Valuetainment - Why Guns Matter - An Argument for 2nd Amendment

00:00:00.000 Guns are not violence. Guns are a tool that is utilized by people who want to commit violence.

00:00:06.380 What would make America safer? 99% of America who has license to carry or 99% of America who

00:00:14.540 doesn't own a single gun. In New Jersey, you have a woman by the name of Kara Bone. She was stabbed

00:00:18.880 to death by her ex-boyfriend and he was a felon. She knew he was going to try to kill her one day

00:00:23.600 and so she submitted her paperwork in order to get the license and she was stabbed in the driveway

00:00:27.840 of her own home. This woman actually called in. I'm just checking on the status of my license in

00:00:32.160 order for me to go buy a gun. When the time came and her ex-boyfriend showed up to stab at her death,

00:00:36.660 she was in a position no longer to defend herself at that point. Weapons have changed in the last

00:00:40.860 10, 20, 30 years. Let's go to worst case scenario. Beto O'Rourke, he's in charge and he confiscates

00:00:46.980 everything away from you. What's the worst thing they can do to us? I don't know. Ask China.

00:00:51.320 Ask China. Ask China. Ask China. Ask China.

00:00:53.040 So if you love guns or if you hate guns, you probably know my guest today. His name is

00:01:02.120 Coleon Knorr. Now he is an American gun activist. He's a lawyer, former lawyer. He's got a YouTube

00:01:08.280 channel with a few million subscribers and a quarter of a billion views. He's faced off Bill

00:01:12.380 Maher. He's been all over the place. People love him, hate him, but they get educated by him every

00:01:17.400 time he talks about guns. With that being said, my guest today, Knorr, thank you so much for being a

00:01:22.060 guest on Valuetainment. Oh, thanks for having me, Patrick. So I got to tell you, man, you're very

00:01:25.820 necessary today. You are very necessary today because so many people who sit there and they

00:01:33.040 have a certain image or understanding of guns, then you come out and educate them and you give

00:01:37.100 the different perspectives. You get people thinking. And I think that's very necessary today,

00:01:41.700 especially someone like you, your background being a lawyer. So you don't just love guns.

00:01:45.540 You're a lawyer. You know how to make a good argument, make a good case. You're bulletproof a little

00:01:49.520 bit if you were to kind of say that, but let's get right into it. So tell us how, where your passion

00:01:55.540 came for guns. Now I know this story, but if the audience doesn't know your story, how did you get

00:02:00.260 so passionate about guns? So it's a really simple story, sometimes to the point where some people

00:02:05.540 think it's fake, but essentially I had a good friend of mine who randomly one day said, yo,

00:02:09.920 I'm going to go to the gun range. And do you want to come? And keep in mind at this point,

00:02:14.200 I'm about 23, 24, maybe a little bit younger, never touched a gun, never shot a gun, never had

00:02:20.220 a gun in the house, never raised with guns. For me, the notion of owning a firearm was relegated to

00:02:25.660 only cops, people in authority. But as a young black kid, if I had a gun, automatically I must

00:02:32.480 have been in a gang or some sort. So I kind of, I wanted to do everything to kind of fight that

00:02:36.060 narrative in that image. So I never really did anything with respect to firearms and look into

00:02:40.300 them or anything. So when my friend of mine, who I didn't even know had a gun, asked me if I wanted

00:02:44.680 to go to the gun range with them, initially I was a little scared. I'll be honest and say that. I was

00:02:48.260 like, I don't know. But then there was an aspect of me that was kind of like, you know, stop being so

00:02:53.480 close-minded, just go ahead and try it. At worst, if you don't like it, you don't do it again.

00:03:00.240 And so I decided to go. I went and I remember very vividly, I walk in to the gun range, it was in

00:03:06.720 Houston, Texas, a place called Top Gun. And I remember walking in and hearing the initial gun

00:03:11.780 shots because somebody had opened the other door to where the people were shooting. And so I could

00:03:15.740 hear the pop, pop, pop. And I'm like, ooh, okay, this is real. And so now, and I remember vividly

00:03:22.740 thinking, man, I'm in a place where everybody has a gun and at any given point they can decide that

00:03:28.240 they just want to kill me. That was the mindset. It was a very kind of, I want to say juvenile, but a

00:03:33.240 very kind of simplistic mindset with respect to firearm ownership and people. And so we get up to

00:03:38.360 the counter. We fill out all the paperwork and do what we need to do. We go to the lane. I remember

00:03:42.520 going to the very last lane on the left-hand side. And so I remember him pulling out a gun. It was a

00:03:48.200 Taurus Millennial PT-1000, I think. It was a subcompact gun chambered in .40 Smith & Wesson, which anybody who

00:03:55.800 knows anything about calibers, a .40 Smith & Wesson in that size of a gun, it's going to have substantial

00:04:02.840 recoil to it. So I remember he gave me kind of a real quick down and dirty understanding of how

00:04:08.680 to manipulate and operate the gun. I wasn't an idiot. So I was able to kind of figure it, you know,

00:04:12.920 get that short lesson and then be able to do it myself. And I remember picking up the gun,

00:04:18.360 remember extending out, pulling the trigger and the gun going off and being completely and utterly

00:04:25.160 terrified. I'm like, what just happened? And it happened so fast. For whatever reason,

00:04:31.960 I decided to do it again. And it was that second time that I shot the gun.

00:04:36.520 I guess because I understood what was about to happen. And now I was able to actually experience

00:04:43.160 the moment instead of just being put in the moment. And I fell in love instantly with that

00:04:48.680 second shot. And I remember I went through a number of rounds that trip, but then immediately after that,

00:04:55.080 I mean, I went down a rabbit hole of, you know, I recently watched the video where he talked about

00:04:59.480 researching and man, when I tell you, I felt deep inside that hole. I mean, and the fascination was

00:05:07.720 more so from a, a love affair with the mechanics of the firearm, you know, I'm a big car guy. And so

00:05:13.960 for me, there was a, there was an immediate relationship there that, that created a fascination

00:05:19.000 that I kind of almost pulled from the car aspect of my, my love affair with cars. And I mean, I was

00:05:24.040 on YouTube watching video after video, after video, after video, magazine articles, articles online.

00:05:29.240 It was, this was kind of an age where like blogs were really, really big. So reading all the blog

00:05:35.000 posts that I can amassing all of this information that I didn't even realize I was amassing. And then

00:05:40.680 at the same time, I was going back to the gun range over as many times as possible. And at this

00:05:45.960 point I was just getting into my law school career as well. So any downtime I had, I mean, I was going

00:05:51.000 to the gun range or learning about guns, a lot of times sitting in class while the teacher was,

00:05:55.880 while the professor was teaching, reading about guns to the slight horror of some of the people who sat

00:06:02.200 behind me in class, but nonetheless, um, at a certain point, I, I thought I kind of reached the

00:06:09.720 end of gun content on YouTube. I consume so much. Um, and I gotten a feel and a vibe for the way people

00:06:17.080 made videos. And so for me, I kind of always been this guy who kind of floats between them,

00:06:21.800 having a very analytical brain, but then very being very kind of artsy fartsy in a lot of ways,

00:06:27.160 I'm being a creative. And so I thought, you know, I watched a ton of car videos and I just

00:06:32.840 got through consuming a ton of gun videos over a few years. And so I said, I want to start making

00:06:37.800 my own videos. Not that the videos were bad that I was watching. It's just, I wanted to create the

00:06:42.680 videos I wanted to watch. Now, at this point, you've never been a YouTuber. So you never had

00:06:46.520 content you created in the past before. Nope. Nope. Zero. And you're not military. You're not former

00:06:51.720 PD. You're not, your family's not, and there is no lineage of that. Nope. And in a family,

00:06:56.840 were you raised conservative? I know your, your families, uh, from Nigeria, were you raised

00:07:00.880 conservative or not really too political? No, um, it wasn't hyper-political. I mean, I'm an only

00:07:06.440 child. So a lot of the conversations as an only child, people who have only children know, and only

00:07:11.180 children, you, you kind of grow up around adults. Um, so you grow up listening to their conversations.

00:07:16.460 And so the vast majority of the, the, the discourse that I've engaged in, or at least

00:07:21.180 passively so by listening, well, you know, there were some political talks here and there, but,

00:07:25.180 um, from a political standpoint, I definitely wasn't conservative from a political, uh, alignment

00:07:31.200 standpoint. It was a, but a lot of the lessons that my mom taught me and raised me on were very

00:07:37.640 much conservative, but when it came down to voting, it was always democratic. You know, you always vote

00:07:44.040 Democrat. I know my mom probably to this day still votes Democrat. Um, so, but other than that,

00:07:49.860 there wasn't an overt political, um, component to my upbringing now. Perfect. So at this point,

00:07:55.800 mom votes Democrat, never been in military, no PD, no inspiration of somebody that taught you how to

00:08:01.180 shoot guns. Friend takes you. You're 23 years old at the time. I'm doing the math. It's gotta be 06,

00:08:06.600 07, uh, Bush's president to put everything to perspective. When you're going to become a lawyer,

00:08:12.020 you're, what are you trying to do? Like, are you saying one day I want to be a criminal defense

00:08:15.240 attorney? I'm going to be, what kind of law were you pursuing? So initially my whole thing was I

00:08:19.820 wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. That was my thing. Um, I wanted to be an advocate. I wanted

00:08:24.200 to be in the courtroom. I wanted to be trying cases, um, as time went on. Um, and I started doing some of

00:08:30.140 that in terms of like some of the programs that I took on while I was in law school. Um, I joined a

00:08:34.540 bunch of clinics that I did as well. And I was part of the mock trial program at my law school as well.

00:08:38.800 Um, and until I met one of my other legal mentors and from there I started learning the, um,

00:08:46.700 personal injury side of things. And so I started working in his office and learning that side of

00:08:52.440 it. And I took a liking to it. And so by and large, that was kind of the, the, the, the most of what I

00:08:58.320 was doing with respect to the legal space, but, but I definitely wanted to be an advocate. And that's

00:09:03.340 what initially when it got me into going into law school. Now your friend, what does he do now?

00:09:08.120 The friend that took you to the range the first time, what business is he in?

00:09:11.460 Oh, he's, he's on the fashion side of it. He's on, he's in fashion. Yeah, no, he's not.

00:09:15.920 No. Wow. Okay. Yeah. He's, he's, he's in high fashion.

00:09:19.440 So, so at what point did you get a call from NRA saying they want you to be one of their

00:09:24.660 spokesperson, you know, and you became, become the most prominent black commentator for pro

00:09:29.880 gun NRA organization. When did that happen?

00:09:32.180 So that happened. I, at this point, so the way my kind of, I guess, YouTube career, so to speak,

00:09:38.520 kind of started or my content very much. So I started off by just doing gun reviews. That was

00:09:43.060 my thing. I was on the gun culture side of things from that perspective. And then we started getting

00:09:48.780 some high profile at this point, Obama is now in office. And so we started getting some high profile

00:09:53.320 shootings, some high profile mass shootings. And I remember doing a video titled how to stop mass

00:09:58.540 shootings. And in the video, I talk about how a lot of these shooters are looking to do these

00:10:03.040 things based on recognition. And then that the more we talk about them, the more that we say their

00:10:06.940 names and the more that we sensationalize it, it, all it does is just motivates other people to

00:10:10.940 continue to do the same thing. But then on top of that, having people in a position to combat the

00:10:16.800 mass shooter that pulls them out of the reality or the fantasy of them going out in a blaze of glory

00:10:22.140 and killing a bunch of people instantly, because now they're being confronted with somebody else with

00:10:25.580 a firearm. And so it's not a free shoot anymore. So I did this video and this video went viral back

00:10:30.080 in the days when hitting a hundred thousand was considered viral. And this video was doing a

00:10:36.180 million. And so that was just like nuts. And so from that perspective, I remember there was some,

00:10:43.180 there was a lot of hype regarding that. And then I was getting a lot of phone calls. A lot of people

00:10:46.580 asked me to do interviews and talk about it. And then I get a phone call from someone asking me

00:10:50.980 if I'd be interested in working with the NRA. Now, ironically at the time, you know, there was a

00:10:57.160 lot of, things were moving so fast and there was so much involved in terms of the political side of

00:11:02.520 this conversation, because up until then I was just doing gun reviews. Like it didn't, it was just fun.

00:11:08.980 Now in the political world and I'm being, you know, I'm getting people leaving nasty comments,

00:11:13.520 you know, people kick, pushing back on my stance and stuff. So now I'm in the political dirty world of it.

00:11:18.120 And so now I'm like, I don't really know who to trust. I'm like, is anybody trying to set me up?

00:11:23.440 And, you know, I, the person who called me, I tried to research them and look them up. Couldn't

00:11:27.040 really figure out who the person was, whether how connected they were to the NRA, so forth and so

00:11:31.480 on. And so I was a little hesitant. I am. And I also, I was aware of the organization, but I really

00:11:37.340 hadn't done my due diligence. All the information I had about the organization was very surface level

00:11:41.920 and very stereotypical. So I was a little hesitant, especially being a young black guy, you know,

00:11:47.300 young black, especially during that time was like NRA was racist. That's all you knew. You know,

00:11:51.420 you don't do NRA, it's a bunch of racist white people with guns. So initially hesitated. And I

00:11:56.760 said, you know, let me, let me do my due diligence and do some research and went, did a deep sea dive

00:12:01.540 once again, like I did with the gun stuff and did my research on the organization. And I felt comfortable

00:12:06.320 with the organization, linking up with the organization or at least seeing what they had to say.

00:12:09.820 And so they flew me out to Dallas, went out to Dallas and met with the, met with their, at the

00:12:17.560 time, I didn't realize how the structure or the relationships work, but I met with their ad

00:12:22.280 agency on record, which was Ackerman McQueen. And so I remember expecting to walk into this kind of old

00:12:27.780 stuffy building with, you know, a bunch of old white guys telling me, he's like, all right, do this.

00:12:33.940 You know what I mean? So, but to my surprise, I felt more like I walked into a modern day version

00:12:40.660 of Mad Men. And, and I mean that in the most positive way. Oh my God. Yes. Yes. And I mean,

00:12:46.540 in the most positive way possible. I mean, I walked in and I mean, everyone was good looking. Everyone

00:12:50.920 was relatively young. I mean, you're talking, it's span the, span the, uh, the spectrum with respect to

00:12:56.620 race. I mean, I was like, Whoa, you know, I was really taken aback. And so from there, um, they sat

00:13:03.920 me down and they were like, look, all we want you to do is literally what you've been doing

00:13:07.760 on your YouTube channel, on our platform. And you're like, they're like, we don't want to tell

00:13:11.720 you what to say. We don't want to tell you what to do. We just want you to create the same type

00:13:15.560 of content that you were creating on your own. And so I was like, okay, this is interesting because

00:13:21.920 now, um, and it really started off with them saying, you know, we want to put together a series

00:13:26.760 of about six videos. I didn't realize I had this at the time, but they were kind of just testing me.

00:13:30.260 Um, and they're like, we want to put together a series of like six to 12 videos. And, um,

00:13:34.920 basically you, you put, you, you do it. Basically, they were just trying to see my productivity,

00:13:38.240 like how I take to that. Um, ironically enough, this was also during a time where I was maybe

00:13:43.880 a week or two away from taking a bar exam. So I was like, Oh man, this is nuts. Cause anybody

00:13:54.600 who knows anything about the bar exam, there's no joke. Um, whether or not it was a good idea to do it

00:13:59.760 or not, it could be debated since I took the bar exam probably three times. Um, so, uh, I went

00:14:05.760 ahead and put together these series of videos. I put together all the scripts myself. Um, I now

00:14:11.280 remember it specifically, they were going to take six of my old videos and put them together and put

00:14:14.860 them out on their platform. And then they wanted me to come up with six videos on my own, um, based

00:14:19.380 on a series of topics. And so I said, cool. So I did that. I went and filmed it, knocked it out.

00:14:23.940 Um, and I guess they liked what they saw and like what they got. Um, and from there, that's when they

00:14:28.700 pitched me to come on more full-time in terms of doing those types of videos, but then also giving

00:14:33.920 me my own show. And so I remember this time vividly because I remember this was when I really started

00:14:39.360 getting some pushback. Um, this was when like the likes of, uh, God, I can't always have, I always

00:14:44.600 forget his name. Um, uh, Russell Simmons, Russell, Russell Simmons. I remember very vividly. He's like,

00:14:50.660 how could you as a young black man sign on with an NRA organization that touts this and snap.

00:14:55.100 And I remember, cause this was, I was in Virginia beach. I was at a, I was at a bar. I was kind of

00:14:59.020 sort of drunk. And, um, I remember seeing this like, Whoa, Russell Simmons is tweeting me. And this

00:15:04.200 is, this is someone who I kind of grew up with. I used to wear his brand and, you know, listen to

00:15:08.660 his artists and things of that nature. So I'm running like, okay, this is different. Um, and I remember

00:15:13.860 specifically taking the time out to say, all right, I've been drinking, be careful how you respond.

00:15:17.880 And this is like at the genesis of when Twitter kind of started. And so I went ahead and I responded,

00:15:24.000 I think something to the degree of, I didn't know, you know, me advocating, defending yourself

00:15:29.720 while utilizing the second amendment was a bad thing. And so then we kind of went back and forth.

00:15:34.900 And if anybody Googles me and his name, it'll, it'll pop up the whole exchange. And what happened

00:15:40.920 was interesting because what ended up happening is people who followed Russell Simmons

00:15:46.760 started telling him like, look, I like you Russ. I mess with you Russ, but I also mess with what

00:15:52.220 this guy is saying. Like, I agree with him on this issue and somewhere between seeing, starting to see

00:15:58.800 that he kind of just backed off because I think he didn't really truly understand who I was. And I

00:16:03.220 think he actually under, he didn't really give me enough credit because I think he thought that

00:16:08.600 they just found me on a street corner somewhere and said, here's a hat, put it on.

00:16:12.460 You're the wrong guy to mess with.

00:16:13.860 Exactly. I get that a lot, honestly.

00:16:16.980 That's an edge to have when people underestimate you. But by the way, who were you in high school?

00:16:22.260 If I was 16 years old with you in high school, who were you? I'm curious.

00:16:25.060 I was a jock.

00:16:26.280 You were a jock. Were you an athlete? Were you the guy?

00:16:28.380 I was an athlete. I was, I played, I did it all. I did basketball, football, track,

00:16:33.420 you name it. I did it all.

00:16:35.020 4.0 GPA? Were you like a 4.0 GPA?

00:16:37.140 I don't know. I was, I was, I was the intelligent kid who didn't take school seriously.

00:16:41.740 Okay. Got it.

00:16:42.780 And so for me, and I remember that during this time, all I wanted to do was play basketball.

00:16:47.720 That was it. That was my love affair. I was like, I'm doing, I'm going to the NBA and nothing was

00:16:51.920 going to stop me. That was kind of the tenacity I kind of have as a person. And so, I mean, I was

00:16:57.580 the guy, we'd go to practice and then after practice, I'd go to the gym, workout, come back,

00:17:02.360 then get like a freshman or something, go back to the gym and do some more shooting and run more

00:17:06.400 drills. That was me. And then wake up Saturday morning, be outside running drills, practicing,

00:17:10.820 doing all that stuff. But my mom was always very diligent about telling me, she was like,

00:17:16.320 look, son, I know you love basketball. And I know you want to go to the NBA, but make sure you keep

00:17:21.640 school number one, because they can take a lot of things from you, but they can't take,

00:17:25.640 take from you what's in here. Yeah, very much so. And so even though during high school,

00:17:32.440 I didn't really put as much effort as I probably should have, and I may have just gotten by on

00:17:36.920 whatever natural intelligence I had, there did come that time where I said,

00:17:41.660 this is not happening, bro. And I really had to be honest.

00:17:47.040 Why criminal defense attorney though? Why criminal defense attorney? Like, where do you go from

00:17:49.940 athlete? You know, I think your dad's a chef. He was a chef. He was an executive chef.

00:17:56.400 Yeah. How do you go from that to criminal defense attorney? Did somebody unfair situation that

00:18:02.220 happened to a friend or a relative that got arrested that you wanted to fight for them?

00:18:05.160 I read Johnny Cochran's biography.

00:18:13.980 Okay. There you go. That's all you have to say. So you read that and you said, that's what I want

00:18:19.580 to do. Yep. Exactly. Wow. And I remember that's, well, that's not when I decided to go to law school.

00:18:26.240 I just, I, how I, what type of lawyer I wanted to be was after reading Johnny Cochran's biography,

00:18:31.020 but I was a sophomore. And so being Nigerian, you know, if it's, if it's not, if it's not doctor

00:18:37.640 pharmacist or lawyer or something like that, everything else degree wise is trash to them.

00:18:43.780 So I started off pre-med and when I was in undergrad and I hated it, I actually started

00:18:50.180 off. Yeah. I did pre-med and then I did pre-pharm and I was just like, I'm not a math and science

00:18:54.040 guy. That's just not me. So I decided to go pull it a poli sci. And so I remember it was my sophomore

00:19:00.260 year. And, you know, mom's like, look, you've, you gotta be more definitive about what direction

00:19:04.840 you want to go. You can't just be sitting in school, just taking classes and not knowing what you want

00:19:07.920 to do. And I remember I took some time out one day to just literally proactively figure out what

00:19:14.260 direction I wanted to go. And I remember I was in Houston driving on 59. And I remember I was just

00:19:20.480 thinking about all the things that really motivate me, what I enjoy to do. What am I passionate about?

00:19:24.860 A lot of my friends, we grew up playing basketball and arguing. That's what we did. We, any topic,

00:19:31.640 you name it. And I, and I don't mean just yelling and screaming, arguing. I mean, we intellectualize

00:19:35.640 the most mundane aspects of life to, to hours into the morning. Right. And there was always a

00:19:42.380 very distinctive way about the way that I argued and the way that everybody else argued. And everybody

00:19:47.700 would always point that out. And so I remember I'm driving and I would always, I would thrive on

00:19:51.840 those interactions, those things. I love them because it was one, me exploring other people's

00:19:55.560 ideas. I love to see how people communicated. Like I have a good friend of mine. He may not know what

00:20:00.140 the hell he's talking about, but he has this beautiful ability to mix in humor with what he's talking

00:20:05.180 about in order to get the crowd to be on his side about a particular issue. Um, and, and things

00:20:09.840 of that. And I love seeing those types of tactics, um, when it comes to kind of just verbal interactions.

00:20:15.180 Um, and I remember I'm driving down the highway and I'm thinking to myself, like, man, what do I like

00:20:19.540 to do? What do I like to do? But, and it clicked, clicked. I'm like, I like, and it sounds so basic.

00:20:27.400 It really does. But it was the truth. I thought to myself, man, I love to, I love to argue. I love to

00:20:33.660 converse. I love to have discussions about things on a, on a, on a most infinite level. Um, so let's

00:20:40.180 go to, let's major in poli sci and then go to law school. Um, and you know, from there, I remember

00:20:48.360 calling my mom's, my mom's boy. Yeah, very. Um, I remember calling my mom's boyfriend at the time

00:20:52.920 and he was an attorney and I remember calling him up and I'm like, are you busy? Can I come to your

00:20:58.480 office? I'm going to pick your brain about something. And so I went to him, talked to him

00:21:02.760 and he kind of sat down and he was just like, you know, he was giving me the reality of it.

00:21:07.120 He didn't feed me BS, which is what I love about him. And, um, and I said, yeah, this is, this is,

00:21:11.840 this is what I think I really want to do. Um, and then from there, once again, I did a deep sea dive,

00:21:16.760 like I normally do whenever I get into something. Um, you know, I started reading book after book and then

00:21:21.540 I read, I read Johnny Cochran's biography and I'm like, yep, this is, this is what I want to do.

00:21:25.920 This is who I want to be. And, um, that's when I decided, okay, as I got into law school,

00:21:30.960 I want to go the route of becoming a defense attorney. Well, that's great, man. You got a

00:21:34.420 good story. So if that's the case, let's just get into the debating part. Cause I'm sure the audience

00:21:38.280 wants to, wants to see that. So one of your recent videos, uh, you highlighted the fact that, uh, in

00:21:44.780 2018, we had 297 people die from a rifle. 235 was from shotguns. Uh, 1,515 was from stabbing.

00:21:55.920 672 was killed by hands and feet. If 297 is rifle, 235 is shotgun. If we have so many more

00:22:05.040 in stabbings and hands and feet, why are so many folks in DC on the left trying to figure out ways

00:22:14.160 to over-regulate guns? I think what you have to do is you have to break down the audience. So if you're

00:22:18.920 talking about just a general population of people in the middle who are just regular people and they're

00:22:23.200 not in politics, who, who want to do those things, they have a different motivation. Then you have

00:22:27.260 the people in DC, as you've stated, who have their own motivations. And I think largely the motivation

00:22:32.160 is control. And sometimes that, that desire for control is they are serving as almost a proxy,

00:22:37.580 um, for other interests that have a desire for said control. Um, because what you'll get is you'll

00:22:44.040 get a lot of politicians who are getting money from people like the Bloomberg's of the world and so forth

00:22:48.240 and so on, who they've made this issue, their thing. This is their life mission, so to speak.

00:22:54.560 And so when they're responsible for getting them elected in these particular areas and these different

00:22:59.120 races, then they can't go against the person who helped them get there in the first place. So they're

00:23:03.440 going to push for these types of laws because they want these types of laws. But then you also get

00:23:08.080 individuals in positions of power who don't like the idea of the common man having access to the things

00:23:13.920 that they consider to be high power because they like the idea of sitting on this oligarchy or this

00:23:19.600 throne above everybody else, because they don't see themselves as our representatives. They see

00:23:24.800 themselves as our leaders. And so you can't just have the common everyday man on the same level of

00:23:31.520 degree of power, so to speak, as you are, when it comes to the ability to protect and take life,

00:23:36.880 because the most important thing we have and the most valuable thing we have in this world

00:23:40.160 is our life. So from that perspective, I'm somebody who sees myself as above the common man.

00:23:46.640 And I looked down and I was like, so let me get this straight. You mean to tell me this little

00:23:49.840 plebeian down here can own this AR-15? And if he decides that he wants to come, I don't know,

00:23:54.640 take my life? We're on the same page? No, I want to relegate this person to, okay, maybe handguns for

00:24:01.360 now. But even then, I don't really like the handgun stuff either. So I'd rather them, if they're going to

00:24:05.440 protest and they're going to be angry with us, I don't want them showing up with rifles and

00:24:10.880 handguns. I want them showing up with rocks and sticks, because we have the forces necessary to

00:24:14.880 deal with that. But you're talking about a whole bunch of people that if we do something to them

00:24:19.360 that they don't like collectively, you mean to tell me that they can collectively come together,

00:24:24.560 take up arms, and make a stand? No, no, no, no. We can't have that. And so I think that's a

00:24:29.840 motivation for some of those people who are in positions of help.

00:24:31.920 Okay. So let's look at the two different sides. I'm going to give you my view of what I see both

00:24:37.280 sides bringing their arguments, and then you give me what else you would add to it, and agree,

00:24:41.040 disagree, whatever may be added. So one side, you got the right side. Republicans may say,

00:24:46.400 look, you can't take my gun. Second Amendment was there, not because of me having a gun to go out

00:24:53.920 there, go hunting or getting food. It's more for tyranny in case the government turns against me,

00:25:00.720 and I can protect myself against them. And the AR-15 is one of the best rifles out there. No,

00:25:05.680 AR is not called assault rifle. AR stands for, you know what AR stands for. But no, it is assault

00:25:13.360 rifle. No, it's not. So why do we need to do background checks? There's no need for a lot of

00:25:16.960 extensive background checks. Why do you need training? If somebody needs to go get a gun today,

00:25:20.400 they should be able to get it. I lived in California, in Texas, and in Florida. In Texas,

00:25:24.160 I can go buy a gun and leave, and I want it to be that way, right? California had to wait,

00:25:28.160 I think it was four weeks. I don't know what the exact timeline was, like 30 days or something like

00:25:31.680 that. So that's this side. On the other side is, look at all these mass shootings. These people,

00:25:36.720 if they didn't have access to the guns, this would have never happened. Why do you need all these guns

00:25:39.680 anyways? Why do you need these semi-automatic weapons? What's the purpose of it? You make me

00:25:43.760 feel scared by all of you owning so many guns. I think it's better if we become a little bit more

00:25:48.000 responsible. How hard is it to understand this? Why is this so complicated? What else would you add to

00:25:52.720 the arguments of each side? I think, honestly, you've kind of covered it, but overarching,

00:25:57.920 at least on the other side, is fear, is outright fear. It's this idea because most people don't

00:26:04.560 really think of themselves as being the protector or the defender. They see themselves as the victim,

00:26:09.040 as a potential victim. So when you only see yourselves as a potential victim, what you think

00:26:13.840 to do is, well, let me disarm the potential attacker, not let me empower myself to defend myself

00:26:20.560 against a potential attacker. And so I think for a lot of people on the opposite side who

00:26:24.880 don't want these guns out there, they are overwhelmingly scared of the potential for

00:26:30.560 people to do something bad to them. And so for me, if I was going to add anything, it's just that

00:26:34.960 overwhelming fear. Okay. So let's add those in there, right? Okay. So now let's go back to

00:26:41.360 guns. If they take my guns away from me, let's just say they do take our guns away from us. What can

00:26:49.360 they do to us that they can't do today? So let's actually go there. I'm not telling you this.

00:26:54.560 Please keep in mind, you come to my house. I got, I'm a former military. You know my background and

00:26:59.440 you know my position, but I'm asking, let's go to worst case scenario. Let's say Beto O'Rourke runs

00:27:06.000 it. He's in charge and he's the guy and he comes and he confiscates everything away from you.

00:27:12.000 Forget about registering your guns. Well, let us register because if they register,

00:27:15.200 that's phase one, then it's next one conference. I'm just telling you, they're going to come and take

00:27:18.560 everything. What's the worst thing they can do to us after they've taken the guns.

00:27:22.800 They got all the guns. What's the worst thing I can, they can do to us. I don't know. Ask China.

00:27:29.280 You're going that far end. So you go. Yeah, absolutely. Why not? Because at that point,

00:27:33.600 what's to stop them? There's nothing to stop them. Everything now at this point is really kind of a

00:27:38.960 negotiation. All the things that they try to make us do now, it's really kind of a negotiation between them

00:27:44.240 and us. At that point, there's no negotiation. They can just do it. And then if we don't like

00:27:49.920 what they do at best, they, they, they suppress whatever half, half-ass attempt of uprising that

00:27:55.840 goes on and then keep it moving. Isn't that what they did in Hong Kong?

00:28:00.000 So I'm from Iran and Iran also, you can't have gun. It's just the government and you don't have the

00:28:04.400 guns, right? They have it. You don't have it. Same as China, same as a lot of different places on that

00:28:07.760 side. But what is the most valuable thing you and I have? What is the most valuable thing you and I

00:28:14.000 have? If you ask the average person, what would they say? What do you think it is? If we were to

00:28:17.840 say the most valuable thing we have in America? I'm going to say in America, our freedom.

00:28:22.400 Okay. So let's just say freedom is one, which is potentially freedom of what? Free enterprise,

00:28:27.440 freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of a second amendment, freedom, a lot of different

00:28:32.240 freedoms, right? So let's say it's freedom. Let's say it's your voice. Let's say it's your life.

00:28:37.760 Okay. Some may say life is at the top. Some may say freedom's at the top, right? Okay. So

00:28:43.920 if they take your guns away today is to do what? To put fear into you that they can't already do to

00:28:53.280 you today anyways, which is what? I mean, we got a lot of things that we're worried about,

00:28:59.040 but nowadays, if the government wants to destroy you, they can silence you because we know these big

00:29:06.680 social media companies. They're pretty much virtual governments. You know that I know that

00:29:09.960 and Facebook's a virtual government, Twitter's a virtual government, YouTube's a virtual government.

00:29:15.000 If they even want to turn against one of their own guys, Cuomo, they can do it. They're about to

00:29:19.160 destroy Cuomo. If they want to silence Trump, they can do it. If they want to find you didn't pay $5 in

00:29:24.440 taxes and put you in prison for six months to defame you or hurt you, they can pretty much do that if

00:29:29.400 you think about it. So what is more painful that they can already do today that's going to change

00:29:36.600 if they're able to take our guns away from us? What can they do today that they can do then?

00:29:43.320 So here's the thing though. Everything you, everything, every example that you name was

00:29:46.680 about an individual, right? Yes. Can individuals, me as an individual, could they shut me down?

00:29:52.280 Could they do all the things that you mentioned before? Yes. But, but the idea about the second

00:29:56.200 amendment is about the collective coming together and stopping an overreaching government from a

00:30:01.720 collective standpoint. And then, and what the gun does and allows it, what allows us to do is to

00:30:06.920 serve as a, as a check against a government potentially doing those things. Because a lot

00:30:11.880 of people think, well, you know, the government has tanks, they have missiles, they have drones,

00:30:15.560 they have all of these things. So how do you think you're ever going to defeat the government?

00:30:19.800 And it's not necessarily about that specifically. It's a deterrent because at the end of the day,

00:30:25.400 what's the point of ruling over people you've completely destroyed? There's, there's nothing

00:30:30.760 there for you. There's nothing left for you to rule over. So from that perspective, they understand

00:30:35.160 that like, look, we can only go so far and do in certain things, whether it be, whether it be,

00:30:41.640 like I said, pointing out some of the things that are taking place in places like China.

00:30:47.320 From that perspective, if they try to do that from a wholesale collective standpoint,

00:30:52.760 what you're going to get is you're going to get groups of people coming together to fight back

00:30:55.960 against that. Now, if I'm on my own, I can't one man army it to death. I can't, I'm going to lose

00:31:00.200 that battle every single time. But as the second amendment stated being necessary for the security

00:31:05.800 of a free state, the right of the people to keep bear arms should not be infringed based and people

00:31:11.480 like to say, well, it's based around a militia. Yeah. The militia is consistent of each individual

00:31:15.800 coming together to fight against a potential tyrannical government. And so, yes, individually,

00:31:21.880 they can do a lot of things to me, but when that, when, what they're, when that tyranny starts to

00:31:26.200 become widespread and starts affecting enough people, having the means and the ability with

00:31:32.840 our firearms to stand up to the government changes the whole dynamic instantly.

00:31:37.800 Yeah. But I don't think they're going to have that fight with you. And the reason why I don't think

00:31:42.040 they're going to have that fight with you is because they don't, they don't have to have that

00:31:45.080 fight to beat you and, and beat a party. I mean, look in one, one day or one, uh, one week,

00:31:52.440 how many millions of, uh, uh, users on Twitter, millions of followers disappeared out of nowhere

00:31:57.880 and they were silenced. They could do that in a heartbeat, you know, in one day, how many people

00:32:02.680 on YouTube could be videos being deleted because you have an opposing argument. They can do that.

00:32:06.840 That's not an individual. That's a group, right? How many, uh, uh, how many people in a

00:32:11.800 state of California have to bow down to what, uh, uh, Newsom says or state of New York have

00:32:16.600 to bow down to what Cuomo or de Blasio say on the handling of COVID you have to do it.

00:32:20.600 That's not an individual. That's a majority. So I guess the part where I'm going right now

00:32:25.400 is I think Republicans, uh, and the conservatives are fighting a battle with a weapon that is 40 years

00:32:35.880 old and they have to figure out to defend other weapons today, not necessarily the guns, because,

00:32:42.840 uh, I don't know if I'm making sense where I'm making, no, you're making, you're making perfect

00:32:47.160 sense. Actually. Now I kind of agree. And I kind of don't. Um, I think what you're saying is, is

00:32:53.400 excellent. And to be honest with you, that's why I'm always pointing out the fact that

00:32:57.800 the fight against with the second amendment is a, it's a culture war. It's about the culture.

00:33:02.760 And so what that does is that seeks to broaden what we're talking about here, because the gun

00:33:07.480 at this point then becomes symbolic. And as far as being able to protect the freedoms that we

00:33:12.040 currently do have in this country. And so I do agree with you. There are other things that they

00:33:16.520 can do that a gun is not going to necessarily solve in the immediate aspect of things. They

00:33:21.000 could silence me. I got suspended on Facebook for 24 hours. Um, and I have no idea why, and then

00:33:27.800 what's to stop them from just shutting me off completely. And now I've lost my voice and I've lost my

00:33:31.480 platform. But I think at the end of the day, there is a point where things go so far. The only thing

00:33:36.840 you have left is to be able to defend your life. And that, and it is simplistic. And as that is,

00:33:43.160 it's still very fundamental because at the end of the day, the most important thing that I have as a

00:33:48.120 person is, is the ability to protect my life. Uh, the, the, and, and I don't, I don't, uh, just so

00:33:53.480 you know, I'm, I'm a guy that hands multiple ARs, several handguns. I served, uh, I'm one that came

00:34:02.280 from Iran who believes in freedom of religion. I couldn't go around telling people I'm a Christian,

00:34:06.760 uh, or my parents couldn't, I was an atheist at the time, freedom of assembly. I want to be able to

00:34:10.440 talk and give my thoughts, you know, free enterprise. I want to be able to make as much money as I want to

00:34:14.520 make without being judged or control, you know, all of these things and religion and guns is one

00:34:19.160 of them. But, uh, I, I, I think there are bigger things to worry about today. And by the way,

00:34:27.240 I'm not telling you, not fighting for it. I'm not, my argument isn't the fact that let's just set it

00:34:32.360 aside. Let it happen on all this other stuff. Who cares? It's not really a big deal. I'm not talking

00:34:36.680 about that. I'm talking about character assassination. I'm talking about silencing at the highest level.

00:34:42.920 I'm talking about all of those things being an issue today where the energy is being put into

00:34:48.200 somewhere where that weapon is outdated today. It was necessary 50 years ago, but not in 2021.

00:34:53.640 I may be wrong. So I'm kind of talking around something that I haven't want to delve into

00:34:59.400 specifically because the reason why I hesitate on doing that, ironically enough, is based around

00:35:03.640 the very things you're talking about because they can take what I'm going to say, flip it and say,

00:35:07.000 I'm inciting this because at the end of the day, if it happens to enough people and enough people

00:35:12.040 are like, I've had enough of it. I've had enough of this tyrannic of this tyrannical government

00:35:16.760 shutting me down on my platforms in order to use my first amendment, right? Shutting me down

00:35:20.760 my ability to make a living and all of these things at the end of the day. Yes, we can collectively

00:35:25.640 come out in the streets with guns and make a stand. That's something that's, that can be done.

00:35:31.640 So from that perspective, you know, it was, so that did happen. So that actually did happen,

00:35:38.600 right? Let's, so let's go to when the protesting slash riots happened, but it's peaceful protesting.

00:35:46.040 We know it wasn't peaceful protesting when the protest and was taking place this summer during

00:35:50.040 COVID businesses were getting trashed. You saw the 17 year old kids going out there and just

00:35:55.720 protecting themselves and defending businesses. Yeah. Well, you know, the script was flipped and

00:36:01.000 it was look at these, you know, uh, people who are out there, you know, look how they're being raised

00:36:07.080 and they're going around with guns and all this peaceful protesting. No one hears the rhetoric that

00:36:12.040 you're giving. All they see is what's being told on TV and on TV, it shows that you are radical.

00:36:17.080 You are radical, nor you're being painted as a radical individual. You are the radical ones,

00:36:22.760 not all the other folks. And then you go and present yourself in DC and say, Hey,

00:36:27.640 here's what we're capable of doing. And then, you know, what comes next? Oh, inciting all this stuff.

00:36:33.240 Then you're turned off. You're silenced. Now what? So all I'm, all I'm talking about is

00:36:38.840 strategically is all I'm talking about. You got money here, right? That's being put into different,

00:36:43.240 uh, uh, issues, gun rights and gun control from 1990 election cycle through December of 2019,

00:36:50.120 gun rights and gun control interest groups reported the following political contributions

00:36:54.520 to federal candidacy, total contribution, gun rights, 44 million total gun, uh, uh, contribution,

00:37:01.240 gun control, 9.3 million donations by Democrats, 4 million donations by Republicans, 39 million,

00:37:06.440 but don't it. So you look at these numbers and like, okay, money's being invested in the certain

00:37:10.280 areas. Democrats, quite frankly, are not really putting that much money in gun control. Republicans

00:37:15.480 are putting 45 million. Democrats are putting only 9 million. Republicans are putting five times more

00:37:22.120 into the gun issue than Democrats are, right? But what are Democrats quietly doing? They're getting

00:37:28.440 their base and their voice and their audience to get louder, to control what you can and can't say.

00:37:32.840 The more they do that, even a great argument loses to one who has more eyeballs. Don't you agree?

00:37:39.320 Yeah. But see, and they, and they can afford to spend less on the gun issue because they already

00:37:44.200 have the bullhorn. That's right. And so, and that's part of the reason why I try to couch

00:37:51.480 my discussion under the guise of it. It's not a guise. It is as a, as a cultural war,

00:37:56.440 because that's essentially what it is. It's a cultural war against the ownership of firearms,

00:38:00.520 because when people, one thing that I will say about me and my journey with respect to firearms,

00:38:04.840 the firearm was a catalyst for a lot of other things for me that were positive because it was,

00:38:09.560 I remember when I first got my ability to conceal carry, I'm a license to conceal carry my firearm.

00:38:14.120 And it was at that moment that I realized the only person responsible for my safety is me.

00:38:17.960 That's the person I can't rely on anybody else. It's going to be me.

00:38:21.560 And so that mindset in and of itself starts to trickle into other aspects of your life,

00:38:26.440 whether it be business, whether it be the way you handle your relationships. That is a,

00:38:31.160 that is a freedom self-sustaining mindset that honestly does not bode very well for a particular

00:38:37.560 group of political class who base their entire ideology on the prominence of government and the

00:38:44.200 dependency on said government. Because when you have people who think from an independent mindset,

00:38:49.080 it's harder to get them to lean and depend on a bigger government. We have a problem with that.

00:38:54.040 It's because they generate so much of their money, so much of the influence from having a bigger

00:38:58.200 government. Well, they're going to do everything in their power from a cultural perspective to tell

00:39:03.240 you how much you don't need those things. They understand what the firearm does symbolically

00:39:08.760 to a person and how it changes their mindset in a manner that is actually positive, contrary to what

00:39:13.800 a lot of people think, who thinks it's pretty much for the negative. And I'm a walking, talking example of that.

00:39:18.680 Yeah. I mean, look, we need a hundred of you. We need a thousand of you. We need people that are

00:39:26.520 putting this argument out there for others to sit there and say, like, even when Bill Maher talked

00:39:30.280 to you, Bill Maher was like, he was a little bit more subtle. He wasn't challenging you. He wasn't

00:39:34.440 pushing you. And then you almost sat there and said, well, first of all, I respect you. The reason,

00:39:38.360 the only reason why he wouldn't push you harder is probably because he didn't research the topic

00:39:44.040 enough to be able to have the data to debate you. So it's like, look, this is not really my deal.

00:39:48.600 I just kind of, I'm looking at, and he just kind of let you do your part. I'm like, wow, even a Bill

00:39:53.400 Maher, who is a guy that's got strong opinions about religion, about God, about a lot of different

00:39:59.000 things. He himself hasn't done a lot of research on gun rights and second amendment and the reasons

00:40:05.960 behind it. So, but let's, let's take a, let's go a different angle here with guns. Just curious about

00:40:10.200 this. So I went in the army. I went through bootcamp. I had never shot a semi-automatic

00:40:15.880 weapon before, whether it's a saw, whether it's an AR-15, whether it's a M60, whatever it is that

00:40:20.920 we had to shoot up. Right. And we had a great time doing that. When I did, I'm like, wow, this is

00:40:25.400 pretty ridiculous, but I'm glad I had somebody that was telling me, okay, put your nose here when

00:40:29.400 you're going through and look like, and when you put, you know, pulling, pull with just the basic stuff

00:40:33.000 they're telling you. Right. Yeah. Do you, do you think the argument on the left makes sense to say,

00:40:37.960 okay, why don't we at least get more people who are buying guns to be more trained rather than me

00:40:44.280 as a rookie can go buy a gun today and walk away 30 minutes later. Don't we need to have more

00:40:48.820 necessary training for guns? Because if I can, I can't get a driver's license with some kind of

00:40:53.460 permit training that I do at least a certain amount of hours. Why don't we do the same with gun

00:40:57.240 ownership? Okay. I have no problem with that. And I've been, that's actually an argument that I've

00:41:01.020 made multiple times instead of, and that's like, I have a, like part of my merchandising and I have one of

00:41:06.260 the messages we have is defund gun control. And the basis behind that is this, if you look at the

00:41:11.480 number of people that die each year from a firearm and you break it down, right? 60, 65 to 60% of those

00:41:17.040 people are suicides. Then you have the remaining, which are actual homicides. And that makes up 80%

00:41:22.700 of the remaining deaths. And then you have 5%. Yep. I think it's like 5% that are accidents. And then

00:41:29.720 you have, or I think it's 15% that are accidents. And then the 5% are like police shootings and so forth and

00:41:33.480 so on. And so we go through each one of these things and we start addressing the overall

00:41:36.840 issues. So let's take the accidents. For instance, we can cut the number of firearm accidents in half

00:41:42.080 surely based on education, purely based on education. Like you mentioned, he was like Bill

00:41:48.940 Maher hadn't even done extensive research on his own. And he was having a conversation on a national

00:41:54.020 platform. And a lot of the accidents that you see are born by way of people who don't really

00:41:58.640 understand firearms. Then you talk about, let's say, the remaining homicides, which are largely

00:42:06.360 about 80% of those is gang and drug violence that takes place in our inner cities, in very specific

00:42:12.780 areas, and even in very specific areas within those areas, right? Down to certain blocks and certain

00:42:18.480 streets. So clearly that's not a gun issue. That's a socioeconomic issue that's gone awry. So a lot of the

00:42:25.920 things that we can do with respect to decreasing the number of gun deaths in this country can be

00:42:32.120 done by way of education. So instead of spending the millions of dollars that we spend trying to

00:42:37.420 pass law, trying to convince you why you don't need this killing death machine, all that money that

00:42:42.960 we're spending to do that, why not take that money and put it towards educating the masses of people

00:42:48.920 who live in a country that have close to over 400 million guns in it? Like, it boggles my mind.

00:42:55.440 But no, they'd rather spend the millions to try to convince you that you don't need the gun in the

00:42:59.680 first place, while nothing changes. None of the laws that they're passing is going to do anything to

00:43:03.840 actually cause these gun deaths to go down. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think we should

00:43:09.560 spend our time, our money, and our resources to educate the population about guns, especially

00:43:15.420 considering one of the few countries, exceedingly few countries that has the right to firearm

00:43:19.980 ownership the way that we do. So I think it should be done. Problem is we spend too much time talking

00:43:25.380 about laws that further restrict the right that actually don't or won't do anything to actually

00:43:30.740 mitigate the gun deaths that we do have in this country. Well, I think if it was a, you know,

00:43:37.020 if they raise the money with permits that we pay for, people would pay for permits, 60 bucks, 40 bucks,

00:43:41.020 20 bucks, 80 bucks. I mean, why not the government? Why wouldn't the government subsidize it? Why not?

00:43:46.680 Let the individuals train it, not even having a government doing it. Something, you know.

00:43:50.960 Well, no, I'm saying if the government's going to require, so I'm against, I'm actually against

00:43:53.800 government mandated training in order to get the ability to own a firearm. And a lot of people don't

00:43:58.580 understand why, and I'll explain it. The reason why I don't want the government to do it is because

00:44:02.560 we've already have, it's already been demonstrated that there are, there's a huge aspect of people in

00:44:07.660 the government who don't want us to have these things to begin with. So what I'm not going to

00:44:12.260 do is rely on the good faith of those people in power to come up with a system that would allow me

00:44:18.420 to then inevitably own a gun. I just, I don't agree with it because what they'll do is they'll

00:44:23.020 steadily start to increase the requirements. When I get it, when I get it, when I get my hours

00:44:28.180 for driving, who am I paying? Is it a government organization or private? I'm assuming it's in order

00:44:34.340 to get the license or the actual training. You know how you go get your permit and you're paying

00:44:38.260 somebody that's private, right? It's not. Yeah. You're paying privately. Yes. Yeah. So I would do

00:44:42.140 the same thing. Have it private, like a retired E8, you know, retired E9, retired E7. He starts a

00:44:47.720 business and here's what he does and let him take some of the business. But the thing is the standards

00:44:51.680 that are put out in order to, in order that you have to meet in order to get that license is,

00:44:56.880 is placed, is presented by way of the government. And they can keep changing that and they can keep

00:45:02.100 changing that criteria. And, uh, okay. I mean, I can, the only thing is for me, like for me,

00:45:07.520 do you think it's okay for me to be able to go get a gun, leave five minutes later,

00:45:13.460 no background check, extensive, no necessary lengthy. Let me see if this guy's going through

00:45:20.660 a bad breakup right now, bad divorce right now. He found his daughter with someone, wife with someone,

00:45:25.780 girlfriend with someone. He wants to retaliate. Let's give this guy one week. You don't think

00:45:29.760 there's a challenge with that? I don't agree with that at all, because I can, I can also

00:45:33.460 demonstrate examples where you have individuals who were waiting for a firearm and waiting, like

00:45:38.800 for instance, in New Jersey, you have a woman by the name of Cara Bone and she was killed by her,

00:45:42.500 she was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend. She had a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend

00:45:46.560 and he was a felon and she knew he was going to try to kill her one day. So she submitted her

00:45:51.960 application in order to get, cause in New Jersey, you have to get a license in order to own a gun.

00:45:56.100 And so she submitted her, her paperwork in order to get the license. But in New Jersey,

00:46:01.200 because the people in power in New Jersey, the Corey Bookers of the world, whenever he was mayor

00:46:06.440 of New Jersey, they don't actually, they sit on it. They take their sweet time and they do everything

00:46:13.060 in their power to make it as hard and as lengthy as a process as possible in order for you to get a

00:46:17.440 license just to own a gun. We're not even talking about the ability to carry it. And she was stabbed

00:46:21.140 in a driveway of her own home. So from that perspective, I disagree with it because this

00:46:26.560 woman actually called in and said, Hey, I'm just checking on the status of my license in order for

00:46:31.140 me to go buy a gun. And they still hadn't done it yet. And they were above and beyond the 30 day

00:46:35.600 requirement that they were supposed to have in order to process the paperwork and give her approval.

00:46:40.240 And so as a result of that, when the time came and her ex-boyfriend showed up to stab at her

00:46:45.760 death, she was in a position no longer to defend herself at that point. And so that's why, so for

00:46:50.320 me, I'd rather err on the side of empowering people to be able to defend themselves as fast as possible

00:46:54.380 than to, I don't want to say create an anecdotal situation where you have an individual who

00:47:01.020 immediately goes out and says, well, I want to go kill a bunch of people. I'm going to go out and

00:47:04.000 buy a gun and do it. Because if we're going to be honest, one, the examples of those that actually

00:47:09.040 exist are relatively few, at least provable. And two, in the events, the most of the times that

00:47:14.620 people are looking to do something that without immediacy, they're going to buy the gun illegally

00:47:17.740 anyway. Well, let me ask you this question. Here's a question for you. What, what would make America

00:47:24.120 safer? Okay. 99% of America who has license to carry or 99% of America who doesn't own a piece of

00:47:33.000 gun? Not, not a single gun. I'd say the former. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've asked that, I've asked

00:47:40.660 the question before on my show. I said, I call it the big red button question. I said,

00:47:44.220 what if you live in a world where if you push through, you had a red button right here. If

00:47:48.120 you push this red button, all the guns disappear. Would you, or would you not push the button? And

00:47:52.780 people, when they ask me, would I push the button? I'd say no. And the reason why I wouldn't push the

00:47:56.400 button is because that button doesn't remove guns are not violence. Guns are a tool that is

00:48:03.320 utilized by people who want to commit violence. And so from that perspective, I wouldn't push that

00:48:08.460 button because sure. I mean, I do, I've done a little MMA, you know, I work out, I try to take

00:48:13.000 care of myself. So a couple of guys show up and try to do harm to me. I could probably take care of

00:48:18.100 myself, but what about my mom? What about my grandmother? What about people who are more vulnerable,

00:48:22.960 who are in positions who will legitimately become targets because they are seen as weaker?

00:48:28.980 I think a world where we don't have those firearms, I believe the criminals would become more emboldened.

00:48:35.020 That's what he called the great equalizer. You know, the great equalizer would allow a grandma or a

00:48:40.740 woman to be safe going up against a guy who is twice her size saying, Hey, if you want to do anything,

00:48:46.220 you know, I don't want any problems. Can you just leave my house? Exactly. And do you think the argument

00:48:51.440 of getting rid of guns, gun control, do you think it's creating more momentum today? Or do you think

00:48:58.840 it's actually losing momentum as an argument? Man, I struggle with this so much because

00:49:03.800 I know there's so much missing, like prior to us coming, prior to me coming on here, I was working

00:49:09.000 on a video response to a guy's name, I think his name is Igor Volsky or something like that. And he's

00:49:16.340 the executive director of a group called Guns Down America. And they basically stopped short of saying

00:49:22.680 they want to ban all guns, but that's essentially what they want to do. And he did a video titled

00:49:26.520 Three Myths About Guns, About Gun Control. And he went on and talked about how the Republicans got up and

00:49:32.200 lied about this bill that just passed the House with respect to universal background checks. And I see these

00:49:38.740 things and, you know, it was placed under this is politics now, and they have a million followers.

00:49:45.100 And I know there are tons of people who are going to see this video who don't know anything about

00:49:48.740 guns to begin with, and then they're going to get this information and they're going to be misled

00:49:52.020 about the truth of it. So then my little black ass has to come up here, put together a video to

00:49:56.560 counter that information with objective information. But then I do, I do great numbers, but I don't know

00:50:04.200 if I can outdo the platform like this is now, and then all of the other platforms that have

00:50:09.820 millions of followers, and then you have a ton of celebrities who are anti-gun, openly anti-gun about

00:50:14.300 things. Like, how do I combat that? And so, but then you, there's another argument that says, well,

00:50:21.100 when you tell people what they can't have, they want it more, right? So when you have Joe Biden get up

00:50:26.420 there and saying that he wants, he wants to ban AR-15s and he wants to have buyback programs for those

00:50:32.860 AR-15s to have you turn them in or register them and so forth and so on, I can see how that can then

00:50:37.980 cause an effect where people want to go out and say, you know what? No, I'm going to go and buy

00:50:41.780 these things. But more than that, what I think really did it honestly was COVID. I think COVID was

00:50:48.880 the biggest driver, largely because it forced people to confront their vulnerability in a way that they

00:50:54.400 never really had to before. And with respect to their dependency on the government, I am not anti-government.

00:51:00.540 I'm just limited government. I just like my government to be as big as it technically kind

00:51:06.140 of has to be in order to get certain things done, but I still want it as small as possible.

00:51:10.280 And so what I think happened is when, when you were seeing people get up there, I mean, yeah,

00:51:13.580 people in Dallas, they had our leaders in Dallas saying, you know, cops aren't going to be coming

00:51:17.340 out for certain phone calls, right? And then they were seeing the mayhem that was going on in the

00:51:21.760 streets. You had literally whole sections of Seattle being taken over by people.

00:51:25.640 So when people started to see this and they realized, no, I can't just pick up the phone

00:51:30.620 and call the cops and say, Hey, come here and deal with this problem. You don't have Uber Eats

00:51:35.400 protection on demand. And so they're like, you know what? I got to, I got to learn to do this

00:51:39.160 myself. Kind of like me when who I, yes, I am the son of an executive chef, but I am not a cooker,

00:51:43.820 but when Uber Eats stops, stops working for a couple of days and I can't order food,

00:51:49.800 guess what I'm going to have to do? I'm going to have to learn how to cook.

00:51:51.940 That's right. And so, so a lot of people realize immediately you, Oh, wow. Like I'm on my own

00:51:58.240 here. Even people who are radically anti-gun because that reality trumped any ideology that

00:52:04.700 they may have. I hate the fact that the whole firearm conversation is even politicized,

00:52:09.000 should not be politicized. It shouldn't, but it is the fact that it's so cleanly divided down the

00:52:14.400 middle between Democrats and Republicans or liberals versus conservatives is insane to me,

00:52:19.340 but here we are. And it is what it is. So to answer your question in short,

00:52:23.800 I think it does a little bit of both. I think, I think some of the rhetoric causes people to buy

00:52:28.960 guns, but then I think more so it, it misinforms people and causes them to vote for things that I

00:52:36.760 think are to their disadvantage with respect to the issue of guns in this country, because they don't

00:52:41.440 know. There are so many people who literally think we don't have background checks for guns

00:52:45.540 because of the way that they talk about background checks, because there's a distinction between

00:52:51.780 background checks and universal background checks. A lot of people don't know that,

00:52:55.920 but when they do a poll, they don't ask, are you in favor of universal background checks? No,

00:53:00.920 they say, are you in favor of background checks? It's like, well, yeah, I'm in favor of background

00:53:04.140 checks, but the issue isn't that simplistic. It's complicated for a reason. And the reason why

00:53:09.540 they call it, they call it a loophole. It's not a loophole. It was purposely designed not to include

00:53:15.100 this segment of gun buyers purposefully, but they don't, they don't say it like that.

00:53:20.700 And so it's these people who become misinformed on the issue and then have a false sense of

00:53:26.560 information when they come and talk to someone like me about the issue. And so then I have to

00:53:31.900 almost kind of re-educate, then rehab that conversation. Yeah. Where I'm going with this is the

00:53:38.060 following. Here's where I'm going with this is I don't think they're making momentum and I don't

00:53:44.420 think it's going to be something that's going to happen. I think people are buying more guns right

00:53:47.860 now than ever before. The other day I was with a friend who just recently bought Remington. He bought

00:53:54.540 the whole Remington brand in November because they were going through some challenges and him and a

00:53:59.780 group of investors came and bought it. And I was looking at a, you know, you know, what was it? A

00:54:06.720 RM 2.1. I don't know what it was. I think it's a 21. It was, you know, massive, massive,

00:54:13.940 you know, Remington rifle that he had. And he brought it on and showed it to us like for five

00:54:18.680 four, $5,000. Beautiful thing. I took a picture with, I posted on Instagram. I don't think, you know,

00:54:24.960 they're making momentum in the gun side, but what I do think they are doing is I think they're sitting

00:54:30.540 there saying, Oh, these guys, they think this is all about guns. This has got nothing to do with guns.

00:54:36.720 While you're defending your gun argument that we are still controlling you with that argument for

00:54:41.140 the last 50 years, we are over here passing other kinds of laws that's allowing us to control you

00:54:45.680 even more. So you can win the gun argument. We'll let you feel like you're winning constantly every

00:54:50.040 year, but we keep passing our agenda on the other side, whether it's Marxist, socialist, whatever you

00:54:54.700 want to talk about it, we're making progress here. You keep your guns. We'll make the progress here

00:54:59.380 because at the end of the day, come 20, 30, 40 years from now, we really don't care if you keep

00:55:04.140 your guns. We just care that you don't keep your voice. You can have all your guns you want. We'll

00:55:08.040 keep the voice and we'll pass all the regulations and laws and policies that we want to pass. I mean,

00:55:13.980 just yesterday, you know, this came up this weekend, Janet Yellen is wanting G20 to agree to come up with

00:55:23.320 a identical corporate tax rate around the world. So America cannot have any competition with businesses

00:55:30.540 wanting to leave U.S. to another country. So they have to pay less taxes. And these countries are like,

00:55:36.380 what the hell are you talking about? We want that competition. But they're convincing others how some

00:55:42.160 of their policies may be the right thing to be a globalist. You know, obviously, you know this as much

00:55:46.880 as I do because you're probably better than I do because this is the world you're constantly

00:55:50.020 researching and going through. But I think it's bigger than guns to them. I think they're given

00:55:55.620 this one victory to win in five other places. I may be wrong, but that's what I think. What do you think?

00:56:03.200 I agree with you, but I think to a certain extent. I think at a certain point, they can only do so much.

00:56:10.480 If their goal, right, is this kind of Marxist utopia or this socialist utopia,

00:56:18.680 socialism can only go so far with an armed community of people or an armed population of

00:56:23.120 people. Because if you really think about it, name one socialist country where the vast majority

00:56:27.520 of the population is armed. I don't think you'll be able to find one. But I don't think they care

00:56:32.960 if you own a gun. I don't think guns are a big deal anymore nowadays. I'm telling you, I don't

00:56:41.480 think like, let me put it to you this way. Like, let's just say I'm the nerd. You bullied me in

00:56:46.380 high school. You have 100 M16s in your house. You have 100,000 rounds. You have all that shit.

00:56:52.920 I'm a hacker. I will ruin your life. There's different ways to beat you today. Weapons have

00:56:59.240 changed in the last 10, 20, 30 years. And the one thing, go ahead. But the one thing about a firearm

00:57:05.040 is it's analog. And what I mean by that is this, is there a stopping point with the level of

00:57:10.640 oppression that you get with socialism? Is there this, is there, where's that, where's the stopping

00:57:14.840 point that says, all right, we're this, we're just going to oppress you up to this point. This is the

00:57:19.580 only point we're going to oppress you. There is no stopping point. It's, it's power consumes

00:57:24.620 unlimitedly from that perspective. So if you, yeah, you could ruin my life and you could ruin

00:57:29.980 millions of other people's lives by way of utilizing technology, shutting my voice down.

00:57:34.660 But then at the end of the day, it all comes back to one fundamental aspect. You piss off enough

00:57:40.480 people. You're going to get an aggregation of people coming together to do something about it.

00:57:45.100 I'll put you in jail. You can't put everybody in jail.

00:57:48.020 But, but, but it's not going to be everybody though. It's not going to be everybody.

00:57:50.540 You have to know, I'm not, we're on the same team. I'm not at all on a team that you're not. The

00:57:57.060 only thing I'm on is, um, these guys are over guns. Democrats are over guns. Democrats have figured

00:58:06.820 out a way to beat you in ways that they're not even thinking about. Like, listen, to have all of that,

00:58:15.360 you know, it, there used to be a time, there used to be time where, you know, me being big and strong

00:58:22.800 mattered. Look how strong I am. No one cares today. Honestly, body, but you, you take a guy,

00:58:28.560 how many of these videos have you seen a bodybuilder who benches six plates, goes and fights,

00:58:32.800 a 160 pound jujitsu guy. The jujitsu guy embarrasses the guy's like, wait a minute, I'm tapping out.

00:58:37.340 Right. So then the jujitsu guy, as good as he may be, he goes up with a girl who's 16 years old,

00:58:44.020 five, one, 110 pounds with a gun. The jujitsu guy gets killed. Now the girl with the five, one gun

00:58:49.740 goes up against a person who's a, uh, an abasement access to all the social media and is able to pull

00:58:55.800 off your pictures off your phone and post it all over social media to embarrass you. That person's

00:59:00.420 so, so the levels of weaponizing has advanced so much that if the Republican party wants to have

00:59:07.080 control and their voice long-term, they have to put just as much energy into having their voices

00:59:14.340 being heard and not being silenced as it is to keep the background checks out. I think, I think

00:59:20.120 the goal with the silencing of the voice is so that they inevitably can get to the guns. And here's

00:59:25.060 why they would have to scare enough of the population in order for them to hand them in.

00:59:32.220 I always say this is they're not going to come door to door. They're not, what they'll do is

00:59:36.760 they'll say, Hey, we're going to make an example out of some people and scare you into turning your

00:59:40.460 firearms in. And, and so, and then to address another aspect of what you said, the reason why

00:59:45.220 I disagree with the aspect of the, disagree with the notion that they are over guns is because if they

00:59:50.440 were, there wouldn't be so much energy being committed to the disinformation, to the pushing,

00:59:57.240 all the money spent to get some of these politicians in place who talk about, who spat about, oh, we're

01:00:02.860 going to do this about gun control and we're going to fight this with respect to the NRA and so forth

01:00:06.320 and so on. It begs the question, why then? So why so much energy geared towards undermining the

01:00:13.840 second amendment? If that's the case, it's been done for a long time. It's distraction court. It's,

01:00:19.420 it's very easy to distract you. Hey, I'm going to fight this battle here, but I'm taking money away

01:00:23.940 from you here and the force over here. But this is what I'm interested in, but I'm not really

01:00:26.760 interested in this because I'm, Hey guys, go, go, go. But here, this is very, I mean, this has been

01:00:30.720 going on for hundreds of years. It's, it's a Napoleon did it. Mussolini did it. A lot of great

01:00:36.580 generals and warriors have done it. Sun Tzu talked about it. Anybody and everybody that's in the

01:00:41.020 military talked about this. If that's the case, they've been distracting for very, very, very long

01:00:45.420 time. Well, America's a baby though. You have to realize America's only 240 some years old. It's

01:00:49.540 not, which is very true. It's not America's not, it's sometimes we forget like, oh, you know,

01:00:54.940 like first I came to the States, they're like, this building here has been here for 128 years. I'm

01:01:00.720 like, are these guys really bragging about this? We'd go to a tour in Iran. They would say this

01:01:05.900 building here has been fear for 3,200 years. Oh, wow. It's an old building. So America's

01:01:10.900 a baby. America politically, look, I think if there's a battle between Republicans and Democrats,

01:01:19.460 if there's a battle between Republicans and Democrats, Republicans are getting schooled

01:01:25.760 right now. Absolutely. I agree with you. If it's a battle between the two, you got schooled,

01:01:31.080 you took your money and invested it in all this stuff because you wanted to be quiet and libertarian.

01:01:34.900 They bought media companies. Twitter was on sale. You could have bought it. You never bought it. No

01:01:38.860 problem. They bought Time Magazine. They bought Washington Post. The other day I was pitching

01:01:42.540 why Elon Musk should buy CNN. I sent, I sent a few thousand people went online tweeting at Elon Musk.

01:01:48.320 Why don't you buy CNN? Because at least Elon Musk is where? Right in the middle. If Bezos is buying

01:01:53.400 a post, why don't you go buy CNN? Let's see what you do to CNN. I bet the content will probably change.

01:01:58.440 I bet half the staff may get fired. But at the same time, CNN was created by a guy

01:02:02.500 who was an entrepreneur. Ted Turner had a good motive to do that. So again, I think they're

01:02:08.480 playing a better strategic game than Republicans. And I think Republicans are kind of being schooled

01:02:13.460 right now. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I do. I will say this much though. So with respect to

01:02:18.800 the bullhorn, right, with respect to the platforms and having the voices that we have, I think, but for

01:02:24.640 the internet, I think our second amendment rights would literally be cut in half. I think,

01:02:30.540 I think the second amendment that we understand it to be today as of right now would be 50% gone

01:02:36.440 at best. And, and, and, and the reason why I think that hasn't been that is because it's because of

01:02:42.500 the internet and social media. I was going to say, have you been censored at all or not? Has your

01:02:46.620 channel at all been censored or not really? So yes. And no, I can't really put a pulse on how,

01:02:53.880 how cohesive they are about trying to censor me if at all, but there, I mean, I do run into issues

01:03:00.180 with respect to the gun side of things. Let's take, for instance, my, my channel. There are

01:03:05.320 people who have the same size channel as me and they're millionaires, but I'm not going to get

01:03:10.340 that because I'm so censored with respect to the subject matter. And so, so meaning, meaning to,

01:03:16.500 so the viewer who doesn't know the, the, the company that typically advertises on all these other

01:03:21.240 channels, they want on yours because you're talking about guns. So 80% of companies can advertise on

01:03:26.820 your channel. Yeah. And so, and as a, and as a result, and as a result of lack of those advertisements,

01:03:31.080 there's no benefit for them to push my, push my, my contents. So they'll, so they will shadow ban it or,

01:03:37.000 or, or artificially limit the reach on that particular content. And so that's, that's,

01:03:42.900 maybe you need more cat videos. Maybe you do more cat videos. You know, I just,

01:03:47.080 I just thought my sexy chocolatey goodness would have done it. It hasn't been working.

01:03:52.140 I think, I think you are making a positive impact and you're very necessary. And I think the world

01:03:58.380 needs you. And quite frankly, indirectly, I applaud YouTube for letting you do what you do,

01:04:04.700 even to have a platform, to have a quarter of a billion views, because a quarter of a billion

01:04:08.560 views is a lot of influence. If you're doing a quarter of a billion views, you got a lot of

01:04:11.900 influence and you're on your way to going over a billion views. You'll be a 10 million subscriber

01:04:15.380 channel in no time. Now I'm just glad, I'm just glad they keep guys like you around to keep the

01:04:21.840 argument on the other side. And you're kind of tough to do anything too, because you're a lawyer,

01:04:28.720 you're, you know, you have like all the things going on where they're kind of like, what do we

01:04:32.800 do with him? Well, they ignore, they ignore me. Yes. And I, and I remember I was on Joe Rogan and I

01:04:37.260 was telling him about that. I was telling him about a piece on, um, what's the guy's name? I forgot his

01:04:41.340 name. Um, on, on the comedy central, uh, either way, he did a 20 minute expose on NRA TV when I

01:04:50.460 had, when I was, when I had John Oliver, there we go. And so, and I taught and I told Joe, I was

01:04:56.040 like, look, man, I was like, I think he ignored me on purpose. He did a 20 minute expose expose on

01:05:00.840 that, on that platform and didn't mention me once, but I'm driving all of the audience. I'm, I am,

01:05:06.680 I literally, my numbers were driving all the audience to the platform. So there's no way

01:05:11.260 you do it and just don't know about me. So if you don't talk about me, you're not talking

01:05:14.640 about me on purpose. And Joe said, and I, and I, and I agreed, you know what, you might

01:05:18.240 be right. I said, you know, Joe was like, you know, maybe because he didn't think any

01:05:21.920 of the content you were creating was problematic or goofy because he was making fun of it.

01:05:26.800 And so he's like, that's probably why he didn't mention you. The problem with that is Bloomberg

01:05:32.140 did a piece where they literally talked about the platform as well, to the same extent,

01:05:37.660 didn't mention me once. And they weren't talking about it from a, oh, this is goofy content.

01:05:42.540 They were talking about the ideology on the platform, which is too, it didn't mention me

01:05:47.620 once. And what I think, and I think what they understand is this, you take my content and you

01:05:53.940 put it in front of anybody who's being objective at bare minimum, you'll walk away and saying,

01:05:58.440 I can see some of his points. I can see some of his points. You can't caricaturize me as this

01:06:04.400 super crazy extremist who doesn't know what he's talking about and just surface level language,

01:06:09.280 talking about red meat stuff and just tossing it out to his audience. You can't do that to me.

01:06:13.180 Exactly. And so they know it's better to keep the light off of him as much as possible

01:06:17.860 than to shine a light on him, even if it's from an attacking standpoint, because, because they've

01:06:23.660 tried it. They tried it. They tried to dox me. They've tried to go in my background. I guess I'm

01:06:28.360 a lame because I don't really have, I don't have a criminal history. So there's nothing,

01:06:31.460 there's nothing there that you can get me on unless they're going to send a honeypot to my

01:06:35.500 room and then recording me to me or something. But other than that, there's not, there's nothing

01:06:39.900 there. I've dedicated myself to this. So I'm, I'm just assuming, and I'm going to, and this is stuff

01:06:45.660 that people have told me because as confident as I am, I don't want to think, I don't think I'm just

01:06:51.420 that important that they're going to go out of the way to create a structure to figure out a way to

01:06:55.040 take me down. But some people have let it be known. They think they feel like, well, no, because the more

01:07:00.400 light they shine on you, whether they're attacking you or not, the more people see you and they need

01:07:05.240 less people to see you as much as possible. Yeah. But they can't, listen, they can't stop that right

01:07:10.780 now. You ain't going away, man. You're, you're, you're young. You're great communicator. You're

01:07:14.760 charming. You're smart. You're intellectual. You can make good arguments. You're, you know,

01:07:19.600 you have a background, you got a story, you got an interesting story. The story is an anomaly where

01:07:24.860 it's not like you were raised by hardcore Christian conservative that your mom always

01:07:29.400 voted for the right. And she loved Ronald Reagan and whispered to you about Ronald Reagan growing

01:07:33.560 up. No, you're an anomaly. So my mom's still kind of, my mom's still kind of as little iffy on what

01:07:38.020 I do, to be honest with you. She's kind of like, I mean, I read the one part when, when you were

01:07:41.980 like, I'm worried about if I tell my mom, I have guns, she's going to think I'm a gangster,

01:07:44.820 you know, the whole thing that you talked about. But look, look, man, I got to tell you,

01:07:49.840 I'm glad I had you on. I'm glad the audience got a chance to get to know you.

01:07:52.820 I highly recommend everybody go check out his YouTube channel. We're going to put the link

01:07:56.080 below, go follow his stuff, go subscribe to his channel. Please continue to make great content,

01:08:03.580 continue to make great content because the rest of the world is watching you, whether you know it

01:08:09.060 or not. It's not just that camera on you. It's hundreds of millions that are watching your stuff.

01:08:14.980 Thank you so much for coming down and being a guest on value team. And I appreciate you.

01:08:18.060 Absolutely. Thank you very much, Patrick. Thanks for having me.

01:08:20.000 What are your thoughts on gun control or gun rights? Do you agree? Do you disagree? Comment

01:08:25.100 below. I want to hear from you. Also, if you enjoyed this interview, I got two other videos

01:08:28.400 I want you to watch. One is with Sammy de Borgervano on what he said about gun control

01:08:32.840 when he and I sat down. And the other one is my sit down with Mike Ritland, former Navy SEAL,

01:08:38.200 who he gave his opinions on Biden's stance regarding Second Amendment. Having said that,

01:08:43.980 take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - April 23, 2021

Why Guns Matter - An Argument for 2nd Amendment

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