the show so you can be in a particular area. And okay, if you're a buyer, I'm going to talk to these firearms guys. Then I'm going to go over here and I'm going to talk to these clothing guys and place orders.

So there's no sales, direct sales that take place. Certainly no cash sales. That's not allowed. And so it's booking orders and people looking at products. It's really primarily now the show is really a new product introduction, a marketing show. It's the largest gathering of outdoor media in the world.

If you took out the knives, it would be the largest knife show in the world. If you took out the knives, it would be the largest knife show in the world. If you took out- Is that right, really? Yep. If you took out- The thing that blows my mind walking around there is all the government agencies,

foreign government, buyers. You hear people talking every language on the planet. I think it's something like 100 countries. We've got foreign military, foreign law enforcement, foreign exhibitors, foreign attendees from all over the place. We've even had people U.S. military buyers there from all branches and SOCOM folks there. They're the ones that can't have their picture taken.

Funny story about that, but a couple of years ago, Governor Romney came to see the show before, or right around the time, just a little bit before he announced he was running. And he wanted to to see the show before, or right around the time, just a little bit before he announced he was running. And he wanted to come see the show and we took him around, walked him around the floor for a while. And there were some guys, military guys,

they were in uniform. It's like, hey, let's get a picture with you and Governor Romney. No, no, no, no, we can't, we can't. Yeah. Okay, you're not here how much is the i don't want to dwell too much on shacho but how much is shacho how much was it impacted by the war on terror yeah because because we've been like engaged in

you know we've been engaged in multiple yeah theaters right, for- Long time? Yeah. I wouldn't say that- 17 years, you know. The war on terror impacted the market and that impacted the show. So it wasn't like a direct impact, but-

It just seems like it's been such a, like just a bewildering amount of new technologies, things driven by, you know, driven by the fact that, I mean, even though most Americans kind of lose sight of the fact, the fact that we've been at war for so long. Yeah, the fastest growing part of the show is the tactical law enforcement show.

Tactical law enforcement. Yeah. Okay. So that's by far the fastest growing part of the show. And I think that's a reflection of the changing market. And I think that that is driven in part due to people like Mark that served, went overseas, came back, left the military. And if they weren't before, they like to go target shooting, hunting. But I think that helps explain the growth of the modern sporting rifle popularity. A lot of the people, our surveys show that about half of the people that purchase them

are current or former military law enforcement. And actually, we have a thing on our website about the history of the rifle in America and that that rifle would become popular was really predictable because it's that's always happened through the history of United States after you know people serve they come back they take up target shooting they're familiar with that platform it's comfortable they like it and so if you look at the growth in the market at you know after every conflict you'll see you know certain types of rifles become very

popular yeah people forget that all rifles were originally a military right it's almost all it is it's cyclic so if you look back through the history of wars after you come back from World War one everyone was using bolt-action rifles well that's the rifle that they were familiar, and that's the one they wanted to take back into the woods with them. After World War II, they were using repeating rifles. They were using semi-automatic rifles, and that's what they wanted to take back in with them.

And after Korea and after Vietnam, you started to see the rise in the use of scopes, which before then was kind of antithetical. You know, people at the time, well, if you're going to use a scope, you're going to be poaching. So, as you kind of see these adoptions of these technologies as they kind of go back and forth. And it used to be that for a while, civilian technology would kind of drive military technology when it comes to small arms. And then it was the push that develop of new firearms for the military would push back out into the civilian market.

We've kind of seen that kind of go back around again. The military is looking at a lot more commercial off-the-shelf items. So you're seeing kind of that cyclic nature of that happening over and over. Yeah, it's not a one-way street. But to your point, Mauser bolt-action rifle, I mean, that is now considered the ubiquitous deer-hunting rifle, right? Like no gun control group would say, well, that's a weapon of war, right? But, you know, it was at one point.

It doesn't mean it can't be used for hunting and target shooting, et cetera. So, you know, the military does buy commercial products and, you know, so it goes both ways. I mean, consumers see what the military and law enforcement use and they think, well, it's good enough for them, that's what I want. And so that drives a lot what happens in the commercial market. What I want to do, I want to return to this for sure.

What I want to do is I want to do kind of like a cover a bunch of ground and do a walk and do a bunch of issues. Sure. But I think like particularly things that I know that our audience asks about around firearms issues, legislation issues, and try to like do quick snapshots of stuff.

And one thing, because being here in DC and you guys have some familiarity in the space, one thing I don't want to dwell on it too long, but we've talked a lot about uh on this show we've covered a lot about land and water conservation fund and it's kind of this story that doesn't really go away right now you guys are involved you guys are in some way yeah like what is it what's your opinion like what's your organization's opinion on it? Well, we think, you know, one of the challenges for the health of the industry is, you know, we need hunters to have access and opportunity. And that takes many forms, right?

Time, but also access to land, particularly out west where there's a lot of public land. And so opening up access to public lands for hunting, target shooting, fishing, et cetera, is important. So Land and Water Conservation Fund, we think is important. We support the public lands package that is in the Senate currently. We wish that it had passed at the end of last year, but we remain hopeful that we finally get it done. But so we support that S74. They filed cloture on it to come up for a vote any day, you know, real soon.

And we think it passes overwhelmingly. Yeah, it seems to have a lot of, it seems to have a lot of bipartisan support. It might even pass on unanimous consent, right? So there was the vote to, yesterday afternoon was like 99 to 1. So it'll pass, and then we'll see what happens in the House. So hopefully it passes as well.

But we think it's important. We support it. We have for quite a while, particularly within LWCF, the making public lands provision is something we think is very important. So to allow, to have a funding source to purchase rights-of-way and easements, et cetera, private land to get access to landlocked federal land, to open it up for more access for hunting and shooting.

So what's your litmus, like as an organization, what is the NSSF's litmus on how to fall on issues? So like, take something like the Land and Water Conservation Fund. So your perspective on it is access is good for hunters, hunters are good for the industry. I mean, is that- Good for conservation, right?

So, I mean, so we go back, it all starts from, you know, sort of the core function of NSSF. Our mission is to promote, protect, and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. That's right. And from the perspective of the industry, as the Industry Trade Association.

So that's how we you know that's that's our sort of prism through which we view things and so access there's no question access and opportunity are are critical to promoting protecting and preserving hunting in the shooting sports as we all know hunting has been on a slow decline for a number of years and so you know we have a lot of of programs and initiatives to try to address that and bend that curve, like the one we just started, plus one. But in terms of looking at legislation, the devil's always in the details, but conceptually, we want to see more public land opened up for hunting and shooting sports. It's a big issue out West.

So, you know, we try to balance equities. We also got to be, you know, sort of figure out what is doable, what is achievable legislatively. You know, you can, you know, I always had the pony on my Christmas list, but I didn't always get the pony. In fact, I never got the pony, so. You bring up the West,

but I think it's important for people to realize, I don't think there's a, I think I heard, I'm pretty always get the pony. In fact, I never got the pony. You bring up the West, but I think it's important for people to realize I don't think there's a, I think I heard, I'm pretty sure this is right. There's not a county in the United States that hasn't had LWCF projects on it. You know, I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, it's like municipal swimming pools, like all kinds of outdoor access programs. So there's a thing, Pittman-Robertson Fund. It feels like this has been like the year of the Pittman-Robertson Fund, where I feel growing up, without realizing you're doing it, anyone that buys guns or ammunition

in a certain archery equipment, you're like paying into the fund without knowing it. Because when you get your receipt, it doesn't say that there's a 13% or 14% tax built into it. So you can kind of live your life as a shooter and not realize you're

doing it. But I don't know why. I just feel like there's some tipping point where there's awareness. It's probably a smart move. It just seems to be in my world, there seems to be, in my world, there seems to be a lot more awareness now and a lot more reporting on the existence of the fund. Well, I'm glad to hear you think that's the case.

The industry has tried to promote that message. We've worked with Fish and Wildlife Service, in fact, a couple of years ago, probably more than a couple now, it was the 75th anniversary of the Pittman-Robertson excise tax being put in place to try to, so there was efforts to put information

or flyers and stickers on the boxes. And then some people purchased it. They understood and knew that. So I think that's hopefully bearing some fruit, trying to push that message. The taxes, it's 10% on handguns, 11% on long guns and ammunition. And it's been in place since 19,

well, the tax actually- There's not one that's 13? There's not a 13% part of it? Not on guns and ammunition. I mean, there's a size tax on a fishing tackle, but that goes into a different fund. Archery may be higher. I'm not sure.

So the tax actually existed. What happened was the industry asked to have the funds be used for conservation. Because at the time, if you look at the history, wildlife was not doing well in the United States. No, we were in the depths of despair, as Jim Poswit says. So the industry helped fund, through Leupold and others, the creation of wildlife management as a science. And that was funded, the industry helped fund, through Leupold and others, you know, the creation of wildlife management as a science.

And that was funded by the industry. And then the tax, you know, we said, use this tax dollars for this purpose. And I think it's now over $12 billion or thereabouts. And it's one of the primary sources of conservation funding in the United States as you know it's collected by treasury distributed given to the fish and wildlife goes into the trust fund

which we've learned actually isn't technically a trust fund I guess on the sequestration battle but from a couple years ago but then that is distributed back out to the states on the formula land mass hunting sales hunting license sales. How is the tax, like what actually is taxed along the way or what point, like at the end of the year?

No, it used to be that the manufacturer had to pay the tax twice a month and three times in September for firearms and ammunition. When the tax was supplied to other goods like archery and such, they got to pay quarterly. So a number of years ago,

actually we got legislation passed to change the payment schedule to quarterly like everybody else. And so, but it's paid basically with the first shipment by the manufacturer is when the tax is owed. And so the manufacturer's got to, you know, submit the tax receipts to Treasury,

to the Tax and Trade Bureau, TTB. They pay based off of sales or what they make? Sales. So, I mean, it gets a little complicated, but some sales are exempt, some from the tax. And it gets very, you know, like any tax log, it's complicated, but basically it's a commercial sale of firearms and ammunition products

at the manufacturer level is what the taxes do. Sales to the uniform branches are not, those sales are not taxable. Sales to state law enforcement is not taxed, but oddly, sales to federal law enforcement is taxable huh which i don't i don't know why how that came to be but that's the way it is so there's complexity so but it's basically you know and as you say my you know the taxes baked into the cost of the goods just like all other costs, insurance, electricity, labor.

You know, it's reflected in the price of the goods, but at the end of the day, you know, that is the consumer or the hunter, the shooter is paying the tax in an indirect fashion. We like to, you know, tell hunters that you're funding conservation, right? So they're connected to it. But to your point,

target shooters, people who never go afield are actually paying the lion's share of the tax because... Yeah, you guys did that study? Intuitively, 80%. And I've heard people in the industry think it's higher than 80%. Intuitively, you can see it. But I would

never have guessed that that would be the breakdown. So think about it this way, Steve. This past hunting season, I went out, I killed two deer this year. So I killed one with my bow and I killed one with my rifle. I probably used maybe three, let's say five rounds to check the zero on my rifle. And I put one round through the deer I killed. So that's what, six rounds max that I used in my rifle to hunt.

And you're hunting with granddaddy's rifle. I'm hunting with my old Remington 700, you know, 30-06. But when I go to the range on a weekend to fire my pistols or fire my AR-15, I'm starting at a minimum of 100 rounds. I'm buying 100 rounds right across the counter and I'm going into the range. And that's what I'm going to, that's the minimum start of what I'm going to play with that day. So you think, you figure I used'm going to play with that day.

So you think you figure I used six rounds to hunt deer this year. I'll use, let's say I go to the range once a month. I'm going to use a minimum of 1200 rounds through each of my firearms. Yeah. So that's the money that's going towards conservation. Yeah. We talked about it recently because hunters, I was saying like there's awareness about Pittman Robertson we talked about it recently because hunters, I was saying like, there's an awareness about Pittman-Robertson, right? And I think, and it was funny

because hunters like to vocalize about it. Or we like to virtue signal. Exactly. Around Pittman-Robertson. When they're looking at that numbers of like 80% of that money is- Yeah, we did that. Yeah, 78% of that money is tied to,

yeah, recreational shooting. And the license sales helps fund conservation. Oh, for sure. So that's why we say hunters are the original green movement. Hunters are the original conservationists. They're the ones paying for it. Which is a fact that has become lost on a lot of people now. I think because some of the systems have been in place for so long that people

lose the people lose sight of it um like i said when i had no awareness when i was a kid i had no awareness of how like your how your state fish and game agency which does all the work they do from disease research to law enforcement i had no idea where that money came from. You kind of live like a pretty nice life in this country, just hunting and fishing away. Yeah. With no idea like the machinations, right? It goes on behind the scenes. It goes on.

We're very proud of it. I mean, you know, because think about it. That's 10, 11% off the bottom line. Yeah. That the industry willingly pays that tax. And look at the success we've had since the tax was put to that purpose. I mean, the wildlife are doing pretty darn well

in this country. I mean, more white-tailed deer, more turkey. It's great success. The bald eagles off the endangered species list. All of this being funded by the excise tax. I think you pointed it out well when you wrote that piece for Outside Magazine a couple months ago where you were talking about, hey, bird watchers, you have birds to look at because of hunters.

Yeah. So, I mean, this is, and to more or less the point of what we're talking about, we've got a lot of people that are going to gun ranges today that will never step foot in the woods, and they're the ones that are helping fund this. That's a nice segue. We really cherish a good segue around here. I want you guys to explain the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act.

Oh, good. Because I was going to go there and you went there. I have questions about it. I call it pivot. You call it segue. Oh, yeah. I like that, man. It call it pivot. You call it segue. Oh, yeah. I like that, man. It's a pivot.

So, yeah, it's good. Yeah, because you imagine a pivot having like a point of pivot. So, I think this is hard for some people to visualize. So, this Pittman-Robertson fund takes kind of like when it comes to exercise the fund, it's like matching grants where states are doing projects and they get funding that they apply for funding from the fund to do certain projects. And a lot of the projects are centered around wildlife restoration. There's a movement though. Catch it, like interrupt me when I'm wrong. Okay. And then there's a push though

that states should have more flexibility to use Pittman-Robertson money to create shooting ranges. Right. So the law now allows the states to use the money for wildlife conservation restoration. That's where the bulk of the money goes and should go. They can also use some of the Pittman-Robertson for hunter education.

Obviously very important. That's already, they can already do that. They do that now. Okay. And they can already now also use some of the funds under certain conditions in the law to build or enhance public shooting ranges. So a number of years ago, we always have conversations with the state fish and game agencies, right?

They have an organization called the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, very creative name. So they have meetings and we go to the meetings and cause there's obviously things we need to dialogue and one of the discussions was and i remember being at the meeting because i said look you know we from the industry point of view think you guys are not spending enough money building public shooting ranges and we need that That's where the growth is taking place is in the shooting sports. And we all know about the struggles for hunting,

but it's just to the point we were just talking about. The shooters that never go afield are the ones that are paying the excise tax, right? That's where the bulk of the money is coming from. Firearms, ammunition that are being used for target shooting. So we think you guys should spend more money on this. This is what we want to see. We're paying the tax. And they say, well, the formula is very restrictive

in the laws, and that's one of the reasons why they just don't really do it. And so we said, well, what do you need? What would you want? And that became what we call the range bill because the name is too long. The Target Practice Marksmanship Training and Support Act that's sponsored by Senator Capito in the Senate.

The range bill. Let's call it the range bill. It's easier. And so all the bill will do is change that formula in the Pittman-Robertson Act to allow more flexibility in the states to use their Pittman-Robertson Act to allow more flexibility in the states to use their Pittman-Robertson allocation. So there's two parts to it.

There's the match part, and then there's the timeframe. So it extends the time period, and it reduces the match. So the states have to put up less money from their allocation, and they have more time to get the project done. It has no impact on the deficit. It doesn't change the excise tax up or down. It just gives them a little bit more flexibility.

So it's broadly supported. It is passed the House and the Senate in different packages, standalones. We have yet to get it across the finish line, but hopefully- Because why? Because it- I want Because why? Because it. I want to touch more on it.

It just gets into politics. It gets into a little bit of politics. Like what it's bundled with? It's what it gets packaged. So a lot of times, because it's not controversial at all, it has broad bipartisan support. Well, I want to point out a controversy.

It could pass on unanimous consent as a standalone, right? Like, which is what we try to do. It gets bundled or packaged with other provisions that are where there is disagreement or it's not as bipartisan. And so they try to use the bill as a sweetener to try to bring people along

on other titles in the bill. I got you. And then that big sportsman's package keeps getting bogged down and not getting across the finish line. Some of it is pure politics because the sponsor is up for re-election and the other side doesn't want to give him a win before the election. That's just the nature of politics, right? I mean, politics drives policy, as they say here in Washington. So we've tried to, we've had it in NDAA, which is the defense appropriation bill that funds DOD.

We had it in there. On one side, it fell out in conference for a number of reasons, basically because McCain wasn't around. It was right before he died. And so they kept the bill clean. Nothing extraneous was allowed to be kept in. So it fell out there.

We thought we had it done then. So we've been working on it about like six, maybe eight years. No kidding. Yeah. But it takes that long. I was watching an interview with you and you were talking about just the slow,

arduous process of legislation. Yeah, it doesn't. You were managing expectations. Yes, like for the Hearing Protection Act. Yeah, that's what I want to do next. Another pivot. That would have been a great pivot, but I got to back up. I could see a smart, well-meaning person

looking at the range bill and being nervous or leery or suspicious of the fact that you'd be pulling some of the money away from wildlife work. But I think what I would tell him in that conversation is I would tell him that the word investment gets thrown around a lot, right? In politics, like everything's an investment, but you could kind of see it as being a, I think you can make a legitimate case that it is's an investment but you could kind of see it as being a i think you could make a legitimate case that it is like an investment it by creating more opportunities for shooters exactly you're probably going to generate you're going to generate a lot you're probably going to generate a larger fund and maybe and and then with the goal being the end of the

day actually putting more money toward wildlife that That's exactly. Here's the talking points at many, many, many meetings on the Hill. A rising tide floats all boats. Shooters who are paying for conservation deserve a return on their investment. And the more public opportunities for shooting, the more consumption of ammunition, the more purchase of firearms, the more funding for wildlife conservation. Pittman-Robertson Exc-Lyce tax dollars will increase. And the bill does not require the states to do anything. It just gives them flexibility. If they want to do it.

Yeah. So then if we get this passed and then they don't, we'll be back saying, now look, you said this is what you needed. We got it for you. Now please go build some more ranges or just improve the ones that exist. It doesn't need to be mysterious

because it's like easily trackable in 10 years after passage. And maybe you'd see a diminishment of, I would like to think you'd see a diminishment of shot up appliances. Because we use a lot, honestly, we use a lot of makeshift. You're kind of forced to.

We use a lot of makeshift shooting ranges. And that's part of the concern of this. We use a lot of makeshift shooting ranges. And that's part of the concern of this. I mean, one of the things that we find from new shooters, new hunters, is the barriers to entry. So, one, let's be honest. It's an expensive sport to get into, whether you're going to be shooting recreationally or you're going to hunt. Buying a rifle, buying licenses, you know, whether or not you're going to be buying access through, you know, hunt leases, those kinds of things. But when you have a public access range, now that's open to everybody to go use.

But again, what we're seeing here is a lot of ranges that have dilapidated or they're ad hoc ranges. And we actually had cases out there in Arizona where people were shooting on public ranges that weren't maintained and weren't well kept. And you had a fatality of a pregnant Air Force spouse who was shot and killed by a stray round that went beyond the edge of that range, beyond left and right lateral limits, and resulted in a fatality. We want safe places for people to go shoot. That's one of the things we're working for in the council, the federal advisory committee that I'm on. I chair the shooting committee, and that's exactly the discussion we've been having

is we need places where people can go shoot. They need dedicated space so that they can be policed. After the SHOT Show last year, myself and several other folks from NSSF went out with Secretary Zinke and local volunteers to clean up some BLM land where people had been shooting. And it was not pretty, right?

I mean, it's the shot up TVs and refrigerators and couches and just like, it was just, it was embarrassing. And you're sitting there picking this trash up and bags and bag after bag after bag. And it's like, you know, this is not a good, you know, if you're not a hunter, you're not a shooter, you come and saw this,

it would not be, you know, you would not have a good opinion of the sport or people that participate in the sport. Yeah, you want to point out, like, I don't, you know, you're a shooter, but it doesn't mean I condone littering. Exactly.

But they get conflated. Yes. You know? Yeah. I think it can become a major barrier, right? Like for us, all of us at the table can sort of like deal with that and you can like make it a safe place when you show up. And if you see unsafe activity, you can walk away.

But to someone that's just trying to get into it and you just show up at a place like that, it's like you're not going to be able to make the best of that. You're just going to turn around and walk away. So it becomes a major barrier. It leads to BLM closing off land, shutting lands down, right? To shooting. And even for us, I feel like there's never enough shooting ranges.

In all the places I've lived across the West, I've never lived in a town where there were so many shooting ranges where on a saturday you're like oh i'm just gonna go here and it won't be busy right like so when i moved to virginia i actually one of the criteria for the house that i chose to live in was the the access to a private shooting range is just down the road from my house so i mean that's how important it is for some of us we want to know that we can get somewhere we can shoot and it's it's a question i get from people all the time. You know,

where can I go shoot? I'm fortunate that I've got a public shooting range not too far from the house where I can go swing a shotgun and I've also got a private range where I can go shoot my rifles. We have a website for that,

where to shoot. Exactly. Oh, really? Yeah. What's it called? Where to shoot. Yeah, let's go shooting.org. Yeah.

I grew up a mile. We could ride our bikes down to our shooting range. It wasn't public, it was a private gun club, twin-lay gun club. And club and you know you'd have to work hard to find someone there yeah it was yeah it was nice to have uh back to the pivot suppressors this is something i've become like increasingly interested in i'm actually just entered into the pro i just began the process with the help of a friend of mine um a friend of mine at vortex i began the process with the help of a friend of mine,

a friend of mine at Vortex. I began the process of doing the rigmarole. Right, to acquire one. Yeah. I started it before. I started it before, but at the time, there was a 14-month delay. It's probably about nine, 10 months now. He was saying maybe eight.

Well, then nothing got processed during the shutdown. I think it's, we asked them to tell us what the delay is. And it was eight months. They had started getting it down. It's probably eight, nine months. A friend of mine actually got one and it took a year. Yeah. I want to get into that,

like what that process looks like and it took a year. Yeah. I want to get into that, like what that process looks like and what could remedy it. But just to touch on it, kind of like my personal awareness of the issue. I hunted with one years ago. Right. How many years ago? Nine years ago in Scotland.

Okay. And I'm sitting there with a guy, what do they call the guys in Scotland. Okay. And I'm sitting there with a guy. What do they call the guys in Scotland? The Gillies. Yeah. Is that what they call them? Yeah. Whatever.

He's like a game manager. Yeah, their game manager is called Gillies. Shoots tons of deer off of big. They got like this huge private property, like an estate. And this guy shoots tons of them for the market. I mean, he like, you know, they sell red deer, right? They sell wild red deer and he shoots and guts and brings to market red deer, processes them.

Not processes them, but strips the hide. And the only, well, it's funny, he only guts from the diaphragm down. They had a word for it too. Anyways, this guy hunts with a suppressor. He had a Tikka T3. I think it was a 270. That's my rifle.

What's that? That's my rifle. Yeah, with a suppressor on it. And I remember saying to him, this is years ago, and I wasn't like as aware of him then. And I'm like, I can't believe you guys can hunt with these things because I can't believe you don't. It's their rule. Yes.

He's not allowed to not use it. That's exactly right. So only in America is there this public perception It's their rule. He's not allowed to not use it. That's exactly right. So only in America is there this public perception that this is some evil device only used, has only one purpose, and that's for gangsters and assassins, right? And as you say, in the rest of the world, it doesn't have that connotation.

It's required for hunting in many parts. Even in countries that have very restrictive- Finland, like even if you're out with no one around for miles, you're still required by law there to use it. You can buy them in like hardware stores in London, right? In England. You can buy them in New Zealand.

They come from China. They're made of plastic, and they're disposable, and they cost like 25 bucks, I've been told. Only in America do you have this connotation, but they are legal to possess in 42 states. You got to jump through all the hoops, but they're legal in 42 states,

and you can hunt with them now in 40 states. 40 states, yeah. So there's the legislation that's been pending for a while called the Hearing Protection Act. Can I interrupt you real quick? Sure. I want to talk theory for a couple more minutes. Then I want to talk about all this other stuff, because this stuff I actually don't understand. Okay.

But I want to talk about the theory of it for a minute. Sure. Because the best argument I've heard against suppressors was from a, remember this, we were hunting swamp rabbits in Kentucky? I do. We're talking to a game, we're hunting with a game warden. And I think I've told this story like too many times already, but I'll

tell it one more time, then I'm never going to tell it again. We're talking to him and he was saying how during general firearm season, hunting for him is out of the question. He's just too busy doing his work as a game warden. But he says he does like to squeeze in some archery hunting. He says, but my problem is I get up in my tree stand and it's bow season and it gets around prime time and off in the distance,

or pouch, right? He's like something about that shot. Didn't sound right. Doesn't sound right. And he says, then I'm down out of my tree stand heading over in some direction. And he was saying that, he also said that Facebook is a very important,

has emerged as a very good law enforcement tool. He said like, I don't need to go out in the woods anymore. I got Facebook. But he said like that sound is need to go out in the woods anymore i got facebook but uh but he said like that sound is important is an important tool for him right and he was leery of suppressors because the gunshot right but then i think about like and i took that in and i and i thought about but the more i think about it, the way we're trained to view wildlife and the wildlife models that we have is we're trained to view it, or not trained to, it's necessary to view wildlife at population level.

Absolutely. So I just have a very hard time picturing that you would see even localized population impact from if some small number of poachers use that technology along with all the other technologies available to them, including crossbows, which are much quieter. I just can't see, like, I can't see there becoming significant population level declines of game because of this other tool. So let's back up just even a second. So let's just back up a second to what your game warden is telling you. Because I've got a guy I used to work for in the Marine Corps.

He retired and now he's a game warden in Florida. And his initial reaction to suppressors was the same thing. They're going to be a tool for poachers all the time. But the key that you said, so the game warden's sitting in his tree stand, and he hears this gunshot. Right. Slightly different. It doesn't sound like a normal gunshot, but he still hears it.

So here's the point about— No, no, no. I misspoke. Not, no. He wasn't pointing that out. He wasn't saying it was a suppressed gunshot. Just the timing of the gunshot, meaning a single gunshot at dusk. Sure.

Okay, yeah. Got it. So you still hear this gunshot, but again, the whole deal with suppressors is it doesn't completely silence the gun. You're still audible. It brings it down from the same decibel level of about a jet going off to about below a jackhammer where it's not going to cause instant

and permanent hearing loss. You could still hear that gunshot. Because there's still the sonic. Exactly. That's why we, in the law, they're called silencers because that's the name Maxim gave to it. I get corrected about that all the time.

When he invented it, right? And he's the guy actually... It was a marketing tool. It was. He invented the muffler on cars. Its function is the same as a muffler. You can still hear a car with a muffler. Without the muffler, it's a lot louder. But that's all it is. It muffles

the sound. So we're basically running straight pipes. Running cherry bombs. Cherry bombs. Exactly. Yeah. So... You're drag racing refer to it as suppressors, not silencers. Even though the law of silencers is to try to win the rhetorical battle. As I understand it, the best research on the issue was done by Steve Holbrook, a lawyer, Second Amendment advocate, who's argued many Supreme Court cases, and he's written a number of books. The reason that suppressors were put in the National Firearms Act in 1934

was at the request of fishing game agencies because they were concerned that people would use suppressors to poach game during the depression that's where it came from yes and it never happened it and and now they're legal and to hunt within 40 states and i've not seen any evidence or suggestion that people are poaching and it's having an impact on populations, even localized. Okay, but you can poach with a crossbow. No one talks about getting rid of crossbows. Right.

It's like an effective poaching tool. There's plenty of, if you follow the news, there's plenty of poaching that goes on with archery equipment. But no one's suggesting, hey, we shouldn't be allowed to have bows because they're so quiet and you can poach and it goes on with archery equipment right but no one's suggesting hey we shouldn't be allowed to have bows because they're so quiet and you can poach with them but even take it outside the context of hunting right i mean like if you go to a shooting range one of the biggest complaints or issues for shooting ranges is noise complaints from neighbors right typically it's you know the

rangers in a rural area and then the suburbs in, people move next to a shooting range, and then they're shocked to learn that they're shooting at the shooting range on Saturday morning. What's all this shooting from the shooting range? That I move next to. So it will allow people at shooting ranges to be better neighbors and to sort of address that concern and issue. But, and if, let's assume there was some evidence that developed that, oh, we got a problem in this state or this part of the state where, you know, we're seeing a reduction in an adverse population impact. We think there's a lot of poaching and it's people using suppressors. Well, then you can, the State Fish and Game Agency has the power to, you know, manage that and say, okay, you can't use suppressors now.

But, I mean, if people are poaching, they're breaking the law, right? I mean, it's like, so, but I don't think there's any evidence of that. And they're never used in crime. I mean, like you can't find evidence of crime. ATF has come out and said it's infinitesimally low. 0.015%. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Another thing that I think about when I look at it as I was kind of kicking this whole thing around, is that why do shooters have to, like, why do we have to, as a matter of law, accept how loud a firearm is? Like, if firearms were just naturally quiet, would there be legislation that made you make it loud? So one of the arguments against the Hearing Protection Act from the gun control groups is that, you know, the police,

it would defeat this technology that was developed in Iraq and now being used in some city, ShotSpotter. And the CEO of the company said, no, the technology would still pick up a report of a suppressed firearm. It has. And all they'd have to do is tweak the software to make sure they picked it up at the right time. Yeah, that became the argument. Like somehow bad guys are going to go through the rigmarole and get suppressors.

I mean, they can get them now. They're legal in 42 states. And you don't see crimes being committed with them. The thing too, not that it changed my perspective, it was as I kicked it around. I think having kids kind of affected too, because I have hearing loss. I'm left-handed and I have hearing loss in my left ear.

What? You don't say. I mean, everybody I hang out with, right? Everyone I hang out with has to have it. They all shout at one another. Yeah, so I have it. And now it's largely self-inflicted, okay? Because I've known for my adult life,

and I'm bad about it. I need to be better, but I'm bad about hearing protection. Lazy about hearing protection. When I was a kid, it wasn't self-inflicted. It was just that my dad didn't have awareness of it. He probably can only imagine what kind of hearing loss he must have had from being a combat soldier.

But now, man, when I'm with my kids and we're shooting, I'm very aware of the ear thing. In fact, I made my kid, we're out duck hunting, and I made him sit there with the headphones on. He can't hear it. I'd be yelling at him to go grab a duck or something. He can't hear anything anybody's saying, but I'm just like, I'm aware of it now. And so when he's 10, where we live, he can hunt with me. He can hunt deer with me when he's 10. And I'm going to have him home with a suppressed rifle.

Yeah. And there's other benefits aside from the, from the hearing protection of it all. I mean, it's reduced recoil. It's less of a muzzle flash. It's when you're trying to introduce someone to the shooting sports and to hunting and you're able to sit there,

especially if you're going to be hunting out of a, out of a shoot house or out of a blind, or you're sitting in a tree stand in close proximity to one another. It's less of that shock that's coming out of the end of the out of a blind or you're sitting in a tree stand in close proximity to one another. It's less of that shock that's coming out of the end of the barrel, that muzzle blast. So it takes that up

and it makes that learning experience for someone new, like a 10-year-old kid. It's going to be a little bit more enjoyable, a little bit less intimidating. It takes some of that scariness out of it. So, yeah. I'm definitely, I'm sensitive to, I don't want to like diminish the arguments against and I'm sensitive sensitive to... I don't want to diminish the arguments against

and I'm sensitive to it, but I just feel like it's a situation where the pros really outweigh the cons in my mind. And the cons aren't demonstrated. They're hypothetical cons. The opposition to it comes from gun control groups and they don't have any, to me, good case or good arguments at all. And in fact, it would be good for ATF because they spend an enormous amount of time and energy and money processing the paperwork when this is not a public safety issue.

It's not going to result in crime or anything like that. So they spend an incredible amount of time processing these Form 4s that you have to fill out and submit. Can you explain the process, like what it involves? Yeah, so there's a $200 tax that you have to pay, and you have to fill out this form. You have to get pictures, fingerprints, and the form and send it in with $200 to ATF.

And notification of the chief law enforcement officer. Yep. Who does what with it? Nothing. Does nothing. You just have to notify them, I'm going to buy a suppressor. Right.

And then the $200 goes to the treasury. ATF processes the paperwork and they do a background check. Guess what the background check is? It's the exact same background check you go through when you buy a gun at retail. Right? Exact same check. Why does it

take... Because there's just stacks of paper. It's all paper, right? So ways to improve it would be electronic forms. Some of the discussions about how you might do legislation would be the original act was to take it out of the NFA. Suppressors are also in the Gun Control Act, right? So even if you took it out of the National Firearms Act, so you didn't have to pay the $200,

you didn't have to do the Form 4. That's the same thing that makes it fully automatic. That's the same act that covers fully automatic rifles. Yes, exactly. So if you took it out of the National Firearms Act, it would still be in the Gun Control Act. So they would still be serialized, they would still be a 4 Gun Control Act. So they would still be serialized. They would still be a 4473

and a background check performed on the purchaser. The same background check they do a second time when they go to pick up the suppressor. So you're doing the same check twice. What's the point, right? So that would like, then the manufacturers could ship them to licensed dealers and you can go in and you can have them in inventory.

You can go buy one. And go through the same check process. And you have a background check. Right. So there are some, there's one bill that's been introduced in the Senate that would take it even out of the Gun Control Act. You know, and it wouldn't be regulated.

It would just be like any other accessory because it's not a firearm. It doesn't do anything. It only, you know, as we. Because it's not a firearm, it doesn't do anything. It only, you know, as we talked, it's an attachment that you would put on a firearm. So the argument would be, why is this being controlled at all? So, you know, whether that's,

look, the legislation didn't move in a Republican-controlled House and Senate, because there's a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of education needs to be done. But in a Democrat-controlled House where they're having hearings today on gun control legislation, the prospects of moving that legislation

in this Congress is, you know, it's not feasible in my opinion. Even with the arguments around just safety issues? Yeah. I mean, it becomes a political issue. They're not going to pass anything. If it seems friendly to guns, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen, right.

Yeah. Can you talk? But I mean, even when the Republicans controlled the House, it was still difficult to move the bill and the Senate as well. I mean, there was just... We didn't get enough co-sponsors. We didn't get enough movement on it.

But again, it takes a lot of time. It takes years and years and years. Do you think it'll ever happen? I think it will. It's going to take a while longer. So I would say you probably go in a minute or it could take another 10 years.

You've got to grind it out. When the Hearing Protection Act was introduced in the last Congress, we saw a lot of people got very excited and they kind of sat out on the sidelines. Well, I'm going to wait. So I'm going to pay the $200 tax and wait nine months. So we're back to where we were telling them then. Don't wait because things in Congress are glacial. So if you want to pay the $200 tax and wait nine months. So we're back to where we were telling him then is don't wait

because things in Congress are glacial. So if you want to suppress it, start the paperwork now. I would completely agree. If you're holding off anyone because you think you're not going to pay the $200 tax, you're going to be waiting a long time, unfortunately. I had dinner recently with one of the state, with a state legislator in Montana who worked heavily on the one that allowed for hunting in Montana.

And they had had some resistance. They'd had some resistance there against Fish and Game. I don't know if it was a real strenuous resistance, but there was some resistance. So there's been efforts to events around the country done by the American Suppressor Association. NSSF has helped out. NRA has helped out as well to educate state legislators.

We did an event at the Shooting Rage in Rayburn Building. Did you know that? There's a range. There's a gun range underneath Congress. Oh, no, I didn't know that. It's for gun range underneath Congress. Oh, no, I didn't know that. It's for the Capitol Hill Police. Oh, okay. But we had the member host an event for other members

so that they could come and hear for themselves the difference between a suppressed and unsuppressed firearm and that there's still a very loud report. You can hear it. It's not silenced in any way, shape, or form. What you see on TV, you know, like the puff of air, it's just not reality. Would you hold one, Yanni?

Definitely. And what I was going to add that I didn't know about, but we were looking into doing a podcast just about hearing loss and hearing protection and whatnot, and talking to a bunch of these experts. They were saying, yeah, the one thing that- There would be a lot of jokes in there. It would be a very loud podcast.

I could do like a 10-minute riff on that. But important, right? Like obviously, not as so important to a 25-year-old, but as we age and you start to realize that you're losing it and you want to protect your kids on and on. But a lot of these guys were saying that, yeah, it only minimizes it so much

that it takes it down to, like you were saying. Hearing safe. But you're still, if you don't run ear protection while you shoot a suppressed gun, you are still getting hearing damage. It's not 100% like you just put it on and you're just off you go. Like everyone I talked to said you should still wear hearing protection. Is that right? That's probably the best argument the other side has is but when you say you know hearing protection and

they say we're hearing protection you know oh yeah but the tonality is why you shouldn't be shooting anyway yeah uh background checks can Can you explain? I heard a story. I was living in Washington when I heard the story. I heard a story about how if you lie on your background check, that prosecutors don't prosecute people who lie on background checks.

And they even interviewed, I think someone from the King County Sheriff's Department, so the county that holds Seattle. And he even confirmed, I can't remember how many people, some staggering number, there's hundreds of thousands of people who tried to buy one and lied on a background check, but then don't get in trouble for having lied on the background check. Do you understand this at all? Yeah, so- I don't even know if I'm explaining it right, but it's a story I heard.

When you fill out the form, it's called a Form 4473. Anyone who's purchased a gun from a licensed dealer has filled it out and then they ask you questions are you you know are you a felon dishonorably discharged you know

here illegally etc um restraining orders right so like seven categories that make you

a privative person and then you sign it and you swear to the accuracy of it so if you lie on the farm um it's a crime a federal it and you swear to the accuracy of it. So if you lie on the form, it's a crime, a federal crime.

And you get up 10 years in jail. But no one goes after them though, right? Well, so then they do the background check, right? And let's say the person's denied, right? Or you even have cases where people don't lie on the form or they lie on the form and they pass the background check. But let's say you fill out the forum, you lie, say you aren't a convicted felon when you are,

and you get denied, right? So when that happens, the FBI notifies, the dealer's not told why you're denied. You don't know at the counter. The dealer doesn't know. The dealer does not know. They just denied. You don't know at the counter. The dealer doesn't know. The dealer does not know. They just know it's like green light, yellow, a delay, red light, you're denied. And they don't know why you're denied, and so they can't tell the customer why they're denied.

They can just give them information if they wanted to file an appeal with the FBI, with NICS, which you can do if you think it was, you know, they're mistaken. And some small number of times they are because it's primarily a name check. And so, you know, somebody could have a similar name, similar date of birth with somebody else. And they think, you know, this is John Doe A, not John Doe B. Yeah, like our buddy Kevin Murphy wound up on a no-fly list

because of some other Kevin Murphy. Exactly. How many the hell Kevin Murphys there got to be running around this country? I don't know. Yeah. So the FBI will tell ATF, okay? And then ATF, you know, it's their job to go out and track these people down. It's ATF's job. Yes, because it's a federal crime go out and track these people down. It's ATS job.

Yes, because it's a federal crime and if the firearm was transferred, the person's a prohibited person. So, but then it becomes a resource issue. A lot of times what I've heard is, you know, let's say, this is the example it was told to me. You got an 80 year old grandfather buying a gun to give to a gift to their grandchild or something like that.

And you know that when they tip that cow over in college in 1953, that was a felony under state law, right? And they were convicted of a felony they didn't even know was a felony. And so they get denied, are you going to prosecute that person? Is that worth using the prosecutorial resources? So a lot of times ATF will say,

look, just give us the gun back. You can't buy guns, you're a prohibited person. And that sort of situation. Or you're the United States Attorney's Office, you have limited resources, you want to have the most bang for your buck, if you will, impact on reducing violent crime. They look at that, and I'm a former prosecutor,

so I can understand this. Look, I'm working on convicting these gangbangers who were selling drugs and involved in shootings and such, or am I going to go after grandpa because he didn't realize, you know, 40 years ago that was a felony? How are you going to use your resources? Which is more important to impacting public safety?

I mean, that's a very extreme example, but there are people, you know, if it's a convicted felon, it's a bad guy and they bought a gun, those are the people that would get prosecuted. So it just kind of depends on why they were denied and what's the best use of limited resources. I mean, the government is no different than anybody else.

You've got limited resources. You have to make decisions to maximize the resources to have the most impact. Can you explain where background checks that you get when you go into a sportsman's warehouse and buy a rifle off the counter, you do a background check. Can you explain what people say when people talk about the need for universal background checks and where within universal background checks, like what's your perspective on it? And where in that do you have, where in that do you have a problem? So if you ever buy a firearm from a licensed dealer, there's a background check. It's required

by law, the Brady Act. And the industry supports that actually the idea of the background check at the retail point of purchase from a licensee was an industry idea long before the Brady Act. So your organization supports? Yes. It was an industry idea because we don't want dealers inadvertently selling guns to prohibited persons. Okay. Right? We can all agree we don't want primitive people getting firearms.

What we have seen, however, is that the background check system that exists now has got some pretty significant problems. And background checks are not always accurate. The data in the background check system is only as good as the data that's put in it. And if data is not put in, right? So look at Sutherland Springs. There was a guy who was a primitive person like three or four different ways. And- Federally prohibited.

Yes. Felony conviction, dishonorably discharged. Domestic violence. Domestic violence. So when you say four different ways, like he had like independent, he'd arrived at it independently four times. And he was involuntarily committed

to a mental health facility. And the Air Force and all of DOD, not just the Air Force, he happened to be in the Air Force at the time, were not putting the records into the FBI background check system. Out of an intellectual opposition? That's the word I'm trying to say.

No, just bureaucracy, not doing his job. Yeah, didn't follow through. Right, and it's frustrating because, I mean, there were apparently IG reports talking about this in the past. Nix was aware that the DOD wasn't putting in records. So that guy was able to buy firearms four times, going to a store or licensed dealer, buying a gun, passing a background check four times

because those records were not in the system. You can see each time that retailer at the counters wanted to make sure that he's doing the right thing. And he's running a background check on this guy who should never own a firearm. And he's coming back clean. He has no idea. The dealer's relying upon that background check, right?

So, and then after the tragedy in Newtown, you know, we launched an initiative and there've been some federal legislation in the past, but it really just wasn't getting the job done. We started, NSSF, that is, started the Fix NICS campaign. And on the industry's nickel, we went around and got the law changed. Now, in 16 states, we're still working on more. Montana's one of them. Wyoming, right?

Wyoming, Montana. New Hampshire, Montana, Wyoming are the three states that we're still working on more. Montana is one of them. Wyoming, right? Wyoming, New Hampshire, Montana, Wyoming are the three states that we're still targeting. And then we want to make improvements. But we changed the law in 16 states to require the states to put disqualifying records into the FBI database. Primarily, what was really missing was mental health records, because states were not reporting mental health records because states were not reporting mental health records because of privacy laws

or state, we had to change state law because they weren't allowed to under state law. And the federal government cannot compel under federal law the states

to give the information. Is that right, really? They can't, right? So, it has to be done voluntarily by the states. So, we got the law changed

in 16 states. We increased the disqualifying mental health records in the database, the FBI database, by 200%. They went from about 1.7 million to 5 million. And again, there are still states that are not submitting. And we're going back and looking at the states, like did they just do a big dump once and then have they continued to report as they should? we're very proud of that like we did that the

industry did that now our view is you have to fix the background check system hence nix is the national instant criminal background check system nix n-i-c-s fix nix to us it makes no sense to start expanding you know private party background checks background checks when you have a system that needs to be fixed in the first instance. That, we think, is where the focus should be. Let's get the records into the database and fix it before you have a conversation about expanding it. Because you're just going to have more bad background checks, and that doesn't benefit anybody. And there are other issues with the legislation we have concerns about we um but we think the focus would be on fixing nicks and we the industry have been doing that and then after susan spring senator cornyn introduced the

fix nicks act um named after our program that wasn by accident. And we advocated for that bill to pass, and it did, and it was signed by President Trump, which requires all federal agencies to submit records. Okay. And we've been talking to NICS, and that's happening. But even there, some parts of the federal government were dragging their feet in getting the records submitted. Maybe dragging their feet's not the right word.

They weren't as timely as we'd like. I think some of it is just, again, a resource issue. And then it gives grant money, it makes grant money available to the states to help them get their records into the system. There's a report I think will be coming out fairly soon, about a year anniversary of the bill, to see what progress has been made. But again, we talk to NICS on a regular basis and they say, yeah, the records are coming in that DOD has put the records in. Other federal

agencies that had records that had not been reporting are now submitting. So we're very proud of that legislation. You know, we advocated for it. It actually ended up passing with more Democrat co-sponsors than Republican co-sponsors. And the lead Democrat co-sponsor was Senator Murphy from Connecticut, hardly a fan of the firearms industry, even though the industry was founded in Connecticut, long history, created the Connecticut's economy, and NSSF is still located there, as are some major manufacturers.

So we're very proud of that, and I think what that shows is there can be common ground on these issues, and we think this is a great example of that. Now, as I said, there are other issues with the bill we have concerns about, but. What universal background checks is normally understood, would that prevent a person from inheriting,

you know, like I never bought, I didn't buy a new firearm until I was in my 30s, right? Like you would just, like, I just, I for a long time hung with my grand, like had ownership of my grandfather's shotgun. Would universal background checks as we've discussed

prevent the, like you from getting a gun from your parents? No. Without you doing a background check? So the bills allow for, and it's changed over time

as iterations have been introduced, like to allow a transfer within the family, right? So father to son, grandfather to grandchild would not require a background check. Okay, okay. But there's, so a couple of the issues with the idea is, first, not necessarily in order, but one big issue is that universal background checks,

it's not enforceable unless you have national registration. And the Department of Justice has acknowledged that in a written document, that it only works if there's national registration. And that to many Second Amendment supporters is just unacceptable. And federal law doesn't allow registration. So if you can't enforce it,

then you can make the argument, what's the point, right? Second is studies by the Department of Justice demonstrate that bad guys are not getting guns from licenses. They're stealing them. That's like the number one source or they're just, you know, trading them for drugs and things like that.

Colorado passed universal background checks. There was this, what we call the myth of 40%. Gun control groups were claiming based on a very flawed discredited study that 40% of all firearms transfers are private party and with no background check. And that's how bad guys are getting guns. Even the authors of that study said, ignore it. It's no good. It's a bad study. Colorado passed universal background checks

and saw not a 40% increase, about 8%. So this idea that there are just guns going all over the place without background checks, Colorado demonstrates that that's not really the case. It used to be the so-called gun show loophole. The reality about gun shows is that the vast overwhelming majority

of people that are selling firearms at a gun show are licensed dealers. Background checks, 4473 and a background check take place. DOJ surveys of prison inmates incarcerated for firearms-related offenses. Where'd you get the gun? Gun shows, less than 1%.

So that's just not really, and then it became the internet loophole. This idea that you can buy guns on the internet. Well, you can advertise guns on the internet, assuming Facebook or others will let you, which they don't. But if you're a licensed dealer, it's still a face-to-face transaction

with a 4473 and a background check. All it is is you may pay with a credit card and then the gun gets shipped to your local dealer. Does GunBroker go through GunBroker.com? GunBroker requires anybody using that service that the gun's transferred to an FFL. That's their own policy. That's their own policy.

And a lot of those sites that exist do that. So that's one problem. Another problem from the industry's point of view is you're asking these retailers to perform essentially a government service for the government, right? And in some states that require background checks, California, the dealer has no choice. They must do it, right?

And it caps the fee. And guess what? The fee is so low that they lose money on the transaction. They have got to spend time, energy, labor, right, to process a background check for a private party sale. And they end up losing money, but they have no choice in California. So that's unfair. We've seen other states cap the fee.

And that's, you know, if you're going to let them, if they're going to do this, they should just be able to charge what the market will bear. I mean, it's America, you know. The government should be regulating that price in our point of view. Another problem we see is that

there's no liability protections for the retailer. So Yanni comes in with the gun. He wants to sell to you. I'm the dealer. I take it in. I've got to log it into my acquisition record. I do the background check to you. You leave.

And then there's an accident, and then you sue me. So now I got to defend a lawsuit for a gun that I didn't sell from my inventory. And guess what? My insurance company is going to say, you didn't sell that gun from your inventory. There's no coverage. Or I make a mistake in the record. ATF comes in and finds a violation of my paperwork. I can now potentially lose my license because the courts have said a single violation of the record keeping requirements, a single willful violation, you can lose your license. So here I'm going to lose my license for a record keeping error on a gun I didn't even sell for my inventory. You lost money on it.

And you lost money on it. So here becomes another issue. But thank you for playing. So, again, let's look at the same issue. So Larry is going to be that FFL. He's going to perform that transfer. And Giannis comes in with a gun. He wants to transfer it over.

What kind of guns you got? What kind of gun you handing over, Giannis? He ruined one of mine. Let's say he's trying to sell that. He's trying to sell the ruined gun for 20 bucks

in a case of beer. So he turns that in. The background check is run and it turns out that Larry's running the background checks on the both of you and you both pop

as prohibited. Now what do I do? Now what does he do? The dilemma of the double denial. So he's got basically a hot gun that he doesn't want to have, and he knows he can't hand it back to either one of you.

He can't transfer it to you who intends to buy it because you're prohibited, and can't hand it back to you because it turns out you're prohibited. What does he do now? Citizens arrest. So now he's got to go to court and file a lawsuit. With a guy you know that is shady, and he's just handed you one gun that he's already destroyed? The dealer then would have to go to court

and file a lawsuit. It's called an interpleader. And give the gun to the court and say, look, I don't have ownership interest or title in this. These two guys, you court figure it out. I'm out of here. Or you got to go try to convince the local police department to take the rifle or whatever the firearm is.

And what are they going to say? Get out of here, I don't want anything to do with this. Not my problem. Yeah. Because what are they going to do with it? You'd have to find somebody else to transfer the gun to. There's a lot of details about it that I, I guess don't know

and hadn't thought about. It sounds great in theory. It really does. But once you start digging into it, then it starts to well, how do you make this work? Yeah, my resistance to it was based largely on how I know that how I know that

in my family, in my circle, in my world, how law-abiding people, how we go about our business, right? And so I never looked at it from dealer industry perspective. It was just looking at just our common practices and ways in which they would be upset and kind of destroyed. But without really knowing the details from the sales perspective.

And again, you do a private party background check, but if the background check database is inaccurate and incomplete, what have you accomplished? Why don't we work on getting the records into the system that should be there in the first place? Montana needs to change their law. I love Montana, but they got to change their law. And what we found was, I'll give you a real world example

from our Fix Next campaign. The Washington Navy Yard shooting took place. Several people were killed. Turns out, as is often the case in these terrible events, the shooter was mentally ill, paranoid schizophrenic. He purchased a gun, a pump shotgun from a dealer in Virginia where he lived,

passed the background check, and that's the firearm he used. And he killed a lot of people. Not long before he purchased the firearm, he had been in Rhode Island on some work assignment and was like off his rocker. And the police get called and they take him to a hospital. He was not involuntarily committed in Rhode Island. But let's assume he had been involuntarily committed.

Now he's a primitive person. Well, at some point he gets out, goes back to Virginia. Rhode Island at the time did not put the records into NICS. So he would have gotten out of Rhode Island, gone back to Virginia, gone to the dealer, bought that shotgun and passed the background check because Rhode Island didn't put the records in. We were working on Rhode Island to try to get them to change the law when the Washington Navy Yard shooting occurred. And they weren't going to do it. They were going to study it, which is lobby code for like kill the bill, right? They were going to go study it. They weren't going to pass the law

to change it, to require Rhode Island to put the records in. We went back to Rhode Island and said, look what happened. We walked them through. This is exactly what we're talking about. Within 24 hours, they passed the bill. Rhode Island now puts the records into the system.

Industry did that, nobody else. I'm real eager to get onto to Sunday hunting and lead ammo, but stay on this for a second. Are there Second Amendment advocate, I know the answer to this, but give me their perspective. There are Second Amendment advocates though, who presumably are uneasy with fixniks. Yes.

What's that argument there, that it's like a government imposition on your rights? who presumably are uneasy with FixNICs. Yes. What's that argument there? That it's like a government imposition on your rights? There's a small segment within the Second Amendment community that doesn't think there should be background checks. We happen not to agree with that. The argument that we heard in opposition to the FixNICs legislation or that we hear when we work the issue in the states is that

people who aren't prohibited, their records are going to get into the system and then people are going to be denied the ability to purchase a firearm when they're not a prohibited person. But there is an appeal process that works very well. In fact, NICS has just substantially improved that. They demonstrated for us when we went to visit them at the end of October. So, and nothing in fixed NICS is about expanding.

In fact, we're very clear about that. We're not looking to expand who is prohibited. We just want the records of those that are under current law prohibited, put it to the system so the dealer knows that when they transfer the firearm, they can rely upon the accuracy of the background check. So they're not selling a gun, transferring a gun to a prohibited person. And the Fix Next legislation passed overwhelmingly. 78 co-sponsors in the Senate. You couldn't get 78 senators to sign a birthday card. And they all got on this bill.

Those who were pro, those who were against. Did you know the Wilderness Act? 99. After 20 years of trying to get it through, 99 to 1. And the one dissenting vote thought it didn't go far enough. Those days are gone, man. I'm getting a bunch of people to agree on something. Maybe someday we'll return to that,

but I don't know. It's hard to picture. A lot of non-controversial legislation passes on unanimous consent. I think if we tried to pass the lands package at the end of last Congress on unanimous consent, one or two Congress on unanimous consent. One or two senators blocked unanimous consent

and there was no time left. It isn't like the sound of that, huh? Unanimous, the hell's that? Well, it was Senator Lee and Senator Paul, but primarily Senator Lee. And there was a very heated exchange on the floor of the Senate between Senator Murkowski, Senator Gardner,

and Senator Cantwell, who were the primary backers of the legislation. And there was, as you know, lots and lots in that bill, not just the range bill, which was our primary focus. But they didn't like a provision. He wanted language change,

and he blocked it because you can do that in the Senate. One person can stand up and block unanimous consent. But so, okay, so now they're doing the bill again, the exact same language, and running it through the parliamentary process, which takes a while, but he may offer amendments, and those amendments will either get voted on or not if he offers them.

But I don't see how he can stop the bill passing the Senate. What happens on the House now that Democrats are in control, whether it will move and House natural resources remains to be seen? I hope it will because Chairman Grijalva, when he was ranking in the last Congress supported the package. So hopefully that hasn't changed. We'll see.

Hopefully we'll see. Sunday hunting. Really important. I was glad to see there were allies on this issue. It drives me crazy. But I see that we're allies on this issue. It drives me crazy. But I see that you guys have an industry perspective

where I see that you frame it around some economic factors. That's how we roll. I just frame it around what I think, just my vision of America. When I visualize America in its best form. That if you can tailgate on a Sunday you should be able to go hunt? I just pictured that the fact that there are

states where someone can't opt. Right. Where someone can't opt to hunt on a Sunday. Yanni got screwed by Sunday hunting laws recently. Tell that. Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, I was in North Carolina.

And, I mean, I was halfway into the truck and realized, I'm like, ah, better check on that. Sure enough, private land only. Yeah. It's the same where I live in Virginia. Same, private land only on Sundays. So, NSSF launched the Sunday Hunting Initiative.

We have partners in the National Sportsman's Foundation, their National Assembly of Sportsman's Caucuses, NRA, SCI, you know, it's really this sort of team. And most people in the country have no idea that there are these old colonial blue laws. It was 13 states. We've made progress. But all along, up and down the East Coast, the original colonies, basically.

There's no science behind it. It's just a vestige of colonial law. But I have to assume that it had to do with enforcing church attendance? It was religious-based. No alcohol, no hunting on Sundays. So yeah. That's why it's interesting to see deeply conservative

leaning organizations in opposition to Sunday hunting because you feel like it would put them up against a thing where they're like up against a sort of religious ruling. So every, it's interesting. We've made great progress on our Sunday hunting. And it's really important because in those states, you know, effectively for many hunters, you're doubling the hunting season, right? If you're working Monday, Friday, Saturday. You got to take Johnny to soccer, the game, or whatever.

You got the honey-do list. You only have Sunday. You can't hunt on Sunday. So you don't hunt. And then you don't take Johnny hunting, and you don't pass down the tradition. Now, like Pennsylvania, huge number of hunting licenses. There's no Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania. So, you know, we started with Virginia,

then West Virginia and Maryland and North Carolina, South Carolina. We actually got a bill out of committee for the first time in the Pennsylvania Senate, 8-3. Yesterday. Yesterday. That's an enormous step forward for us in Pennsylvania. Is the opposition now,

is the opposition the religious community or is the opposition anti-hunters? The interesting thing is it is, the opposition varies from state to state. In Pennsylvania, the primary opposition is the Farm Bureau. In North Carolina, it was the Christian right. I can't tell you why. They just know we don't do that in Pennsylvania.

Just because we don't. Just because we don't. I just know we you why. They just know. We don't do that in Pennsylvania. Just because we don't. Just because we don't. I just know we don't. Yeah. So in Maine, oddly enough, one of the major forces in opposition is the guides. They don't want to work on Sunday. You don't have to work on Sunday.

No one's making you work on Sunday. You've got to be kidding. No way. I'm not kidding. So the Farm Bureau, they don't want the boss man calling up. In Pennsylvania, the Farm Bureau would say, the farmers don't want to be disturbed on Sunday

because they don't want people coming on the land on Sunday. Or if they shoot the deer one piece of property and it goes onto the farmer's property, they got to get permission to go retrieve the deer, right? But it really wasn't a persuasive argument. We said, we'll pay for signs you can put up saying, you know, no hunting. You know, you can post no hunting on Sundays.

So a lot of times it's, okay, private land. We'll just do private land. Take whatever we can get. Or public land. We got a change in North Carolina. Private land because part of the argument we would encounter would be from hikers or equestrian people like to ride their horses on public. Say, well, we don't want to get, you know,

accidentally shot by a hunter, you know. Well, it doesn't happen on, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. What makes you think it's going to happen on Sunday? Well, if that's our day, it should be our day. So, you know, we sort of, whatever we can get, you know, and then just go back and

try again for more later. But we've made great progress. You know, and then just go back and try again for more later. But we've made great progress. You know, yesterday's vote in Pennsylvania was an enormous step forward for us. Explain what happened there. One of our guys, Brody Henderson, he's Pennsylvania. We got a couple of Pennsylvania guys we work with. They talk about this all the time. So we were able, finally, to get a bill out of committee in the Senate,

eight to three, in favor of giving the state Fish and Game Agency the authority to permit Sunday hunting. It doesn't require it. And what way do you think they'll lean the Fish and Game? The commission wants it. They support it. They publicly come out and say they support it. To your earlier point, so one of the things we did as industry is to try to say, you know, it's access. We want to pass on the tradition.

You know, you can do all these other things on Sunday. You can play golf. You can fish. You know, golf, by the way, is a four-letter word. Those are not the birdies we think you should be shooting. You can go shooting on Sundays. Yeah, but you can't hunt. But then part of what we did was to show the economic impact

allowing Sunday hunting would have. Yeah, that's where it gets interesting. And it's significant, right? So you look at Pennsylvania. And so what happens is if you're in New York, you won't go on a hunting trip on a weekend to Pennsylvania because you can only hunt on Saturday, right? So Pennsylvania misses that economic opportunity.

New York used to have restrictions. Ohio used to have restrictions and they've been chipped away at over time. But about, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, we put a real focus on like, how can we really, what's a way we can really drive the needle on hunting? And so it's changing sunny hunting laws on the East Coast.

And we're making progress. Not easy. We're still fighting it in Maryland, right? Yes. Now, Maryland is, there are some counties. And so now there's the push to finish up all the rest of the counties, to let the counties go. And it's that progression here and there.

So it used to be Maryland wouldn't even touch it. And now they're going county by county. And we're pushing a little bit more and more. As well, I mean, they're pushing part of that that same families of field program they're pushing the mentorship bills right to try and allow so that way you can take your 10 year old uh out hunting where you can take someone even an adult who wants to get out and hunt the first time they don't have to buy it's kind of a try before you buy program is you can buy a license at a reduced rate as long as you're going out with someone who's going to mentor you through that process yeah we did that

in michigan this past spring and it was great. Yeah, it was real nice. So we had some guys, never- Colleagues. Had never been hunting, were curious about it. You know, for a bunch of reasons, it was, they lived in California, it was like a bunch of reasons that would have been hard for them to get through. Just onerous for them to like, hey, let's go hunting turkeys all of a sudden and then do hunter safety.

But in this case, with a mentor program, you're able to, you know, you're like with them. And you're physically next to each other. Able to take them out on their first hunt. And which winds up being in that kind of relationship, I feel, that mentored standing next to each other relationship. And why is it being like very educational? It's critical. Around safety issues. an inexperienced hunter, I feel that that time together is as instructive or probably more instructive at that phase in their journey than sitting through like-

You're right. I mean, that's the incubation of a new hunter. You're teaching them the traditions, you're teaching them the rules, the left and rights. This is where you step, this is where you don't step, this is how you carry your rifle, this is when you load your rifle, this is when you don't have your rifle loaded.

Those are all the things that we were taught by our folks when we went out and learned from the folks who taught us. And there's a little bit of a gap. We want to kind of close that gap. Someone's not going to wake up one morning and say, I think I'll try hunting. You wouldn't know the first thing, right? How to get started.

People do do that and they struggle. Some are successful. But mostly, you know, that's the exception, right? People just say, I'm going to play golf. Because I can go get a lesson right down the street. So mentoring is critical to passing the tradition and the heritage on. Yeah, I like the program. And I think, I know there's some talk about, like in this case, there was one.

Age is a big factor too. Was it one year? These guys were, you know, guys in their 20s and 30s. I want to say you could do it two years. Some states are going to two years. You could do it two before you had to show up, you know, with the proper. The hunter ad.

They're still buying a license. Yes. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there was a press conference at SHOT Show about Phantasm Field, and it reached a milestone in the number of apprentice licenses, and it's been very successful. And the work continues to,

and there was a lot of resistance from hunter ed guys to the families afield effort. Is that right? Oh, yeah. But it's a collaborative effort, and SSF is part of it, Sportsman's Alliance, National Wild Turkey Federation,

and the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation and their National Assembly of Sportsman's Caucuses. And the work continues. My resistance to it was based on bitterness because when I was a kid, you had to be 14 in Michigan. In Michigan, when I was growing up, you had to be 14. My dad didn't pay a whole lot of attention to that, but you're supposed to be 14 to rifle hunt deer.

And then all of a sudden, I'm talking to buddies of mine from back home, and they're out there with their 10 and 11-year-olds. I'm like, dude, you're supposed to wait forever. You got to watch your own. You got to be in your teens and still watching your dad. Still watching your dad hunt. What really drove the families af the field was, you know, studies coming out that showed that, you know, if you did not get a young person in the field by a certain age,

you lost them. Yeah. Right? They're playing video games. They're getting, you know, their time is occupied by other things. And it's very hard to get them, you know, to start when they're 16, 17, right? That you got to engage them earlier.

Otherwise, you're not going to be able to, there's too much competition out there. And it's proven to be pretty successful. Where I live, where I live, my boy can, not boy,

my boy and my girl and my other boy, can hunt with me when they're 10 and then hunt unaccompanied after they do hunter safety once they're 12. So he's counting the days, man. I can't wait. And there's a youth season there for deer. There's a youth season for waterfowl. So that's going to be a lot of fun.

So we did Sunday hunting. We jumped ahead of ourselves and got into some youth stuff. Lead ammo. Yeah, big challenge. Some would say it's the biggest threat to the industry, banning lead ammunition, like we saw in California. So our view on the issue is this.

You mentioned a point earlier. You manage wildlife populations. You don't manage to prevent harm to individual animals because if wildlife management becomes about preventing harm to individual animals, guess what? You just made the argument for banning hunting, right? And fences and glass windows. So our view is that decisions on this issue should be evidence-based, based on science, that's clear, that shows that there's an adverse population impact.

And then if that's the case, the Fish and Game Agency should look at what are the options available to address the problem, to turn it around. And that may or may not include banning ammunition, certain types of ammunition. But you should look at what are the full spectrum of things you can do. And then we think a factor in the decision should be what is effective and least costly to the hunter. Because if you increase cost, just basic economics, you're going to have less participation. And that may or may not result in banning lead ammunition in an area. And we think the solution should be as localized as necessary. You know, if you've got a problem in a particular localized area,

that doesn't mean you have to adopt a statewide ban. California started in the Condor region and then expanded statewide. We think, without question, that a good part of the push for banning lead ammunition comes from the anti-hunting groups. I mean, when the Humane Society of the United States, you know, supports banning lead ammunition and wants people to hunt with copper ammunition. I mean, are you serious?

I mean, now HSUS is okay with hunting as long as you're not using lead ammunition. That's laughable on its face. Yeah, you consider the source of it. Right. So, if there's, and we don't see population impacts, right? I mean, even with the Condor, it's clear that they were getting lead from other sources. Paint chips on the water towers. the law in California was a study that is totally flawed and not credible that was pushed by the folks out there to became the basis for why they banned lead ammunition for hunting in the entire

state. And we said, look, if you do this, here's the consequences. People are going to hunt less and they're going to hunt outside the state. And there is not enough non-lead ammunition produced in the country to meet the demand of hunters in California. So the industry makes non-lead ammunition, alternative ammunition, in response to consumer demand. And that demand amounts to less than 1%

of the entire ammunition market. Is that right? Yes. What about when you break it down into center fire? So 95% of ammunition is metallic lead ammunition. 5% is alternative ammunition. Four of the 5 percent of shot shell the rest is uh you know for some of its frangible ammunition a small part but that's that's how much demand there is for non-lead ammunition

and our view is look if hunters want to use alternative ammunition that should be their choice right i mean and the industry will make it in response to consumer demand like any other product. That's the thing, like an annoyance I find in this debate is if people are, it's become so contentious that if people talk about how they use monolithic bullets or use copper, some people feel that just the simple fact of you using it is condemnation of lead even though i first became introduced to it certainly by people who are just motivated by performance right but it's like it but sometimes

people jump on you you know if you use solid copper they'll act like somehow you don't support lead i think it's just like one of those things that it's just a sensitive world because we're all like really embroiled and it's a passion, it's a passion based thing and there's sensitivities afloat. But it just winds up being like a really interesting conversation of individual, like to say like individually,

for whatever reason, performance, concerns even they don't seem to be... People have concerns about ingesting bullet lead absent any documentation that hunters have elevated lead levels. And that evidence doesn't exist. In fact, quite the contrary, right? But regardless, like you might, whatever reason, like someone might decide to do it. And I think that you, again, industry will match up with people's choices,

but there needs to be ability to say like, this is what I personally choose. Does that mean that I want to legislate it? Does that mean I want to legislate it and make it mandatory for all people to conform to the decisions that I've personally made? And we think it's the hunter's choice. If they want to use that product for performance

or because they think it's more environmentally sensitive, the industry will respond to consumer demand and more will be produced. Those just are the facts that it's less than 1%. We don't think it's really, you know, this should be a decision for the state fishing game agencies. They're the professionals. They're the ones with the expertise in wildlife management. We don't think it should be regulated by legislature because, you know, that's why the state agencies exist. Although, I mean, if you had an out-of-control state agency,

maybe you would need legislation if they weren't making a science-based decision. But, you know, so it's, you manage populations. If there's a population impact and you determine it's coming, you know, from lead ammunition, what are the options?

So for example, dove. You know, if you ban lead shot for dove hunting, I mean, it makes dove hunting really expensive, right? And so what would happen to dove hunting? It would go down precipitously. Do you need to ban lead for, you know, dove hunting? Well, I don't see any evidence of adverse population impacts on doves. I mean, people have been shooting doves in Argentina,

for example, like crazy amounts of lead shot. And there's no shortage of doves in Argentina, for example. Most harvested game animal in America. 10 million. And I've talked to the former director of fish and wildlife, like, because Missouri, for example, was looking at, you know, banning the use of lead shot for dove hunting. And so, you know, are there other things you can do short of banning the product that would adequately address the problem?

And one of the things you can do is till the soil, right? Turn the soil over so it's not accessible or rotate the dove fields. So there are things that can be done short of an outright ban. And again, shouldn't ban it unless there's population impacts. What's your perspective?

We hear a lot in this, like the bald eagle is used as the symbol of the other side, right? It evokes a lot of emotion. Yeah, but that was DDT. Right. And eagle populations are soaring, pardon the pun, right? And most states don't even bother counting nesting pairs anymore because they're so plentiful.

But we see story after story after story, you know, and they're almost indistinguishable. It's like a cookie cutter. And this is coming from, you know, from anti're almost indistinguishable. It's like a cookie cutter. And this is coming from, you know, from anti-hunting groups who are convinced, you know, that they hold up a single eagle that's in a, you know, avian- Rescues. Rescues thing and, or place.

And they extrapolate that, you know, there's this big problem and you have to ban lead ammunition. When in that, you know, there's this big problem and you have to ban lead ammunition. When in reality, you know, the populations of eagles are soaring. And there was that study in Iowa done a couple years ago. You know, it's like, there's a guy at Federal who works on conservation issues, Ryan Bronson. And you know Ryan, great guy. He often has said

in some of these state Fish and Game agency meetings that we go to, he's like, look, if you look for sick people in the hospital, guess what you're going to find? Sick people. But you can't extrapolate from the sick person in the hospital that there's this problem

outside of the hospital. And that's what that study in Iowa did. It actually went out and looked at, you know, the eagle population and said it was fine. There wasn't any evidence of a problem. So they, you know, they find one eagle, they bring it and they extrapolate from there and say, well, we got a band-led ammunition.

When, you know, and it's the hunters and the conservation dollars back, pivoting back to Pittman-Robertson, who paid for the restoration of the Eagle? Hunters did, you can thank a hunter, right? So you're going to ban traditional ammunition without evidence that there's a population impact. And there's even less evidence

that there's a human health risk. I mean, the study the CDC did in North Dakota, hunters had lower than average, than the control group, lower than the average person walking around on the street. Everybody in this, we all have some level of lead in our blood, right? It's, but-

Probably a factor factor predominantly rural yeah so and hunters who had hunted the longest had even lower levels so if there was this idea that well if you keep eating game harvested with traditional ammunition lead's going to build up in your blood well then these hunters that have been hunting the longest should have had higher readings and they actually had lower readings so that study it probably like diminished exposure to all, diminished exposure to all the other ways you ingest lead.

And nobody in the study had a lead level that was remotely approaching the threshold of concern for a child, let alone adults, right? And there was one person in the study, as I recall, that had levels about the level of concern for a child. But this was an adult. But they couldn't say that lead was sourced from consuming game. And Iowa has been checking the blood lead levels of people in the state for years.

A lot of hunting in Iowa. They've never seen it. There's never been a documented case of anybody in the United States having elevated lead levels, let alone lead poisoning from consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition. So what was your perspective in the early 90s when they banned lead ammunition for migratory waterfowl? Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

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Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I know that predates me, but what I've heard is that, and this is what I've heard over the years, is that there really wasn't good science that it was having a population impact, but basically it came down to the judge saying, either you agree to this or I'm going to ban waterfowl hunting nationwide.

And so sort of that's how it came to be. But I mean, we're not debating this issue now 30 years later, right? So- Yeah. My dad said that- But it did have an impact on duck hunting in the United States. My dad talked about, because I was just starting to hunt then, just starting to legally hunt.

My dad talked about people quitting hunting. Yeah. But then people adjusted to it over time. But as an organization, what's your perspective on, like you represent industry, okay? And you want things to be smooth for the industry. What is your perspective on cases? And let's say around letters, other hypotheticals, where a wildlife management agency

is making a wildlife-based decision. Here's a good hypothetical. I heard a story one time, heard a story that Florida used to, or Florida had a thing where they allowed rifle hunting for turkeys in the spring. Okay. Well, let's just say there's a state

that allows rifle hunting for turkeys in the spring. And someone points out that you don't wear a hunter's orange when you're hunting turkeys because they see the orange and they're spooked. People are on the ground. People are mimicking the sounds of female turkeys. And the turkey hunting community, let's say in a hypothetical state, the turkey hunting community says, man, let's just stick it to shotguns because then everyone's safer out in the woods. And this is traditionally all across the country, people hunting with shotguns in the spring.

And we're going to conform to that norm as suggested by turkey hunters. The game agency's behind it now what if someone looks and says what might be a hunter issue a game management issue but someone looks and says no that's a gun issue you're infringing gun rights yeah how do you like how do you navigate that if if you do that the state fishing game agencies you know have have the authority to regulate the seasons, regulate the implements used for taking game. We have no problem with that. So if that were going on.

I think it's a safety issue, right? I mean, the bullets from a rifle travel a lot further than pellets from a shotgun. So instinctively, you don't see that and think, that's a fight I'm going to wade into. That's not a fight we would get involved in. I mean, think about it. It's even, even where I live in Virginia, there are some counties that are closer here to, to the DC area where you can only hunt with archery equipment because it's so

urban, so, so densely populated. And then as you start to get a little bit further out, okay, you can hunt with a shotgun. And then once you get to these counties, okay, now you can hunt with a rifle. We don't have an issue with that. I mean, it's a safety issue. But you could see, as much as I'm comfortable with that stuff, you could see that becoming a tool used by anti-hunters.

It's like, I guess that's kind of the broader point I'm making is you always need to consider the source on things. Sure. Because there's ideas, like you said, like the abuse of lead ammo bans in California, where there's an isolated instance or an isolated case with migratory waterfowl, say, where you're looking and say,

from a management perspective, this makes sense. Someone then looks and says, huh, I'm going to now manipulate this and use this as a general tool to curb people's rights. Sure. Because it's sellable. You're seeing that happen right now in Oregon. So in Oregon, they've got several bills that we're trying to push back on.

That would include a 14 day waiting period, a limit of only 20 rounds a month, and a five-round magazine capacity. 20 rounds a month? 20 rounds a month is all you can buy. So you couldn't shoot around a skeet, trap, sporting clays? You got to save up all year for duck season? Exactly. But on top of that, you're also looking at,

they're debating right now whether they're going to have a ban on lead ammunition for anyone between the ages of 18 and 21 right i noticed and the the argument they make is it's public health see this is what this is what i'm talking about where you wind up into a situation where it's just it's like so clearly coming from the perspective of someone who is like, I want to whittle away at this community or whittle away at people's rights. What are the things I can use to get there? So what we're seeing is Connecticut, there was a bill introduced to have a 50% tax on ammunition.

We've seen that in Seattle, Cook County, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and we see this in Oregon. The other thing we're seeing is, we saw it in Florida, say you cannot purchase long guns until you're 21. So federal law now says you can't purchase a handgun until you're 21. So now you're 18, 19, and 20. That's federal law now. Federal law now says you can't purchase a handgun until you're 21. So now you're 18, 19, and 20. That's federal law now.

Federal law now says you have to be 21 to purchase a handgun. That's 1968 gun control act. Right. I didn't know that. Yeah. So if you ban under state law, like in Florida, for example, and there's lawsuit pending,

you're 18, 19, and 20, and you can't purchase a long gun, you also can't purchase a handgun, you're an adult, you could be in the military, or you could be the spouse of somebody in the military, you could have a child, you can't purchase a gun for target shooting, you can't purchase a gun for hunting, and you can't purchase a gun for self-defense. To us, that is clearly a violation of the Second Amendment. We don't even think that's a close call. So again, you're looking at someone 18 years old,

fully vested in their rights. They can vote, freedom of speech, freedom to exercise their religion, freedom of assembly, but you can't exercise your Second Amendment rights. You can't buy a gun until you're 21. I wonder why we're 21. Because of drinking laws? I think it's an arbitrary number that they picked out of the air.

Yeah. I mean, you know, in 1968, long before Heller was decided, right? So, you also can't buy handguns

across state lines. I'm trying to think of how I had, I had a, Even from a dealer. I had a handgun when I was 17. I'm trying to think of how, I guess my dad just dealer. I had a handgun when I was 17. I'm trying to think of how. I guess my dad just gave me a handgun. But you couldn't.

You cannot walk into a gun store, licensee, and purchase a handgun unless you're 21. And if you're in Montana, you cannot drive into Wyoming, go to a licensed dealer in Wyoming, and purchase a handgun from that dealer, even if you're 21 or older. You cannot buy a handgun across state dealer, even if you're 21 or older. You cannot buy a handgun across state lines. So, yeah, I mean, in case of point, when I was in the military,

I could buy a handgun in any state I was stationed in because of virtue of my military orders. Now, my wife, I was a New Hampshire resident while I was in the military. My wife was a Texas resident.

She maintained her Texas residency. For her to buy a handgun, she would either have to go back to Texas or she would have to change her residency every three years every time we moved so you're putting that huge burden on people what is the what is the issue with the limit the oregon thing which i can't picture is going to

get anywhere or am i wrong the rounds. So what is it again? You can only buy 20 rounds a month. 20 rounds a month. Isn't a box of shotgun shells $25? Yes. State bill 501. And again, how do you enforce that? Come back next month for these five. That's not going to go anywhere, is it?

I would not say no. Not in Oregon right now. Not in Oregon. Yeah, so I mean, think about it. We're going to go out duck hunting, and I'm a terrible shot, and I can't shoot anything. So I blow through 20 rounds right away trying to shoot my first two ducks. And then I'm like, I'm out of ammo.

I look at you and say, Steve, let me get some shots from you so I can continue to shoot. Am I a violation of the law now because I'm now transferring ammo to me? Are you violating the law because you're handing ammo to me? I guess I can't ask you to pay me back for it. Well, he's only got 20 himself,

so he's not giving you any. Exactly. You're out of luck. What other things are you guys watching for that make you... I guess not pieces of legislation like again man i don't know that's very hard for me to picture uh i don't know i don't know the political climate there that's very hard for me to picture passing oregon is

california it's tough tremendous resistance your listeners that live in oregon pick up a phone call your state senator and call your representative. Make sure they know how ridiculous that is. And it includes shotgun shells. Yeah. Okay, what are the pieces of legislation that you're looking at

and the ones you're most leery of coming up? The age base. I know you spend some time on age base. That age base is a concern. Attempts to ban modern sporting rifles, we see that. We're looking at that in several states.

Maybe Nevada, maybe Oregon, maybe Illinois. Colorado. We're concerned about that. Those are by far the most popular rifles being sold in the United States. Articulate from your perspective on it. It's a semi-automatic rifle.

They are like the 94 band that was in place for 10 years. They would be banning the products based on cosmetic features. There's no effect on how the firearm functions. Semi-automatic firearms have been in civilian possession for well over 100 years. Studies that were done by the government on the 94 Clinton gun ban

showed that it had absolutely no impact on reducing crime in the United States. We also had a magazine capacity restriction for 10 years. It had absolutely no impact on reducing crime. It's had no impact on reducing crime in the states that have passed it. So you're just denying people a rifle that they want to purchase for lawful purposes. Primarily target shooting is the main use. Increasingly hunting

and also for personal protection, self-defense. I was not young. I was, I don't know. I was out of high school, but I just didn't follow things as closely then. What did the 94 ban, was that at the time, were adoption rates of AR so low

that there wasn't any resistance or was that like a contentious issue? Oh no, it was extremely contentious. I didn't know if it was like one of those things where it wasn't, they weren't in widespread use. So it kind of went on, not unnoticed, but it wasn't as- They have grown in popularity since the sunset in 04,

partly because the sunset. And then also largely, as we talked earlier, people that served in the military came back from overseas, or being in the military, and wanted to purchase these firearms for target shooting primarily. More than 16 million modern sporting rifles are in private ownership today.

More than 16 million. 16 million just since 94. They've been on the commercial market since 1963. There's a 1961 Colt Sporter ad out there talking about hunting with the Colt Sporter rifle, which was an AR-15. Yep. What do people do in states where, you know, okay, like if you're hunting,

you're hunting waterfowl, you have a three-shot limit. So you can only have three shots in your shotgun. Right. And that's a, not a vestige. I mean, it has to do with, in order to have plenty of opportunity for everyone to hunt, state game agencies need to, in federal, in this case, US Fish and Wildlife Service,

they take measures to limit efficacy so that you can spread that. So it's like this matter, we all hear like fair chase, which is a problematic term, but fair share, right? You're expanding things. So if you have states that have magazine capacities, what do AR hunters do if you have a state where you have a four-shot limit?

So that you, I've, you know, models with smaller magazines that are, you know, camoed out and, you know, sold for the hunting market, or you just have a larger magazine, but you can only have so many rounds in it. So people produce that. I've never hunted with one. I've shot and never hunted with one.

Yeah, I mean, it's a small part of the hunting market. I mean, it's- It's small in the hunting world? Yeah, but growing. It's growing. I've hunted hunted with one. Yeah, I mean, it's a small part of the hunting market. I mean, it's- It's small in the hunting world? Yeah, but growing. It's growing. I've hunted with ARs. I've hunted predators. I've hunted hogs with them.

I know people that have hunted big game. Yeah. With them, they come, you know. The other side, you know, they don't understand that it comes in different calibers, right? I mean, like we did an exercise at a conference of state legislators. We had a poster. We had a Remington AR in camo. I think it was the R-15.

I believe it was chambered in.308. And then we had a black Smith & Wesson M&P 22, 22 long rifle. And we had the two bullets like on the bottom of the poster and like actual size. And we asked state legislators from all over the country, okay, which goes to which? They invariably said, you know, like got it wrong. Or which, oh, that one, that's okay

because it's camouflaged. The black one, well, that's okay because it's camouflaged the black one oh that's bad just like you know yeah and they would just assume that the larger you know because they all they hear right in the media is you know high powered assault rifles most ars modern sporting rifles come in 223 remington right most states will not let you hunt white-tailed deer with a.223 Remington. It's not powerful enough. But if you're prairie dogs, things like that, that's where the people use them a lot,

or hog hunting, feral hogs, which is a- Great against coyotes. And coyotes, right. Awesome against coyotes. So what's the conversation that you have with states that are considering bans? There's often not much of a conversation. I mean, nothing you can say they want to hear.

They don't care. I mean, it's politically expedient. They think it's popular politically, and they trade on the false information. They don't want to know the truth. They don't want to know the facts. I think the easy case to point is how quickly New York pushed through their Safe Gun Act

and their gun laws that they're pushing through right now. They're literally days. It's their introduction and three days later, the governor signing it into law. There's no debate on the bill. There's no public hearing.

In New York, often the case, the bill isn't even written when they pass it. It's just like a concept, right? Here's an outline of what will be in it. And then they write it later. No kidding. There's no public hearings, no opportunity for people to come in and testify against it in New York. And the rest of the legislature doesn't see the bill. It's decided by the head of the House, the head of the Senate, and the rest of the legislature doesn't see the bill. It's decided by the head

of the house, the head of the Senate and the governor. And that's what happened the other day in New York. A thing I'm a little bit guilty of is, I've lived in a lot of states where you didn't feel that your rights were being infringed on and you become, I don't know, passive. You're not aware of what's going on. You become passive about the issues. So like, you know, like I just live in a lot of states like that. I spent time in Alaska, spent time in Montana.

You just kind of like lose sight of what happens. I lived in New York for a while and living there, I really felt kind of like victimized. You get the sense that sort of like there was a tacit governmental disapproval of your perspective and lifestyle.

Yes. And it made to the point where you're engaged in lawful activities and you're someone who's accustomed to like enjoying certain liberties, you know, not enjoying, but exercising liberties and rights. And you come up against a system where you're like, man, I feel like the system is in some ways designed to make it very hard for me to be above the books. For instance, in Limiton, I had to have a while where I could only, you had to register

everything and you could only register them at a certain cadence. And being in the business that I'm in, it wound up being like restrictive restricting me to carry about what I view as a legitimate business enterprise yeah and being there but then also seeing evidence of the way that the people who don't care about doing things by the book, how they operated. And it just felt like, and then you had like this heightened sense. Then you develop this like really heightened sense of losing your rights.

You're like, oh, you know, this is something I should be involved in. And then eventually I'm like out of there and take off and then kind of forget about the whole thing again, because you take for granted that you can have a rifle in your truck and it doesn't need to be in a hard case and you can lend your buddy your gun and you can have a closet that has a few cases of ammo and you lose sight of them well i mean so at the state of the industry

event at the shot show our ce our CEO, Steve Sinetti, spoke to this sort of very issue, that in America, I have the right to enjoy my activities. You don't have to like hunting, you don't have to like shooting, but you should respect that I do, and you should respect that I should have the freedom to engage in these lawful activities.

And you're infringing upon my liberty, my freedom. You're not making the world a safer place. You're just restricting my rights. And in America, you should respect, you don't have to agree with other people, but you should respect that they have the right to do these things and it's not causing problems. And to your point, all these, I mean, you hear it, it's almost cliche, but it's true. All these gun control laws only impact the law abiding. We had Mark Robinson, the guy from the YouTube and the Greenville, North Carolina, you know, I'm going to obey the law, but the criminal is not, right?

So all these laws don't stop the bad guy, right? I mean, the criminal is not going to pay attention to law. I mean, it's kind of definitional, isn't it? I mean, that's, and so take the case now that's going to the Supreme Court. Finally, after 10 years from Heller, the Supreme Court is finally taking a case. Now that, you know, you have Kavanaugh's on the court

and Gorsuch on the court, they've taken a case, thankfully. We'll see what happens, but I think it's hard to imagine in this case that the Supreme Court doesn't rule. It feels like a slam dunk to me. I mean, I hesitate to say that. Yeah, I mean, it's, so in New York City,

you can only have a pistol in your home with a permit, and you can take the pistol and go to a shooting range, and there are seven within the five boroughs of the city of New York, and back, but the gun has to be unloaded. It has to be in a co-op city in New York, which is close to the Westchester County border, and you want to go to a shooting range that's opened up in Westchester County, outside of the city of New York.

You cannot take your pistol, put it, unload it, put it in the case, lock the case, and go to Westchester, to that range in Westchester County across the city line. You've committed a crime. Let's say you have a weekend house

or something like in the Catskills. You can't take that pistol, unload it, put it in the case, lock it, and drive to your weekend house in the Catskills. You've committed a crime. Let's say you decide, I'm out of here.

I can't take New York City anymore. I'm moving to wherever, Montana. Yeah, Idaho. You can't take that firearm. You can't take that pistol, unload it, put it in the case, lock the case, and drive to Montana. You can't take that pistol, put it, unload it, put it in the case, lock the case, and drive to Montana. You've committed a crime.

And the district court, the federal district court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sits in Manhattan, ruled that that did not violate the Second Amendment. Like, because, you know,

the city had an interest in, like, you know, not having guns on the street. Now, I don't know one gangbanger, because the city had an interest in not having guns on the street. Now, I don't know one gangbanger, criminal, drug dealer in the five boroughs that is abiding by that law, right? I mean, how is this making New York City safer? I just cannot imagine.

I had to spend hundreds of dollars for a permit. Right, you're lucky to get one. And there was an article just the other day about the only people in New York City who are able to get carry permits are the rich and famous. Yeah. And there's a whole big scandal going on

about bribes that were being taken. Well, within the pistol licensing unit, within the NYPD, some guy was caught taking bribes. To clear permits. Yeah. So explain the Supreme Court case that's coming up. So that's the New York...

There's an individual challenging... There's a lawsuit that challenged this requirement in New York City's law. So it's not that someone got busted and appealed up to the Supreme Court. I want to be able to, you know, I should be able to go outside the city. So he's suing the law as unconstitutional. Right, that this law is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment

and also violates the right, you know, you have a constitutional right to travel, so I can't take my pistol with me. So they sued, they lost at the district court, they lost at the court of appeals, and now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. And I have a hard time imagining that the Supreme Court doesn't rule that that goes too far,

that that violates the Second Amendment. Because the court in Heller, for example, has already said, and in McDonald, the Second Amendment involves two rights. The right to carry, the right to keep, and the right to carry. Two rights. Keep and bury, yeah. Right. It's not one.

It's two rights. And that those are common law rights that predated the Constitution. The Second Amendment didn't create those rights. It protected them. Right? It protected them, right? But those rights were already existing under English common law that was adopted by the United States after we won the War of Independence. And so the court has said

that the right to bear arms means to have it on your person, to carry it. So there have been some courts like the Seventh Circuit that, you know, and we've seen it in DC, you have the right to carry it. So there have been some courts like the Seventh Circuit that, you know, and we've seen it in D.C., you have the right to carry a firearm, self-protection, which is why now every single state in the country has to allow some level of right to carry, right? The last state was, I think, Wisconsin and Illinois were like the last two states. Even in the District of Columbia. So now there are different,

like some states are shall issue. Some states now increasingly, including now most recently South Dakota, are a constitutional right to carry. You don't need the government's permission. New Hampshire changed recently. So that's a trend that's positive trend that's happening. And other states,

you have to prove like in Maryland, you have to prove you have a need and get the blessing of the government in order to carry a firearm for self-protection. Interestingly, the District of Columbia, it's actually through the court decisions, essentially a shall issue jurisdiction. They can't use their discretion to deny you. And we see that a lot, right, in other parts of the country where, you know, I like you, I'll give you one. I don't like you so much, you didn't contribute to my campaign.

Or, you know, like, I don't like you, or you're not my buddy, I'm not going to give it to you. And you see a lot of abuse of that discretion that takes place. I mean, it's the problem we have in California right now. Right. It's county by county. The county sheriff gets to decide, well, Los Angeles County, good luck. You know, you go out to Kern County where it's more rural and the county sheriff out

there is good with it. He'll, unless he's got a need for you to not care, he's going to give you a permit. Yeah. So your constitutional rights shouldn't be determined by the happenstance of geography. I remember years ago when my father went to get his concealed permit, he had to go up in front of the, he had to go to the sheriff's office and go up in front of a board. Some states have that, Connecticut?

Yeah, this is long time ago. But yeah, he had to go and the sheriff's office and go up in front of like a board. Some states have that, Connecticut. Yeah, this is long time ago. But yeah, he had to go and he went in front. I can't remember who it was, but he went down to the sheriff's office and they had a panel of people who conducted a little interview. Right. And he got his concealed carrier,

which I remember. But the only thing he had was a.22. To buy my first handgun in North Carolina, I had to get permission from the county sheriff to buy. Just to buy a handgun in North Carolina, I had to get permission from the county sheriff to buy. Just to buy a handgun. Yeah.

Lots changed. Yeah. Yanni, what do you got, man? I guess the one thing we haven't touched on and maybe we could touch on is what's the NSF doing in a proactive way

about gun violence? So actually, the industry has a long history of having real solutions and pursuing initiatives that will, we think, make for safer communities. So one example is our Project Child Safe campaign, which we've been doing since about 1998, where we, the industry, distribute firearm safety education kits that include a free gun lock,

a cable-style gun lock, which fits most number of actions. We've distributed, ready for this, over 38 million kits, 38 million locks, in every state and U.S. territory, partnering with over 15,000 local law enforcement agencies as our distribution partner. We're very proud of that.

We continue to do that. And as adjunct to that, since 1996, 1997, manufacturers have been providing a locking device with each new firearm that they ship from the factory. So between the two, it's well over 100 million locks distributed around the country. So how would you participate in the first one? You just go down to the local police department?

We get requests all the time. In fact, the demand outstrips the supply of locks by three to one. Law enforcement agencies know about the program all over the country. They call and say, hey, can we get some locks? We're going to do a community event. We're going to do a safety program. We want to distribute these.

Our local gun shop when I was in Seattle, they would do Project Child Safe Locks up there. Right, so we're really, really proud of that. And not exclusively, but I think we've helped contribute to the decline in accidents involving firearms. Accidental deaths involving firearms

is at the lowest level it's ever been since record keeping began in 1903. It's incredibly rare, particularly for children. You know, there are some states that don't have any accidents involving children, accidental deaths involving firearms. You're far more likely to die from, you know,

a host of other causes, drowning, fires, poisoning, than you are, you know, with an accident involving a firearm. Makes news when it happens, right? Particularly if it involves a child, but so we distribute these locks. That's one program we do. We also have been doing with ATF since 1999, the campaign we call Don't Lie for the Other Guy

that is to assist law enforcement in educating and training retailers and their staff on how to be better able to identify and prevent illegal straw purchases. And then a public service announcement component to the program to get the word out in the community that it's a serious crime to buy a gun for somebody else who can't.

And that if you do that, you lie on the 4473, that it's a felony. You can go to prison for 10 years and you get a fine of up to a quarter million dollars. Yeah, for those of you that have never filled out that form, the question is basically that you're- Are you the actual purchaser? You're the actual buyer.

Yeah, and if you're not the actual buyer, it's not actually for you. So your felon boyfriend gets out of prison and convinces his girlfriend to go into a store and buy a handgun for him because he's going to use it to go rob the 7-Eleven. And she says, I'm the actual buyer. That's a crime. And you can go to prison for that. And so we've been doing that campaign for a long time.

With ATF as our partner, there's educational material for the retailer to help educate their staff what to be on the lookout for, what kind of questions to ask. And it can be very difficult for the retailer to discern if somebody comes in and fills out the form and doesn't do anything

that would cause you to be suspicious. But again, also we have the public awareness campaign to tell the would-be store purchaser long before they ever walk into the store that, you know, don't lie for the other guy, you can go to prison. So that's another program we've been doing for a long time, very successful. We've done, you know, it's a national campaign. We've done it all over the country. We've distributed the kits, the retailer education kits to every retailer in the country, free, you know, you want one, we'll send it. We make it available at the dealer educational seminars that go on at the SHOT Show and things like that.

We're also, we talked about the Fix Next campaign. We're very proud of that. That's been a great success. We're now partnering with ATF on another initiative called Operation Secure Store. So ATF came to us a little while back and identified a troubling trend where burglaries of gun stores were on the rise, and they were stealing more and more guns from these burglaries.

Some pretty significant increase, primarily gang activity. 75% of the guns that they were stealing were handguns and those guns hit the street. I mean, it's not, you know, these are bad guys. And so we've been working with ATF on Operation Secure Store to raise awareness within the dealer community, you know, that this can happen to you.

And, you know, what steps can you take that are appropriate for your business to reduce the risk? Like, can you put the guns away in a gun safe? Can you put them in smash resistant display cases? Have closed circuit TV monitors and cameras and make sure you've got, you know, solid locks on your doors and things like that. But I mean, it's, you know, what we see is, you know, the bad guys will take a truck, steal a truck, and drive it right through the front door. Or you got bars and gates on the window or bollards in front.

They'll just hook up a chain, put it on there and blow it right off. Or they come in, they'll break in to the nail salon or something next door and they'll go in through the wall. They'll just punch through the wall or through the roof. I mean, all kinds of ways of getting in. They're in and out in a short period of time and can steal a lot of guns. Fortunately, the most recent information

that we've gotten with ATF is that we know we've bent the curve and the rate of these are starting to go down the number of guns stolen starting to go down and ATF believes that's been in part to the cooperative effort to get the word out to dealers that they're reacting in a responsible way to protect their inventory from being stolen. I mean, I really applaud ATF. Whenever this occurs, they respond. Even if it's one gun that's stolen, they come in force. They respond right away. They work with the retailer, you know, and they try to recover the guns as quickly as they can.

And as part of this effort, if ATF puts out a reward for information, NSSF will max that reward. So instead of like a $5,000 reward, it's now 10,000. Oh, really? And that's now 10,000. Oh, really? And that's a check I don't mind writing, you know? And we do write those checks from time to time,

but we're happy to do that because it means that you're getting the bad guys. And we're very happy to see when these guys get sentenced, you know, they really get, they get hammered. The judges put them away for a long time. As part of that, on the NSSF side, we're supporting legislation called the Federal Firearms Licensee Protection Act,

which would increase the maximum penalty that someone could get in prison for stealing guns from a licensee from 10 years to 20 years and impose mandatory minimums for burglaries and robberies. Robberies, fortunately, are still pretty rare. But, you know, we've seen homicides of retailers

in the commission of a robbery. So that's concerning. And we worry that, you know, if you sort of harden the store, then they'll just come in during daytime and commit a robbery. So we're really worried about that. Although you would think robbing a gun shop would be a special kind of

stupid, but it does happen. Fortunately, pretty rare. So we're working on that legislation. We hope to have it reintroduced in the House soon. And Senator Graham introduced the legislation in the past in the Senate, and we believe he'll reintroduce it again. We're trying to build support for that. We think that's not a gun control bill. That's a pro-law enforcement, pro-safety bill with the support of all the major law enforcement groups in the country behind that. So we're really proud of that.

And the other fairly new initiative we've been working on is with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which is the largest suicide prevention organization in the country. They actually came to us to partner with us to try to help address the issue. And as I think you probably know,

about 60% of gun deaths are suicides. And so that's, you know, most people don't even hear like, you know, X number of gun deaths. Two-thirds of those are suicides, which is a terrible, terrible thing. Fifty percent of suicides involve a firearm. And when a firearm is used to commit suicide, it's lethal and effective about 85 percent of the time. So the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a goal that we're helping them to reach.

They want to reduce suicides by 20% by 2025. And the only way they can impact that or reach that goal is by addressing firearms-related suicides because so many of them are committed or done with firearms. So we're working with them to get information out to ranges and retailers um you know through they have state chapters and we're

in our outreach to our members and other even non-member retailers we give it to anybody you know how you know what are the things you can be on the lookout for you know what do you do if it happens and and unfortunately it, you see it happening. It ranges from time to time. And it's very troubling for the people that work at the range when this happens. It's very difficult. I mean, most of the time,

the person doesn't come in wearing a sign, obviously. So it's a challenge, but it encourages people, not gun owners, the information that goes across the counter to the consumer, to have that difficult conversation. If you see somebody you're close with, a family member or a friend,

you think is struggling, that might be depressed, had a death in the family, bad news on medical or they lost their job or something like that or just struggling financially, you know, to reach out, to offer assistance, to, you know, try to point them in the direction

where they can get help. I mean, there's lots of suicide prevention hotlines and things like that. So just to try to encourage people to have that conversation. If somebody is struggling, you know, maybe it's somebody in your family, if your firearms aren't locked up when not in use,

maybe you should do that. Maybe you should take the firearms, offer to take the firearms from somebody. And a lot of times we hear that people say, yeah, just take them from me because I'm in a dark place or whatever. So just encouraging people to have that conversation, offer help, try to just make sure that firearms are not,

you want to reduce access to lethal means. And that's what it's really about. We're working with the Veterans Administration on the same thing. Obviously, we all know about returning veterans, 22 a day commit suicide, again, often with firearms. So we're working with the Veterans Administration on suicide prevention as well. We've worked with them in the past with ChildSafe and provided, you know,

hundreds of thousands of Project ChildSafe kits to the Veterans Administration, and they gave them to returning vets while we were drawing down from Iraq and Afghanistan in big numbers. So we're very proud of that, And we're continuing to work with them on their new initiative to try to help address the suicide issue with veterans. So it's kind of teaming up with... And after the shooting at the school in Texas, in Santa Fe,

we work with the governor's office to bring child safety to the state, and we've actually received a million-dollar grant, or in the process of receiving a million-dollar grant from the state of Texas to run Project ChildSafe in the state of Texas as part of Governor Abbott's response to that tragedy. So we do a lot.

I mean, people don't know we do these things. I mean, we're, you know, but we're trying to make sure policymakers understand that the industry is proactive, pursuing real solutions to make for safer communities. I was having a conversation there tonight about suicide, and I've lost a very close friend, and our buddy Jay recently lost a close friend,

and he was saying that to the annoyance of his other friends now, he's always checking in with people. Right. And pushing a little bit. And how you doing? How you really doing? He says now he was so blindsided by it

that he's nervous now of like missing cues. Right, exactly. Among his friends and colleagues. He said it made him like, he now lives in this world of being like very aware of where people are around you. Yeah, you hear that, like people say, I never knew, I wish I had asked, I wish I knew.

Yeah, he wonders if he had missed something and he doesn't want to miss something next time. You know, and look, a lot of times it's the person that chooses to do this. It's their own firearm. So there are, you know, limitations is what you can do. But, you know, if you're the, you know, parent and you've got, you know, a young adult

or a teenager in the house and, you know, you think that it might be an issue, make sure your firearms are secured and not accessible. Make sure the keys aren't out there or they don't know the combination or even have your buddy hold the firearms. And that's not anti-gun, right? We're not saying ban guns.

We're not saying, just be responsible. No, that's personal storage stuff. I mean, like our personal choice. Once we had young kids, I don't want to say that I didn't used to store guns carelessly because it was things that were in my own secure home. We were just grownups living in a home.

Once we had kids. Different story. Yeah, because they're really interested in what their dad's interested in. And so we had to adopt, for now we have a four-year-old, six-year-old, an eight-year-old. We had to adopt a pretty,

I don't want to say rigid, but we adopt a system that's twofold where we do a locked cabinet and then in the lock cabinet, we do trigger locks. And it took a while to train myself to not be lazy now and then. Right. Because it's like, oh, yeah, you're in a situation where you're working on something or cleaning it and then something comes up and you got to go do something and like force yourself to stick to your own system that you have put in place when you have young kids around. And that's the thing I like about Project Child

Safe. It's like you're speaking to gun owners, but in friendly terms and not, you're coming at them from friendly terms and not like condemning what their decisions they've made or condemning them as a person, but you're saying like, I understand where you're at. Here are some tools and practices to achieve what I know is your concern. And there's no one size fits all. I mean, if someone has a firearm that's for personal protection and they want it accessible,

then there are ways you can approach that. You know, a lockbox, quick access lockbox that come in biometrics now or combinations, that's one approach. But every firearm is capable of being secured, right? One way or another. Yeah, there's plenty of ways for families to find a system that works for them.

And I think just the simple fact that you're aware of the issue and thinking about it is a step in the right direction. The great irony recently that we've seen with, I guess, flattery is, what do they say about, you know, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. What we have seen, it's not really, this isn't really imitation, but what we've seen is gun control groups like Moms Demand Action getting Project ChildSafe

locks from the local police department and then packaging them with their anti-gun literature and distributing those. Taking pictures and being proud of it. We've had to go back to our law enforcement partner and say, you know, that's not really what this is about, right?

Like we appreciate that they care about safety. And it's pretty ironic because here's a group that's funded by a multi-billionaire. And we say all the time, you know, the gun control groups, they don't have any programs. They just, you know, they don't. They don't actually do anything. They don't have any programs. They just, you know, they don't. They don't actually do anything. They don't have any gun safety initiatives. And one of the reasons ChildSafe is, I think, so successful and why this American Foundation

for Suicide Prevention has approached us is, you know, as the industry, we have license to talk to gun owners, right? They'll listen to us, right? I mean, if a gun control group, you know, hands out a lock, it's gonna, you know, they don't want a lock on a gun. They don't want the gun, right?

Like they say, get the gun. There shouldn't be guns in the house. But so when the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is like, you know, we need your help to communicate to gun owners. How do we communicate to gun owners? How do we get this message across without offending them or turning them off so that they will listen to the message?

And so that's why I think that program is successful and will be successful. Yeah, it's a good one. All right, we've taken up a ton of your time. That's all right. We have a thing called concluders. Pivot to the conclusion. Do you want to conclude?

You want to throw one? It's not mandatory. You don't need to do a concluder. No, it's a good conversation. It's good to spend time with you. We got to visit very briefly in New Hampshire at that conference, but that's the first time we've really had a chance

to have a conversation. So I welcome it, it's fun. That's your concluder? Yeah, why not? My concluder is that, yeah, I'm going to reciprocate with my concluder. I'm really glad that you were able to take time and walk through a lot of this stuff.

I think we covered a lot of things that are probably pretty unfamiliar. Yeah, that's great. Oh yeah, nobody knows a 10th, or they know a 10th of what you guys do, not the other nine tenths. There's also the problem with the stuff you think you know and you realize there's a little more to it. Yeah. Yeah, we have a great group of people that work at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, really passionate about what we do

and dedicated to serving our members and we're really proud of our, all these, we say real solutions for safer communities and representing the industry in state capitals all across the country and here in Washington. The challenge never ends. I got one more question though. Any chance you guys can move shot out of Las Vegas?

No. Not likely. We're there for many years. We've got signed contracts going out. And as I said, I don't know if we talked about it on the air before, but next year we'll take space in MGM. And the year after that, we'll take space in a building that Caesars is putting up, the Caesars Forum. We'll go from just under 700,000 square feet

to just under a million. And no, I'm sorry, it's not open to the public. Mark, you got any concluders? I think probably one of the funnest things, I really enjoy working here with NSSF. I was explaining to you kind of before we started talking on the show, you know, I get to talk about hunting and guns all day. I mean, it's a passion of mine. But, you know, the fun thing about it is those of us who kind of, as I've gotten into this world and I've worked in it and I've talked to other people who are kind of in this world. We work all day. So everyone else gets to go hunt and shoot. So I wish I got to get out and

hunt and shoot more. I really do. I don't do it nearly as often as I want. So, so, you know, for everyone who's listening to the podcast, for me, get out and hunt and shoot. Cause that's, that's what I'm working every day for you guys to do. So I want you to go out and hunt and shoot. If you, if you have a hunting season and you have something you can go out and hunt, go out and hunt and shoot because that's that's what i'm working every day for you guys to do so i want you to go out and hunt shoot if you if you have a hunting season and you have something you can go out and hunt go out and hunt it today you know and if you can't hunt something today and get your gun to go down to the range and get better at shooting so that's pretty funny because so many guys write in about wanting to be like in you know quote the industry and i'm like man you know a lot of people i know that do the spend the most time outside are not in the industry. Yeah.

You can industry your way out of the woods. I'm still looking for that very rich uncle who's going to let me just hunt and fish all day. The number of times people have said, oh, you must get to go hunting all the time. I'm like, actually, no, like hardly ever. Yanni? Yeah, I'll just conclude with thank you for what you guys do. I appreciate you guys making opportunities for me to hunt and fish all the time.

So, yeah. Great. No, we love to see what happens on the show. We love to hear what's happening on the podcast. So, we get to live a little vicariously through your adventures. So, thanks for sharing with the world. All right, everyone.

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