The Ricochet Podcast - Special Episode: The New Orleans Meetup!

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Rob Long and Charles C.W. Cooke enjoy chatting over a couple Sazeracs with Ricochet members at our 2023 meetup in New Orleans. Join Ricochet, folks, and meet the guys at the next one!

At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. is total betting. Sign up by 2 p.m. 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race.

Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie All right, so we'll start by giving away, I promised that I would give people who join Ricochet, show up in New Orleans, they get a drink. So I got a classic. This is a classic New Orleans Sazerac.

That is the original cocktail invented by Antoine Peixode. He was a pharmacist on Charter Street. And it's herb saint, rye, a little sugar, and then a twist. And it's the first cocktail that people say existed.

And wait, I got... Ever? Yeah, this is it. One more? more right I'm doubled is anyone else coming to claim this I think my only but I only have two drinks so thank you for Jim gone wild and darling thank you well this is Jim gone wild's cousin Jim gone wild never told me his cousin's name. Oh, same. I'll be answering it. Same. Either way, you get a free drink. Yeah. So quit complaining.

Thank you. That's good. I've never had one. It's great. It's a really good drink. Yeah. And this one, the guy was like, they're serious about it. Like, if you're running a bar in New Orleans, you can't make a fast ride.

You're going to get ran out of town pretty fast. I need them to come to Jacksonville Airport and open after 9 p.m. Because everything closes at 9 p.m. They will not serve you a drink at Jacksonville Airport after 9 p.m. Why? Because the restaurants don't cater for people who fly late. And I thought this was a Jacksonville thing. And I looked it up.

And apparently Austin has gone to 3 p.m. But what's the point? I see people drinking in airports at 7 a.m. I know, but do you see them at 7 p.m.? That's the problem. No, that's true. Increasingly, that's the problem. All right, sorry.

Oh, yeah, let's open it again. Thank you. I'll go first. If my five-year-old were here, he would open both our presents. Both of them, yeah. Oh, this is great. I thought it was going to be a Trump 2024. I love it.

This is literally true. What does it say? Thank you. It's a t-shirt and it says, I drink martinis and I know things with a kind of a cool design of a martini glass. This is both true and

true, factual. So thank you. You'll love the fact it's an inside joke with us. It's actually a reference to Game of Thrones. Is it really? That's hilarious. Have you not seen

Game of Thrones? I have and I just, I did, I was fine with it and then the dragon. And I'm like, I'm out. I'm not into dragons. It was about like struggle

and politics and people talking to each other's heads off for money and power like that I get and then once the dragons were there I'm like

eh not for me do you think it's weird how quickly it disappeared it's just the last episode came everyone watched it and it went

yeah except they had a new one from the culture oh yeah it went. From the culture. No one watched the next one. Or talked about it. No one talked about it, but it's doing better than... I mean, it's not doing great, but it's doing better than Lord of the Rings, which was their

attempt to capture that at Amazon, which cost $1 billion and has a 35% completion rate which means that only a third, about a third of people watching that, Lord of the Rings, are bothering to finish the series.

That's horrible. I'm a 0% completion rate. I didn't watch it before. I'm a 0% with Game of Thrones too. Anyway, so you have a present. Yeah, my five-year-old opens all the presents for me this is the first present I've got to open for myself for a long time so I'm very excited about it and now moderately

confused ah wow look at this page It says Porsche 911, right? And it says Ricochet on the side and Astrolux on the top. Oh, there you go. I love it. I love it. Oh, and it's magic. There's a personalization on that.

I know, it's beautiful. Thank you. You need to open it up eventually and look at all the sides. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm happy to open it up now. Am I better opening up at home? Yes. When it's safe. When it's safe. Okay, deal.

Do we have a box in the YouTube? Yeah. Perfect. Well, who is responsible for this? Randy. Thank you, Randy. Appreciate it. Not the t-shirt. Melissa, I believe, bought that.

But the car. Thank you. Thank you all Randy. Appreciate it. Not the T-shirt. Melissa, I believe, bought that. But the car. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. This is great. So if you're listening at home, you know, we have an audience here. We're all gathered at a restaurant on Magazine, I think it's 7th,

in the Lower Garden District. We had a nice meal. You guys have, like, you saw it's 7th, in the Lower Garden District. We had a nice meal. You guys have, like, you saw, you were hanging, someone told me they got here on Monday. Monday. Do you come here often? No. We honeymoon here, we came back for XM's anniversary, and this is the first time back after that, so we made an event.

Wow, you surely did, yeah. Well, I love it here. This is a great city. Who are, we have some we have at least one native here, right? There are a few. Native. Native. A lot of natives. A native. Born and raised. Born and raised. Born and raised. I don't know why I'm saying that, Of course people are born and raised in New Orleans. Why wouldn't they be? But, you know, a lot of people come here, like me, and they go, you know, I've been here for a month.

I'm basically local. How's it going? Great. We love your mayor. Yeah, you've got a great mayor. Yeah, they managed to not recall her. So that's it. That's unfortunate.

That's unfortunate, yes. But we are lucky enough, we live in Jefferson Parish. So you think of Orleans Parish as being blue, Jefferson Parish as red. Yeah. Just say they had recalled her. Wouldn't they have replaced her with somebody equally bad? I mean, it kind of feels like...

If not worse. Absolutely. Yeah, right, right. Why would they recall her? Yeah, it just seems like, I mean, I don't know, at this point. Because they just elected her, what, a year ago. And suddenly a bunch of stuff came forward that the media here didn't talk about. Like her corruption, or paying security,

often to be policed, to be with her. That's such a great New Orleans thing, though. Yeah, like, urban corruption is sort of like, I don't like the idea, like, you really think that the citizens of New Orleans would be shocked to know their mayor is corrupt? No. It's measurably worse. Measurably worse.

Yeah, it is. Crime is worse. They can't pick up the garbage. The water doesn't flow. It's just a, you know. We used to get twice a week garbage collection. Now we get one, and we're grateful for that. Wow.

You should recall her. Forgot. What are you gonna get if you got a guy running things called Nudie Man? It's not gonna be good. Yeah, it's not gonna be good. She's better than me. I mean, he killed me.

Yeah, well, that was Ray Nagin was the mayor during the flood, during Katrina. And he came from, he was a cable TV executive. And so people couldn't believe that he wasn't going to be efficient. The guy is, he's a cable TV guy. He's like the people who say they're going to be there by 5 and he'll show up. That's like, that's him. He's the guy who took like $, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race.

That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly.

18plusgamblingcare.ie He parked them under a bridge where they got flooded out. Yeah. There are pictures of that, yeah. My favourite, I mean it's not a favourite, I know we can start, but I just want to get a little warm us up so we know where we are.

My favourite New Orleans, Katrina story, um, was that the chef, um, John Besh, who is local Louisiana guy, um,

had a bunch of restaurants here for a long time. Uh, and the morning after two days, he got all of his pantry stuff together and the cities are still, the streets are still flooded. And he got a couple flat bottom boats. And he made a bunch of red beans and rice. His family recipe, red beans and rice. And he went around just puttering around this giant lake that was the city.

Going up to people who had been on their roofs or wherever. And offering them their first meal in two days. And he finds there's some guy sort of sitting on, I guess it was on his shed, and he'd been on the shed for a day, day and a half. And they putter over to him, and they give him a bowl of red beans and rice, and they say, you know, this is for you. He says, thank you. And he takes a bite.

He goes, hmm, it's not like my grandmother made. And he handed it back. And when he handed it back, Bash thought, okay, well, you know what? We're going to be okay. Like, we're still who we are. We'll be fine. So I kind of feel that way whenever I come down here,

that everything's terrible, but it's still a pretty great city. It's terrible, but it's our territory. Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah yeah right so where do you where do you live rob i live in new york city which is official and uh clean and there aren't crazy people running around the streets you won't get pushed in front of a subway train for no reason uh and i said this i said this on a podcast i was uh last week i was walking um down madison avenue at night and it's a fancy shopping street and in the doorway of a some fancy store there was a guy on a bunch of newspapers and cardboard on his knees facing you know towards the building, shooting up,

which is something you don't really, I have not seen in New York City since pre, before Giuliani. And then you walk a little bit farther, and then you pass Trump Tower, and Trump Tower had already been barricaded, and they're already, like, tape on the ground for all the media. So it's, like, the CBS, the CNN, NBC, they all had their areas that were designated for them because Trump was going to come in the next day.

And then a little farther down on Fifth Avenue there was a very large crazy man who was wearing like a little short t-shirt and nothing else on Fifth Avenue just, and like people were walking by and they're like,

wait a minute. Was that guy... You can see people just hitting people as they're ten steps ahead. Wait a minute. Of the three things, there's three things in Manhattan that you'd think would be of interest to the... At least two of them to the Manhattan District Attorney.

But he's only interested in one thing, which was what was going on in Trump Tower. He had no interest in a guy shooting up on the street or a naked guy running around on the street. Not his job. His job is to come up with some nonsense charges and make a spectacle of himself in the city and use like 8,000,

some astronomical number of cops were involved that day in just controlling the Trump circus. Meanwhile, you know, something's got to go, right? I guess what goes is the safety, quality of life on the street. Yeah, I mean, it's not like down the beach where I live. If that's what you're looking at, I mean... Maybe the people who just have clothes up to here, Yeah, I mean, it's not like down the beach where I live. That's what you're looking at.

Maybe the people who just have clothes up to here, but actually we encourage that where I live. Yeah, that's right. That's actually a law. There's no shooting up. Of course, when Trump was trying to build down here post-Katrina, it was the same story. You had drug dealers and the drug users

shooting up. You had homeless people running around crazy and naked. And you had Trump holding press conferences on the street surrounded by NOPD talking about how he was going to redevelop Shell Center, which he never did. Well, here's a private citizen then.

It's pretty good. We went about seven minutes before he mentioned him. So we're on to something. I did. You're about seven minutes before you mentioned him. We're on to something. I did. You're right. No, you're right. I was trying to do it in a positive way. We are here. Like a lot of things with Ricochet, it is entirely organized by members.

We're just sitting here having a drink. The member who organized this is sitting right over here. Randy, how many of these have you organized? I don't know. A lot. Probably ten or more. Ten? Like everywhere?

Where do you live? Last May, the end of May, my wife and I and her mother moved to Cookville, Tennessee. Okay. We used to live in northwestern Minnesota. Wow, okay. So you had one here. Twice have done one in Utah. Had a huge one in Montana.

Had a huge one in Black Hills, South Dakota. Had a big one that was basically a grand tour of western Kentucky. It wasn't just in one city. We started out in Bowling Green, visited the National Corvette Museum, went on a couple cave tours, went to Bardstown, toured the Bardstown bourbon distillery, went to whatever town Maker's Mark is in toward that distillery, went to Lexington for an afternoon of horse racing,

went to Louisville, took a steamboat ride, and some of us visited the Kentucky Derby Museum. So that was a unique one where it wasn't in one city, but we did a grand tour. That sounds like a good one. And then a bunch of little ones in, let's see, yeah, a few times in Chicago, Fargo. We did one a million years ago in L.A., and then we did one in northern california and then last year in new york we did one we did kind of a pub crawl which would have been a a bigger pub crawl except that it it rained it like it just poured that day so we're kind of all huddled into the city winery but But then we found another place after that was,

after they were really done with us, they kind of wanted us to leave. We found another place that we hustled over to. And that was like, I don't know, it seems like part of the fun of being a member of Ricochet is this part. I mean, are you a charter member? Yes.

I mean, as they define it, I don't know what the cutoff is, but I've got that on my badge. As a matter of fact, Leidens and I joined Ricochet the exact same day. Really? April 7. Really? Yeah, April 7, 2011. So, you know, you can't go back.

That's 12 years ago. You can't go back in the list of Ricochet podcasts that far because I was thinking it would be fun to listen to the one just before that or maybe two before that because you must have made a particularly compelling pitch. I don't think so. That got both of us to join up and uh ricochet's charlotte joined up just a few days before leans and i did wow and she's do you remember what it

was was it well there was some there were some that were begging yeah and whatever the ones were like listen uh we are uh this is it we're on life support it could have been that. One of the ones you're like, listen, this is it. We're on life support. It could have been that. Unfortunately, those tend to work. You just can't go to that well too often. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you.

That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18 plus gamblingcare.ie 2011. That just feels like like ancient history, right? Like 2011. It just feels like

even though it wasn't that long ago, really. I remember we were we started doing a podcast first and I think I remember doing a podcast or having a meeting or something on election night 2008

Obama's election I was in New York and I remember just thinking okay well this is either going to be really great for us or it's going to be terrible you never really know turned out it was really great, but, you know, who knew? All right, anybody predate 2011?

Okay, what's your year? All right. 2010. Okay, 2010, that's pretty good. So when did you start? I mean, is this... You know, we don't know. Peter and I have no memory of, like, what is pretty good. So when did you start? We don't know. Peter and I have no memory of what year it was.

I know that we were doing something about it in 2008 because I wasn't living in New York then and I was in New York because we had meetings for this. I know that I was invited to join at a Christmas party in 2007. 2007, yeah, so that would have been, yeah. I mean, it's like, it does feel like a million years ago.

So are there, okay, so 2011, 2010. Anybody, besides the people who just joined, anybody join like in the past year? So two years? Two years.

Okay. Five. Is five like the number? Five? That's a lot of fives. So, people, for two years, what made you join? We were listening to your podcast, and you paid so much. I'll take it.

I'm not proud. I'll take it. It not proud I'll take it I was listening to your podcast I was listening to a whiskey one and there was another one and I was like all these are the same athlete it made an interest and so then

what made you join? I learned for a long time and then I was listening to a podcast with Boss Bongo. He said, you ought to have skin in the game and that got me to join. That's good. So skin in the game works.

Kind of. Well, thank you. Whenever you join, thank you. All we really need is for you to find two other people and make them join too. But we don't want to change what it is. We still like the idea that you could have meaningful interaction on the site And it's reasonably civil and polite. I mean, the standards

now are really low, so it's like, for us to say that we're the most reasonable, rational, civilized conversation on the web is really not saying much. But I still think that when I send people to, I mean, every now and then I'll get a login, and I'll send somebody,

usually it's a liberal, often it's a liberal journalist. And I'll say, just, just go in and like, just look at what you can do. It doesn't have to be a swamp. Um, you just have to have some rules, some dress code, that's all. And, uh, I usually get back like, yeah, it was sort of interesting. Although there's a lot of like, a lot of people on that site who like, think that, you know, the second amendment means you're allowed to have firearms a lot of that like like yeah they're conservative so they're going to say that you know so sometimes you get that argument anyway yeah right i do indeed think the second amendment means you're allowed to have firearms that's true it's kind of what it says. I mean, that's literally what it says, right?

What about cannons? Sorry? Cannons? Well, okay. Do you really want me to answer? If you're interested, I'm happy to talk about cannons. Okay, this drives me crazy

because Biden says this all the time. And it's funny because he's wrong in both directions. First off, at the time of the founding, it was entirely legal to have canon. That is just a fact. There was no law against it. But no one would have thought this was included under the Second Amendment because canon are ordinance, and ordinance was separate from arms,

and the Second Amendment protects arms. So what Biden is doing there is he's getting it wrong, which is his speciality in both ways, which is he's getting it wrong, which is his speciality in both ways, which is he's saying, well, at the time of the founding, you weren't allowed to run a cannon. Well, actually, you still are, by the way. Look it up. There are no laws in the United States, in any state or at the federal level, against the ownership of cannon. And no one has ever passed this. You know why? Because you don't turn on the news in the morning and go, oh my God, another shopping center devastated by a cannon fire. That never happened.

That never happened. So there's no federal laws. There's no state laws. We've always been able to do it. It's actually not covered under the Second Amendment. But not being under the Second Amendment was never the American standard. And this is the point. This is not how the country set up. If you look at

the Constitutional Convention, they were not sitting there saying, right, what are you not allowed to do? They said, what's the government allowed to do? So the government was allowed in some ways to regulate the militia. There's a militia act, there's a militia clause in the Constitution that predates the Second Amendment. That's it. That's it. Cannon were common. They were privately owned. They were anticipated.

There's a whole clause in the Constitution, letters of mark and reprisal. People had naval ships that they owned privately. They expected to be sent abroad to use them. There wouldn't be much point sending a ship abroad to fight the Barbary pirates if you didn't have cannon on it. You've really got me going now. This is dastardly. But yes. So my point is, join Ricochet, buy a cannon, maybe at the same time.

I wonder, could you... Who makes them? Can you buy one? Yes, you can buy them. I mean, are they like weirdly sort of antique things now? I wonder, how much are they? How much is a cannon? I mean, a small one. I don't mean a big one.

A small one. Just for my own protection. Right. Small one around... You can get them and keep them 25 hours. I don't know how much they cost, but they're used a lot in Civil War reenactments. Right. And all those are privately owned.

Right. So, like, we should price that. It'd be really cool, like, Ricochet Premium. You know, the person who goes to the most meetups. Wait, we have an answer. We have an answer. Black powder cannon barrel, 20-inch long, 1-inch bore, made in USA, $395. There you go.

Holy moly. Wow. There's also a whole category, antique maritime cannons and cannonballs for sale. What a great country. Just the fact that you can look that up. Yeah, yeah, right. In England, you go to prison for looking it up on your phone. And you can probably click Apple Pay Buy, right?

You can just get it sent to your house. You should say... Don't you worry that if, as a group, as a Ricochet group, we bought Santa Cannon, it might Ricochet on us? Oh, that's right, yeah. Well, no, it would Ricochet off something. You should,'s right, yeah. Well, no, with Ricochet off something. You should, next time, instead of offering to buy three drinks,

you should say, if you join Ricochet, we'll buy the first three people cannon. That'd be kind of cool, right? Right. There is a shop, I don't know if you guys have been, I don't know if you had time today, there's a shop on charters, I no it's on royal in the in the quarter that's got it's like old uh weapons and stuff and um there's a bunch of sabers and things but there's also some great old like rifles and i bet you he could get i bet you he could hook us up with a cannon but if you go in there and you kind of like you're you're

a little cagey about like Amendment stuff a little bit, you just drop a few hints, you'll be there. You should go. It's a long afternoon, and it's really fun because this guy is a true believer. So a lot of people don't know this, but this is true. All American gun laws stop at 1898. So it's a curio if it was made before 1898. Right, so you could go into that store. If that gun was made in 1897,

even if it's perfectly functional, you can go in and buy it and just walk out with it. There's no laws that apply. There's no background check. There's nothing. And I'll say it again. I don't think that's a problem in our country, right? Again, you're not sitting there turning on the news and they go,

yet another 1850s rifle used in massacre. A blunderbuss. I knew somebody who said it was normal in the 50s in New York City to see young men, boys, going to school carrying a.22 rifle. Correct. And because all schools had rifle range in the basement. My dad was a stylist. Yeah, right. He was on the rifle tour. Yeah, right. He was on the rifle tour.

Yeah, right. My high school had a rifle range in the basement. And we had this one girl's group, one club, called the Rifleettes. And they wore a little uniform. Where was this? East High in Denver. Okay. Well, in the West, you guys are weird. But I mean, I took riflery. I was in the Boy Scouts. I didn't take it to school.

By that time, they didn't have it. Nobody thought you shouldn't know how to fire a weapon. When did you start shooting? I'm asking Charlie. Legally. Yeah. Well, it's always illegal. I feel like I'm in a police cell here.

Yeah, right. Well, actually, I mean, although we don't have privately owned firearms in the UK, you do take the course at school, which we did, which was run by the army, and they come in. So I guess they did that. I mean, when I came to America and started writing about this, I immediately got invitations. People would say, come to the range.

So I'm probably within six months of being in the US. I mean, originally, my interest in this was not at all practical. I didn't particularly like guns. I had an interest in the fact that the press was lying about it, and I think that's really annoying. the Heller decision

came down, and I thought that was correct, and then I wrote about this a lot, and then people would say, come to a range, and then I sort of enjoyed it and now I've moved all the way. But that wasn't the impetus. It was that there was a secondary to it. So, I mean, for a long time. But, you know, another thing that really irritated me on this was, and I think, I actually think the press has caught on to this now, 10 years ago, there was this idea,

only white people have guns. Only white men actually have guns. And this was not true in the range that I used to go to in Connecticut, in Bridgeport, which is not a particularly white town. And people would come over, and they would share guns, and they would talk. And I thought, this isn't true.

I mean, now the idea is absolutely laughable that this is a white male thing. And finally, this has actually become acknowledged is that if you look at gun sales in the last five or six years, especially the last three, they are very heavily actually not white men, partly because white men already have all the guns, right? So you've got to market share. That's right. But that was very annoying too. Because you'd read about this and then you would

I would accept the invitations of people in various places in America. I went to one in Denver, Colorado and Connecticut and New York City actually has a gun range. And it just didn't correspond at all to what I was being told. California. Go to a gun range in California.

It is not just white men. So that kind of pissed me off. When I was in Southern California, in Los Angeles, in Los Angeles County, they had, I forget, strict gun laws. But not in Culver City, which is a little independent city surrounded on all sides by Los Angeles. So you could just drive into Culver City, and they had a bunch of antique, you know,

curio, I guess, sales shops, and then two or three gun ranges, and then gun sellers. So the idea was, like, the point of the kind of kabuki theater for L.A saying we're gonna no guns like well actually right in culver city you can buy all the guns you want i don't know if you could buy a cannon that'd be cool i'm stuck on the can and we're getting a cannon that's rule one we're gonna get we're gonna figure out a way to get a cannon in here yeah sorry uh i had a co-worker

who was a associate foreman of the Teamsters of Southside Chicago, a black dude. He was also a concealed carry instructor. It was like, police ain't gonna come to your rescue. You gotta be able to rescue yourself. Right, exactly.

Did anybody have a, I mean, I had a pellet gun as a kid. Do we have a pellet gun? Remember those pellet guns? Was it a CO2 or did you have, was it the pump? The pump. The pump. The pump was great because you could, if you really loved it, which I loved, you could pump it up really, really, you could feel it.

It was like super hard to finish. And then, and your, the trajectory of the pellet was better. And if you shot it against... Rob, Rob, you're scaring everyone. Yeah, if you shot it against the shed, in my backyard anyway, you were convinced that if you just a little bit more pressure, you could pierce the steel,

which of course you could never do. But if you only gave it a little bit, you could actually lob it. I thought anyway, I was like, what if I could get my site picture, you know, the cluster on the target, I could get it

a better, I could angle it, you know, because you're not going as fast. I never quite figured that out, but I did it for hours. For hours, trying to bust through the shed until my dad got mad. And just trying to lob it into the target. Yeah, I think your canon application

is going to be refused after this testimony. But that's what they do with canon, right? Because you've got to get loft, right? That's right. Ballistics. Yeah, whatever that is.

Okay, so where are you planning next? Now that it's your job, yeah, whatever that is. Okay, so where are you planning next, now that it's your job apparently to plan all these? No, well, Matt Balzer is doing another one in Milwaukee to go along with German Fest. That's like in a week, right? In July. Still water in Minnesota.

That's like... Not tomorrow, but the following Saturday. The following Saturday, right. The next one that I'm doing, STAD, a neutral observer, and my wife and I are going to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for a science fiction convention. And we've invited any ricochet-y

who want to come by and meet us. And maybe we'll pick up somebody else who wants to go to the convention, too. As far as another really big one like this, I don't have any plans yet. Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, Omega Paladin is planning on... Oh, that's a cool idea. That's a cool idea. We set that up last night. Oh, that's... That's a good idea.

I think that's a great idea. Yeah. I still want to do another one in New York because it's so safe and because it's easy for me to get to. It's safer than here. You know what? It is safer than here. But know what? It is safer than here.

But do you feel like this is unsafe? No. I mean, you read about it, but I don't know. There's just some pretty atrocious stuff. I don't know if a lady got dragged over that. They dragged her on a car. It's just, you know, and now the DA can't get the judge to case him. They delayed the case for a year.

She did. For some bizarre reason, you know, the DA can't get the case brought to court. It's just, you know, at our grocery store, basically. They just dragged that man behind the car. The cops here will tell you, you better buy a car. They just drag everyone behind the car and run them off. The cops here will tell you, you ain't got to buy a gun. They'll tell you. So, you know, it's not good.

But this is good. It's not good. It's not what it should be. And it's a little bit of what it was a while ago. We're not doing, we're not in the right spot. Okay, so Charlie, if gun ownership went up in New Orleans, what would happen? Well, I don't know.

But what I do know is that there's no correlation, given the number of guns in America already, between gun ownership and crime, because the saturation point was already reached. I mean, there's 500 million guns in the United States. There's 330 million people. The number of guns changed between 1990 and 2014 by 250 million, and crime dropped and dropped and dropped.

So the idea that if, given the rate of gun ownership we already have, that if you increase the number you'll get more gun crime seems patently false. Probably the opposite is true. That's what I was going for.

I mean, if... Look, everybody I know cares. I mean, look. Everybody. And I lived in New York. It's not the guns. It's the people. You've got to get the people I mean, look. Right. Right. Right.

And if someone's a homicidal maniac, they don't need a firearm to kill people. Right. Well, we're just talking about this today, driving through town where everybody's walking on the streets. You know, we're incredibly fortunate that this hasn't caught on in the homicidal maniac community to drive people over. There have been a few incidents. I think at the Los Angeles Olympics, some guy plowed through the crowd and killed a bunch of people in Germany or France at some Christmas gathering. Yeah, somebody did it in New York too. It occasionally happens, but imagine if that caught on the way school shootings have.

What are we going to do then? Can't outlaw automobiles. And look, we actually have irrational laws, and I'll give you an example of it. And I feel it's safe saying this here because normally I get blank looks on this. So I looked up before I came here the concealed carry laws, which are quite good relative to the rest of America. I didn't actually bring a gun, but I looked up the laws because I was interested. And the law in Louisiana, including here in New Orleans, is that if you have had as much to drink as would disqualify you from driving a car, you're not allowed to carry.

Now, that sounds presumptively sensible, but it's not. And I'll tell you why. The state of Florida does not have that law. The state of Florida says you can drink as much as you want unless you put your hand on the gun. You can have it in your pocket. You can be smashed. Let's be frank. You can be smashed. You can be blotted, three streets to the wind. English

people are really good, by the way, at using words for drunk. Anything works in an English accent. It's true. Car parked, gazebo, whatever you want. You can be that. And if you have the gun in your possession, you're fine until you touch it. Now, people think prima facie that that sounds a bit crazy. There has never been a problem with that once in a state of 21 million people. It actually makes sense, because the thing is that what you're not comparing that against is a rational person. You're comparing it against a crazy person. And all of you, whether you drink or not, you are more likely to be rational, even if you've had

12 gin and tonics, than the person who you're trying to protect yourself against is. The only point at which you're going to put your hand into your pocket, and don't worry, that's my phone, not a gun. The only point at which you're going to put your hand into your pocket. And don't worry, that's my phone, not a gun. The only point at which you're going to put your hand into your pocket is if you absolutely have to, because you have no intent to hurt anyone. I think we need to rethink this. Every time something terrible happens, as it has recently in Kentucky and in Nashville, Tennessee, all of our laws are discussed as if the crimes that are being committed are committed by people who are rational, who are thinking it through, who care about the consequences, and they don't. This is the problem. Look, I'm not criticizing Louisiana's laws. I think they're

pretty good. But actually, they would be better if they made that adjustment. So you said, you know, what would happen? If more people carried under laws that were more lenient, not a single person who has no intention to hurt anyone would subsequently hurt someone. I mean, there's 26 states. A majority of states have now abolished permitting processes for concealed carry. And nothing happened. You know why?

Because no one who has murderous intent in their heart cares what the permitting laws are. So do I think that America has more gun crime because there are 500 million guns than South Korea, which has basically none? Yes, I do. I'm happy to stipulate that. Do I think that it has more gun violence than England does, where basically no one is allowed guns. Yes, I do. That's not to say, by the way, that you can replace one by one. America's suicide rate's much lower than most countries. People will substitute suicide instruments for something else. So Japan's suicide rate's twice what America's is, even though they basically are no guns. But yes, homicides are higher because of guns. Mass shootings are higher because of guns.

But given that that is a fact, what you really want to do is maximize the latitude that responsible people have. And I think this is the mistake that we make. We're obsessed with the people who are obeying the law and not with the people who aren't. Yes.

I don't understand. We're going to have guns. Right. Right. You know what the shooting at the kids' schools was? Correct. And what is doing that? You know, surfing the crazy. I don't know.

And it's copycat. Yeah. Social occasions. Yeah. Everybody. Well, that may be true. I mean, I remember some years back where somebody had looked at the statistics and said, actually, school shootings have gone back to like the 1930s.

You know, it just was not a nationwide news story every time it happened. Where now, no matter where it happens in the U.S., it's a nationwide news story. There's a lot of crime now. There's a lot less crime than there was 20 years ago and 30 years ago. And that's really good. But the mass shooting phenomenon, to your point about cars, is a copycat phenomenon. There have been 33 peer-reviewed studies, and I'm not a big peer-reviewed studies guy because you can sort of hack them,

but 33 of them that have looked at the media's influence on mass shootings since about 1996. And every single one of them, all of them, all 33, say one causes the next one. You put it all over the news. You tell people they can be famous. I don't know if you guys read this. Hopefully you didn't because you're not weirdos.

But the Nashville shooter texted her friend just before she did it. What was the last thing she said? Does anyone know? She said, you're about to hear about me on the news. Why did she say that? Because it was true. It was true. Also, a lot of these school shootings, the people who do them are on antidepressants. Yeah, that's true as well.

Almost 100% of them are antidepressants. Yeah, but millions and millions of people are on antidepressants who are not violent. You know, I don't know that it's the antidepressants that make somebody crazy. It's the people who are crazy are the ones who are taking antidepressants. And in many cases it works and probably in some cases it doesn't. I don't know that those people would be less crazy if they weren't taking antidepressants. Yeah, I mean, there's something in the culture that's either social contagion or it's some other thing, some, you know, brew.

More than one or two factors that's going on. I buy that. This is a very depressing conversation to be having. So I'm not going to, I'm just, I'm going to get out my cannon. But here's the question I ask when we do this, when we go on a national review cruise, and there's always that moment you're sitting at the table, everybody's sort of sitting there and no one knows what to say. And I always want to do this, when we go on a national review cruise, and there's always that moment, you're sitting at the table, everybody's sort of sitting there, and no one knows what to say.

And I always want to know this question, because, like, this is where, so I'm not exactly widespread in age, but close. Was everybody in this room always, like, conservative? Yes. Was anybody in this room like liberal? Okay. So Ken was liberal.

Where was your moment? Was it one moment? I was telling Charles before in college, I'm an undergraduate. Back in our 20s, we were very optimistic and wanted to push back against our parents and our older generation, things we were ignorant,

I guess is the kind of polite way to say it, but we had an older coworker who was in his 40s. He used to work on campaigns down here, like government. He'd run with the governor and such. He was a Republican, and he was conservative. He'd tell us, we were a young man working with him at a bar, that we'd change our tune in about 20 years. He'd say, give yourself about 10, 20 years.

You'll come around to changing your way of thinking. And he was right. I talked to him when I was 40. And I said, yeah, sure enough, I got a mortgage. I got a responsibility. I got out of college. And slowly, yeah, I'm registered independent. My wife's a Republican, I got out of college, and slowly, yeah, you go. I mean, I'm registered independent.

My wife's a Republican. I'm independent. But I still lean towards conservatism now. Right. But, yeah, I absolutely left early 20s and stuff. But it wasn't like one moment you're like, wait a minute. I think at a certain point you just look around at the world around you and realize you don't really agree with the, you know, most of what you're hearing, at least in the circles I was associated with. So I don't think it was one moment where the light came on, but slow progress for me, a

slow process. How old are you now? I mean, I'm 43. So what was the first, what's your first presidential election that you could vote in when you're 18? Like, must have been Clinton, right? When I was 18, it was 97, I think. So the nearest one would have been, what, 97? No, the nearest one was 2000.

Okay, right. So 2000 was, in fact, I'll never help the other. Bush-Gore. You are young. Bush-Gore. That's 24 years ago. I can't remember. Okay, what about that election?

I'm trying to impolitely ask you where you were on that election. I'm trying to date your moment. Bush or Gore? I was Bush. I remember dad growing up in the 80s, 90s. Yeah, I was Bush. I thought the policies made more sense to me, basically. I don't like to say I lean specifically one way or the other. There are issues where I'll actually disagree with people

that would call themselves staunch Republicans, staunch conservatives. Also, Bush and Gore, 2,000 people, forget. They weren't that different. thought, you know, we're probably the misogynists. Also, Bush and Gore in 2000, people forget, they weren't that different. It was not like, oh my god, they were not that polar opposite. In fact, they both competed to see who would come up with the most generous Medicare

plan. And it was Bush who said, I'll give you better, more free drugs than this guy. And it was Bush who said, I'll give you better, more free drugs than this guy. And Medicare Part D, that's Bush. And so he scooped up a lot of old people. I don't remember the civil division. In that election, I don't remember

people being very vehement to each other. They were afterwards. They were from election day on. But up to the election day, it was pretty... Anyway, so who else was started as a liberal? Started as a liberal? Yes. From where? Chicago?

Basically, in high school, I got rebellious and was kind of a rejected religion and such and was out there. And kind of slowly wandered my way back, but the real moment that changed me was 9-11.

I was actually really on the fence. I voted Bush, but it was like I was seriously considering voting for Gore. And I found this as a rule. If I seriously consider voting for a Democrat, they're going to be a monster. I voted for Blagojevich, and look at what happened to him. So after 9-11, I saw some of,

I saw what people were doing on campus. I saw they were saying to them, we deserved it. It was our fault. And we should apologize. And I was like, no, I want dead terrorists. And I wanted them down. And that's when I realized I did what? There was no space for me on the left.

Yeah, when you say, I want dead terrorists, I want them now, you kind of can't go back there anymore. Like, they don't, there's no, they've taken your chair away. That's exact, that by the way is exactly me too. I had absolutely no idea what I thought about anything because I hadn't had to. I was born in 1984, the economy was great, the world was broadly safe, the West won every war it got into. 9-11 happened, I was horrified and I heard people on the radio in England saying America deserved it The world was broadly safe. The West won every war it got into. 9-11 happened.

I was horrified, and I heard people on the radio in England saying America deserved it, and I thought, whatever that is, I'm not. And that's exactly me as well. Whatever that is, I'm not. Anybody else have 9-11 on their... I mean, that was late for me. I'm old. For me, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism.

Because I was told in high school and college that Reagan was a madman and that there's nothing really wrong with communism. It's just another system, and they're very happy with it. And it's sort of a little bit tacky to be anti-communist. And by the way, their system's fine and it's not in any danger. And then the wall comes down and you think,

oh, well, wait a minute. What else are you lying to me about? And once you start with that, once that domino hits, what else isn't true? Then it's like discovering there's a recurring dream that psychiatrists say that people have.

You're running in sand and you're going to an exam for a class that you haven't gone to, whatever that is. The other dream is that you discover a room in your house that you never knew existed. That's a classic dream. And that's what it feels like when you suddenly think, well, wait a minute, what else are you lying to me about? And I discovered by reading Paul Johnson's Modern Times, they were lying to me about everything. They were lying to me about Stalin. They were lying to me about communism.

They were lying to me about American politics in the 20th century. They were lying to me about everything. They were lying to me about welfare and welfare reform. And once that happens, it's kind of over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to interject. Charlie hasn't seen Rocky IV.

Where's my cannon? It's like... It's true. It's true. Wait. Rocky IV... Was the one where he goes to Russia. He goes to Russia he goes to Russia

that's Dolph Lundgren right? yeah I love great movies why haven't you seen it? I haven't seen any of the Rocky movies this actually is beginning to feel like a Chinese struggle session but I'll go through it

anyway I want you to explain your sin. I haven't seen any of the Rocky movies and many other movies besides. You haven't seen the original Rocky? Correct. Is this a choice? I guess.

I mean, I wasn't forced out of it. I guess. This is a failure. This is a failure. We need to shut immigration down until we can figure out what's going on. That's what I think. Well, I'm not going to vouch for the other Rockies

because they kind of got a little bit crazy. But the first Rocky is a great movie. It's like a great, great movie. It has nothing to do with... You haven't seen any Rockies? You've got to see the first one at least. It's great. It's a great movie. It has nothing to do with... You haven't seen any Rockies? You've got to see the first one at least. It's great. It's a great movie. 1977?

78? What best picture? I mean, it's a really classy picture. It's really great. You should see it. Yeah, right. That theme's really great. Anybody else? Who else had that conversion moment? What was yours? How liberal were you before, though?

Well, I was going to say, because for me it wasn't a personal choice. I was a fourth-generation farmer, and so if you were a farmer, you voted Democrat for the farm programs. Where? So a very, very tiny little town in sort of northwestern Indiana. Okay. Yeah, nobody's ever heard of the town, but it's about 45 miles west of where Purdue University is. Okay. So, middle of farm country, so everybody was a Democrat because you wanted the farm programs. So then I married a Reagan-era Republican and started actually learning about politics through him. And over the years have probably

outclassed him in my conservatism. And you're like, hey, slow down. You live there now? No. Well, hey, slow down. Well, you live there now? No. Well, it's still in the Midwest, outside of Detroit now. OK. Because let's just say, Indiana's an interesting state. Because it went through that change now. It's inconceivable that Indiana would ever elect a Democrat statewide at this point, right?

I mean, it's just not possible. Which drives my sisters nuts, by the way, who still are Democrats in India. Are they? What's the party? Is it just the Democratic Party? Do they have like the Democratic farmers, workers thing from the old days?

I think it's that they have never really bothered to move beyond. I've always been a Democrat, as my dad were, and they don't follow it that much. And so... I was, I had lunch today at the bar at Galatoire's.

So I was working today and it was like 2.30 or 3 o'clock and I knew Galatoire's was open. It's my favorite restaurant in town. I'm at the bar and it's, it's Friday lunch

at Galatoire's is like a, well, all you New Orleans, you know, it's like, it's a,'s like a thing. And so there's some people come from the dining room, which is next door.

They kind of come into the bar to finish their long lunch. And they've all had a little bit. And so there's a crowd of people to my right. And they've all had a lot. And these are accents like from a movie about New Orleans. I mean, this is real. And they are in politics. And they're all Democrats.

And they are talking about politics the way, I didn't think people talked about politics in 2023. It was like old-fashioned stuff. It's like, well, I'll tell you that guy. Well, she appoints those commissioners. So it's a lot of that, like a lot of that. And I feel like partly people who are that kind of vestigial Democrats, right?

They like the order of it. You know, it's like they like the system. Like, and I think you probably find Republicans like that in like Republican areas too, but like it's for older American places. I think it's like Democrats that are, like if you give up the party system and the party hierarchy

and the party organization, then what do you have? You just have to run for office like anybody. Whereas if you're part of the system, you don't really run for office like everybody. You run for office and you kind of know you're going to win. I think that might be part of the system, you don't really run for office like everybody. You run for office and you kind of know you're going to win.

I think that might be part of the appeal. But does anybody have friends who are... How many people... I obviously have a lot of liberal friends. Most of my co-workers in

my work in Los Angeles, they're all extremely liberal Democrats. Is that, is that, that's normal, right? Like people say it isn't, but I think it is normal, right? How many of your, this is like a leading question, so tell me I'm full of it if I am. How many of your liberal friends say things, especially recently, like, well, I'm a liberal, but I'm not, and then they list a bunch of things they especially recently, like, well, I'm a liberal, but I'm not. And then they list a bunch of things they're not liberal on. And you're like, well, you're not a liberal then. Well, I'm a Democrat. I mean, I'm a Democrat, but I don't go for, and then they'll

list a bunch of things. You're like, well, I guess it's news for you. You're not a Democrat. If this, if you believe all this stuff, you're, you're, maybe you're in the middle, you're independent, but they don't want to lose that label. They'll still act like they're, well, I'm a liberal, but I think we're going too far in climate change. And I kind of agree with DeSantis' school rules about talking about trans stuff. Okay, well, that's...

That's fine, but how do they vote? Right, right. But it makes me feel like they're winnable, right? They're moving. Now, for social reasons, they seem to be part of the majority of Republicans. You know, Republicans are pejorative. Yeah. But if you talk about a specific issue, schools, or crime, or something like that,

then you find, well, it's sent out by me. You know? Right. It's stuck on a label. Yeah. I mean, I think even conservative liberal labels, they're stuck on that. I know people who are even more conservative than I am on some things. I'm like, you can't go around

calling yourself a liberal. At the most, you're independent. But basically, you're a conservative. Yeah, the Republicans seem to get up. Because of the press, maybe, it seems to be other kind of strength.

Yeah, it's a book. Yeah. It's interesting you brought that up, because I have two brothers live in the area one of them is a self-professed liberal we have lunch every week

and he said the exact same thing he said I'm a liberal but these things are starting to I don't agree with what these things are happening so I don't pursue it because I hate to talk, I love my brother, I want to continue to love my brother

so we don't talk politics. But he's bringing it up. They're going too far. What are these things, does he say? I think it was the transgender thing. You know, it was the talk du jour. But a crime.

We were talking about recalling the mayor. He's a big guy for recalling the mayor. So crime, all the things with the city that should be happening but aren't happening. So he talks like a conservative but he calls himself a liberal. I'm pretty sure that he would vote Democrat because that's just what he would do. Nationally he would vote Democrat. In Orleans Parish he had to vote Democrat because there are no Republicans on the ticket. What about governor? We haven't talked about that.

But our governor is a Democrat, but he's kind of an old-school blue-dog Democrat. He's on the right, supposedly we're on the right side of abortion. Right. Guns. were on the right side of abortion. Right. And guns. And those types of things. You know, a real left-wing politician could not be elected governor of Louisiana. But it's just interesting that you brought that up because I think it is starting to happen. Yeah, it's weird, though, for me, for Democrats, just to think about Democrats as a party.

I mean, the parties, I think, are kind of dumb anyway. And I think the volatility in American politics in the past 20 years kind of suggests just in the market for us that people are, I mean, the country going from like George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Donald Trump is like, it's either a country having a nervous breakdown or it's just the customers trying to get the attention of the politicians.

It's the voters trying to say, something's wrong. You're not doing a good job. And that's kind of what I think it is. It's like we're at a frayed end. Look, these party systems don't last forever. They haven't lasted that long. This is the longest they've ever lasted in American history. It's probably time for them to figure out something else. But what astonishes me is like you look at

almost every single American general election or any poll, so that psychographic poll of voters that are non-affiliated with the party or that don't ask the voters to be affiliated with the party. And their ideal presidential candidate is essentially what you just described, a southern conservative Democrat. In American politics, still, in national politics, a southern conservative Democrat is nearly unstoppable. And yet, there aren't any. Yeah, there's literally the category that never gets represented. Right, right. It's like the answer is right there for that party.

All they need to do is to elect a Southern conservative Democrat, and that'll be a national figure for them, and they can't do it. They can't. It's got to be like... You remember that moment in the Democratic primary when, was it Jim Webb?

And they were asking all of the Democratic candidates in the primary, like, what was your proudest moment? And they're all like, oh, it was when I passed subsection 7B of the, you know, of the what angle should stairs be at act of 1987, right? And then Jim Webb was like, it was when I threw a grenade at a Vietnamese guy he died and the press was like holy shit that is so horrible but the public completely loved it yeah and then they nominated Hillary Clinton and they know they Hillary Clinton no No, but 30 years ago there were, literally 30 years ago. And he was elected twice. Look, I'm not a southern conservative Democrat.

And yet that senator from Georgia. Sam Nunn. I mean, you had them. They were... Al Gore. When Al Gore ran in 84? 84, 88? 88. He was incredibly conservative. He was a conservative When Al Gore ran in 84, 84, 88? 88, yeah. 88?

He was incredibly conservative. He was a conservative southern senator, Democratic senator. He was pro-life. He had all sorts of things. He was arguably as conservative as any Republican at the time. But he wouldn't be a Republican today. No, and he didn't win the nomination. I just think it's just interesting that I know more people who fit that bill. Like your brother, he's winnable.

Or winnable for the Democratic Party to win a national election for real. And they just don't do it. There was a post on Ricochet within the last week saying, who do you fear the most for the Democratic 2024? And I read that and I said, okay, just like you say, a Southern Democrat conservative.

You know, the old blue dog. They put one up, that's the Republicans' worst nightmare. I agree. What the problem is you have to choose what's out there. And the pickings are so sparse that even though you're so totally devoted to a particular outlook,

there's nobody out there. These are Democrats. Or Republicans. Or Louisiana. Yeah. Why doesn't your Louisiana go? Yeah.

You see them? Why doesn't your Louisiana go? Because you'd get crushed. You wouldn't make it out of the primary. You'd get crushed. Yeah,'t make it out of the primary. We would want him anyway. He's not corrupt enough. You wouldn't trust him.

But I don't know. I actually feel like... I mean, I don't... I mean, I am... Now, I don't care about any of these parties at all. I think they're all terrible. All of them are just terrible. But if I was going to bet, I think that the Republicans have more

you know legitimate traditional winning candidates this cycle I don't know why people aren't talking more about Brian Kemp, governor successful governor of Georgia

Santa seems like he's a good governor right? but I don't think he should walk to it. I feel like you have, Brian Kemp is a perfectly good governor, has a story to tell. Former governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, he's going to, he is running.

I mean, he's getting yelled at, or apparently he's getting insulted at the... Yeah, I think Kemp has already indicated that he won't run. No, he won't run. He's sensible. Who won't run? He's fabulous, though. Oh, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, he's like, you know, he's like...

That means a governor of a big state, an important state. That person's almost automatically... You talk about that person as the presidential candidate naturally, like, in American history. Weird. So as fun as this is, we are well past the restaurant's closing time. Yes.

So we should probably wrap this up. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I hope this was fun for you. I don't really know what we're going to do with this. This will be a podcast. It'll be up to Perry to figure something out. We're going to do with this. This will be a podcast. It'll be up to Perry to figure something out. We're going to

monetize it. Yeah, Perry. I would just like to say this was fun. Thank you, Randy, for arranging it. And for the future ones. Thank you

to Melissa for doing all this. Yes, she saved us. Yeah, and also, we'll see you in the next one. And if you're listening to this, and you're thinking to yourself, why was I not there? Here's why you weren't there, because you didn't join.

So whatever I said to some of these people here, I will say it again. If you join, you get to not only get on the site and have fun in the members section, but you also get to come to stuff like this. And if you do come to stuff like this and you join just to come to stuff like this and I am there,

I will buy you a drink. I made good on that promise. And a cannon. But the cannon is later. We've got to figure the cannon out. That would be great. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.