Mentally Oddcast Transcript: J Grant and Mel Hynes. Gun Ownership for Non-Gun People
Audio version of this podcast can be found here.
Recorded 11/24/2024
A book you really ought to read.
00:00:01.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday, Lee Friday. And in case you didn't know, we're actually diverging from our usual format of guest interviews and talking to panels of people on various issues that are going to be more important than ever in the coming months.
00:00:21.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Today's issue is actually ah gun safety. And the reason that I wanted to do this episode is because a lot of my liberal friends who are staunch gun people, a lot of progressives, a lot of left-leaning independents are saying, I should get a gun. And the way that they talk about it is as if a gun is, you know, like a magical amulet that will keep them safe, and they're not talking about getting training, they're not talking about practicing, or even, I mean, you know, older ladies with carpal tunnel talking about wanting a nine millimeter, just things that don't really jibe with reality. So on that note, I have with me Mel Hines, who's been on the show before, and Jay Grant, who has not, and both of these folks know a whole lot more about guns than I do, so we're gonna talk about it. Hey guys, welcome.
00:01:15.05
J. Grant
howuddy Howdy, howdy.
00:01:16.04
Mel
Hello again.
00:01:17.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
It is awesome to have you both here. um So I want to kind of start with, ah actually why don't you guys talk a little bit about your own experiences with ah with guns and gun safety? Jay, you want to go first?
00:01:31.19
J. Grant
Sure. ah Something that people could check out online is for two years, Mel and I did a webcomic, specifically a romantic comedy set in a Dallas gun store where we used our lifelong knowledge and experience with guns to tell a story about a guy who works at a gun store. And there were a lot of guns in the comic.
00:01:58.11
J. Grant
I grew up in a family that had a subsistence farm out in the middle of nowhere and firearms were something that we taught our children, including me, at a very young age because they were necessary to keep the farm going.
00:02:16.99
J. Grant
Mel.
00:02:18.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:02:19.89
Mel
So the name of the comic is Failure to Fire. I don't know if that got mentioned before. ah if People want to check it out. I grew up in a somewhat similar background. ah our We did not need to hunt for subsistence, but we did grow up kind of on a micro farm and ah my father hunted for ah food on occasion, mostly deer, but we would I learned to use an air rifle to pick off squirrels and blue jays and moles and very tiny creatures that were kind of destroying our food.
00:02:52.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:02:57.65
Mel
um yeah But I was taught that it that they were tools, first and foremost. They were not for fun. They were not toys. And there were very specific rules for safety, both for myself and for others, and to avoid cruelty to the animals.
00:03:15.85
Mel
um because that was actually a big consideration for us. So that's one of the reasons that I was really happy that ah you invited us to be on here because I think as James likes to say, ah you know, there are some critical rules for gun safety and that's the first things people should know if they're interested in it.
00:03:37.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
absolutely yeah i there was no utility really to the gun use that i i did as a kid it was all about sportsmanship and we'd go shooting skeet there were hunters in my family i but was already kind of out of of gun gun activities by the time i was old enough to go on hunts with my family and i had younger brothers coming up so they were kind of the focus of of all that. But what I remember most about the and NRA, and we actually met Lloyd Mustin, like way, way back in the day, who was an old NRA president.
00:04:13.22
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the the general mindset wasn't one of, hey, this is my right and I'm going to do what I want. The general right mindset was you be safe with your guns and you follow all the rules or you will have no damn guns. And that is not what I get from, I don't want to say the most gun enthusiasts, but certainly the loudest ones.
00:04:35.14
J. Grant
I was an NRA member for quite some time, and there was a massive shift in the and NRA's entire paradigm right around 2005, 2006, and I just stopped paying them any money.
00:04:47.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:04:49.26
J. Grant
They used to be about gun safety.
00:04:49.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:04:51.38
J. Grant
It was about educating, especially children. It was about educating people on responsibly owning a gun. and When that shift happened, it wasn't a small thing. It was fairly dramatic. And I was disgusted. It went from, as you said, it went from, Hey, here's how to responsibly own a firearm. Here's when you should legally use it. And then it just turns to guns are cool and everyone should have a gun. And I i ah walked away from it.
00:05:26.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, they were also very quiet about the murder of Philando Castile, which, um I mean, he was a legal gun owner. He told the cop he had a gun, and he was killed anyway.
00:05:40.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
And one would think that the NRA would be very upset about that, and it was it was crickets. There was nothing from them on that.
00:05:46.16
J. Grant
Yeah, nothing.
00:05:49.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. Yeah, so so let's get into just like a baseline question. Should everyone who wants a gun be able to have one?
00:05:59.50
J. Grant
Should I take this one?
00:06:00.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Please.
00:06:01.87
J. Grant
Okay, um by pure coincidence, this afternoon I was finishing up, when you invited me on the show, when you invited us on the show, I was i do a YouTube video series for urban survivalists, people living in cities,
00:06:16.92
J. Grant
um this will the what The whole diatribe is probably going to come out in this interview, but I was literally right before joining us finishing up an episode where I answer that question and quite a few more. My answer to that is absolutely not. No, not everyone should have a gun. I do believe everyone should be educated on gun safety. And once they know what a firearm is,
00:06:45.84
J. Grant
Should they wish to have a firearm? Yeah, absolutely. But there I'm a bit and using the term in its actual definition. I'm a little little liberal when it comes to gun rights. I do believe that nonviolent felons should not be banned from owning firearms. I do believe that most households like a chainsaw or fire extinguisher should have one.
00:07:13.20
J. Grant
but only if they know how to use it, when to use it, and how to keep it safe.
00:07:21.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
That seems very reasonable. Mel, do you have anything to add?
00:07:25.13
Mel
No, I fully agree. This is one of the things that we actually discussed before getting married. So we align on it pretty pretty much. Neither of us thinks that you know the anybody needs Fisher Price, you know baby's first nine millimeter. um But I think that his analogy was pretty much perfect. Like a fire extinguisher, I think most households should have one, should have it safe against um accidents or untrained people playing with it. Um, and just in case of emergency, it's, I know it's like having a fire extinguisher or a fire blanket or an escape ladder from a second story window or something. It's one of those things that I don't think everyone should have it around and play with it and go, Oh yeah, this is part of my lifestyle necessarily. But if you need it in case of emergency, it is good to know how to use it and not be fumbling as it were.
00:08:24.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. And would you agree that I didn't pull up stats in front of me, but it seems like accidental gun deaths, you can always, almost always point to some form of of stupidity when those happen. You know, the the the toddlers that but get the gun from mommy's purse or the, you know, just asinine things. And I think I mean, that's that's really, there's there's so much back and forth about like, should you have this gun? Should you have that gun? that And especially you know with the NRA being what it is now, there is this huge knowledge gap of like, yeah, it would be fine to have a gun. I mean, ah a stove and an oven cause just as many accidents in in the home as as guns do. Ladders even are are comparable.
00:09:19.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
so
00:09:20.69
J. Grant
Bathtubs.
00:09:21.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, yes, well the bathroom is like more dangerous than being on an airplane they say um So
00:09:22.04
J. Grant
Bathtubs are deadly indeed.
00:09:29.00
Mel
This is why you never use the bathroom on an airplane. That's just double whammy. so
00:09:32.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I don't because they're too tiny for me, but that's that's another issue. um so so now that we ah let's let's Let's go back just a little bit. So now that we've determined that not everyone should have a gun, at least not until they're ready, what might be a better choice for personal defense or also like home defense?
00:09:54.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because those aren't the same. I mean, a rifle is is probably a good choice to protect someone in their home, but you're not going to walk down the street with a rifle in case someone decides to mug you.
00:10:07.09
J. Grant
Mel?
00:10:08.97
Mel
Well, I mean, it is Texas. So you know you could walk down the street with a rifle. But um let's see. Are we talking about ah specifically like for home defense ah before someone of gets the education to be safe with that gun? Are you talking about ah carrying down the street, literally?
00:10:29.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, I kind of want to cover everything. I'll say like, I don't, and we don't keep a gun in our home because I am too frequently suicidal to be safe with a gun in my home. That's just the straight up truth.
00:10:42.72
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:10:42.83
Mel
That is a valid concern.
00:10:44.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
But the last time someone wanted to come into my home that I did not want here, all I had to do was take the lid off a can of wasp spray and pointed at them and and they left, you know?
00:10:57.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I don't know that that'll work every time, but because, you know, they just they like just wanted our stuff. It wasn't like they were here specifically to to hurt us because they hate us.
00:11:07.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
We don't really get that yet.
00:11:09.70
Mel
Right.
00:11:09.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
But
00:11:11.13
Mel
Or sometimes if the person ah breaking into your home is altered in certain ways, they can see you as, oh, there this is a threat to my life and now I need to you know fight to the death to defend myself, even though ironically they're the ones ah who are the attacker.
00:11:11.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:11:17.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, yes.
00:11:28.02
Mel
so
00:11:29.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
So let's talk about personal self-defense, the people that think that
00:11:29.67
Mel
um
00:11:32.86
J. Grant
I'm going to let Mel run this first part in a way that I don't think anybody was expecting. um I know she probably wasn't going to pimp herself like this, but Mel is one of the most accomplished martial artists I've ever met.
00:11:48.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Don't!
00:11:48.06
J. Grant
So ah yeah, very, very much so.
00:11:49.55
Mel
Yeah. um That's actually one of the reasons that I started learning martial arts when I was younger, because I was living in Northern California at the time, which is a very, especially, you know, in the 90s, was a very non gun owning kind of ah environment and society, as it were,
00:12:13.88
Mel
And yeah, I had the typical thing of, oh, well, you know, keep a baseball bat next to your front door in case, you know, someone bangs on it in the middle of the night, keep a knife in your nightstand drawer in case someone tries to come through the window and things like that.
00:12:27.61
Mel
And I got so anxious about everything, which is, you know, kind of my default state of being about the world in general, but it, it was just one of those,
00:12:37.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
reasonable
00:12:41.13
Mel
I thought about it and went, okay, what is a weapon that someone can't take away from me? Because that was one of the big things of ah that's true. They say, you know, if you have a gun and you're not trained and you don't know how to use it, or how to get to it quickly, it very likely is going to become ah your attacker's weapon rather than yours ah very quickly, because they can take it away from you. But if you learn, train yourself in at least self-defense, not necessarily martial arts or, you know, you don't need to like belt and krav maga or anything. But if you just take some self-defense classes of, hey, if someone comes up behind you, you know, while you're walking down the street and grabs your purse, grabs your hair, grabs your neck, what do you do in this situation just to disable them long enough to get away and get help? That's the important part. It's like you don't need to dirty hairy on somebody. You just need to get out of the situation and
00:13:36.69
Mel
prevent it from reoccurring immediately. You know, like, get to a so place that's safe, that there's other people ah where you're not going to be pursued and re-engaged. So, frankly, I think that's the best and easiest, and depending on what kind of thing you study, the most fun ah way to protect yourself. And that can work both in a house and, like we said, walk just walking down the street.
00:14:05.41
Mel
um But for ah for actual weapons, weapons, like I said before, a, you know, a baseball bat or, you know, a walking stick with a big heavy metal head on it that you just keep in a ah um but umbrella stand next to the door. You know, unassuming, highly fashionable. If someone comes to the door pretending to be a delivery person and then tries to force their way in, it's right there and you can break their arm or their nose or whatever.
00:14:36.90
Mel
Um, and it doesn't take as much training, uh, as say a gun to be safe with, because, you know, if you have a, if you have a baseball bat, it's, there's only so much skill involved.
00:14:50.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:14:51.42
Mel
yeah So, um,
00:14:51.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, right. Well, and, you know, sometimes an attacker is counting, especially if they attack a woman, they're counting on us to not fight back.
00:14:55.01
J. Grant
time.
00:14:58.62
Mel
exactly.
00:15:02.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
They're counting us on us to stand there and be frightened.
00:15:02.67
Mel
exactly
00:15:04.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
So sometimes just making it clear that, no, man, you don't, you don't get my purse. You don't get, you know, whatever it is that you're after. You cannot have it.
00:15:15.72
Mel
going the Bobby Hill route. That's my purse.
00:15:18.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't know you.
00:15:19.14
Mel
I don't know you. Yep, absolutely. No, that does.
00:15:22.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well.
00:15:23.57
Mel
That is something else I was was trained at as, as a young person, that was basically act crazier than them. And if they are just going like you said, it like you were saying, if they were just trying to come in and get your stuff, and they're about to get some wasp right to the face, I got you I have
00:15:32.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:15:42.62
Mel
reassessed my priorities for the day and this is no longer on my to-do list. I'm out of here. So yeah, now it's definitely a ah a decent tactic. James?
00:15:53.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cool.
00:15:53.80
J. Grant
Yeah, um one there's a couple that I recommend often for people who either they're asking about buying a gun and I don't think they have, shall we say, the mental acuity to be responsible with that firearm or people who just don't want a gun but they do want a home defense or They're put simply, they're not as physically able. And I have two that I recommend to everybody. The first one's called a Boga knife, B-O-G-A. It's called back off get away. It's not a big knife. It's going to be a neck knife or a clip to your pocket, very small, but razor sharp fixed blade knife.
00:16:43.07
J. Grant
The idea of a Boga is if somebody grabs you or assaults you or is coming at you, this is a knife that you can in less than a second, pull it out and hit them with it. You're going to slice them. You're not, you're not trying to kill them. You're not trying to cut off their head. You're not trying to be John Wick, just a cut will make an attacker feel it.
00:17:08.14
J. Grant
And you need to be trained in like make the cut and push them back and run.
00:17:15.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm Yeah, I think
00:17:16.38
J. Grant
They're unlikely to follow after you if you just scored a two inch gash in their forearm. Most attackers, as Mel said, ah they don't expect you to fight back.
00:17:30.65
J. Grant
The other one, go ahead.
00:17:32.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
couple that with a big loud no because the word it's interesting because in private the word no is is iffy whether or not bad men will respect it but in public a big loud no will turn heads because it's interesting and everybody will want to know what's happening and once you get a bunch of eyeballs on it people don't want to do as many bad things
00:17:34.16
J. Grant
Mm-hmm.
00:17:56.17
J. Grant
The other one that besides the baseball bat, I do recommend a baseball bat, a good solid metal one. It's because there's very little training involved. You can actually get baseball bat self-defense training.
00:18:06.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:18:10.52
J. Grant
It's a real thing. But anybody who's over the age of five in this country has probably swung a baseball bat before and it's it's a stick. it's it's the year It's the result of 150,000 years of human history, like a club is still a very effective weapon.
00:18:32.95
J. Grant
One that I would recommend for home defense, because unless you're in Texas or a similar open blade carry state, um one for specifically home defense that I have used is a machete.
00:18:42.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my!
00:18:47.91
J. Grant
You can get a machete at almost everywhere there, but you go to the sporting goods department in Walmart and they sell cheap machetes, or you can go online.
00:18:55.79
Mel
or a hardware store.
00:18:57.16
J. Grant
Yeah. Or a hardware store. I mean, you can get a machete almost anywhere. A machete is basically just a huge knife. I have been in a situation when I was in my heyday of punk rocking in Southern California at a party where a drunk dude Maybe you had more than just alcohol.
00:19:20.19
J. Grant
Picked a fight with the host of the party. The host of the party pulled a gun, and the drunk dude kept coming at him.
00:19:26.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, geez.
00:19:27.31
J. Grant
He was saying, oh, you gonna do shoot me? You gonna fucking shoot me? come up I don't know if we're allowed to curse on here.
00:19:33.62
Wednesday Lee Friday
You are.
00:19:34.66
J. Grant
Okay, cool. ah He was coming at the host in front of me, going, what are you gonna do? You gonna fucking shoot me? Come on, I pulled the trigger, you pussy. It was basically his thing.
00:19:45.90
J. Grant
And then a bunch of us grabbed the guy and hauled him out of there. Uh, about two months later, I was hosting a party and another guy, this guy had a beef with me. He'd been brought by a friend of a friend and he was starting to get aggro. I had a machete. It was just a basic 20 inch blade, cheap spring steel. I did keep it sharp. Cause I mean, if you pull out a knife that big.
00:20:16.00
J. Grant
People are going to think twice because everyone has cut themselves. Not everyone's been, most people have not been shot with a gun. They don't know what it feels like. So they, they have this bravado towards the concept, but everyone has cut themselves with a knife.
00:20:30.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:20:34.30
J. Grant
And when they see a giant machete blade, they're not, they're going to think, how close do I want to get to try to grab that away from you? Also, what happens if that hits me in the face?
00:20:46.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:20:48.19
J. Grant
So my biggest one for home defense that I have recommended over and over over the decades, a machete. Get a good machete. It doesn't have to be super wicked looking or anything like that.
00:21:00.58
J. Grant
But that has, ah it scares people if you pull one of those out and say, hey, you need to leave.
00:21:11.76
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I think I would assume things about any sort of any person who would pull out a machete. that's That's going to give me ideas about the sort of person that they are.
00:21:23.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
and And all of those ideas say, I do not wish to engage physically with this person. um
00:21:31.13
J. Grant
I mean, i have I have been in a lot of bar fights.
00:21:31.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
oh
00:21:34.29
J. Grant
I am not a martial artist at all. i I took two years of one martial art and failed out of it. I've been in a lot of bar fights. Mel is like, she's taken trophies at a statewide level in martial arts.
00:21:49.15
J. Grant
I don't think either of us would attack somebody who pulled out a machete and was holding it in front of them, even if it looked like they didn't know what they were doing.
00:21:59.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:22:00.18
J. Grant
I'm not going to close in on somebody who's wielding a 22 inch blade.
00:22:07.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah right well that makes sense so let's see where do we want to go from here I guess So we have some alternatives for guns. Now, let's say that someone does, like you know, a complete non-gun person, never owned a gun, never shot a gun. They'd like to go and purchase one. How long do we think it would be to go from no knowledge of guns to actually being competent, assuming standard intelligence?
00:22:41.74
J. Grant
Um, I've.
00:22:42.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I mean, you're gonna need some sort of structured training, right? It's not like you can just watch YouTubes and have training.
00:22:46.52
J. Grant
Oh, yes. No, absolutely not. I wouldn't recommend anybody get their gun training off YouTube or the internet.
00:22:52.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:22:53.48
Mel
Oh God, that's just that's just like a sequel to Jackass waiting to happen, I think.
00:22:57.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right?
00:22:57.72
J. Grant
Yeah. Firearms are their own thing. They're nothing like the movies or TV. They make a very loud sound. They do not react in any way that people are prepared for until they actually put their finger on the trigger for the first time. Your question is feeds back into what you started the show with. One of the reasons I was making the video that I'm going to put out tomorrow is because much like 2016,
00:23:27.85
J. Grant
Every time my liberal friends, my Democrat friends think shit's about to go sideways, they I've had 17 messages in the last 10 days of people saying, hey, what kind of gun should I get?
00:23:38.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, I'm sure.
00:23:43.23
J. Grant
And that's like, if you knew somebody who'd never owned a car saying, what kind of car should I buy?
00:23:49.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:23:50.78
Mel
And I'm just going to jump behind the wheel and drive down the freeway.
00:23:51.20
J. Grant
but Yeah, no, no, that's that's not how any of this works.
00:23:53.90
Mel
No license, no training.
00:23:56.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
00:23:57.59
J. Grant
um In my personal experience, and I've trained quite a few people in firearm safety, they have publicly recommended me, which is I think why I got 17 damn messages.
00:24:09.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:24:10.08
J. Grant
um I would say once you have chosen a particular firearm, you fired it maybe at the range before buying, you've been through a class, you're still going to need at minimum, I'm just spitballing probably a thousand rounds of ammo, however much however many visits to the range that is for you, you're going to need to put at least a thousand rounds through that gun to really get the feel for it. Every single firearm is different. And I've often said, it's going to be in the video on Monday, it is better to have a firearm that you know inside and out, you know how it shoots, you know how to clear a jam.
00:24:55.34
J. Grant
You know how this gun operates very well. It's better to have that than any gun that you don't understand, that you don't know.
00:25:07.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that makes sense.
00:25:07.74
Mel
something oh I was gonna say something that I personally recommend is uh since you're going to want to scope out a local gun range to get this practice in anyway a lot of ranges have an option where you can come in and ask to basically rent a particular style and caliber of a gun and test it out without
00:25:08.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, please go ahead.
00:25:34.92
Mel
purchasing it and you can find out what you know what fits your hand, what kind of a kickback can you handle, ah you know what what works with you you know physically and just personally.
00:25:48.38
Mel
And I think this can be a great option for going in, especially for someone who has never fired a gun before and they have no idea. It's like, well, I don't know what's going to fit in my hand. I don't know how much kickback I can handle.
00:25:59.13
Mel
I don't know if I feel, yeah, recoil, sorry.
00:26:00.66
J. Grant
Recoil.
00:26:01.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
ye
00:26:03.21
J. Grant
Recoil.
00:26:04.04
Mel
ah clip uh but yeah it's it's just a matter of sorry it's an inside joke from uh
00:26:13.83
J. Grant
It's a gun. Okay, maybe this maybe this fits into the podcast. it it When it comes to discussing firearms, something that Gunners, as I call them, and non-gunners get into friction about is the appropriate terminology.
00:26:29.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Yep.
00:26:29.11
J. Grant
It's not kickback, it's recoil. It's not a clip, it's a magazine. Unless it is an actual, I have two of these, if it is if it is an actual gun that takes a clip, then yeah, that's a clip.
00:26:41.23
J. Grant
But, and this'll probably come up later in it, but like the entire argument about the term assault weapon It causes a lot of friction where I think people should be talking. You got to use the right terminology. Like words have meanings. So.
00:27:02.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and I mean, that's fair, if only for clarity, so that we all agree that we're talking about the same things. And I think politics actually makes that muddier because typically, like not, you know, present company excluded, but typically when people are going off about, oh, well, I don't have to listen to your opinion on guns because you said, you know, you know, you didn't know the word armolite or, you know, whatever.
00:27:12.13
J. Grant
Oh, yes.
00:27:28.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I mean, yes, there's a point to be made there. People should know what the hell they're talking about.
00:27:31.98
Mel
Mm hmm.
00:27:34.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
But at the same time, we can't invalidate people's opinions because they're not necessarily enthusiasts about something and know like all the terminology.
00:27:45.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because, you know, Republican men, they'd be wanting to control women's bodies and yet they don't know a whole lot about women's bodies.
00:27:50.38
J. Grant
Oh yeah.
00:27:52.78
J. Grant
They don't know what ovulation is.
00:27:55.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right, it's like, okay, you you tell me where the G-spot is and then we can discuss what we'll do with a anything happening in my uterus.
00:27:57.08
J. Grant
Lord.
00:28:03.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, do you know what a uterus is? you You don't, do you, sir? But I don't want to get off on a tangent about that.
00:28:07.38
J. Grant
At the same point, on the same point, I would point out, if you were talking to a Republican about drug laws, And they said, well, every time you go to inject those bong weeds, how are you going to feel about them?
00:28:23.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
00:28:24.14
J. Grant
How are you going to view their opinion?
00:28:26.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, that's that's absolutely true. um That if if people don't know the terminology, they're going to sound like they don't know what they're talking about. And yeah, we we should all be on the same page about that.
00:28:39.23
J. Grant
Mm-hmm.
00:28:39.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
um you know I mean, there's probably a fine line because ah you know I'm a bit of ah a grammar. bob I don't want to use the word Nazi, but I just did.
00:28:51.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
00:28:51.95
Mel
the other n-word, your grammar nerd.
00:28:53.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
right grammar nerd yes okay but but there's this whole push about that being ableist like correcting people's grammar is ableist so i try not to do it but then if a person with terrible grammar insults someone else's intelligence it's like oh good i don't have to be tolerant anymore i can tell you what i what i think but But again, I don't want to get too far off the topic here, but yes, ideally when you discuss any topic, it is best to know enough about it to be using the best terminology.
00:29:26.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is the best way to be taken seriously.
00:29:26.73
J. Grant
Mm hmm. And to basically answer your question, in my opinion, and I say this having ive owned a lot of guns and taught a lot of people on a lot of guns, I'd say it's not a time period. You have to put about a thousand rounds, a thousand bullets through that gun to really understand where's the bullet going to hit? How is it going to feel when I pull the trigger? How do I clean it? You know, that kind of thing.
00:29:56.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
So buying a gun does not make you instantly safe. And I don't say that to you guys because you guys know that, but man, I'm hearing from a lot of people that, that you know, they're buying a gun as if it will keep them safe.
00:30:00.72
J. Grant
No, absolutely not. No. Oh, the.
00:30:11.69
J. Grant
I've had friends come to me with a brand new gun going, Hey, you said we're going to go to the range today. And the very first thing that tells me, Oh, wow, you don't know anything about this gun, but you're trying to learn that's good.
00:30:24.47
J. Grant
They bring it in the brand new case and they haven't even taken it apart and cleaned it. They haven't lubricated it.
00:30:28.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh wow.
00:30:30.42
J. Grant
They haven't oiled it up. That's important.
00:30:34.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:30:34.62
J. Grant
Like that is, that is not even firearms 101. That's like baseline Boy Scouts know this. And then I have to, okay, we're not going to the range yet. We're going to, we're going to take an hour.
00:30:46.10
J. Grant
We're going to take this gun apart. We're going to oil it up and make sure there's no, you know, bad manufacturing in it. We're going to put it back together and then we'll go to the range. But buying a gun by itself, absolutely not.
00:30:59.83
J. Grant
Like, no.
00:31:02.33
Mel
especially um sorry ah saying especially if someone's going to buy a gun, ah put some bullets in it, and stick it under their pillow like a talisman ah like so that the the you know the safety ferry will come in the night and you know keep them safe.
00:31:02.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
you and and it
00:31:20.93
Mel
And that's all they have to do. ah
00:31:23.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and if we agree that guns are a tool, All tools require some training. i mean Owning a hammer, even if it's the perfect hammer for you, doesn't give you the knowledge to build something. you know that's something and Even once you know intellectually how to build something, you don't know what it's really like until you actually get to the physical act of of building it. so Obviously, that's going to be just as true of guns. Now, another thing that I've heard a lot, and it it largely comes from conservatives, but it is considered a general American principle, the reason that we are supposed to be able to arm ourselves is in case we need to fight off a tyrannical government.
00:32:10.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
pause for laughter. um But book what' how how does that strike your ear now hearing that and in the current climate? Mel, you want to go first?
00:32:22.93
Mel
Brrrr! That is a loaded topic. Yeah, and obviously we're not going to John Wick ourselves against, like, an invading army. We're not going to Red Dawn, as it were, for the most part.
00:32:42.08
Mel
um
00:32:43.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think we have more to fear from our own military should the new commander in chief.
00:32:45.79
Mel
Um...
00:32:50.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, he's already promisedised to he's promised to send the military after protesters, and I have no doubt that that will happen.
00:32:50.43
Mel
Oh, I highly agree.
00:32:57.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then a bunch of 18-year-olds who just got out of basic will have to decide individually whether or not that is a lawful order. And I'm sure some will and some won't.
00:33:04.09
J. Grant
i I Yeah, I this is one where I think Mel and I are in disagreement because we I have we have never served but we have known very well quite a few people who have um No, I am not worried about the military following an illegal order some of them might but It's, it is stamped into our, uh, into our rules of engagement into the military, American military itself. If you follow an illegal order and then you guys get busted, you're just as to blame as the person who gave the order. And every single branch of the U S military down to the coast guard has an oath they take.
00:33:54.26
J. Grant
where they swear they will follow the Constitution and the law. I'm not saying that's gonna absolve them or keep anyone from acting badly, but ah if trump were to if Trump were to order the National Guard, for instance, to round up 10 million citizens on based on their skin color, he's going to get a lot of pushback on that.
00:34:05.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
well
00:34:20.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well... But the Supreme Court just said the President can do pretty much whatever the hell he wants. And if an order comes directly from the President, it would be difficult for a military private ah to to say that, no, that's not a lawful order and I won't follow it.
00:34:40.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, it's a hypothetical at this point, but it won't.
00:34:42.20
J. Grant
That's literally they're trained in bootcamp. Do not follow an illegal order.
00:34:48.84
Wednesday Lee Friday
But how is it an illegal order if the president said it and he's allowed to do whatever he wants?
00:34:53.89
J. Grant
Whatever he wants. That's in retrospect.
00:34:56.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
what
00:34:57.10
J. Grant
That's if somebody press charges, if he gives an, if he gives an order that is illegal with how the law stands today, it's still an illegal order.
00:35:09.75
Mel
The problem we run into is the gray area of like the Japanese internment camps in World War II.
00:35:09.92
J. Grant
He can be absolved. Bye.
00:35:19.35
Mel
If he says, oh, well, we have these 10,000 people who are suspected of you know being terrorists or illegals or insert ah term here, and I have just passed an executive order saying that we need to round them all up for questioning.
00:35:39.71
Mel
and yeah detainment for as long as it takes. This is a legal order. Go do it.
00:35:46.74
J. Grant
I mean, I've told you about my family member who was in one of those camps. He was a shoemaker here in the 1940s, my father's uncle from Japan. And once they let him out of the camp, he sold everything he had left and moved back to Japan and never came here again.
00:36:05.67
Mel
My point is that I think it may be less of a, Hey, he gave me a blatantly illegal order. I have to decide whether or not I'm going to do that. It comes down to the, what is the law now? Did he just change it? Is he talking out his butt? Uh, you know, what's the, you know, what is the actual legal and moral standing on the situation? And I've got 90 seconds to decide. And as Wednesday said, this is a fresh out of bootcamp 18 year olds.
00:36:35.98
Mel
they may very likely just fall back to, well, I'm gonna fall in with what everyone else is doing and I'll figure it out later.
00:36:45.43
J. Grant
Ugh.
00:36:47.22
Mel
Oh, I agree with Yi.
00:36:47.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. yeah
00:36:49.29
Mel
Very much Yi.
00:36:52.56
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. So, realistically speaking, should Trump or or any commander in chief, like if we ever got like a different one after that, uh, since the military after civilians, we aren't really going to be able to defend ourselves in any meaningful way from the military, are we?
00:37:14.00
J. Grant
Okay, i'm gonna I'm gonna jump in on this one. um People seem to see the government, especially a lot of my liberal friends.
00:37:16.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Please.
00:37:23.19
J. Grant
I am a liberal. I am just not a Democrat.
00:37:24.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:37:26.72
J. Grant
I i am so far left to the Democrats. I am proof that once you go far enough left, you get your guns back. um People see the government as this imaginary like monolith, when it really comes down to is the federal government goes to the state government goes to the local government. If your local government decides to go fascist on you, and it could be because they got orders from the state gov, which got orders from the fed gov, okay, that cascades down. But if it's just the local government, um,
00:38:09.24
J. Grant
Texas cops have already multiple times had standoffs with properly armed citizens who held them at bay for a very long time, including one particular landowner outside of Austin, who's been holding his own against the sheriff's department for over 20 years now.
00:38:23.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Wow.
00:38:30.09
J. Grant
Like, They're not bringing in drones and tanks because this is a local level problem. He also is, as far as we know, just holing up on his 180 acre property, chilling out. You know, he's a hardcore Rambo survivor type. He's got family there and they just don't mess with him anymore because there were a couple of firefights. Now, if it comes up to the federal level, if you have actual feds,
00:38:59.37
J. Grant
The federal government coming after you. My first assumption would be you did something. You, you fucked up. Like if they're actually sending drones and tanks after your ass. Yeah. ah I want to know.
00:39:15.95
J. Grant
I'm not immediately going to side with that civilian. I'm going to be like, why are they sending drones and tanks after your ass? They're not going to like the they're not going to they're not going to mobilize the National Guard to go after ah a drag queen who read to kids. They're not.
00:39:34.30
Mel
unless they've got really good dirt on somebody.
00:39:37.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, exactly unless you know, they're part of the they were involved in like tinder shutting down during the RNC or Grindr rather
00:39:42.37
J. Grant
Yeah. Now, if if a group of drag queens had decided to, I don't know, storm into a national parks office and take it over and declare themselves sovereign citizens, yeah, you might be looking at a little more friction there.
00:40:00.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
well I think though that The scenarios that you're describing so took place in ah in a sane world with sane people. And I'm sorry, but we don't have that now.
00:40:13.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, Trump trump is not a ah well person. And I'm sure that they're going to 25th Amendment him by like February.
00:40:16.87
J. Grant
Actually, um
00:40:19.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
but
00:40:20.87
J. Grant
minus the minus the drag queens part, the Bundy family actually did that three years ago.
00:40:28.37
J. Grant
They took over Bureau of Land Management offices, kicked out all the law enforcement offices officers and called it their own sovereign territory.
00:40:38.95
J. Grant
And then the internet got involved in a whole bunch of people, FedEx, them dildos, which was hilarious.
00:40:41.73
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:40:47.12
J. Grant
They were asking for supplies and they got just stacks of dildos.
00:40:47.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know, I'm i'm always in favor of of sending someone a bag of dicks.
00:40:50.88
Mel
Dicks.
00:40:52.91
J. Grant
All the dicks.
00:40:54.86
Mel
Yep.
00:40:55.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
My business offers that, you know. um Well, so many people are like, oh, I wish I could tell my family what I think of them. Well, I will be happy to anonymously mail them a bag of dicks.
00:41:08.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
And, you know, any message you like with that, because you you know, there's always a message. um But yeah, I really, I think up until this point, even with a Trump presidency, there was a sense of clearer heads prevailing. And I, I just, that's, that's behind us now. I mean, it's, it's all right. All of it is. And anything could happen.
00:41:35.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Things are gonna happen that no one is expecting, I'm sure. Because, you know, I can't necessarily conceive of the military shooting down protesters, but if you recall, ah Occupy Wall Street got pretty friggin' bloody, and it wasn't because the protesters were out of hand.
00:41:52.00
J. Grant
Yep.
00:41:54.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, the people that showed up in the riot gear were the violent ones.
00:41:54.91
Mel
Mm hmm.
00:41:56.22
J. Grant
At the same time, at the same time on January 6th, Trump tried to activate the local National Guard to protect his horde of people.
00:42:09.16
J. Grant
And the National Guard told him to go fuck himself.
00:42:14.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and, you know, obviously I approve of that. Things are different now. He had lost at that point.
00:42:19.87
J. Grant
Indeed.
00:42:21.43
Wednesday Lee Friday
He had lost and he was on his way out and, you know, he was a lame duck. He's not a lame duck now. He's just an asshole, but he's an asshole with a whole lot of power and a bunch of apartheid guys surrounding him.
00:42:34.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
letting them know that, like, no, the proles don't matter. The masses, as long as we have enough to work and take over, you know, all the all the immigrant jobs after we deport them.
00:42:44.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
But but again, I don't i don't want a tangent. I really don't. I don't want this episode.
00:42:48.83
J. Grant
What? It's a podcast.
00:42:50.29
Mel
yeah
00:42:50.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
I know. It's just i don't I don't want to be another white person bitching on a podcast.
00:42:54.62
J. Grant
I know we started with guns and then we turned into politics anyway. but um
00:42:58.60
Mel
Well, I think the short version, which I agree with James on, is basically your your original question was, you know, do you think that us arming and training ourselves will make a difference, you know, against, you know, fascist law enforcement, as it were?
00:43:17.28
Mel
And I think that James summed it up by basically saying, On the federal level, no. On the local individual level, if it's just, you know, ah Sheriff Roscoe P.
00:43:30.03
Mel
Coltrane coming out and harassing you for being a queer, ah then yes, you know, ah you and several of your friends all trained and armed are good in that situation.
00:43:37.75
J. Grant
Absolutely.
00:43:38.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, i could I could beat up a school board, I'm sure of it.
00:43:43.02
Mel
Right? so
00:43:44.52
J. Grant
Yeah.
00:43:45.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
You put those books back.
00:43:45.49
J. Grant
And I'm saying straight up, if, if we broke some new, let's just say, handmaiden's tale, weird law that was put in in 2026 saying you're not allowed to, I don't know, own a copy of the Quran and the cops showed up here.
00:44:07.33
J. Grant
Maybe I'm, I'm, I'm pre, uh, maybe, maybe I'm giving myself evidence in the future to get arrested, but the cops showed up here for that. Oh, absolutely not. We're going in lockdown and a good luck getting in boys.
00:44:22.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Yeah, I love that. Love it. Um, let's see. Oh, we were gonna talk personal anecdotes. Now, Jay, I'm actually aware that you have been in a situation where a gun was used for self-defense. We would love to hear about it. We would love to hear what you learned from it.
00:44:44.82
J. Grant
yeah Okay, I've been in three, one of those I wasn't actually in, i was it was my parents. My mother, before she passed away, had a fairly decent online presence, and this is just a family story we all know because of the trauma it caused to,
00:45:09.25
J. Grant
um to everybody. ah Long story short, in 1974, my parents were living in Riverside, California when several very aggressive home invaders invaded their home. And they were basically threatening to kill them. And my mother used her 38 pistol, a revolver, and They ended up in court in wheelchairs.
00:45:40.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh my.
00:45:42.19
J. Grant
And had they been successful, because they just brought big butcher knives, kitchen knives, had they been successful, I wouldn't be here. ah Anecdotally, the first time I ever had to use a gun was in Long Beach, California.
00:45:59.53
J. Grant
I was living in a bad side of town, right? my Like my house faced a major throwaway, Bellflower Boulevard. One night I wake up at four in the morning to the sound of my living room window opening.
00:46:17.52
J. Grant
And I was a little what? And I just happened to have a pistol.
00:46:20.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yikes.
00:46:22.59
J. Grant
I had a 357 Magnum. And I came in and there was a dude, like his waist was right at the windowsill. He was halfway into my living room.
00:46:35.13
J. Grant
Didn't know the guy, didn't recognize him. Let's just say he looked like a tweaker to me. He looked like a meth addict and I cocked the pistol and pointed at him.
00:46:42.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
00:46:47.34
J. Grant
And he, ah his eyes got about the size of plates.
00:46:51.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm hmm.
00:46:52.66
J. Grant
And then he exited the way he had come in very fast to the point that I opened my front door to come out to try to get a look at him. And I could see him booking it down the sidewalk about a hundred yards away.
00:47:03.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:47:06.58
J. Grant
That dude did a, he just road-runnered. He was gone. I didn't fire. In fact, to date, I have never fired a gun at a living human being.
00:47:11.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well.
00:47:17.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
I think there are a lot of situations where just the sound of it cocking, or particularly that cool sound that a rifle makes, that shh, shh, you know, that scares the shit out of people.
00:47:30.09
J. Grant
I do warn people about that. A gun is not a noisemaker. My home defense weapon, my personal one's by the bed, is a 12 gauge. It's a pump action. Yes, does that sound scare people if they're you know invading a house and they hear they shook track of a pump action? Yeah, absolutely. But I keep one in the pipe, as they call it.
00:47:55.81
J. Grant
So I'm not making that noise. If there's a home invader, the first sound they might hear is the click as I disengage the safety. The next sound they hear, they probably won't even hear. yeah They'll just be dead.
00:48:12.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, don't rob people.
00:48:13.24
J. Grant
if if If the sound, no, this is actually something that ah that i've I've talked in public about before. If the sound of a gun, is enough to deter an invader or an attacker, then, and you don't want to go through the training to get knowledgeable firearms, just download the WAV file to your phone.
00:48:37.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
00:48:39.46
J. Grant
See how that goes for you. Because you should be trained in a firearm and if you just have it to make that chick chick noise and are in no way prepared to fire it, then you might as well just download an MP3 to your phone.
00:48:42.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
00:48:54.75
J. Grant
It's not a noisemaker it's a weapon.
00:48:59.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, and I mean, that's, that's a very basic thing. Like don't point at anything that you don't want dead. Don't even take it out unless you're taking it out to use it. You know, the the whole waving it around to intimidate people.
00:49:12.24
J. Grant
actually
00:49:12.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, it just, oh no, please go ahead.
00:49:16.20
J. Grant
Well, you sent us the the ah preview of what we were going to be talking about. um The basic four gun rules are one that I can rip through real quick.
00:49:27.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
Please.
00:49:27.59
J. Grant
The first one is there's no such thing as an unloaded firearm. In my family, unloaded was a profane term and you could get actually punished for saying it.
00:49:38.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
00:49:38.25
J. Grant
Guns exist in two states. They are loaded or disabled. A disabled firearm is one with its action locked open. You can see it.
00:49:49.43
J. Grant
it If you were to put a bullet in it and pull the trigger, they mechanically cannot work. Every single gun can be disabled. Anything else, especially if it just is closed and locked, if it's ready to go, even if you just check to make sure there's no bullets in it whatsoever, treat it as loaded.
00:50:11.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mhmm.
00:50:12.20
J. Grant
Unloaded is profane. The second rule, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire. And that includes while you're aiming. I do this to the point that I don't even pick up a Nerf gun and put my finger on the trigger.
00:50:22.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah.
00:50:27.99
J. Grant
You can aim a weapon at an attacker without putting your finger on the trigger. The trigger is the only thing.
00:50:33.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
That was so hard for me to learn as a kid. Because as a kid, you just want to put your finger on the trigger so much.
00:50:39.05
J. Grant
here Movies and TV teach people that when you pick up a gun, yeah, put your finger on the trigger.
00:50:39.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it was really hard to get to train myself out of it.
00:50:48.22
J. Grant
That's like putting your foot on a gas pedal of a car immediately.
00:50:51.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:50:52.75
J. Grant
It's the only thing that can make the firearm go off. The only thing. Don't put your finger on the trigger. The third one, ah and always, always, visually identify your target and what is behind it. Bullets go through things, especially when it comes to live mammals.
00:51:18.21
J. Grant
Bullets don't stop, it's not the movies, even hollow points don't just stop inside of a human body. They pass through and hit whatever's behind it.
00:51:28.44
Mel
This also includes walls, especially in apartments.
00:51:32.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, well, any neighborhood.
00:51:32.11
J. Grant
Yeah. You are, you are basically both ethically and legally, um, you're on the hook for all the damage that any bullet you fire causes. That's a hard one for me to get to people, get through to people when I'm teaching them how to shoot.
00:51:54.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, people still think it's safe to fire into the air. You know, that there's so much basic knowledge that eludes people.
00:51:58.66
Mel
Mm hmm.
00:51:59.45
J. Grant
Right.
00:52:05.22
J. Grant
and the fourth one is never ever point a loaded firearm and pointing is a human thing it it requires you holding it in your hand and pointing a gun never point a gun at anything a loaded gun at anything you're not willing to destroy it's that simple and if if you follow and the reason those four holy rules i only realized this in my adulthood i was just taught this as a kid
00:52:22.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
00:52:30.79
J. Grant
If you break any one of those rules at a time, you still can't have a firearms accident. You break two or more, that's when you end up on the news.
00:52:41.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
00:52:45.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep yep.
00:52:47.23
Mel
Well, I was going to say, uh, that actually kind of ties into the one anecdote that I had because I've never actually been involved in a gun incident.
00:52:47.26
J. Grant
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
00:52:50.19
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah
00:53:02.10
Mel
Fortunately, knock on wood. Um, however, I have had a couple of scares, uh, and one of them, you know, following those rules actually prevented any kind of incident from happening.
00:53:15.90
Mel
Uh, the short version was, uh, I was home and asleep and, uh, heard, was awakened by the sound of, uh, sounded like somebody kicking in our sliding glass back door. So mainly, uh, grabbed the pistol that I have in a lockbox under the bed. Um, and was heading out into.
00:53:44.34
Mel
very carefully out in the living room, you know, finger off the trigger, ah muzzle ready, but not pointed directly at anything. And as it turned out, um the sound of someone kicking in a plate glass sliding door can also be replicated by an obese cat deciding to jump onto a pinball machine at two in the morning and landing on the large plate of glass on top of it.
00:54:10.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah Wow.
00:54:14.83
Mel
So because I followed these rules, I did not shoot the cat um and everything was fine. But yeah, if I had not been following these rules and I'd come around the corner and he startled me like that, there could have been you know a tragic accident and there wasn't. so
00:54:30.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. Yeah, to I I've never used a gun outside of a sportsman setting. I've been around people that used guns very irresponsibly.
00:54:41.53
Wednesday Lee Friday
But when I was a kid, I thought like my grandfather would take us to shoot skeet, you know, and he had this big thing that was like a mousetrap. It looked like it was giant and it would shoot the little clay disc.
00:54:53.60
J. Grant
Yeah, it's a clay thrower.
00:54:54.57
Mel
Mm hmm.
00:54:54.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, and it was so awesome.
00:54:55.96
J. Grant
Yeah.
00:54:57.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then, you know, all the adults would do it and then the kids would get to go have their turn. And I think one time, out of all the times I shot, I was probably nine or 10. One time I actually got a piece of the clay and I was so, so excited. And, you know, you go around showing everybody the big bruise on your shoulder, like, look what a badass I am. I've been shooting all day. Oh yeah, just out at the range, whatever, at the Sportsman Club. Like, I'm some kind of little gun enthusiast badass.
00:55:26.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
But that's the thing is that the NRA community, the Sportsman Club community, it used to be so welcoming.
00:55:27.15
J. Grant
And.
00:55:33.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
And if someone went there and said, I don't like guns, I'm afraid of guns, people wouldn't say get the hell out of here, you woke bitch. They would say, look, man, guns are fine, actually, you probably just need to know more.
00:55:45.26
Wednesday Lee Friday
And then they would start teaching them things. And that's something that we could probably stand to get back to as a culture. Just the whole like, no, man, you're you're maybe not an asshole. Maybe you're just not as well informed as you could be. Let us tell you some things. And we've gone so far away from that in the socio-political sphere for for good reason. I mean, there's there's lots of reasons not to break bread with Trump people.
00:56:11.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
But I think that reasonable people can agree on guns. And for the most part, they do. Like, it is a stereotype that liberals don't want anyone to have guns. Plenty of Progressive Zone guns.
00:56:22.01
J. Grant
Oh, no.
00:56:22.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
If I wasn't such a crazy pants, I would have one.
00:56:25.87
J. Grant
No, I've I've I've gotten in a few arguments with idiots online and they I know.
00:56:25.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
But, uh... What? You?
00:56:33.83
J. Grant
But they start it's on gun forums and they're like, well, I got more guns on you. I'm like, no, you don't. Guarantee you fucking don't um But actually to circle back to what you're just saying This is one of the things that when I say it's important to have experience with the firearm you choose Had you as a teenager or a child? shot skeet every day Gotten really good. at Just nailing those clays out of the air Awesome, then you have mastered that shotgun But if I were to hand you a Glock
00:57:10.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
right yep
00:57:10.43
J. Grant
You're starting at square one. You do not know how that firearm works. And that to me is one of the reasons it's important for if somebody wants a gun, you really, really need to get experienced and trained in it.
00:57:25.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah well i mean ah a Glock and a rifle they're they're different tools you know they're as different as a hammer and a drill they're just not the same they don't do the thing the same way So let's get into that. Let's get into how does someone know what gun is appropriate for them? Like how do you decide? What what factors do you consider? How do you decide?
00:57:49.66
J. Grant
I'm interested in seeing what Mel has to say here because mine literally is polished and I just put it in a video, so.
00:57:56.25
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
00:57:56.40
Mel
I was actually going to say I'm going to step away for a bathroom break for a second. So you start and I will come back in a second.
00:58:02.60
J. Grant
Okay. Well, um every time that my friends, especially my friends who've never fired a gun, come to me asking, oh, what kind of gun should I get?
00:58:15.59
J. Grant
The very first one or out the gate that I just tell them no, is any kind of handgun. Handguns are for a very specific use and that is home defense in very close quarters and self-defense also at very limited ranges. Nobody is John Wick.
00:58:41.29
J. Grant
Nobody is going to pull off a 50-yard shot with a handgun in a stressful situation at all. That's just not a thing. That's Hollywood. That's TV.
00:58:54.28
Wednesday Lee Friday
Would it make sense for me to carry a handgun in my purse for personal protection?
00:58:59.65
J. Grant
Well, that comes back to training and disappointment again. um A handgun is good if your attacker is 15 yards or closer. Also, it comes down to, is it legal in your state?
00:59:13.60
J. Grant
We live in Texas where after 2016, you can pretty much carry anything.
00:59:18.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
You need a permit where I am.
00:59:18.86
J. Grant
um No.
00:59:20.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
I'm in Michigan.
00:59:20.99
J. Grant
Yeah. We, we got rid of our permits. Like I daily carry a nine millimeter that I have learned. I have taken it to the range multiple times. I know how this gun functions and it's a pocket sized pistol.
00:59:35.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Are you, wait, are you open, open carrying that or can you conceal carry that?
00:59:35.42
J. Grant
Nobody knows. We. No, we conceal carry with no permit in Texas.
00:59:40.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, wow.
00:59:43.50
J. Grant
Well, we were concealed carry up until 2016, and then they passed a bunch of laws saying, yeah, we don't have to do that anymore.
00:59:51.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh good.
00:59:52.75
J. Grant
um Actually, you did send that list of, let's just touch on that real quick. Open carry versus concealed carry. I am a very strong proponent of concealed carry.
01:00:06.30
J. Grant
if you but like If you feel like you wanna open carry a gun, yeah, great, go on, show off to people what kind of gun you're carrying. It's more important to me that if anybody is trying to attack me, they don't know I have a gun.
01:00:21.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, I very much agree.
01:00:26.12
Mel
But if you don't have 17 visible rifles when you go to Sonic to you know get a milkshake...
01:00:30.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and honestly, I think, I think, but that's why people think that liberals don't own guns because we don't make them our entire fashion aesthetic.
01:00:31.57
J. Grant
Okay, those people are idiots.
01:00:40.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
You know, it's like, yeah, if, I mean, it's like, I don't carry a gun, but I do carry a knife. I have a little Spyderco that comes with me everywhere I go.
01:00:49.76
J. Grant
Right on Hello podcast listeners
01:00:50.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's great too. I love it. It's one of those combo blades. ah It's like one of my favorite things. But I don't like, well, I guess I just did, but normally I wouldn't advertise.
01:01:01.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
that but
01:01:03.58
Mel
and thought Edit that! Edit that!
01:01:05.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, because the thing the thing about like these people walking around with the giant guns, I mean, you obviously wanna look like a threat because yes, you are allowed to do that, but like I'm allowed to walk around with a boa constrictor around my neck and floppy clowns fuse.
01:01:23.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like I'm allowed to do that, but I'm not because it's ridiculous, you know?
01:01:28.08
Mel
However, that would probably be more of a deterrent for people mugging you than, yeah.
01:01:33.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's true, you know what?
01:01:34.51
J. Grant
I.
01:01:34.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
When I first got my anaconda, I had a roommate. Yeah, I had a yellow anaconda. His name was Dante. He was dope as fuck. so when But when I first got him, my roommate was very upset.
01:01:44.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
She was a drag queen. And hi, Charles, are you listening? Do you listen to my show? um But they they used to steal my laundry quarters. And so I'd go to do laundry.
01:01:56.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
And it's me, like, who doesn't drive, right? So I can't just go out and get quarters. my laundry quarters kept getting stolen. So I took all my quarters and put them in a Tupperware and put the Tupperware in the tank with the snake.
01:02:09.00
Wednesday Lee Friday
And yeah and then I always had laundry quarters.
01:02:14.52
Mel
That is amazing.
01:02:14.54
J. Grant
Right on.
01:02:14.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, it's but it's a tale with a happy ending. But but but we digress. um
01:02:21.47
J. Grant
Of course we do, it's a podcast.
01:02:22.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:02:23.93
J. Grant
That's how these go.
01:02:26.71
Wednesday Lee Friday
So yes, so we're so we're back to to choosing and and and thinking probably not a handgun for most situations.
01:02:34.45
J. Grant
Okay, if somebody wants personal defense, going out in public, I would say, yes, get a handgun, but Lord, you really need to be trained in how to shoot it. And also, much more importantly, when and why to shoot it. Because um even if it's a cut and dried, you're walking down the sidewalk, this dude runs up and tries to rape you. If you shoot him to death, you need to know how to react afterwards
01:03:08.82
J. Grant
legally because you are in for a lot of legal expenses. Even if the cops show up and say, oh, yeah, that was totally justified, no charges pressed, you are still going to have to pay for a lawyer.
01:03:26.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep. Well, and there's almost certainly going to be some kind of civil suit.
01:03:31.86
J. Grant
Yep. His family is probably, can you come back and paint him as somebody who, Oh no, the meth was just, you know, it was just something he only done that day.
01:03:42.52
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:03:42.89
J. Grant
And, you know, just cause he was coming at you with a 12 inch butcher knife, doesn't mean you had to shoot him once. When it comes to handguns, a handgun is a great personal protection device to about 15 yards. Most of my liberal friends are a lot more worried about their home. And if you're doing a home, get a long gun, get a long gun with a buttstock, it can be a rifle, it can be a shotgun, but get a long gun because they're far more accurate and far more powerful.
01:04:21.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, that makes sense because again, it's about a deterrent, right? I mean, you don't necessarily want to kill someone, you just want them the hell out of your house, right?
01:04:33.61
Mel
Or, at the very least, if they refuse to get out of your house, you want to incapacitate them and keep them from doing you harm.
01:04:34.00
J. Grant
i
01:04:38.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:04:41.44
J. Grant
It's the thing that I train people on every time that I've done this so many times over the last nine years. um If somebody's like, well, I want something that i like I can shoot to kill. No, you don't want to shoot to kill. You're trying to shoot to stop. Stopping is when the bad person either runs away or just stops what they're doing. The the whole ah wing someone in the leg or the shoulder thing, that's all Hollywood bullshit. You need a gun that if you shoot them,
01:05:17.76
J. Grant
They will stop doing what they were doing that made you shoot them that's it Dying is stopping Yeah, but so is wounding them or missing them entirely and they leave You shoot to stop not shoot to kill in fact, you can get in a lot of trouble if you
01:05:27.29
Mel
I mean, down the far end of the spectrum, yes.
01:05:36.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:05:43.88
J. Grant
do wing somebody and then decide, okay, I'm gonna execute them now. There've been multiple court cases in the last 20 years about this.
01:05:53.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Sure, sure. Okay, let let me ask about cost. Now, if you're talking about a long gun, something for home defense, um how much is like what what is a reasonable amount that someone should spend we're talking about like new from a gun dealer and that subuse thing you found wherever um How much is like, what is suspiciously cheap?
01:06:18.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
What is a reasonable price to pay?
01:06:19.89
J. Grant
yeah
01:06:21.18
Wednesday Lee Friday
What is it?
01:06:21.68
Mel
ah I'm...
01:06:22.23
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because I know that guns can be fantastically expensive, but it's like musical instruments.
01:06:22.57
J. Grant
Oh boy.
01:06:27.11
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, yes, you can have some for shockingly low prices.
01:06:28.23
J. Grant
Yeah.
01:06:30.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
They're not going to do what you want them to do. And if they do, they won't do it at a high scale level.
01:06:34.42
J. Grant
Oh, that, that.
01:06:35.82
Mel
I'm laughing because I know exactly the brand James is supposed to go on it is about to go on a rant about.
01:06:42.96
J. Grant
I'm not going to, no, I'm going to, I'm going to do a very small rant. So. ah You can get many firearms in America for remarkably cheap.
01:06:54.57
J. Grant
um There's a company out of, I want to say Michigan called High Point. I own three of these. I did not buy any of them. All of them were, somebody bought them, didn't like it, gave it to me. Two of them suck. One of them actually is really good.
01:07:14.00
J. Grant
um But we're we're talking about somebody, let's just say like somebody listening to this podcast is saying, well, I want a weapon that I'm going to get trained in. They're going to do everything right. What's a good price point for a gun? Surprisingly, long guns brand new are usually cheaper than handguns.
01:07:37.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:07:40.40
J. Grant
My recommendations are ah for a rifle, you can pick up a good home defense rifle for 300 to $400, brand new.
01:07:51.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:07:52.84
J. Grant
A shotgun, you can get for 200 or more dollars, brand freaking new.
01:08:00.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now explain for people that don't know the difference between a rifle and a shotgun.
01:08:05.73
J. Grant
It's in the name. um Rifles shoot. No, I mean, it's it really is.
01:08:09.85
Mel
Thank you, Captain Potentic.
01:08:11.76
J. Grant
It's literally in the name. Pistols and rifles have what's known as rifling. It's stripes of steel on the inside of the barrel that causes the bullet to spin.
01:08:24.80
J. Grant
Shotguns are what's known as smoothbore. They have no rifling. There's no anything on the inside. It's just like it's like looking down a chunk of You know, fence posts. It's smooth. Shotguns are smooth because they're supposed to be used at closer range. And if you fire a slug, the slug has rifling that picks up where the barrel does not. um A rifle, on the other hand, it's going to have a twisted pattern like a corkscrew down the barrel that spins the bullet because much like throwing a football. When it spins, it's more accurate. It stays on target.
01:09:05.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay. See, we know about rifling because we all watch Law and Order, but I don't i don't know that people
01:09:12.10
J. Grant
I don't.
01:09:13.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, what what I recall is like, I know we talk about TV and movies not being accurate, but the shotgun is the one that fills someone full of lead.
01:09:19.21
J. Grant
They're not.
01:09:22.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like it's, it's you know, ah it's the little, ah what what i every every gun term I ever learned has escaped my mind. But, you know, the buckshot in the cartridge that just goes everywhere and and just fucks your whole face up.
01:09:33.12
J. Grant
Oh, yeah, no. It doesn't go everywhere. And this is something that I've had to prove to people who went out and bought a shotgun and got me to train them on it. Buckshot is not like the TVs and movie.
01:09:45.90
J. Grant
It does not spread out, even with, I'd have to get into chokes and all that. Most, yeah most home defense shotguns have no choke.
01:09:51.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
I am going to tell Elmer Fudd that you said that.
01:09:58.94
J. Grant
It's what's known as open bore. And at 25 feet, those buckshot pellets spread out about four inches. At 50 feet, they spread out maybe eight.
01:10:11.99
J. Grant
You can absolutely miss with a shotgun. Otherwise, skeet wouldn't be a thing.
01:10:18.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah. yeah
01:10:20.45
J. Grant
Like, oh, I just pulled the trigger and everything in the sky exploded.
01:10:24.12
Mel
Yeah, it's not the AOE cloud of death that Hollywood often makes it out to be.
01:10:28.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
But if I'm a bad shot, I mean, obviously I shouldn't be if I'm handling a gun, but let's say that I just never really get the hang of it.
01:10:28.99
J. Grant
Now,
01:10:38.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
what what do i mean Do I avoid guns altogether or is there something that will still allow me to defend my home effectively?
01:10:46.16
J. Grant
I mean, I would tell that person to get a machete. like There's no getting around that shot placement matters. Shotguns do not just spread out and kill a whole room full of drug dealers at a time.
01:11:00.33
J. Grant
um I would say, OK, what was the original question? What kind of what?
01:11:06.24
Mel
if you're if you're a bad shot but
01:11:09.72
J. Grant
If you're a bad shot, ah go to the range and be a better shot.
01:11:09.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:11:13.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I mean, that that certainly makes the most sense.
01:11:16.17
J. Grant
That's like saying it's like saying, I'm a bad driver. What kind of car should I get? Like, no, go be a better driver.
01:11:20.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
A tank, obviously! Well, yes.
01:11:23.02
J. Grant
You should.
01:11:23.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
um Yeah, I think, like, anytime that I've had a gun pointed at me, it made my hand shake real bad. So I would have to think if I'm in a situation where I'm trying to shoot a gun, even if I'm normally pretty good at it, my hands are gonna be shaken pretty bad.
01:11:32.29
Mel
if you're a bad shot.
01:11:40.77
J. Grant
that also comes back to something that i I cannot train anyone on, the military can and certain firearms instructors can. um People for the most part are not ready for what a gun in real life does to a human being. It isn't John Wick, they don't just take a shot and they don't just take a bullet and drop over dead.
01:12:06.18
J. Grant
If you shoot somebody, they're prop the the probably gonna, if you hit them badly, they're gonna probably fall over. And then they're going to bleed and scream.
01:12:17.76
J. Grant
And you will probably be traumatized, not as badly as they are, but you will be traumatized. You're gonna need therapy.
01:12:27.60
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:12:27.68
J. Grant
Bullets don't just cleanly magically make somebody's life go out. You're punching a hole through somebody.
01:12:36.64
J. Grant
That's something that that, that one is really one where I tell people, you need to go to a, if you really think you're gonna have to use this in self-defense against a human being, you need to go to a proper trainer who will train you for what happens when you shoot somebody. Because they don't just fall over dead. They're going to yell, they're gonna scream, they're gonna cry. There's gonna be a lot of bodily fluids everywhere.
01:13:02.86
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, it seems like it would be impossible to shoot, to to have to shoot anyone without winding up with PTSD yourself. I mean, whatever it is, it's going to be a trump traumatic incident.
01:13:12.46
J. Grant
Right.
01:13:15.60
Mel
Yeah.
01:13:15.81
J. Grant
I have, I have hunted many animals with firearms and I've never once shot a human being. I hope I live the rest of my life without having to do it because the animals alone. Yeah, there were some ones in there that. Yeah, they left a mark on me.
01:13:35.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. You know what? let's ah Let's lighten it up a little bit. Now, we we've said we've said several times that TV and movies are mostly bullshit, but I'll bet both of you can think of a TV or movie gun ah scene or or event that is accurate.
01:13:41.84
J. Grant
Sure.
01:13:57.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
who Who's getting it right? Somebody must be getting it right.
01:14:00.54
J. Grant
OK, Mel, you want to do this on three because I think we have the same answer.
01:14:07.03
J. Grant
I think you're on mute. I can't hear you.
01:14:09.00
Mel
I am on mute, sorry.
01:14:10.18
J. Grant
OK.
01:14:11.04
Mel
um No, i'm I'm trying to think of one that's wholly accurate.
01:14:12.35
J. Grant
um three
01:14:17.84
Mel
But you go ahead and...
01:14:19.08
J. Grant
Oh, come on. and We watched these and you were like, Oh my God, everything is absolutely accurate.
01:14:26.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
but it's not John Wick?
01:14:26.69
Mel
i That is that one.
01:14:27.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
Because like, I was gonna say, it seems like, yeah, I mean, the thing is that just because we're not John Wick doesn't mean John Wick isn't John Wick.
01:14:28.29
J. Grant
It's John Wick. It's a hundred percent John Wick.
01:14:38.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, we can all see him.
01:14:38.60
J. Grant
Okay.
01:14:39.68
Wednesday Lee Friday
He's clearly beating up a guy with a horse.
01:14:40.01
J. Grant
John Wick. The John Wick movies were written and directed by a dude who had done all the stunts for The Matrix. And this is a firearms master and martial arts master. And the first time we watched John Wick together, both of us, especially Mel, because of her her um martial arts training, we're watching this movie going, wow, this is this is real. but There's no magical gun that just never runs out of bullets.
01:15:12.14
J. Grant
Nobody did like John. It's not like John Wick never fucks up. He fucks up in the movies and then he corrects.
01:15:20.45
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah I mean I'm not like an action fan per se ah an action movie has to be a pretty high quality to get my interest and I cannot take my eyes off John Wick and That's one of the reasons like I don't know.
01:15:21.10
J. Grant
Although.
01:15:32.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
Have you watched on YouTube any of the Keanu Reeves training videos?
01:15:35.87
J. Grant
Oh, absolutely. I thought they were amazing.
01:15:37.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
It is fucking incredible, you know
01:15:39.70
J. Grant
It also made me wonder what, who are these weird three people who over the last five years have broken into his house while he was home?
01:15:47.09
Mel
Right?
01:15:47.53
J. Grant
Like, I mean.
01:15:47.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:15:48.29
Mel
Seems like an extremely elaborate suicide attempt, but... you
01:15:51.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
It really does. Yeah, you might as well kidnap Liam Nason's daughter. I mean, what would even be?
01:15:56.99
J. Grant
The level of detail they put into the movies, I remember the first time Mel was watching John Wiggum. Mel has done a lot of martial arts and she had me pausing the movie like every 15 seconds going, wait, hold on. I know what the with that style is. And then he's mixing it with this style and Mel, you elaborate because I don't know all these styles.
01:16:19.38
Mel
I mean, I can't remember the exact details, but yeah, it was a very interesting ah and exciting thing to watch because most of the time when you see martial arts and action movies, especially when guns are involved, like, you know, the whole gun kata thing that's kind of gotten popular.
01:16:36.05
J. Grant
Ugh.
01:16:36.85
Mel
ah It's, it's like you can kind of see the the pee of reality buried under the 17 mattresses of special effects, as it were, and and and choreography. But this one, I was sitting going, no, no, they actually just took two valid, ah two or three valid things and melded them together. And yeah, it's not perfect. And it's probably a little more flamboyant than anyone in real life would do. But this is effective as hell. And I'm taking notes.
01:17:12.69
Mel
you know, kind of situation. So that was a really refreshing and kind of exhilarating watch for me.
01:17:20.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
neat
01:17:21.40
Mel
So.
01:17:21.42
Wednesday Lee Friday
Neat.
01:17:22.44
J. Grant
Another one, um, hold on. I'm going to have to Google it. The one that we were watching it, God, this was like 16 years ago. Uh, hold on.
01:17:35.28
Mel
and Equilibrium or?
01:17:35.92
J. Grant
There was a movie where collateral, 2004 collateral, Tom Cruise and, uh, Jamie Fox, Tom Cruise.
01:17:39.50
Mel
Hmm.
01:17:46.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wait, is that the one where Tom Cruise is a bad guy? and is
01:17:49.39
J. Grant
He's a hit man who has kidnapped a taxi gra driver to drive him around.
01:17:51.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, right, yes.
01:17:55.78
J. Grant
Tom Cruise's actual depiction of how he used close combat firearms, it took my breath away. like It was so perfectly done.
01:18:08.30
J. Grant
like This is above and beyond any training I've had. like This is realistic. This is how you would actually effectively use a firearm for self-defense or as he did several times, actual offense.
01:18:23.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, when I was a kid, it was the time when TV was considered the height of realism because they started counting how many guns they fired, like how many times they fired on Starsky and Hutch before they had to reload.
01:18:41.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
And at the time that was considered a very big deal, like a very, a huge leap toward, well, because you remember like TV in the sixties, people would get shot and then like clutch their belly and fall forward.
01:18:44.24
J. Grant
I mean, it was, it was a thing.
01:18:53.29
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like they there was no, yeah.
01:18:54.43
J. Grant
Right. No, it was, it was actually, yeah everybody knows what I'm referencing when I say, do you feel lucky punk? Like, and that said, Hollywood has basically turned as we've said a couple of times in this podcast, Hollywood has turned guns into this imaginary talisman that just makes you a bad-ass and you'll kill all the bad dudes and all the bad things will be done because you have a gun.
01:19:23.29
J. Grant
And I really want people to get away from that because guns are real. They're a real me mechanism. They're a real tool. You don't just, owning a gun does not make you into John Wick.
01:19:31.67
Wednesday Lee Friday
well Well, which is a shame, because it'd be neat if there was more John Wicks, but they'd have to really be John Wicks.
01:19:36.48
Mel
So.
01:19:42.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
And that's something else that I
01:19:44.52
J. Grant
I'm against that. No, I don't want that many puppies to die.
01:19:47.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah, well, fewer Theon Greyjoys and more more John Wicks, but um the idea that people, that like having a gun enables you to be a hero in, you know, like a mass shooting or or stopping some kind of altercation.
01:20:02.84
J. Grant
Oh, absolutely not.
01:20:06.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, then what we're running into now is people that think they're rushing in to be the hero and the cop doesn't know the difference and they end up dying, you know.
01:20:11.80
J. Grant
No.
01:20:14.67
J. Grant
Oh yeah. Yeah. We got Kyle Rittenhouse out there.
01:20:17.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
hu
01:20:18.95
J. Grant
Fuck that guy.
01:20:20.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:20:21.07
J. Grant
Um, no, I, it's something that when people I'm, I'm teaching them how to carry a pistol responsibly, I do often point out at the Colorado theater shooting, there were two different members of the audience who were concealed carrying.
01:20:39.41
J. Grant
They had licenses, they had loaded pistols in their pockets, and they did exactly what you are supposed to do. And that is you're not going to be the hero.
01:20:50.77
J. Grant
You're not going to rush the gunman. You're going to use your gun to make sure the aisle is clear and then get the hell out of there.
01:20:58.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:20:59.22
J. Grant
That's what they did. They never fired a shot against the guy. And a bunch of the public bleeped up and was like, well, why didn't you John Wick him? It's like, dude, you're talking about 50 year old men.
01:21:10.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, because there's no vantage point, there's no cover, you're just like in a place with a bunch of people.
01:21:16.32
J. Grant
No, it's if, if you are carrying a firearm, if you're carrying a firearm for personal offense, and it's usually going to be a pistol.
01:21:17.14
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's completely irresponsible.
01:21:24.17
J. Grant
The first thing I always tell people is, well, from now on, you're going to lose every fight at a bar, every fight at a party. If somebody's getting in your face, you're going to back up and walk away because you are carrying a deadly weapon and they don't know that. And second, you don't carry a firearm so you can be a hero. You carry a firearm to defend your life.
01:21:48.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I don't know how many people realize that that's actually a sociopathic fantasy. To want to be in some kind of horrible situation so you can rush in and save everybody.
01:21:54.52
J. Grant
Oh, it very much is.
01:21:58.15
Mel
Uh-huh. Main character syndrome.
01:21:59.50
J. Grant
Yeah, everybody wants to be that cop at Fort Hood who came in and killed the shooter, not knowing that that cop immediately retired and had to do years of therapy.
01:22:08.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah, very much so. Um, okay. So I'm just looking over my notes here, making sure. All right. So we're going to actually talk about some common mistakes that new gun owners make and you know, why you should not make them.
01:22:26.09
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I think one of the biggest ones is improper storage of guns and, and ammo. Um, do you guys, you guys don't have kids in your house, but I'm sure you're, you're still eminently responsible.
01:22:37.07
J. Grant
Not anymore.
01:22:39.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
Um,
01:22:39.77
Mel
That was a really ominous answer, James.
01:22:43.22
J. Grant
Not anymore.
01:22:45.35
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh!
01:22:45.83
J. Grant
Don't check the rose bushes.
01:22:47.43
Mel
The kid has grown up and moved away, so...
01:22:51.89
Wednesday Lee Friday
We had kids and guns and now we just have the guns so...
01:22:55.26
J. Grant
This is where my answer might actually shock you a little bit. um I'm not a fan. of, uh, required trigger locks. I'm, I'm not even a fan of gun safes. And let me, let me, let me, uh, anecdote this one. In my family at the age of five, you are taught what a gun is. You are given, you are, you are handed one and taught how to use it, when to use it, what it does.
01:23:29.35
J. Grant
In my family, going back for at least four generations that I traced back, they did this.
01:23:35.65
Mel
Thank you.
01:23:35.77
J. Grant
And this is a big family. They had a lot of kids. They kept their guns loaded and in a closet with no safe, no trigger locks.
01:23:47.10
J. Grant
Every kid knew where those guns were. And I was one of those generations and we didn't fuck with them because we knew what a gun was and what it does and when to use it.
01:23:59.25
J. Grant
You know, pull it out to show your friends of, you know, her, her chugging out. oh I got a gun. um I would say that if you have a house with unruly children.
01:24:11.42
Mel
or visitors or.
01:24:11.70
J. Grant
Yeah, you. Or visit or unruly visitors or unruly roommates. Yeah, you probably want to lock your guns up, put them in a gun safe. That's a real good idea.
01:24:24.85
J. Grant
There's a common narrative of, well, you know, most shooters, they they got their guns from a house where they broke in and they it was unlocked. That's not true at all.
01:24:35.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, i yeah, it's not.
01:24:37.56
J. Grant
I did a lot of research into this. And the reality is most mass shooters, at least since 2013, which is where I did my data set, ah they bought their guns legally.
01:24:49.63
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, no, that's that's still true.
01:24:49.72
J. Grant
They bought them within,
01:24:51.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
The last numbers I pulled up were from 2022 and it's still predominantly legal gun owners.
01:24:57.78
J. Grant
Yeah, they buy the gun within 72 hours and it's usually a nine millimeter handgun, not an AR-15. AR-15s count for less in all of the data sets I did year by year since 2013.
01:25:15.18
J. Grant
AR-15s and similar rifles, let's just say the AK-47 is similar. I'm sure somebody who knows guns, who's listening to this podcast can be like, it's not the same at all.
01:25:24.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:25:26.22
J. Grant
But. they count for less than 12% of mass shootings.
01:25:30.50
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well no, it's really more of a special occasion gun.
01:25:34.29
J. Grant
Oh yeah, absolutely. With that one out for the for your quincean area. um No, it the vast, vast majority of mass shootings are done with a legally purchased nine millimeter handgun.
01:25:53.26
J. Grant
It's easy to conceal. You can walk into your workplace. Nobody knows it's in your backpack and with double stack pistols being what they are, you know, you can walk in there with, you know, you got 22 rounds per magazine. Just unload on that manager and then everybody else. Um, when it comes to safely storing guns, I am not a fan of locking it up because that would be like putting your fire extinguisher under lock and key.
01:26:25.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, I mean, I and i understand that, theoretically, it it really doesn't take very long to engage a ah fingerprint lock and get your gun out.
01:26:26.61
Mel
Well, I'm just saying um we do have a gun safe where we keep the majority of our rifles locked in.
01:26:35.84
J. Grant
Oh, Lord, no, no, no.
01:26:36.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Honestly, I would... um oh
01:26:38.34
J. Grant
We'll lock horns on that one. Fuck those. If I got go ahead, Mel.
01:26:50.35
Mel
um And I do have a, not a fingerprint, but a push button ah handgun handgun safe that I keep under my side of the bed. And one of the reasons I got this was when the kid was little ah say, yes, they were trained in safety, the way that James and I were as kids, you know, this is not a toy, you do not touch it. and all All of that drilled in. However, I still ah wanted to keep mine safe. And it is instead of like said, instead of fingerprint, it's push button.
01:27:26.59
Mel
But because of the configuration, it has like over 10,000 possible combinations to open it. But since I have it memorized, I can literally do it in a third of a second backwards in the dark with one hand. So, and I practiced. So it's a matter of, yes, technically it's locked away, but it takes less time for me to open that safe now than it would for me to pull open a bedside drawer to get to it. So.
01:27:56.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, and I mean that, I would think that that would just be part of like your, your general gun training is getting it quickly out of the safe. And honestly, I don't think you're supposed to store your gun loaded, but if it was in a lock safe, if I would be perfectly comfortable keeping it in there loaded.
01:28:06.38
Mel
Exactly.
01:28:16.05
Mel
and
01:28:16.71
J. Grant
I mean, you can store a gun safely loaded because going back to those four rules, I'm not even kidding. The engineering of most modern firearms, the only thing that makes you go bang is putting your finger on the trigger. That's it. Nothing. You can drop it. You can throw it off a fucking building. It's not going to go off. um I, on the other hand, keep my ah home defense weapon behind a window curtain.
01:28:45.17
J. Grant
And I mounted magnets to the wall. So I have a loaded 12 gauge next to the bed that should the need arise, I can just grab it and go.
01:28:57.43
Mel
But the curtain has a combination on it. So, you know.
01:29:01.77
J. Grant
Yeah, I gotta sweep it aside and then up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right.
01:29:05.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah One of those steel reinforced curtains you keep hearing about.
01:29:08.99
J. Grant
You know, it's it's just a bedroom curtain and that's just it.
01:29:09.13
Mel
Yep.
01:29:13.98
J. Grant
Concealment is a way to keep people from knowing you have a firearm. um At the same time, as Mel noted, we keep most of our firearms in a safe. And that's not for safety reasons, that's because they cost a lot of money.
01:29:31.13
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and, you know, like, like weed used to be, it's one of those stupid little things that cops can hassle you about it if they want to. And it's typically better not to give the cops a reason to be able to hassle you. So, sure, safe, by all means. We're all being safe with our safes.
01:29:50.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:29:50.86
J. Grant
I mean, this could be a segue to something I wanted to interject in here. um One of the problems that I think your audience will understand, not talking down to anybody, is gun laws and drug laws in the United States are very similar in that they were written by idiots who have no idea how these things work.
01:30:14.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well I think gun laws were written for like muskets initially and then guns advanced a lot more.
01:30:23.95
J. Grant
Oh, no, there was there was the 1995 assault weapons ban that was so ineffective that when it came up for expiration under Obama, it was like no Democrats wanted to renew it because they realized this law, that this entire set of laws was stupid. It did not lower gun violence in America. It did not lower school shootings.
01:30:50.72
J. Grant
And the assault weapons man was dumb. It was it was written by people who quite honestly, I've i've read this law this this set of laws. It's almost a novel.
01:31:02.87
J. Grant
I've read it over and over again. I'm like, you people have never touched a gun in your life. It's just, it is literally the same as Texas marijuana laws.
01:31:14.70
J. Grant
Oh, but marijuana, it'll it'll make you rape your dog and kill your grandma.
01:31:18.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, they they do put it on par with things like heroin and cocaine, which, you know...
01:31:23.52
Mel
Mm-hmm.
01:31:24.04
J. Grant
Yes.
01:31:24.62
Mel
Well, when you inject those bong weeds, your eyeballs fall out and you eat your grandma, so...
01:31:29.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, my grandmother shouldn't be that delicious. I can't help that.
01:31:34.04
J. Grant
And to me, that's just as dumb as saying, well, the AR 15 was designed to blow children's legs off. No, it's not.
01:31:43.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:31:43.59
J. Grant
It's, it's a fucking, that's, that's a you problem.
01:31:44.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's an it... I'd love to meet the engineer for whom that is, yeah by all means. She'll be that guy.
01:31:51.30
J. Grant
But the AWB was passed. with a strong Democrat majority in Washington at the time. And if you read it, if you know anything about guns, this was written by people who had no idea how guns work.
01:32:09.11
J. Grant
They're like, oh, yeah, well, we'll outlaw the AK-47. Oh, the SKS carbine, that's still, that's a hunting rifle. They fire the same bullet.
01:32:18.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
Wow.
01:32:19.02
J. Grant
They're both semi-automatic. They literally fire the same bullet. It's no. And then when the AWB came up for, ah came up for renewment, Obama's administration looked at how popular it was, which it wasn't and was like, uh, it didn't actually do anything.
01:32:37.63
J. Grant
Okay.
01:32:39.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, the argument for that was supposed to be that it gets guns that do that, you know, the the so well, they're semi-auto because normal people can't own automatic rifles, right?
01:32:39.78
J. Grant
But.
01:32:51.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
right
01:32:51.45
J. Grant
No, you can, but you gotta get a tax stamp and an FBI background check.
01:32:51.48
Wednesday Lee Friday
so
01:32:51.80
Mel
Mm hmm.
01:32:57.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay, okay so so yeah so the thinking is to keep those guns away from regular people because regular people don't have need of them, which I think brings up an important point. Now, we agree that the right to own firearms is guaranteed in the Constitution,
01:33:16.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
but should that mean any firearm for any person who is is qualified to own a gun?
01:33:22.05
J. Grant
he he
01:33:24.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Now, I know people have, ah you know there's a lot of different ways to feel about that. you know As a citizen who lives in the world, there's a whole lot of people that I don't want to have, like you know like something with ah with a bump stock, for example, that's gonna make it real easy to shoot more in a short amount of time.
01:33:42.59
Wednesday Lee Friday
It doesn't make sense to me. I think anybody that has done domestic violence and actually been convicted of it, or pled guilty to it, shouldn't get a gun.
01:33:46.29
J. Grant
Heh, heh.
01:33:51.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
At least for a while. Get your shit straight first.
01:33:53.22
J. Grant
Oh, I 100% agree on that.
01:33:55.55
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and we know that domestic violence is a predictor for mass shootings.
01:33:56.35
J. Grant
So 100%.
01:33:58.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Like, we know that now.
01:34:02.61
J. Grant
I alluded to this earlier. In 2018, I was in a online argument And I decided, you know what, I'm going to do my own research. And by that, I'm not saying like, I'm going to do my own research about vaccines and listen to Dr. Oz. I actually went to FBI data and looked up mass shootings from 2013 onward. I did not expect the data that I found. And it actually changed my mind about certain gun control laws. Um, full auto.
01:34:36.61
J. Grant
it's it It scares people because they've seen it in Hollywood. The reality is most, and by that I mean the vast, vast, virtually non-existent on the other side, the vast majority of firearms crimes in America have nothing to do with full auto.
01:34:54.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right.
01:34:55.48
J. Grant
Like it it like the hall the North Hollywood shootout was the exception proving the rule that most Firearms crimes, it has, they're done with nine millimeter handguns. um I actually have, and oh God, this goes into what they call the loopholes. For instance, my survival rifle, the one that I would grab if society collapsed and I grabbed, it's a 22 that I put a binary trigger on. It is not a machine gun. It goes bang when I pull the trigger.
01:35:33.09
J. Grant
It also goes bang when I release the trigger. So I can empty a 25 round magazine of it. I have a video of this. I can empty a 25 round magazine of it in like eight seconds. Does that turn it into a machine gun? No, I fired those. They don't operate the same way. It's not about how fast you can fire.
01:36:00.55
J. Grant
It's not about even size of bullet.
01:36:06.19
J. Grant
And this is where I lose all the right wingers listening to this going, her, okay, we got a we got a liberal here who's pro gun. I believe that we should have a 21 day waiting period on all handgun purchases.
01:36:19.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, sure.
01:36:22.40
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, absolutely.
01:36:23.42
J. Grant
All of them. Well, but what if you need a gun right now? Get a shotgun.
01:36:28.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
For what? I mean, I i need, I need
01:36:31.04
Mel
Yeah, that's the question. What do you need to so for so urgently?
01:36:35.56
J. Grant
Okay, let's say a gal is getting stalked by a dude. Like he has come to her work. He's come to her home. He wants to rape and murder her.
01:36:45.83
Wednesday Lee Friday
See, the thing about that, the police should expedite that under that circumstance.
01:36:46.55
J. Grant
She feels...
01:36:51.10
Wednesday Lee Friday
That is a viable reason to go to the police and say, this is, I need you to waive the 21 days. There should be a mechanism for that. If there is a reason to not wait a full, well, but we've, for home defense, we've determined that.
01:37:00.49
J. Grant
Or just get a shotgun. Which is more accurate and more powerful.
01:37:09.30
Wednesday Lee Friday
You can't walk down the street with a shotgun, you know, if if there's a stalker, that's a little different.
01:37:09.36
J. Grant
here
01:37:17.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
But yeah, I mean, you know.
01:37:18.90
J. Grant
Agreed. And also, yeah, I'm not going to touch on my views about the cops.
01:37:25.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
but No, no, we want we want people to listen.
01:37:27.54
Mel
Yeah.
01:37:28.37
Wednesday Lee Friday
But I would imagine that we're all of one mind on cops. I have never in my life called police to help me and been helped by them. Like they've never improved a situation with their their presence or general coppishness ever.
01:37:38.63
J. Grant
Yeah.
01:37:45.20
Wednesday Lee Friday
So although I will say that in on occasions when I dealt with police as a a criminal, I think being a middle-class looking white lady, that everybody was very polite and professional with me.
01:37:46.34
J. Grant
General competence.
01:37:57.04
Wednesday Lee Friday
So.
01:37:57.20
J. Grant
Oh yeah, you obviously look like you could afford a lawyer.
01:37:58.81
Wednesday Lee Friday
Ha!
01:38:01.17
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah Fooled ya! But I'll tell you what. um but But once I started hanging out with H, I was actually, we we had, we were having an animated discussion and I turned around and walked in the other direction and a cop car like pulled up immediately to ask if I was all right.
01:38:22.11
Mel
Oh good lord.
01:38:22.32
Wednesday Lee Friday
And for those of you who don't know, my husband is, according to Michael Moore's movie, the most terrifying person on the planet. He is a black man over six feet. So yeah, that was, we were actually pulled over once in a cab because they thought that maybe we robbed the Hollywood video store.
01:38:42.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
And I was the manager of the Hollywood video store. I was coming home in a cab and they hey pulled us over.
01:38:47.77
J. Grant
It was an inside job, you see.
01:38:49.53
Mel
Oh my god. and And you hijacked a cab to to get away from the scene of the crime, because that's that's the best way to cover your tracks.
01:38:53.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes, that's, cause every, well,
01:38:56.46
J. Grant
Yeah, see.
01:38:59.15
Wednesday Lee Friday
And the the thing is, at at the time, the uniform at Hollywood Video was like a white blouse with a neon vest over it and a bow tie, which like, if I became a thief, exactly, 23 Skidoo.
01:39:02.99
J. Grant
yeah
01:39:08.55
J. Grant
me
01:39:12.04
J. Grant
Yeah, see, I'm stylish.
01:39:16.79
Wednesday Lee Friday
No, i would I would definitely wear a bow tie if I started robbing places, no question.
01:39:20.67
J. Grant
Wow.
01:39:23.80
Mel
Oh my gosh.
01:39:23.94
Wednesday Lee Friday
I would be the bow tie robber.
01:39:27.67
Mel
Ah, the bozo band, it's struck again!
01:39:31.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's right, she, I come for your DVD, she.
01:39:36.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, yeah, make make with the laser discs.
01:39:36.73
J. Grant
um Hello, everybody moved to streaming.
01:39:40.37
Mel
Oh my gosh.
01:39:42.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
I don't know what that is, it's 1929.
01:39:46.48
J. Grant
Yes, 1929 laser discs, they were printed on wax.
01:39:49.91
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh yeah, can can I see the Jack Dempsey fight?
01:39:54.89
J. Grant
Jesus. All right.
01:39:56.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
So,
01:39:57.27
J. Grant
All right. All right. What's your next question?
01:39:58.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
So we're we're we're talking about common common mistakes that that new governors gun owners sometimes make. ah We talked about trigger discipline um ah training. Now we we talked about this a little bit, but like, is there a substitute for going to the range and and working with someone experienced? Is there any way to get that experience without getting that experience?
01:40:21.56
J. Grant
Yeah, uh, find your, this isn't even a joke. It's going to sound like a joke. It's not a joke. If you're an American, you know, a gun nut. There's someone in your social circle that you, you're like, Oh, that's that gun nut. That's the guy who's like, you know, he's an ammo sexual. He's totally into his guns. If you're breaking into firearms ownership, man.
01:40:47.15
J. Grant
get that guy to take you out to a range You don't need to pay an instructor at the range. He's probably going to go, no more than the instructor.
01:40:55.84
Mel
I mean, this is technically still going to arrange with an instructor.
01:40:55.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm.
01:41:00.35
J. Grant
Yes.
01:41:00.85
Mel
It's just a hump.
01:41:01.61
J. Grant
And he might, he might know a, he might know a ranch or some private property.
01:41:01.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
You might not need an appointment um or or to.
01:41:04.38
Mel
yeah
01:41:09.11
J. Grant
And this is actually important to me. I take people to ranges, but it ranges. You're only allowed to shoot paper. I believe it's important to show people a reactive target like a beer can, a beer bottle, a pumpkin.
01:41:15.77
J. Grant
You're only allowed to shoot paper.
01:41:24.27
J. Grant
Show them what their bullet actually does to more than paper, because when you're shooting at paper, you're just putting holes in it.
01:41:31.94
Mel
what and in lieu of being able to afford a ballistic stomach because they are kind of pricey we have found that uh milk jugs full of jello stuffed into old clothing is
01:41:31.93
J. Grant
Show them the real damage that a bullet does.
01:41:46.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
That's what the militia guys do. They they fill up jugs with stuff.
01:41:49.18
Mel
hu
01:41:50.10
J. Grant
That's what we do.
01:41:51.02
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, yeah you know, we're in milit in Michigan. We have a lot of militia here. And when I was writing The Finster Effect, there were a couple different militia guys that like showed me their militia wares. And I don't know if you've you've read like in the back of that book, there was a guy that wanted me to call him Rusty Shackleford because that's Dale Gribble's fake name from King of the Hill.
01:42:11.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
Cause they were all like, don't put my name in that thing.
01:42:11.38
J. Grant
right on
01:42:11.98
Mel
Nice.
01:42:14.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Nobody can, I'm like, of course I'm not going to out you guys. Y'all are out loud and proud, but yet not somehow with your malicious stuff.
01:42:22.16
J. Grant
Yeah.
01:42:23.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
But yeah, if you're in in Michigan talking to not those like fake ass, we're kidnapping the governor militia guys, but like actual militia guys.
01:42:32.63
J. Grant
They were not fake ass. They were a real militia.
01:42:35.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Eh.
01:42:35.71
J. Grant
Let's not move that goal post. They were a militia.
01:42:38.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Real militias, I know they were cosplaying as um as a militia.
01:42:39.12
J. Grant
Just not one we agree with.
01:42:43.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Real militias have supplies and training and a bunch of shit that these these guys were like glamping militia. I used to buy weed from one of those guys.
01:42:52.88
Mel
So militia flash mob is what you're saying.
01:42:53.24
Wednesday Lee Friday
and
01:42:55.54
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah We're doing the militia dance so that it ends with kidnapping the governor. No, but But yeah, that I mean, but that is like, I think an important point is the difference between like real militias and like hateful separatists with lots of guns.
01:43:12.06
Wednesday Lee Friday
They're different guys. And one of the things you may find as a liberal is that when you try to go to gun ranges or talk to gun people, they may strenuously disagree with you socio-politically.
01:43:14.20
J. Grant
Mmm.
01:43:27.44
Wednesday Lee Friday
So you'll want to be able to like, you'll want to take some time and set some boundaries and some guidelines of things like, you know, what are you prepared to listen to? What are you not prepared to listen to? Cause you know, that's, that's just a thing that people will want to be ready for because right now it is rough to interact with Maca people and they're goddamn everywhere.
01:43:46.41
Mel
Yeah, I'm just saying I agree with you.
01:43:46.73
J. Grant
Oh, agreed.
01:43:49.49
Mel
I think that like ah the upcoming holiday season, if you and your gun-owning acquaintance who's going to be training you, you can set a very firm no political discussion boundary at the beginning of the session and just carry on from there hopefully.
01:44:01.41
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mm-hmm. Yep. yeah
01:44:06.80
J. Grant
Maybe it's confirmation bias, but most of the gun nuts, like my level gun nuts, we don't care about politics.
01:44:08.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:44:15.05
J. Grant
If somebody's interested, in learning how to safely shoot a firearm, we are all about it. We're like, oh yeah, awesome, okay, I don't like i don't care what your, I don't care. It comes back to the guns, always comes back to the guns. I would point out that last time I checked, one of my favorite ranges where I teach people, the cheapest in-house firearms instructor is gonna run about $75 an hour.
01:44:46.65
Wednesday Lee Friday
Okay.
01:44:46.97
J. Grant
Reach out to your local gun nut because they'll do it for fucking free.
01:44:52.21
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, that's true.
01:44:54.25
J. Grant
It's fun to teach people how to shoot and it doesn't come down to killing anything. It doesn't come down to Rambo tactics or any bullshit. It comes down to everyone feels that incredible joy when you put a bullet on a target 50 yards out for the first time.
01:45:13.28
J. Grant
And you see like, I was that accurate. Holy shit. That's amazing. That's a thrill. That's like, you know, first time somebody rides a motorcycle over 60 miles an hour.
01:45:24.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
kea
01:45:24.97
J. Grant
It's just awesome. I know how to use this and your local gun nut, your friend who you consider like, Oh shit, that guy's he's got, he's got an amount of guns. It makes me wonder like what the hell he's up to.
01:45:38.40
J. Grant
That's the dude that is going to teach you how to properly fucking shoot.
01:45:44.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right on. Yeah, i I strenuously agree.
01:45:46.05
J. Grant
I might be that guy.
01:45:48.72
Mel
Hint hint, hintity hint hint.
01:45:48.95
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right. Now, I need for for you guys to do this instead of me, even though I kind of know the answer to this, but like, I do hear from people that say, I can't get to a range, but I'll bet I can set up a target in my home or in my backyard, in in a city where other people are.
01:46:06.49
J. Grant
No.
01:46:09.75
Mel
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
01:46:10.06
J. Grant
Well, you yeah.
01:46:11.45
Mel
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
01:46:12.26
J. Grant
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You're wrong. Uh, no, absolutely not. Bullets, uh, do not stop in drywall. Bullets do not stop in planks of, uh, backyard fence.
01:46:25.23
J. Grant
Bullets travel. Also, that's usually a felony.
01:46:29.97
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:46:30.51
J. Grant
Don't do that. Like ask around, find somebody who's got a farm outside of city limits. In most states in the nation, it is legal to go outside of city limits to a farm and do whatever the hell you want with a gun.
01:46:45.63
Mel
Yeah, and if somebody's got a dry creek bed or something, it's like, oh, look, here's an earth berm.
01:46:46.13
J. Grant
most yeah and you'll find probably that the two match up that gun nut that you know oh he's already he already knows several places you guys can go to shoot legally yeah the do not do this shit in your house or backyard for god's sake that's
01:46:50.32
Mel
You don't have to worry about a stray bullet going miles down the road killing somebody's cow. so
01:47:06.85
Wednesday Lee Friday
like yeah
01:47:15.66
J. Grant
You know, where would it be flamed to where where would it be safe to set off my flamethrower? I know my backyard. No, no, no.
01:47:22.46
Wednesday Lee Friday
yeah
01:47:24.38
J. Grant
no
01:47:25.08
Wednesday Lee Friday
Obviously your neighbor's backyard. Come on now, I have some consideration.
01:47:29.92
Mel
And this to this touches back on what you were saying before, also Wednesday with the whole, oh, it's okay.
01:47:29.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
um
01:47:35.97
Mel
I'm just firing it up in the air. It won't hit anything. No, it will come down.
01:47:39.90
Wednesday Lee Friday
Right. Well, and as we pointed out, you are responsible for anything that comes out of your gun. So ah people also pretty much know that they need ear protection indoors when they're firing. Do you need it outside too?
01:47:54.97
J. Grant
Yes, eye and ear protection every single time. of We are, oh, we're not supposed to use that N word. We are um really strict.
01:48:04.96
Mel
Rigorous.
01:48:05.81
J. Grant
We are rigorous when we take people shooting. Everyone has to have eye and ear protection. I actually have to write this second lifelong tinnitus because in the farm community, we didn't really care about those things when I was younger.
01:48:23.18
J. Grant
I got a ringing in my ears and I thought everybody had it.
01:48:26.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:48:26.47
J. Grant
And no, it was caused not just the guns. I also went to a lot of loud concerts, a lot of loud nightclubs. ah Protect your ears and eyes. Like that's important.
01:48:38.08
J. Grant
And guns are loud. They're very, very fucking loud.
01:48:44.49
Mel
um I will say that they make now fairly inexpensively and you can get them at Walmart or just about anywhere. um The ear protection that actually has a tiny built-in microphone that ah basically ah funnels ambient sound and voices and everything in so you can just speak normally you're not having to what at each other constantly outdoors but when something exceeds a certain decibel level, such as a gunshot, it cuts off just long enough for the shot. And so you can still hear and speak normally, you're not, you know, at a disadvantage or in danger or anything like that. And I find those to be a lot more
01:49:33.88
Mel
I'm trying to think of the word, uh, easy for people to get used to than the old school, Hey, just wad up this you know piece of foam rubber and stick it in your ear. And now you're deaf.
01:49:44.29
Mel
ah so
01:49:45.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well.
01:49:45.70
J. Grant
I mean, how many, Mel, how many times have you seen me start a shooting instruction outing with the words, I'm yelling at you.
01:49:45.98
Mel
mr
01:49:53.26
Mel
Exactly.
01:49:55.12
J. Grant
I'm not angry at you. I'm just yelling at you to make sure you can hear me.
01:49:59.42
Mel
exactly I'm just saying that the these types of ear protection that are out there now, and they're, like I said, they're fairly cheap. I want to say they're like, what, 15, 20 bucks?
01:50:08.85
J. Grant
Yeah. The last pair I picked up with last pair of picked up was $19.
01:50:12.35
Mel
Yeah. So they're very accessible at this point. And I think they make shooting and or wearing the ear pro a lot more accessible for people because they're not having to deal with the being muffled and, you know, Oh my gosh, I can't deal with this.
01:50:26.66
Mel
It's so annoying. I'm going to take them out so I can hear and then forget to put them back in and
01:50:30.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, and if you're investing in a gun for your safety, investing in the protection equipment is, I mean, it's the same thing.
01:50:31.19
Mel
You know that.
01:50:37.34
Mel
Protection.
01:50:40.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, you're investing in your safety.
01:50:40.63
Mel
I agree.
01:50:42.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
There's no need, no need to take an unnecessary risk, like not wearing proper protection.
01:50:48.44
J. Grant
Right, if you have to use the gun, if if you have to use your gun in a moment of emergency, chances are you're not gonna put on hearing protection.
01:50:49.12
Wednesday Lee Friday
I mean, I'm a crafter. We we use protection for, just for crafts. So, you know.
01:51:01.41
J. Grant
Yeah, it's gonna be really freaking loud and ah there's a whole thing that our roommate, are my meta could tell about. ah You probably will only hear the first shot and then your ears go into shock.
01:51:16.24
J. Grant
and you won't hear any of the follow up ones. Guns are that loud. They're louder than a 747 engine. But man, if you're if you're going out and doing those thousand rounds, protect your hearing.
01:51:29.49
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yes.
01:51:29.91
Mel
yeah
01:51:31.98
Wednesday Lee Friday
Is there anything that we did not bring up that either of you wanted to bring up? Because I think we covered a wide range of things, but is there anything that we left out that's important?
01:51:43.37
J. Grant
Trying to think. um Thinking back through the video I'm doing. um Accuracy.
01:51:48.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
We'll have a link to that in the in the description so so people can
01:51:51.71
J. Grant
Oh yeah, oh yeah, no. And that's just it. I want people to understand my channel and I even say it in the video I'm about to publish. I don't believe that guns should be linked to survivalism.
01:52:04.25
J. Grant
Survivalism, you can survive most things without a gun. like And by that I mean virtually everything. I have interviewed people who've been through social collapses, through actual civil wars, who never owned a gun. They came out the other side just fine because guns are a very America centric thing. We are, we are programmed from birth due to our media that, you know, guns save the day. Every time in all these movies, all these TV shows, guns save the day.
01:52:41.26
J. Grant
And that's stupid. Like learn how to build a fire, learn how to like purify water, how to remove human waste from your living area safely.
01:52:47.08
Mel
canned food.
01:52:48.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep.
01:52:54.05
J. Grant
That's a hell of a lot more important.
01:52:57.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yep, yep, right on. Well guys, it's time for the Mad Lib. Are you ready for this?
01:53:02.21
J. Grant
OK, how does this work?
01:53:03.87
Wednesday Lee Friday
How do Mad Libs work?
01:53:05.63
Mel
Well, I've never done it with two people answering before.
01:53:06.13
J. Grant
No, I know how Mad Libs work.
01:53:10.92
Mel
So that's the part that I...
01:53:11.16
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh wow, really?
01:53:11.49
J. Grant
I wasn't, yeah, wow.
01:53:11.80
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, see, this is this is ah this is a party game for us. So we we usually just go around in a circle.
01:53:15.13
Mel
Okay.
01:53:15.52
J. Grant
Okay, yeah.
01:53:17.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
So I'm gonna do the writing, obviously, because I have the book. So Mel, you start with an adjective.
01:53:23.27
Mel
Agitive, uh, see, here's the irony is I was an English major and I always get adjectives and adverbs mixed up when I have, when I get called on the spot.
01:53:31.58
Wednesday Lee Friday
Adjectives are for for nouns and adverbs are for verbs.
01:53:31.79
J. Grant
Add to it.
01:53:32.60
Mel
the Yeah. Yep. So adjective, uh, fluffy.
01:53:40.92
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, Jay, I need a plural noun.
01:53:45.47
J. Grant
Biscuits.
01:53:49.05
Wednesday Lee Friday
And Mel, a noun.
01:53:49.16
Mel
So we're getting in the Yosemite Sam territory, a noun. Uh, pistol.
01:53:56.81
J. Grant
Keep it on point.
01:53:57.73
Mel
so Oh boy.
01:53:57.69
J. Grant
Yeah.
01:53:58.75
Wednesday Lee Friday
Jay, another noun.
01:54:01.36
J. Grant
um Aardvark.
01:54:06.57
Wednesday Lee Friday
And Mel, another adjective.
01:54:11.01
Mel
Ah, velvety.
01:54:16.49
J. Grant
We're gonna have a fluffy biscuit velvety art vark.
01:54:20.34
Wednesday Lee Friday
Alright, so Jay, plural noun.
01:54:21.50
Mel
With a gun.
01:54:26.74
J. Grant
Socks.
01:54:29.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mel, noun.
01:54:32.23
Mel
Skull.
01:54:34.36
Wednesday Lee Friday
Jay, I need a verb in the past tense.
01:54:39.43
J. Grant
Withered.
01:54:42.27
Wednesday Lee Friday
And Mel, another adjective.
01:54:47.74
Wednesday Lee Friday
Jay, I'll need an adjective.
01:54:48.67
Mel
Granulated.
01:54:49.77
Wednesday Lee Friday
Granularly nice. Jay, I need an adjective from you.
01:54:59.00
J. Grant
Green.
01:55:00.99
Wednesday Lee Friday
Mel, a noun.
01:55:06.07
Mel
Glove.
01:55:08.03
Wednesday Lee Friday
Jay, a part of the body plural.
01:55:13.01
J. Grant
Toes.
01:55:15.51
Wednesday Lee Friday
All right, this is called a ghastly ghost story.
01:55:20.67
Mel
Oh boy.
01:55:21.05
J. Grant
Oh, Lord.
01:55:21.93
Wednesday Lee Friday
What? One dark and fluffy night, I had a sleepover party with seven biscuits at my family's old Victorian pistol at the edge of town.
01:55:35.70
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was the first person in the...
01:55:36.97
J. Grant
Haven't we all done that?
01:55:38.96
Wednesday Lee Friday
Haven't we? It's just a universal thing.
01:55:41.03
J. Grant
It was back in college.
01:55:44.58
Mel
Experimenting.
01:55:45.31
Wednesday Lee Friday
I was the first person in the house to fall asleep, and in the middle of the aardvark, I was startled awake by a velvety sound coming from the attic. Oh, is what, Mel Torme? Is that the velvet guy? up I couldn't stop my socks from shaking as I slipped into a skull, withered upstairs, and opened the door to the attic.
01:56:12.38
J. Grant
Haven't we all withered upstairs in a skull?
01:56:14.24
Mel
in a skull. ah
01:56:15.82
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, Dorian Gray certainly has. Out of nowhere, a granulated figure in a pale white glove with long green hair flew past me. Terrified, I screamed at the top of my toes.
01:56:35.56
Mel
ah The haunting of Michael Jackson.
01:56:35.71
J. Grant
Haven't we all done that to.
01:56:37.07
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah.
01:56:38.32
Mel
Okay. so
01:56:39.39
Wednesday Lee Friday
It's so, so relatable. He's Madeline.
01:56:41.10
J. Grant
The. yeah
01:56:42.40
Mel
yeah
01:56:44.47
Wednesday Lee Friday
You guys, I am so glad that you both could be here to do this. I think this was a really productive conversation and I hope that people got something out of it.
01:56:53.66
J. Grant
I hope to because I'm drunk.
01:56:55.67
Mel
but
01:56:55.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Oh, nice. Yeah, I've gotten...
01:56:57.47
Mel
I'm not, but i this was a blast.
01:56:58.10
J. Grant
Oh, I got drunk while doing this, so, yay.
01:56:59.70
Mel
so
01:57:00.69
Wednesday Lee Friday
Yeah, I got progressively more high from the... And I can always tell during the edit, I'm like, wow, I'm really high at this point. but um
01:57:07.86
J. Grant
You fucking hippie all smoking those weed bong drugs.
01:57:10.33
Wednesday Lee Friday
But... Yeah, it's...
01:57:11.86
Mel
Oh, boy.
01:57:12.07
J. Grant
You injecting those weeds.
01:57:13.78
Wednesday Lee Friday
ah believe me, it was less funny during the sobriety episode. um
01:57:20.64
Wednesday Lee Friday
Well, you know... Anyway, do do do those who can't do teach um So so yeah, so we're gonna be back, you know, whenever these air like next week um We're gonna have some episodes about trans rights and name changes and getting your legalities in order We're gonna be talking to some teachers about some education issues.
01:57:26.76
J. Grant
yeah
Audio version of this podcast can be found here.
Recorded 11/24/2024
A book you really ought to read.
01:57:42.01
Wednesday Lee Friday
So Catch up with us. We are gonna be doing a couple of more shows about vulnerable populations and how we can help In the meantime, massive thanks to Mel and Jay for being here. ah Please do support us on Ko-fi, where we are sometimes hilarious horror, who supports the mentally odd cast. Bye, guys. Thanks.
01:58:04.28
Mel
Thank you.
01:58:04.38
J. Grant
Peace out.
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