GUNS, VICTIMS IN SCHOOLS & TRULY STOPPING GUN CRIME

Robert Hansen

Even for a strong person.

Grant Shaw

Yes, even for a strong person, I don't know how Stallone did that in Rambo.

Robert Hansen

A lot of takes.

Grant Shaw

A lot of takes, in 60 because that's a heavy gun.

Robert Hansen

And steroids.

Grant Shaw

That too. Alex really took a front at this notion that, hey, here's this guy trying to get back to where he wanted to be. And just because he couldn't manage shooting this gun in a controlled fashion, controlled way that he would like to do, was asked to leave a shooting range.

So we took the concept of the wrist rocket, which was a slingshot from back from when I was a kid, that had a bifurcated flap that went over the wrist, that became a stabilizing point for the slingshot. But when you look at doing it for guns, the same sort of principle, you take that what looks like a stock.

We make most of our braces to look like stocks from an aesthetic standpoint, but it has a bifurcated flap that allows us to open it, put it over the wrist, tighten it down. And when you do that, all of a sudden, you have a stable platform, that regardless of the caliber within reason, you're able to manage the recall of that effectively.

You’re able to manage holding it with its weight without that being a contributing factor. And you're able to be more accurate with it. So he had this real altruistic motive around I want to get this into the hands of people with limited mobility because they're excluded from a whole category of guns that they otherwise can't shoot.

So it was really about getting his friend back in the range, back shooting again. And what started off as just an idea to help one person quickly blossomed into something that has gone on to help a lot of people but it was also just become a sort of, we've created our own niche within the firearms market. Which has been a great experience all the way around.

It's just been lots of ups and downs, of course with that, but overall, it's the American dream. That's what I love about what we did, is it was two guys who had an idea and a little capital and put them both together. Took some chances a little bit of mitigated risk, but came out on top and continue to produce a product that a lot of people enjoy.

And it's just been a very satisfying company to be a part of, as the range, but SP in particular has been very satisfying.

Robert Hansen

A very good friend of mine has nerve degeneration, in one hand, in particular is especially bad, but both hands are basically almost unusable. So you think, well, that person probably should never have a gun. But why not?

As long as you can make it manageable for them, maybe attach it to their wrist or make some other concession here and there aesthetically to give them this thing, why wouldn't you?

Grant Shaw

That was exactly the kind of the thought process that we had originally behind this is that everybody should be able to shoot, regardless of any sort of physical limitation or debilitating factor they should be able to shoot.

So if that involves thinking out of the box in terms of how we came up with the product to meet that need then so be it. It worked out really well. And turns out, there's a larger community out there than what we had originally thought.

Robert Hansen

So let's talk about what an SBR is. Do your best to define it, how you think about it. Also, if you can, try to explain what the ATF is trying to do to change the definition of SBR.

Grant Shaw

Yes, so United States is interesting in that we're the only country at least that I know of that regulates firearms based on the length of the barrel. This goes back to the late 20s, the 30s. And, essentially, what the US decided because you had a lot of people at that time, who were getting firearms, putting them under trench coats, things like that.

Guns were accessible at Sears, it was a different timeframe. There really wasn't an ATF at that time. There wasn't a lot of regulation around things like you could buy a machine gun at Sears and Roebuck up until the late 20s. Which, to me, is just crazy.

Robert Hansen

Different times.

Grant Shaw

Different times. You could also buy bees apparently you could buy bees from Sears and Roebuck and become an apiarist if that was something that you were looking to do and why not both. But the powers that be decided that we needed to regulate the length of the barrel.

So any firearm that has a barrel, or any barrel less than 16 inches that has a stock attached to it becomes what ATF calls a short barreled rifle. Those are legal to own as long as you're in a National Firearms Act NFA friendly state, but you have to pay a $200 tax, fill out paperwork, process some ATF forms, take some nine to 10 months to get it through that process.

And just like a suppressor or other things that you can have, you're able to get what you're looking for, but it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort to get to that to that point.

Robert Hansen

This is larger than a pistol, smaller than a rifle. It's right in that sweet spot where they think that that is the thing that's dangerous.

Grant Shaw

Yes, I think there's this misconception that the way a firearm looks mandates how it's going to be used, which has always been interesting to me. Product, for example, doesn't make a firearm any more lethal, or any more prone to be used in any sort of disturbance or crime of some sort.

It's just an accessory. That's all that goes on that firearm. But going back to your question, the US has a law, if you go into a gun range or gun store and you want to buy a rifle, if that rifle has a stock on it, it has to have a barrel of 16 inches.

Which is interesting and going back to the efficacy of a shorter barrel, actually, the shorter the barrel you have on a firearm, you reduce the efficacy of that firearm because you don't have length of barrel, the shorter the barrel, you have less spin on the bullet.

So it's not as stable, it's not going to have the same velocity, it's going to have a slower velocity, it's not going to be as accurate. So when you look at a gun with a shorter barrel, there's a tradeoff, you have a compact size, which is great for maneuvering in tight quarters. But you lose accuracy at distance because you just don't have a long enough barrel.

Robert Hansen

So what is the ATF doing to change the laws right now? What did they do?

Grant Shaw

ATF has been interesting. If we go back in time 10 years when Alex and I started the company, one of the very first things that we did was that we contacted ATF. Because we wanted to make sure that, we're producing a product that is not going to be construed to be illegal or is not compliant with laws and regs that ATF has established.

So we wrote to them and then we had a number of meetings with them telephonically at first, but then in person as the years went on. Where we sought their approval and sought clarification on our device and said, “Well this is designed and intended for people to use who have limited mobility.” it's the best way for me to say it.

We want to make sure that this is not intended to be fired from the shoulder as a stock would be. It's a bifurcated flap. So it's a piece of rubber that opens up over your forearm, we were able to tighten it down. So the whole way that we developed it was for shooting from this position.

This being an extension of the firearm, your forearm. Over the years as our product got more and more penetration to the market because of the fact that it wasn't regulated as a short barreled rifle, this doesn't make a firearm.

Robert Hansen

What did they say when you had those meetings? What was the reaction?

Grant Shaw

First reaction was, ”We understand what you're trying to do, this is not a stock.” That was one of the phrases that they came back. “We don't think this is a stock. And as such, it's not beholden to all the rules and regs that ATF established relating to short barrel rifles.” So for us, that was a huge, we can go sell this thing. And ultimately, I can't control how an end user wants to use it.

Robert Hansen

It reminds me of an egg in a sock. An egg in a sock is just an egg in a sock. If you put an egg in a sock and swing it over your head and throw it at somebody. Is that a weapon? I guess sort of. You know what I mean? It seems like anyone can misuse a product.

If they're misusing your product in a way that you did not intend, then why would anyone who didn't break that rule be culpable? Seems more it’s a user problem. If you misuse a product in the same way if you go kill somebody that would be against the law. So why wasn't that simple?

Grant Shaw

I think initially it was, but I think there's a point where we were becoming, this is probably year three, year four of our company's existence where we were starting to generate a lot of traction. ATF wanted to ensure that people understood what SPRs were, they understood what pistols were.

When you put our device on AR15 pistol, it doesn't reclassify, doesn't re manufacture firearm into some different type of category of firearm, it's just an accessory. So I think there was a period where initially, they went back and forth and said, “Well maybe ultimate in use determines the classification of the product.”

Which we said, that’s a difficult road to walk, because, again, to your point about an egg and a sock, I don't know what somebody's actual use of that product is going to be. I know why we designed it, how we designed it, how it's intended to be used.

Robert Hansen

You told them your intention; you didn’t leave it up to guess work here.

Grant Shaw

We were very matter of fact because again, if you go back to who we were 10 years ago, we were just two guys that had an idea, had a little capital and before they went and risked all that capital and blood, sweat and tears.

Wanted to make sure that the product that we produced as we envisioned it was going to be legal to sell, legal to own, legal to have.

Robert Hansen

And this isn't a firearm.

Grant Shaw

It’s not a firearm. No, it's metal, aluminum, plastic rubber, Velcro strap,

Robert Hansen

You don't think you could hurt me with this? Unless you took it on? Hit me with it or something?

Grant Shaw

Maybe if I dropped it off at 20 storey building on top of your head it might break the skin but no, I don't think. It's not designed to hurt you. It's mostly rubber as a matter of fact.

Robert Hansen

When they got wind of how well you were doing, what suddenly changed? What did they try to do?

Grant Shaw

We were at in Vegas for the Shot Show, which is the firearms big industry show that they have once a year at the Sands Expo. It's one of the biggest shows in Vegas. It's a lot of fun to go to. If you haven't been you need to go.

Robert Hansen

I know.

Grant Shaw

I took Chris, Chris had a great time.

Robert Hansen

Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.

Grant Shaw

But before shot show started, there was an announcement from ATF that they plan to change their mind on our approval. And their stance at that time was, well, if you buy it, and you put it on your gun, that's fine.

And if you shoot like it was designed to be, that's fine, but the minute you put it to your shoulder, you've manufactured or you've created a short barreled rifle at that point.

Robert Hansen

It just seems really, really silly to me.

Grant Shaw

Which was really silly.

Robert Hansen

But I get it. That at least makes sense. Everything up to this point makes sense.

Grant Shaw

The frustration we had was that there was a lack of clarity. We had follow up questions, we wanted to understand more about how they had gotten to this conclusion. But also just for the firearms community, from other gun dealers from individuals, we needed to be able to communicate to them what we were being were being told.

The issue that I had at that time, one of the things I didn't understand, which a lot of people didn't understand, was that you could have a gun with a brace on it. And at that time, they were saying if you put it to your shoulder, you're remanufacturing creating an SBR at that time.

Well if I was borrowing your gun and I decided to shoot it in a different fashion than you, does that mean that gun is now tied to the way in which I use that firearm?

Robert Hansen

What if someone does it accidentally just assumes it does one thing?

Grant Shaw

Of course yes. There was a time period where there were a lot of dealers who were concerned, and the gun dealers selling it in stores because they were afraid of like, I remember going to one where I'm put it up to my shoulder and the guy says “Oh, don't do that.”

I'm like, “It’s okay, I'm just holding it up right now, I'm not I'm not doing anything with this firearm.” And so it had a chill factor, I think, on the sales of our product for a while. But conversely, as you can well imagine, any sort of controversy often generates publicity.

In the long run that ended up being a good thing for us, as that, it got a lot of people talking and talking about firearms rules, firearms laws, whether or not this was inside the boundaries of what ATF is meant to be doing as a regulatory agency. They're supposed to regulate, interpret, not create.

That’s that that's what our legislators do. They create laws, and ATF regulates those. So what happened after a number of months of us going back and forth trying to get clarification on their position was that ATF ultimately rescinded their position. Said regardless of how someone uses the brace, that doesn't create a different class of firearm based on usage.

Robert Hansen

Well, now we're back to making more sense again.

Grant Shaw

Which to me was very logical and said, “Yes, that’s what we had been doing for the past three years.” That put us back on track to where we were previously and allowed us to grow. It's really a double-edged sword because at the time, it was very painful.

I mean, there were a lot of sleepless nights because we're like, “Holy cow, we've put all this money and effort and energy.”

Robert Hansen

I remember telling you a number of times get out while you can.

Grant Shaw

I know. It took a lot of it just took a lot of determination to stay the course, stand our ground and not get frustrated right out of the gate and blow up and get into an antagonistic relationship with ATF because we didn't want to have an antagonist relationship.

We never have we, still don't. I don't think we do. Except when it comes to subsequent determination.

Robert Hansen

Schwartz came up fairly recently. This is maybe a year?

Grant Shaw

Yeah, a little over a year ago, I would say November of 2020. Wait, 2019? Is that right?

Robert Hansen

2021 RO8. So it's got to be this last year.

Grant Shaw

Yes. So it was this last year. And, again, we've tried to work closely with ATF because we want to understand how, what their processes for determining what constitutes a brace versus a stock. To that end, we probably have 30 different braces that we make today.

I remember there was a phone call that Alex and I had at one point where we were putting every brace we were sending to ATF and saying, “Hey, can we do this, this is what we plan to do.” We were doing one with the AK 47, for example.

I remember the contact at ATF that we worked with saying, “You don't have to send in a request for every, we've already approved the category. So simply coming up with a different design that is related to a particular weapons system. It's the same principle you don't have to write in every time you get approval for that.”

Which was great. We still did a lot of that though. We actually included, for the first I would say five or six years of the company's existence, we included our original letter from ATF kind of an miniaturized version, with every brace that we sold so that everybody could see exactly what ATF responded to us.

How they responded to us about our product and not being a stock and not being subjected to the National Firearms Act, and the registration that goes on with short barreled rifles. And that was, I think, good for the firearms community as well because they got to see how that process worked. And that we were being totally transparent with respect to what ATF was telling us.

Robert Hansen

Then, all of a sudden, they came out with this new piece of legislation that has all kinds of weird point system thing attached to it. Which, by the way, I printed this thing out just so people who are on camera can look at this thing.

This is like 20-something pages of dense writing that is, I'm a pretty technical guy, and I've read exactly one million contracts. That is almost not legible.

Grant Shaw

It's very difficult to get through. I had to read it a number of times.

Robert Hansen

I read it last night, I did my best anyway, and I walked away from it with a lot of thoughts.

Grant Shaw

I think that's something, what you just touched on is pretty key and sums up my reaction overall to this latest push from ATF to try to classify and determine what makes a firearm an SPR versus a pistol. Is that it's so detail-oriented, and it's a point system.

There's everything from the type of weapon, I mean, there's a lot of information that goes into determining whether or not that gun is an SPR or a pistol with a brace on it. I think the average consumer doesn't need, doesn't want, they just want a product, and they want to know that the product is legal to own, legal to use.

Robert Hansen

There were some pretty interesting things I thought in there. Like, for instance, one of them was if there's an optic on it, that only works when your hand is fully extended, then that counts is a pistol. But if it works when your eyes are close, then that's a rifle. It just seems bizarre that they would come to that conclusion. What if it's just out of focus?

Grant Shaw

You're right. It's very confusing, very convoluted, and it sort of doesn't pass the common sense test. There's been a lot of pushback, and it gave us a great sense of comfort, knowing just seeing how the firearms community rallied behind us.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, how did that go?

Grant Shaw

It went really, really well. ATF provided a defined period of time in which comments were allowed to be sent in through the federal government's register. And we had just an enormous outcry from the end user community, and also the gun community at large.

Had, I think, upwards of 150,000 written responses that went in that stated people's opinions on this proposed regulation or proposed reclassification. The firearm industry is an interesting place to be where we tend to be a persecuted lot, in that we're providing something that is part and parcel to being an American.

It’s the Second Amendment, it's when this country was founding founded, it's what our Founding Fathers had in mind to not only put meat on the table, but also to prevent tyranny and to make sure that the common man has power and doesn't lose his voice and doesn't lose his ability to raise objection to the government,

Robert Hansen

I can safely say, I don't think I've ever seen a document coming out of the government, where an individual company's name is brought up at least half a dozen times throughout this thing. They were after you. You became a lightning rod, almost as much as the NRA itself.

Grant Shaw

Well, we did. The whole ecosystem now that exists 10 years down the road, or almost 10 years down the road, it's much larger than just us, we aren't the only manufacturers of braces out there. Lots of companies…

Robert Hansen

SIG, for instance.

Grant Shaw

SIG is a great example, they make a brace. And they've been very successful with it.

Robert Hansen

I mean, SIG I think has mentioned exactly once, and you're mentioned at least at least six times, maybe more.

Grant Shaw

Maybe more. These things come out of left field, we literally had been moving businesses normal for years, and then got a heads up from our attorneys that something was coming down the pike. And it's been interesting to deal with. I say interesting in that maybe frustrating is a better…

Robert Hansen

Is this a Biden specific thing or do you think this was coming either way?

Grant Shaw

I think this was coming either way. I think the current administration facilitated it. I don't think under a different administration, under Trump, the previous administration, this would have been pursued with the same level of intenseness is that word…

Robert Hansen

Enthusiasm.

Grant Shaw

Enthusiasm, as it has been now. We really seem to be something that’s risen to the top of the ATF shortlist. And it's frustrating from the standpoint because we really don't understand why our products haven't been used in nefarious ways, haven't been used in any sort of tragic fashion.

To your point about the egg in the sock, that's really a great analogy. It's just a brace. It's just a piece of stainless steel, rubber, that we make here in America. We put people to work, we've created this ecosystem within the firearms community which has generated a lot of growth, and it's been exciting to be a part of that.

In many ways, it's been the American dream, it really has been. Because you had two guys from very different backgrounds. My business partner Alex, in the armed services, Marines and the Army For close to 15 years.

I had been working for SAP and Oracle on the software technology for years. And you had two guys who were really, really enthusiastic about farms, we just love to shoot. He's from Jersey, I'm from Texas, go figure. But we ended up in Florida and met each other at a gun range, just because we really like the camaraderie that comes with shooting, the fellowship.

There's also a competitive side of the equation where you want to best. And it takes effort. Just like golf, you've got to have focus, you've got to work on your breathing. And there's lots of things you do, it's not just standing and shooting a gun in the general direction and being happy with that, you want to be accurate.

Robert Hansen

So how are things standing right now with the ATF? Are you feeling confident that you can, all this pushback? Because I mean, even if I wanted to follow this law, I would have to spend hours going over this just to figure out whether something I own was or wasn't legal? Maybe hours literally.

Grant Shaw

That's part of the crux of our response that we've had ATF, is that we've looked at it from the standpoint of our customers, most of which aren't into firearms, as deep as I am, they're not following the ATF website looking for updates on changes in firearms policies and procedures.

They bought it at a time it was legal to use it that time in that fashion, that way. And that's the last time they've ever thought about it, may be sitting in a closet somewhere, maybe they don't use it like I use firearms on a weekly basis.

But creating that liability for law abiding citizens, by having something that they may not be aware of is now been changing categories, being reclassified is a better way to look at it.

Robert Hansen

It's like owning a car and suddenly your car like that car is outlawed. Right, wait, what? I'm owning it already, what am I going to do?

Grant Shaw

That's that whole due process part. We sell product, we sell through the channel, we sell through VMs. And we don't have a master customer list of every person who owns our product.

Robert Hansen

Gun owners don't like that. I'm surprised.

Grant Shaw

There's no need for us to have that either. It's not possible for us to pull together that much information. So it's been interesting to watch how this developed.

Robert Hansen

So do you think it's going your way? Do you think it'll reverse this travesty? Or do you think they'll just refine it and make it more clear because this could easily be cleared up in hundreds of different ways.

Grant Shaw

I think as it currently stands, I think it's a non-starter, I think it's way too cumbersome on the average firearm owner to understand not only what they own and how it would be seen in the eyes of the ATF as well as what they might buy. It's just too complicated process. You can't put the burden of a 27 page document to determine whether or not…

Robert Hansen

I think its 26

Grant Shaw

26. it’s off a page.

Robert Hansen

I missed the cover page.

Grant Shaw

When I take a step back, and I just look at, okay, we're rational beings, we make rational decisions. To me that seems an irrational approach to taking a look at something that's been around for almost a decade, hasn't caused any problems or commotion in creating issues where there are none.

I think there's a perception that something looks small and compact and tacticool, for lack of a better term, is more deadly. It's like just the common misperception that an AVAR15 is more deadly than a deer rifle or a hunting rifle. They both have the same purpose in terms of their design and have the same capability.

Robert Hansen

Literally the same magazines.

Grant Shaw

Just because one can hold 30 rounds versus seven doesn't make…

Robert Hansen

Seven riders could just be replaced by 30. So it really is almost identical.

Grant Shaw

It really is. And so when I look at it from that standpoint, and I remove the emotion, I feel better because I don't see a way that ATF can implement the classification as they currently have it defined. It's just too cumbersome. I don't see how they could pass that.

Robert Hansen

Do you think they're done are you think are coming back?

Grant Shaw

Well, I think they'll come back. If I had to put money on it. They already sort of kicked the can down the road a little bit and have said that they won't be coming back with a response until August. So it's kind of a “we're going to pump and we're going to tell you in August what we think.”

I think they're going to come back in August and say we need to punt again or we're going to refine our approach because what we have put together as it stands today in that document that you're holding is far too cumbersome, far too difficult for the average Firearms Owner to be responsible for going through.

Robert Hansen

So the reason I wanted you to come is because the Second Amendment is definitely one of the most controversial topics in American culture for all kinds of reasons. I think before we delve into those specific reasons, it's probably good to start talking about what the Second Amendment actually is.

Because I think there is a pretty big misconception of it for, I would say, more than half the people I hang out with, don't want to shoot, don't like guns don't like talking about guns, don't like looking at guns, they're just totally turned off by the whole idea. They're literally allergic to everything about it.

But usually, when I talk to them even a little bit, I can see very large misperceptions and what it even is, they weren't even using the same language. And they make some very weird assumptions about things that I'm just not sure where they're even getting this information because it's not based in reality, from what I can tell.

So briefly, what I think the second amendment was, it started off as a way, because keep in mind, we had just fought a pretty massive war. And we had a loose colony of states, and everyone's pretty beat up. This is not a group of people who… it's a kind of a lot like Ukraine right now.

This is a kind of a war torn group of people and lots of limbs lost, a lot of lives lost, a lot of family members who are crying. It was not a happy, happy time. But I think there was some celebration, and some “Oh my gosh, I think we've just done it, I think we've made a country.”

But the problem is you made a country with a bunch of different countries in it. There was 13 countries, and they all were sort of their own thing banded together just to fight off the common enemy. But I think everyone wanted to have that sort of like, “We're our own thing, call us a state, call us a country, whatever. But we want to be around thing. Don’t come across the border, don't tell us what to do.”

The only thing that we agree on is you can you can have taxes, but that is only for security. That's only for the security of the state, the common states, the United States. So they created the Second Amendment, after ratifying the original Constitution, they created the First and Second Amendment.

First Amendment being number one, for obvious reasons, they want everyone to be able to say whatever they want. Second is to protect the first one. And the way I understand it is there's two separate things going on there.

Number one, they needed everyone to agree that we're not going to come to your guns. Because A, we need you to have them because we have this invading force that could come back anytime and we just kind of barely hung on there. But also, we don't want you to feel like we're coming in, we're not going to come in and take your guns and take over your land or whatever.

The federal government is not going to become the next king. First of all, any reactions to does that seem like that makes sense?

Grant Shaw

That makes that makes sense to me. And I think if we go if we go back in time, and you think about, to your point, about people, they’d gotten through it, we had beaten off the English and stood our ground. At that point in time, everybody had a firearm who was in the United States because you needed one.

You needed one to put food on your table, needed one to keep your family safe. What you said earlier, we were 13 different countries, we weren't an organized lot with a federal system. We didn't have Unified Police forces or federal agencies.

It was pretty rustic. I don't think we would have been successful in rising up and fighting against the British if we wouldn't have been an armed country. If people didn't have those firearms over already we wouldn't have had the same outcome. You saw on the Ukraine, the President saying “If you need a gun, come down and get one, we're going to we're giving them out.”

That's too little too late at that point. I think to what you said, there was a recognition that they couldn't have done what they did without having the firearm, without the individual having the firearm and to try to regulate that post war and say, “All right, well, we appreciate all that you did. But we're going to go ahead and go ahead and need you to turn your firearms now.”

That would not have sold. That was part of the reason that we were ultimately successful, was that we were we had armed citizens who were able to stand up and say this is tyrannical. We can do better, we can govern ourselves and we ought to be able to govern ourselves.

Robert Hansen

So the way it reads is a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. One of the words that often gets misunderstood a lot is regulated.

Because regulated, unfortunately has lots and lots of definitions, like an enormous amount, and to regulate has even more like probably 30 different definitions. But the way it was meant at the time was similar to how you say, I'm going to regulate my digestive track.

It's not like I'm going to have a cop come over and monitor me or something. What it means is make sure it's functioning, it's a well-regulated in the sense where you are regulated, you're regulating your temperature. It means orderly, in this context.

So if you read it, an orderly militia, and militia also has a bit of a weird meaning. Militia as it was defined and is still defined actually, is any male, which the ladies out there should be annoyed about that one. But any male between the ages of 17 and 45, under 45 unless you are in the National Guard, or I think as the naval reserves or something, naval militia, I believe.

Then you can go to under 64, I think, is what the cutoff is. Or if you're a woman, and you happen to be in the reserves, that's the militia. That's everybody in there. So I am not a member of the militia, I don't think you are either based on what I know about you.

But effectively, the bulk of what you call like the fighting force of the United States is part of the militia. Whether they understand that or not, that's kind of a weird side effect of the way these laws are written. It's not to say that you have to have a gun, or you have to train or you have to know anything about what's going on.

But this is sort of the foundation things like the draft, it's like, well, you're already part of the militia, we're calling up the militia, we're bringing them forward, which I know a lot of people have problems with. But these are all the same set of laws doing the same set of things. Is that how you feel?

Grant Shaw

I think that's a fair assessment. And yes, times have changed from the 1700s, to where we are now. But I'm 100% confident that if you would have asked any of our founding fathers today, if their stance, the principles behind why we have the amendments that we've made to the Constitution are sound.

In my perspective, those are the guiding bars that keep us in line, we have to have those. We have those in place, so that they can't be taken away. Those are our rights.

Robert Hansen

I also like to go back in time and think about what would they do and what would they say if you started giving them alleged cases here. Because when they say “Shall not be infringed,” a lot of people will assume what that means is there can't be anything the government would ever do to stop anyone ever.

Well, what about people in jail? What about the crazy guy down at the edge of the bar, where everyone knows that guy should not have a gun because he's just going to go crazy. They clearly had sanitariums, they clearly knew that there are certain people who are just not trustworthy with guns,

Grant Shaw

For example, children, right, you're not going to sell a firearm to a kid?

Robert Hansen

Well, that's the militia, so that all is covered in there. Well, what about something like there's just somebody who's very mentally incapable. Not necessarily crazy, just this person is Down syndrome or whatever, just don't necessarily trust this person with a gun.

Are we saying that the Founding Fathers wouldn't have just understood that there was some sort of okay, well, obviously, we're not talking about them. We're talking about able bodied. And able bodied means something to them, but it wasn't real codified in law.

Grant Shaw

Right. I think to your to answer, I think it was meant to be able bodied. Obviously, you can go down to the minutia and always find ways or examples in which well, does it apply to this? Does this make sense? Maybe it doesn't, maybe it does. But in general, able bodies is how it was approached.

Robert Hansen

Unfortunately, that was probably very common sense at the time, and now it is turned into something completely different. I have the same feeling about the First Amendment, by the way. So obviously, we have this everyone should be able to say anything they want except yelling fire in the theater rush, which is great.

Eric Weinstein actually did something really funny. He had everybody sing along, he's like, “I actually don't remember the word super well. So if you wouldn't mind just singing along.” So he's like, “Come on baby light my…” and then they stopped and everyone was singing along and they all yelled ‘fire” in theater.

I would have loved to been there to see that actually. But that is a great example of where context really matters because the DA is not going to go arrest them.

Grant Shaw

Context and intent. The intention was not to cause panic. I don't understand what Eric was doing there. But it's just a word. So it's the intent. It's the context in which that word is used. does it create Panic at the Disco? Does it create? no, that wasn't the intent.

Robert Hansen

Yet, that law is actually kind of poorly written in that regard. Because one person's panic might be the other person's just satire. I had a similar sort of problems where there's these weird edge cases that unfortunately, the Founding Fathers just didn't know how weird the internet was going to get.

Grant Shaw

Yeah, they hadn't figured out how weird that the internet was going to be back in 1776. I think that even today, let's say we were starting a new country, and we came up with our own constitution, and a couple years into it, we needed to make amendments along the way, we can't predict what life's going to be like in 200 years.

Take the internet, for example. When I was a kid, we didn't have the internet. So trying to describe that to me, 30 years ago, I don't know if I would have grasped that as well as I do now. Now I get it. I totally understand the pervasiveness of the of the internet and the role that it plays in disseminating information, good and bad.

But that sort of conceptually wouldn't have been something that our Founding Father thought.

Robert Hansen

I know for a fact, if I saw myself come back from the future, I would definitely know that person knows more than I do, don't mess with them. We just get more and more scarier as the years go by. So let's talk about the NFA act 1934. My understanding was this was mostly a set of laws that were meant to stop the mafia.

Grant Shaw

Correct. If we go back to what I said early on in this conversation around the ability to purchase firearms, without having a dealer involved, there wasn't the concept of a dealer, you could go to your hardware store, whether it's Sears or your local hardware store down the street, and buy a firearm.

Because they were seen as tools in the same way that a hammer is seen as a tool, a firearm at that time was seen as a tool to put meat on the table to provide safety in your house. Provide shooting sport with your kids, whatever it might be.

Robert Hansen

That used to be a thing back, then, now it's kind of inconceivable, but people used to go to the gym and shoot their 22. And that was a thing.

Grant Shaw

Times change.

Robert Hansen

Carrying a gun to school was required, you had to do it, otherwise, you aren’t going to pass class.

Grant Shaw

If you think about it back in the time frame again, as a country, we were growing, we're developing, we didn't have 911. And even when you have 911, it's not an instant salvation that occurs, it takes time for our men in blue to get to the citizens who are in need.

So you've got that time period that exists from when you place the call to when actually people show up. So the ability to protect yourself, protect your family. I think a lot of people have seized upon that and said, “That's why I need to have a firearm, it's not because I need to rise up and fight. It's because I want to have the ability to protect my family in the event, something unplanned happens.”

Robert Hansen

So I think also, when the NFA went in place, I think there was a lot of very gruesome murders happening, where people were going in and shooting up basically entire neighborhoods. And

That was their way of sending a message.

But there's really nothing stopping anyone from making a modification to a weapon and doing the exact same thing today. Clearly these people don't care about the law, otherwise, they wouldn't be in their business.

So what does the NFA Act actually do today? What are we talking? What is this doing for the public today?

Grant Shaw

I think there's probably two acts that are worth talking about. There's the National Firearms Act of 34, I believe, there's also the Gun Control Act of 68. Which combined really provide the regulatory piece of what the ATF implements.

Going back to the 30s, you had the proliferation of the Tommy gun, for example, which could be you could purchase it $20 from a hardware store, with no background check, no age requirement no requirements in general.

I think at that time when people were seeing how these firearms are being used in the way that they were being used by the mafia, by the mob. Logically, it made sense that yeah, we you shouldn't be able to go down to Sears and just buy a machine gun off the rack. You probably want to regulate that, maybe that needs to belong in its own category.

I think most countries, and the US is unique in that. In the US if you're in a National Firearms Act friendly state, you can legally own a machine gun or presser or short barreled shotgun or short, barreled rifle. A lot of countries can't even own a handgun. I mean, take the UK, just owning a rifle or a shotgun requires a fair amount of permitting, processing.

It's no easy feat. So the fact that in the US, we created this way of defining what falls into what bucket, made sense, and I think does make sense. And I think if you look at and there's there are millions of firearms that are in the National Firearms Act registry.

Again, these are all things like machine guns, and grenade launchers, and some of these things that sound pretty extreme. But the reality is, none of those firearms, or weapons have been used in a nefarious way. There's a lot of proper background checks that go on with respect to making sure that they're going into people who don't have criminal backgrounds.

Who haven't been judged to have been mentally defective or had crimes of domestic violence that they've committed. Logically, I think we all agree that we don't want to put guns in the hands of people that have made bad choices, or buying it to make more bad choices.

So that made sense. And I think we needed regulation to create healthy boundaries for what can go where, what can be purchased, by whom. And what might require additional levels of approval in order to own that.

Robert Hansen

I think Ukraine is an interesting use case, where is they have a general population that is just normal human beings who are making Molotov cocktails and getting in sniper positions and making it very difficult for people to move around the country unless they're on their side.

I think the people in the United States just can't imagine that that kind of situation would ever happen the United States. And yet we have had a civil war here. We have had multiple wars, the Spanish American War, we've had the Canadians come down and burned down the White House once.

It hasn't been while, it's been many, many years since we've had conflict have any real meaningful size other than maybe Pearl Harbor. But we're not necessarily impervious to foreign invaders. So one of the interesting things about this is, how many of the weapons you see on the ground, and there's a couple of very interesting Twitter feeds about this.

They're just small arms, they're just people with rifles or people with sniper rifles, but still just rifles, nothing that would even be covered by the NFA act.

Grant Shaw

Right. And I think the vast majority, if you look at firearms, they're used in crimes, they're regular firearms, they're not integrally suppressed silence machine gun, or submachine gun is just a rifle that's being used in a way that is criminal.

Just the same way a car could be used as a ramming. We don’t ban the car, because the car can be used in a dangerous way. It doesn't make sense. I mean, common sense, says, car brings a lot of good to this world, allows us to be mobile, allows us all sorts of freedoms that we wouldn't have, if we were dependent on public transportation, or our own two feet,

Robert Hansen

Just wait till we have self driving cars and they get hacked. I don't think people are understanding how bad that could possibly be. But it could get pretty bad. So let's talk about the different gun controversies out there, we talked a little bit about automatic weapons, but we talked about them in the wholesale, like this gun is shipped as fully automatic.

But there's also things like bump stocks, and there's binary triggers. And then there's just people who are really, really fast and semi-automatic and get very close to fully automatic speeds just by having a very well set up trigger. In fact, I used to play quite a bit of paintball once upon a time and there's something called a double trigger, where you just you just as fast as you can tap the button then.

And it's all just a little electronics inside that governs weather it shoots or not. And people would be hard pressed to know that that is not fully automatic. Like very fast. Well, 15 balls a second, and that's with my fingers just doing that.

Grant Shaw

I think that's a good point. Because you can take an AR 15, take a shotgun, for example. They're not really any. There are a couple people who tried automatic shotguns over the years but there really isn't a fully automatic shotgun out there that's been mass produced and used in large quantities.

Because it doesn't really need to, you can just pull the trigger pump it whether it's a pump action or not, you don't need to unload it at 1500 rounds per minute. It's okay the way it is. I think that again, there's a misconception that just because something is fully automatic, it's more dangerous.

If you look at our own armed forces back in the mid-80s, when the US Army put out its request to replace the M 16A1, with a follow on firearm, which became the M 16A2. They moved from fully automatic guns to three round burst because the army had been doing studies and showing that there was a lot of ammunition that was getting wasted on fully automatic fire.

Because, as you know when you pull the trigger, you've got a controlled explosion that's happening and the power of physics take over.

Robert Hansen

Actually, this is a point that maybe not everybody listening will understand. So semi-automatic and fully automatic, could you define that.

Grant Shaw

The way I would find that semi-automatic is when you pull the trigger, one bullet is fired with each pull of that trigger. And that's not including binary or devices, or bump stocks or anything like that. But it's one trigger pole, one shot, when you move to what's called automatic, fully automatic, it's a pull of the trigger.

Depending on the design of the gun, whether it engages or disengages or, however that's designed, it will fire multiple bullets, as long as you're holding that trigger. And whether it's two bullets, three bullets, or as many as you can have in a magazine, the way the government looks at that is if it can find more than one it becomes a fully automatic and then becomes subject to the National Firearms Act,

Robert Hansen

Then bump stocks. So bump stocks, effectively just use the recoil to basically make your finger move without moving kind of thing.

Grant Shaw

I don't have a bump stocks.

Robert Hansen

They're not legal anymore.

Grant Shaw

That's true. But even when they were, it wasn't something that I was really interested in. to me the bump stock was a way to try to replicate the full auto fire, but in a less than precise fashion, or fashion rather because the bump stocks from what I've seen, they don't operate the same every single time.

You pull the trigger, sometimes the fire is designed or they fired as designed, sometimes they didn't.

Robert Hansen

A lot can go wrong. It's pretty clunky.

Grant Shaw

It's pretty clunky. But I think there's this belief within the firearms community, that as long as you are a law abiding, taxpaying citizens in the United States, and you don't have a criminal record, and you haven't been a bad person, bad husband, you haven't done acts that are considered criminal, you should be allowed to have whatever it is that you want, as long as you don't break any laws.

Don't do anything that would otherwise result in a catastrophic situation. I mean I'm a huge firearms nut. I love firearms. I don't ever, ever want to have to use a firearm on a person. I mean, that's not something that I ever want to want to do.

But it’s something that I have to consider that if it came to that, and I was at home, and I've got a seven year old daughter and my house was being invaded. I'm not going to risk.

Robert Hansen

We'll come back to this one. I'd certainly want to talk more about it. But let's say with the technology stuff for a minute. Suppressors. So this is one of those, it just seems like Hollywood is to blame for this one. Suppressors are not something that are used in crime, like ever. And they're not particularly difficult to manufacture in your home.

It's extremely easy. So if bad guys wanted to use them, for some reason, they absolutely could. But no one, no bad guys ever that I'm even aware of ever, literally maybe other than some spook somewhere have ever used a suppressor in a crime. So what's the deal? Why is this something we're worried about?

Grant Shaw

I think a lot of it is what you just said early on earlier on, which was the way in which maybe Hollywood portrays suppressors. I love James Bond. He uses suppressors more than just about anyone, but even then the practicality of having a suppressor and spreading it on the barrel, it's not something that becomes…

Robert Hansen

It’s bigger and cluckier and heavier and slows the round down and it's a lot of bad things.

Grant Shaw

Oddly enough doesn't sound at all like the sound that you hear in movies.

Robert Hansen

Nothing like it,

Grant Shaw

Nothing like it at all.

Robert Hansen

But on the flip side, if you are a conservationist or care about the outdoors, suppressors are great.

Grant Shaw

Totally great. And I'll go back to the my seven year old daughter, I can be around her if we're outside I and I can have a firearm that has a suppressor on it, and I can shoot it, without it exceeding OSHA hearing level concerns, without me having to put your protection on her if I don't want to have that. Naturally, I always have ear protection, but in case it's not jarring.

Robert Hansen

And the birds don't care, the wildlife, livestock don't care, your dog doesn't care.

Grant Shaw

Right. It's not something that, again, if you looked at intention, suppressor, it traps the gases as they expand. There's a lot of things that kind of go on with those concentric series of baffles inside of a suppressor. But it doesn't make it more accurate actually has the opposite effect, it slows it down.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, it seems to me it's almost backwards. It seems like the government if they actually cared about any of this, they'd say everyone should have a suppressor because, they're safe.

Grant Shaw

If you think about you mentioned earlier with a gun range down, that sound was something that we had to put a lot of consideration into because it can be jarring for people watching who aren't in the range, who are standing back and just observing, as well as other people in the range.

So you want to manage that sounds as best you can. And not everybody has suppressors because a lot of people don't want to go through the red tape of filling out the paperwork, submitting it and waiting that time. And that's okay. But there are lots of us who do. And a suppressor is not a prohibitively expensive thing to get. 600 to $1,000 you can have some.

Robert Hansen

I can introduce you some good audio engineers, if you want to get that down even further. 3d printed guns, this is another kind of bizarre one where there seems to be a lot of moral panic about them, but at the same time, there's a million ways to make a gun.

It always strikes me as funny when there's a gun buyback programs and everyone thinks, “Oh, we're going to get all these guns off the street.” But all that happens is people submit, like pieces of pipe with like, a nail hanging off the end like, “Well, this would shoot, it would shoot at a shot gun show, that's a gun like.”

They have to pay this guy 200 bucks for $5 for the parts or whatever. And occasionally, some grandma brings in her old hunting rifle or whatever that she doesn't know how to shoot anyway. And that's pretty much the end of it. But 3d printed guns seems kind of ridiculous.

Why is the government's after this in particular, I don't have anything particularly great to say about Cody Williams, the guy who kind of pioneered a lot of this, I think he got in some pretty bad controversies. Laid it to underage ladies. But the idea that you can try to regulate bits and bytes on a computer that can be downloaded by anyone anywhere, and just extruded on some printers somewhere seems just bizarre. What are we talking about?

Grant Shaw

Well, I think, again, there's a practical side of it. It just doesn't, to your earlier point, there are a number of different ways to get a firearm. Printing it on a 3d printers is definitely not the easiest way.

Robert Hansen

It's the fastest way just to have the worst day of your life. But then secondly, it's not going to work very well. You might get one or two shots off.

Grant Shaw

That's a great point. I mean, it's one thing if I'm printing stuff on a 3d printer for a diorama that I'm making with my daughter. But it's different if it's something that is going to be controlling or managing a controlled explosion like firing a bullet. I wouldn't want to shoot a gun from a 3d printer. That's not something I would feel comfortable with.

Robert Hansen

It just seems to me there's a moral panic. It's a lot of people worried that suddenly there's going to be guns everywhere. When's the last time you've seen some guy in the street walking around with a 3d printer? It just doesn't happen. It's these manufactured concerns. I mean, there are real concerns with guns. That just can't be one of them. It's not even the top 100 things.

Grant Shaw

I mean, you think about the guy who's going to Comic-Con and wants to dress as master sergeant from Halo and wants a cool futuristic firearm that looks like the halo gun. I mean, that's fine for 3d. It's not a firing firearm. But to take something that's been manufactured and try to turn that into a device that can be used regularly.

No, it thwarts the agreed upon notion that, yeah, we do want regulation when it comes to creating manufacture firearms. People have the right to create a firearm. But if you do that, then you have to register it with ATF. To me that makes sense. We do background checks for a reason. Like you would with any product that could be used in potentially dangerous way, you want to have a way of tracking that.

Understanding how many are being made, how many are being sold. That makes total sense to me. Trying to fort that by making it at home would seem illogical. I think part of the issue is, it's not a glamorization. That's not the right word I'm looking for. But it’s this notion from people who maybe don't fully understand what a 3d printer is. Or don't understand what a firearm necessarily is.

The people behind who, what the buying patterns are of people who buy firearms. We don't want something that a guy made on a printer at his house. We want something that…

Robert Hansen

I think the only excuse they could make for getting involved in this is because they're just dangerous to the person shooting. You're much more likely to burn yourself or to try to get this hot stuff together, or the gun will explode in your hand, than you are going to hurt anybody else. Much more likely.

Grant Shaw

Yeah. I think that's a fair concern. But I think when this whole hullabaloo started several years ago about 3d printed guns, there was a lot of coverage in the media about this. It hasn't really amounted to anything.

Robert Hansen

We've had multiple years now where 3d printed guns are downloadable right now. You can go get them if you feel like it. I don't see them. They're not being used. What was going on there? This is the thing that drives me crazy. Because there's so much talk about it in the press, and no one's thinking.

No one's going to spend $1,000 to make something that you could make much cheaper. 200 bucks, and safer, with other parts that are freely available. You could just go to the hardware store and do it.

Grant Shaw

Right. It is insane. You are absolutely right.

Robert Hansen

It’s insane. People are just not thinking this problem through.

Grant Shaw

They don't think it through. I think that's because it's just glossed over at a high level. I mean, if you think about in the early 80s when the Glock pistol was becoming. It was plastic guns, right. There was all sorts of media noise around…

Robert Hansen

They're going to be able to groom these things right through security.

Grant Shaw

You're going through airport security with this plastic gun. Well, it’s plastic polymer parts but it still has a steel barrel. I mean, it still has lots of metal in it. That was just a great example of, oh, conceptually, yeah, this could be…

Robert Hansen

For years later, I thought they were talking about something other than the Glock because I'm like, “well, it can't be that gun!” They just got a metal slide. I mean, there's lots of metal on that gun.

Grant Shaw

Right. But you can see how it becomes interesting conversation if you skew it to, oh, it’s something that could get past a metal detector. It's not. I mean, it never was designed or intended to be used in that fashion.

Robert Hansen

For the audience's sake, I think I need to describe where I stand on this whole flesher. This is a bit of a story, but I think it'll be useful for anyone listening. I see myself as a protector, not a collector. I don't own this massive arsenal of cool looking guns. I have a few. But I have always seen myself as somebody who runs towards danger. If I'm going to do that, I gotta know what I'm doing basically.

Also by virtue of the fact that I've been involved in a lot of investigations. I brought a lot of people who are quite prominent, as a matter of fact, to justice. I have had a number of death threats, really fairly credible death threats. I just have guns. One day I might have to use it. That’s always how I thought of them. That’s around, but not something I really focused very much on up until, I don't know, maybe four years ago or so.

Then one day, one evening I should say, someone tried to get into the house. My wife at the time woke me up and said, “Hey, Robert, there's somebody trying to go in the house.” My reaction wasn't to flee. My reaction wasn't to freeze. It was to fight. The very first thing, up ready to go. Grabbed, I had a shotgun under the bed and grabbed it. I went to the door, completely buck naked for the ones who want to visualize that.

Grant Shaw

You naked with the shotgun. There's some shock factor there in that entry. But at the time, your wife called the police, I assume?

Robert Hansen

Not yet. I was having a discussion with the person on the other side of the door. We’re yelling at each other. He's calling me all these names. “Let me in!” Trying to get in. I'm…

Grant Shaw

This is out of left field. This person, this guy is in your backyard.

Robert Hansen

In the backyard coming in through the bedroom door. We're going to cut forward in the story a little bit just because there's a lot going on there. Police were called but I still had to deal with this person. Turns out that shotgun is terrible for home defense for all kinds of reasons I'm not going to get into.

But I ended up grabbing a pistol that I had. A backup weapon. I went outside which I would not recommend. Do not ever chase an adversary. But I was not as well trained as I am now. I went outside and tried to find this guy. He was hiding in a bush. I told him he had a couple seconds to leave or I was going to come out and start shooting.

He didn't leave. It turns out there's some good reasons for that. I had a chain link fence on one side and a privacy fence on the other. He climbed the chain link fence just fine. But he couldn't get out of the privacy fence. I basically caught him, you know what I mean? There was no way for him to escape. He was trying at that point to climb over my fence into my neighbor's yard. He has two little girls there.

I'm thinking about somebody, just imagine your daughter there. I'm like, oh, there is no way that's happening. You're just staying right where you are. I use my rather aggressive outdoor Robert voice. You can just imagine every curse word I can think of. I got him out of the bush. This is big, 10 foot by 10 foot by six foot bush, right. I got him. He was unwilling to get on the ground. He didn't want to get all the way in the ground. He was okay being on all fours. But he didn't want to go all the way down.

I couldn't quite figure out why at first. Later on, I figured out because he had this very nice white shirt on which I had not been able to see up to this point. It was very dark. I ended up basically holding this guy at gunpoint for about 14 minutes or so while the cops came. They were chased, they thought he was up and down the street. They didn't realize he is in the backyard.

But at one point in this moment, it's not like this all happened very quickly. This is so long. I mean, 14 minutes is… I mean, just sit there and do nothing for 14 minutes, you'll know how long that was. On top of the fact that this adrenaline's going and there's this person who's very erratic and yelling at me still. He’s doing everything…

Grant Shaw

Not complying with your commands.

Robert Hansen

He's doing everything wrong. He seems extremely aggressive and angry. This is not someone like, oh, mea culpa. At one point, he starts reaching into his back pocket as if to grab something. I didn't know if he had a knife in there. I didn't know if he had a gun. I yelled at him to get his hand out of his pocket.

He claimed it was a cell phone. His friends were, “calling me,” which is entirely plausible. But in that moment, I had made the decision that I was going to kill him. I didn't have to because he didn't do anything. But I overcame that part. I think everyone's like, “Would I be able to do it?” I had already made the decision.

Grant Shaw

You'd already assessed the risk. Regardless of the adrenaline in your system, I mean, it’s a legitimate situation that you're in.

Robert Hansen

Right. I've never known whether I could or not until that second. When I realized, if there's somebody who's going to hurt me or my loved ones, there's absolutely no way I'm going to let that happen. Absolutely, I know at this point that I'm capable of doing it. That was the first thing that I realized out of it.

The cops came. They were not impressed by his unwillingness to get on the ground. They had smeared him through my yard. There was a big boy on top of him. They dragged him off. I figured out who the guy was later. I used my special set of skills to know everything about the guy that there is to know as you would imagine.

But I also learned that I was incredibly poorly trained. I had no idea what I was doing. I went to the range, your range, the range in Austin. I met a Navy Seal who works there, Jeff Gonzales. I started taking classes. I met you shortly thereafter.

Grant Shaw

I remember.

Robert Hansen

Yep. That was the point at which I realized how far I had to go before I was even competent with a gun. I was not even close. I had shot all my life. At ranches or at friends parties or whatever when they go to a gun range. It is not what people make it look at all on TV. It is just very, very different. It is almost Zen. You have to really know what you're doing. You have to practice all the time. Practice in the right way.

Just going in spraying and praying is not going to make you good. In fact, I know for a fact that if I had pulled the trigger, I don't even think I would have hit that guy. I would have tried to hit him obviously. But I don't know that I was any threat to him at all. Turns out he was a CPA and just drunk, trying to go to an Airbnb. He thought I was just one of his asshole friends trying to mess with him.

I am very glad I didn't do that. This in the moral philosophy terms would be a lack of proportionality. I didn't have the right to kill him. But I didn't know that. I had no idea and he did literally everything wrong.

Grant Shaw

I think that's to your point about getting training. Not just understanding how to use the firearm, but understanding what to do if a scenario like that presents itself.

Robert Hansen

I mean, how weird, right? It came out of nowhere.

Grant Shaw

That's how those situations come up. I think it's hard to appreciate the amount of adrenaline and what that does to you as well. When that's coursing through your veins in a life threatening situation because again, at the time it's a guy in your backyard.

That’s all you know. You are buck naked. You're trying to go to bed. You've got this intruder. To me, if I was in that situation I would have done the same thing. I think I would have for sure grabbed my gun, called 911, and kept that guy in place until the police arrived.

Robert Hansen

The police did say that I had the right to kill him. They were very glad I didn't.

Grant Shaw

I'm glad you didn't either.

Robert Hansen

He was just a CPA. Just drunk, high and just in my yard. I thought he was at the wrong, thought he was at his Airbnb down the street. That’s very dangerous.

I have several thoughts about that. Number one, I mean, how do we make sure that we are getting people trained? That is the thing that I realized out of that, out of everything. That had the biggest ripple effect of my life, is actually getting good with firearms. Because I realized that there is no way I was going to let that happen twice.

One of the things that Jeff asked is, “In your last encounter, were you good, or was the other person just very unlucky?” I think he was just much, much worse than I was. He was just that bad off because I did everything wrong too.

Grant Shaw

Again, by not putting yourself in that position ahead of time and thinking about, what happens now that I own this firearm? What happens if I have a home invasion? Most people don't. When you look at, since COVID, 40% of firearm sales have gone to new firearms owners. Which is an incredible stat.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, when that COVID thing was happening, you were just out of guns. There was nothing left. They were cleaned out.

Grant Shaw

The shelves were bare. Hopefully, we'll never see anything like that again in our lifetime. But completely caught just about everybody by surprise in terms of how quickly that supply that existed just evaporated. From firearms to ammunition that just disappeared. And rightfully so. I mean, during that timeframe, there was a lot of civil unrest. A lot of people, defunding of police forces.

Ultimately to what I said earlier on; I have a seven year old daughter and she's the most precious thing in the world to me. There's nothing, there's no risk worth taking with her that I would willingly put myself in. I want to be the master of my own destiny in that regard.

Even when you, if you have detained somebody who is breaking into your property, most people forget about the fact that when you call the police there's lag time between when, enormous. To your point, I just learned something new about the story today when you told it. That they weren't at your house. They responded and they were down the street.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, they thought the person was running down the street because that was, our assumption is he had actually left. But he didn't. He went into a bush.

Grant Shaw

Right. That shows you. When that's all happening real time, there's a lot of communication that should be happening that maybe is not being relayed properly with the dispatcher.

Robert Hansen

Another detail of that story actually. It was actually my next door neighbor who called the police. He's like “Robert’s got them on the ground.” They thought it was down the street. He's like, “no, he's in the backyard right now. He's yelling at him.” That's how this all, because I could have been out there for half an hour. I mean, who knows how long they would have taken?

Grant Shaw

What happened when the police showed up? Did you say, “Hello I'm the homeowner. I've got the gun don't shoot me.”

Robert Hansen

My wife at the time told them my husband is the one with a gun.

Grant Shaw

Naked guy with a gun.

Robert Hansen

At this point I had put something on but yes. She made them stop and say, “repeat it back to me which one my husband is.”

He’s like, “He's the one with a gun.” She was very smart. Then they came out. They detained me and the other person which was actually very concerning because it took them a while to get this guy wrestled to the ground. Meanwhile, they're trying to get the gun away from me.

I'm like, “but he's still feisty.” You know what I mean? They ended up being okay except for they didn't understand the operation of my pistol. They weren't trained. Details about the type of gun, how it works and all the nuances around…

Grant Shaw

On the chamber or around or whatever.

Robert Hansen

Exactly. I mean these little things you don't think about. The fact that it has a safety. The fact that there's de-cock lever on. These are things they're not used to. They have Glocks. That is all they train on.

Grant Shaw

All firearms are not created the same for a lot of people who don't shoot regularly or don't maybe own a firearm or one pistol. Pistols can be without a safety. They can be with a safety. There are all sorts of different ways in which they operate. No two pistols are necessarily the same. A Glock is very different. There is no safety. It's a striker fired pistol. Once a round is in the chamber, it's ready to shoot.

Other pistols like a 1911 style pistol, you've got duplicate safeties. You've got one in the in the grip. You've got one on either side that you can pull down, you need to pull down to fire the weapon. Throw in a bunch of adrenaline and a crazy guy in your backyard, then you've got opportunities for failure, breakpoints.

Robert Hansen

For instance, I had the safety off but I wasn't sure I had the safety off. Then last thing I want to be doing is messing with a gun with somebody who's potentially a very dangerous threat in my backyard; who is still yelling at me this whole time by the way. This is not a passive individual. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about how much I didn't know in that moment.

Part of the process of, immediately afterwards, after the cops left and everything was cleaned up, I actually stayed up for several hours. Just writing down all the mistakes that had been made. No lights in the backyard. I couldn't see what was going on. I shouldn't have gone outside, etcetera, etcetera. A bunch of things like that. The gun issues and so on.

I'm really, really glad I did that because I think I avoided PTSD. Had I not done that, I think I would have spent too much time being emotionally charged. By virtue of writing it all down, I feel like I was able to avoid by focusing on every nuance of every detail. What he was wearing. What he looked like. Because I felt I might have to give this as a deposition at some point. I want to get it all right. I think I avoided some very serious PTSD. Seriously.

Grant Shaw

Yeah, I think you did. I think you experienced a situation that I think a lot of people say they're prepared to experience. But most people don't. We don't want to experience what you had to go through.

Robert Hansen

Which in the end was nothing if you think about it. That's actually the weird part. But I don't think this story makes me look good at all.

Grant Shaw

But at the time it all made sense. You have to make decisions real time. You don't have the fortunate ability to look at all the data points at that time, right. You're only able to glean what you can from the situation as it's unfolding. Especially when you've got somebody who is using substances, alcohol, drugs, whatever it may be. Not being rational in their own right.

You've got to make sound decisions to protect yourself but also not to do anything that you then regret and have severe trauma over for the rest of your life. Thinking, no, I shouldn't have done that. That guy was an accountant. He was just intoxicated.

Robert Hansen

I almost killed somebody.

Grant Shaw

But I think to your point, when you took the time to write down all the details, remember the conversation and remember hey, this is my house. You remember the confrontation as it was unfolding. To me that would help to really codify this.

This was a person who was trespassing, whose intent, that you had no idea what that intent was at the time. Again, hindsight it’s 2020 but you have to look at it when it's unfolding.

Robert Hansen

Well, now I've had maybe a week, week and a half of Navy SEAL training. I feel very confident compared to where I was before. That's quite a bit better.

Let's talk a little bit about the media, and how bad they actually are with guns. I know this is a personal pet peeve of yours and mine too. It is really abysmal. I just wrote down a couple of simple ones. First of all, through and through shots. You'll see people jumping up, something about Krista Beck about this at Southby. You'll see people jumping in front of somebody and it'll stop the bullet, instead of just going right through them and the person behind them and the five people behind them.

Just nonsense. Clearly no one was involved who actually knew anything about guns because that's just not how guns work. Or glamorizing how easy it is to shoot. You'll see a lot of people picking up a gun. They've never shot a gun before. Suddenly they are very proficient at it. Shooting people. It's like, that is very difficult to do. They're not even aiming.

Grant Shaw

Not too long ago, I'm not going to say why, I saw this on TV. But it was late one night. Invasion USA with Chuck Norris from 1985 was on TV. Every bad guy in Invasion USA shot from the hip. Shot a machine gun from the hip, which, if you're not a shooter, you want to have that up on your shoulder. You want to be able to control, and aim it. If you're shooting a gun from the hip like Rambo, you can't accurately see where those rounds are going to go.

Robert Hansen

Unlimited ammo.

Grant Shaw

Unlimited ammo.

Robert Hansen

That's gotta be one of the most annoying ones to watch. That really scares people too. It's like, oh my gosh, there's a 20 minute shoot-out scene. That wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

Grant Shaw

Well, you and I have shot machine guns together. You know that a submachine gun, take an HK MP5 can unload 30 rounds in 1.5 seconds. There is no 10 seconds worth of ammunition that you're just continuing to fire and fire and fire and fire and fire.

I think when you see that in the movies, to your point, it looks easy. It looks like anybody can pick it up. Anybody can operate it. It's going to go where it needs to go if you're a good guy. If you're a bad guy, you're going to miss your mark. That's not realistic.

Robert Hansen

At all. I think it also adds a lot of fear for people. They're like, oh, that's what guns are like. But they just aren't like that. They really aren't.

They're also incredibly loud. It’s another thing that Hollywood always gets this wrong. People are shooting indoors, and they're not. They're fine. They can talk immediately. You wouldn't hear anything. It would be beep.

Grant Shaw

It's incredibly loud. Going back to what we were talking about earlier with suppressors. Suppressors not only reduce the sound signature, but they also reduce the recoil. There's a whole argument that you could make. That it makes a gun less jarring to shoot when you have it suppressed.

But the sound, I think that is probably the thing, in my experience, when I have a first time shooter. The thing that surprises them the most is the sound of a firearm. They'll jump. That sound can vary widely as you know. I mean, a nine millimeter compared to a rifle round like a 5.56 millimeter, night and day. One is loud, and one is really, really loud.

Robert Hansen

A lot of people will literally leave as soon as that starts happening. They'll just walk out. I can't handle that even with ear suppression. Even with foams and those things over there. It's still too loud. Too much concussions.

Grant Shaw

It's a very visceral experience when you shoot a gun. There is the sensation of the firearm going off. There's a lot of movement and basic physics going on. You can feel the concussion of the explosion going off in your chest a little bit. There's the sound. There's the smell of the gunpowder. There are a lot of things that are very, when you see it on TV, all that's removed.

You don't feel the recoil. You don't hear what the actual sound of the gun is like. But when you're doing it in a controlled environment, you do. I think to me, and I grew up shooting guns, but part of what that does is it commands respect of the gun. That this is something that is a tool that can be used in a number of ways, right and wrong. But you have to know what you're doing. It's a controlled explosion going off. That's basically what it is.

Robert Hansen

I remember one time I went shooting with a friend. We were totally ill prepared and just shooting out in the middle of the woods or whatever. It was an actual range, but it was very uncontrolled. Just go out there and shoot. No one brought ear protection. We just shoved gum wrappers in our ears because we didn't have anything else. I heard this high tinnitus beep sound for at least the rest of the day. It was very, very loud.

Grant Shaw

I mean, the decibels that you hear, it's akin to being front and center at a concert. I mean, it's loud. Hearing protection is something that's important especially when you're in an indoor environment. Indoor range as opposed to outdoor.

Robert Hansen

Let's talk about gun laws as they relate to criminal activity because I think we've talked about it. How it affects the average everyday shooter. But when we're talking about somebody who is out there actually attempting to rob a car or rob someone who’s coming out of an ATM or whatever, steal a car, let's say.

These people are not necessarily people who give any credence at all to laws. They just they don't care because their business is crime. There's a class of laws that might have a positive impact like removing all guns. Might have a positive impact. But that means you have to remove them from the bad guys too. How are you going to go get those guns? And meanwhile, all…

Grant Shaw

How do you keep them out of the bad guys’ hands, right?

Robert Hansen

All the good people might deliver their guns to you that day, let's say in a perfect world. But the bad guys are not going to because they don't care about your laws to begin with. First of all, do you believe that there are any gun laws that exist or that could exist that really do a good job of targeting the bad guys in particular? As opposed to somebody who's just a sports man or somebody who's trying to defend themselves?

Grant Shaw

I think, to answer that question, one of the things that, as a federal firearms license holder…

Robert Hansen

You are a gun dealer.

Grant Shaw

Yeah, I'm a gun dealer. If I sell a firearm to you, I have to do a form 4473, criminal background check. Which is you're going to answer and say if you've committed a felony. You've got to answer truthfully, and honestly. You're going to get called out for that. If you don't answer truthfully…

Robert Hansen

You mean you have been caught before or?

Grant Shaw

Well, it's a fine line. But let's assume that you've been arrested for that. From my standpoint, I want that background check to occur. I'm okay with that background check. I'm okay when people do it on me. I'm okay when we have to run it on other people. I think there was an adjustment that we set. Well, I can't remember the exact year that we did it. But I want to say 20, 25 years ago. Maybe even 30.

We included people who had, because the way it reads now, if you've committed a felony, you can't own or have a firearm. But what about if you were a jerk of a husband and abusive, and abused your kids and your wife and had domestic violence, misdemeanors. Because that’s unfortunately, that's a misdemeanor. But we changed the regulations to read; that if you had committed crimes of domestic violence, if you were abuser of your spouse. That also precluded you just like a felony would from owning a firearm.

To me, that was a very real reaction to a, not a made-up problem. But a real problem whereby somebody could be a law abiding citizen, but if they have anger management issues and take that out on their family, or loved ones. You don't want that person having a firearm because they're volatile.

Robert Hansen

Same thing with road rage. It seems like that's a very similar class of, clearly this person's unstable in certain situations. They probably shouldn't have a gun. But how does that tie in with things like Red Flag Laws? How do you feel about that?

Grant Shaw

I mean, the problem I have with Red Flag Law is that you could flag me and say, “well, Grant’s got a whole shit ton of firearms that he owns.” Which I do. I have a lot of firearms.

Robert Hansen

He does. For the audience, if you've ever seen that movie Tremors where you see this big wall of guns. They have nothing on Grant.

Grant Shaw

I mean, I love my firearms. You pointed this in a different set earlier. I am a collector, whereas you may be a shooter, not a collector. I'm a collector.

Robert Hansen

Protector as opposed to collector.

Grant Shaw

I'm a protector but I'm also a collector. To me firearms are art. Their engineering is beautiful to me and how they operate. I have lots of firearms that just sit on the wall and get used once every couple of years but because they're very special firearms to me.

Robert Hansen

There's nothing wrong with that by the way. At least not from my perspective.

Grant Shaw

I would agree with that. Because if you tried to label somebody who owned 100 guns as a lunatic, I don't think I would, I don't think I classify as a lunatic. I'm just a firearms enthusiast.

Robert Hansen

Or you’re a lunatic. But then maybe otherwise

Grant Shaw

But more importantly, I haven't committed felonies. I don't have crimes of domestic violence. For all the NFA firearms that I own, I've gone through the appropriate background checks to make doubly sure with my fingerprints and passport photos. To make sure that I'm a person within good standing. I think we want to have a baseline of requirements around owning a firearm.

Now to the efficacy of those requirements due to your earlier point. Does that really keep a person with bad intentions away from owning a firearm? Of course it doesn't. I mean, just the same way that making drugs illegal or having drugs be illegal. That doesn't stop the availability of drugs in our streets. You walk out and get drugs very easily. I think people…

Robert Hansen

I mean drugs are illegal, so why aren't they gone? I mean, if the idea is remove all guns from the United States, which I think a lot of people still legitimately believe is the right answer. Well, start with drugs and see how that goes. Then get back to me.

Grant Shaw

I think that's a great comparison to show. Because with drugs, and certainly in the 80s when we saw this increase in drug usage and reclassification of drugs like cocaine to be felonies if you had that. It didn't stop the availability or demand for these drugs.

Robert Hansen

Or even if you're going to start with guns, start with the criminals first. If the criminals can't have guns anymore, you've arrested thousands of them, and there's no guns in possession, then I'll believe you. That you can safely do this. But that's just not the case.

Grant Shaw

I mean, I hate to keep using drugs with the example. But it's a fair example in that drugs are illegal. We're talking about narcotic drugs, illicit drugs, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, they're illegal. That doesn't stop their availability and usage within the US or the world at large.

Robert Hansen

I think there's a lot of confusion in certain countries. Well, we've done away with guns, but the United States is very strange. First of all, we have a lot more of them. We also have a culture around it. It's not just a military thing where only people who've trained with them have them or have ever been exposed to them.

Grant Shaw

Right, right. You take countries like Australia, for example, which 25 or so years ago had mass turn-ins where the government paid people for their firearms. They got rid of firearms. They were already highly regulated.

They're very different than the US. Firearms are part and parcel to who we are, I think. Again, going to the how easy it would be to put out. I mean, I just don't think there's feasibility in the US of having people turn in guns. I don't think people would want to do that.

Robert Hansen

What about things like making sure things are locked up in your house? Saying you have to have some childproof locks or some way to prevent them from being stolen from your house.

Grant Shaw

I mean, again, you look at buying a brand new pistol, right. If you buy a brand new pistol from me, it's going to come with a lock in that pistol case. That is a federal requirement that gun manufacturers have to abide by. They have to provide a way to lock that up. Now, I can tell you, I don't use that lock. I have a safe, I mean, my stuff…

Robert Hansen

But let's say that there was carve outs for that. Safes or locked vaults, all these things provide the same service. Which is, only the person who's allowed to be in there is in there. Do you think that that law would be practical or good to stop this?

Grant Shaw

I think the practicality is the issue. I mean, again, take a car for example. You could say that if you drive a car over 100 miles an hour that you have malintent. You're speeding. You're reckless or dangerous. Well, therefore, why do you need a car that goes faster than the speed limit, for example? But all cars go faster than the speed limits. I mean, we don't limit the speed of the car because of the risk associated with it.

I mean, at some point, people have to be responsible for the things that they own, and the things that they use, and use them in the prescribed manner. I think that's what we, take a look at the brace or take a look at some of these other things. That's what people step back and look at. It’s that, ultimately, I'm a person who's responsible for myself, my own actions.

I should be able to determine what is safe and what is not safe. I'll give you an example from my upbringing. I grew up in South Texas. In our house, we had, and I have this in my house now. But we have a gun cabinet, which is where all our shotguns, all out rifles, all our handguns as growing up were located. It was never locked in my house. But I grew up respecting firearms. It was never something that I would, I would never pull a firearm out and play with it or anything like that despite what misconceptions may exist out there.

Robert Hansen

I had a similar upbringing. It wasn't so much a gun cabinet, but it was just there were guns everywhere. It was a ranch. It made sense. People, they shot things.

Grant Shaw

That was for us as well. We had a hunting lease. We were constantly, for us that hunting and being outdoors was a way for my father and my sister and I to have fellowships, spend time. I mean, when you spend five hours in the morning with your father in a deer blind, you get an opportunity to have some pretty cool conversations.

For me, that was part of being a Texan. Part of growing up around firearms. But to the point of, my father didn't have a lot of, we didn't have locks on the guns or, it wasn't. There was trust. I mean, there has to be at some point that you trust.

Robert Hansen

But also you had a relationship where they told you that these are dangerous. Well, you were trained on those guns as much as anyone in the family.

Grant Shaw

That’s true. I mean, that’s very true. I had to respect them. If I ever displayed any improper gun safety techniques like swinging the barrel around or anything like that when you're hunting for birds, I'd lose my privileges. I think because I grew up not fearing firearms, just rather respecting them because they were tools. Things that I wanted to use. It was always painted as a privilege to me.

First and foremost was safety. If you violate any form of safety then you lose your privilege with the firearm.

Robert Hansen

I think that's definitely missing. It’s that common sense training of kids. If you're going to have guns in the home, they have to at least know how to make sure they're unloaded, how to handle them in a safe way. I mean, it's the very first thing.

I've probably trained maybe 15 people now how to shoot. Always people who've never shot before ever. Each time, I start with how to make sure it's unloaded. I don't start with how to start shooting. Like, here's how to make sure it's unloaded and then here's how to unload it. Now we'll talk about doing all the stuff you're interested in. Because if you can't start there, the rest is just very dangerous.

Grant Shaw

I think the way in which you are exposed to firearms. For me, we treated every firearm as if it was loaded and ready to rock and roll at any point. The minute I had a firearm on my hand, even when I checked to make sure there was no bullets in the in the chamber. It wasn't loaded. We still, you don't point it in the direction of anybody else. You don't dry fire it. It's treated as something that can kill because it can. It's a very serious thing.

Robert Hansen

The way I've been told, this is probably the best analogy I've heard. It’s like, okay, you take a gun. You unload it. It's absolutely perfectly safe. The safety or whatever things you can do to make this thing safe. Then put it in a safe. It was a safe. Walk out of the room, walk back into the room, unlock the safe, pull it out, and would you hold it to your head and pull the trigger?

Even though you know exactly what happened, and the fact that no one touched that gun. That just isn't safe. If you know how to handle guns, it doesn't even matter how well you have inspected the gun. The second it's out of your sights, like woof, that is just, I don't even want to think about what might have happened. You know it couldn't have happened.

Grant Shaw

But even then you know that what you're dealing with is something that's very serious. You just don't take chances. I mean, you respect…

Robert Hansen

Yet if we were to go to Wall Street and take bets on whether you die or not. Obviously, a betting man would say, absolutely take that bet. You're not going to kill yourself. You're fine. Go ahead. Do it 100 times. Do it 1000 times. You're good to go. It's still something that you just wouldn't do.

Grant Shaw

I think it's something that becomes sacrosanct. It's something that, it's ingrained in you. That don't use a firearm except for its intended use. I mean, just like the way in which I don't know, pre your training or after your training, you don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot. You always keep your finger off the trigger so that you don't have an accidental discharge.

Robert Hansen

There was 19,000 people murdered in 2020. 40,000 injured. By comparison, there was about 400,000 people who died of smoking. We're at least one, and maybe one and a half orders of magnitude off. Somewhere in there. Suicide was another 24,000 in 2020. That is the bulk of the people who died actually, died by their own hand. They were not shooting somebody else. They were shooting themselves.

Right there, that to me means that of all the issues we should be worried about, smoking is probably number one. COVID maybe has now taken its lead. But this is an issue that's down the pipe. This might be seven or eight on the list of preventable deaths. Why do you think this gets so much play, if those numbers? Is it just because it is newsworthy? Because it's interesting? Most of these deaths by the way were gang members shooting other gang members. This is not normal. This is not school shootings.

Grant Shaw

Right. I think when you look at statistics even further. When you look at when there is an assault that occurs or crime that occurs with a deadly weapon. That more than a firearm, it's a knife. It’s an edged weapon of some sort that is used. Or fists. I mean, there are lots of, fists can be just as deadly if used in the right way.

But I think again, there's a tendency to glamorize firearms. The light in which they're painted is, the hypocrisy that you see from a lot of folks in Hollywood who use guns and every firearm in every movie that they make, rather, but then they're outspoken.

Robert Hansen

Say a name. Who are you thinking?

Grant Shaw

I'll say, let's go with Mark Wahlberg for example. For a long time, he was very anti-gun, but a lot of his movies, firearms left and right. Alec Baldwin. I mean, there's a great example. Probably a better example. Somebody who is very outspoken against firearms yet uses them in the movies that he makes.

From my standpoint, it would seem that if you're going to preach from the pulpit, then you want your, you should follow your own preaching, and perhaps not be in movies that use firearms if you're against them. You look at something that's been, when you blow up the statistics. I'm a numbers guy. I like empirical data. When you look at, you take a step back and you say, alright, I'm going to use a scientific method. I'm going to approach this and look at all the data.

I want to see things at a macro level rather than a skewed and maybe micro level. You see different things right. You see that, to my earlier point that knives or your point, fists can be used in assaults. People don't necessarily think about that when they think about a robbery. Or they only think about the gun being used as the tool, as the weapon.

Robert Hansen

An estimated 2.5 million crimes a year prevented with guns. 400,000 lifesaving violent crimes are thwarted by guns. Of all of the deaths, only 611 were mass shootings.

Grant Shaw

Those stats are powerful to me. Why do you think that we don't talk about atrocities that are prevented by people having firearms? We don't really tend, if you remember, a year and a half or so ago, there was that church or attempted shooting in a church.

You had a couple of armed congregation members who were working security and were able to fort this crazy guy with a gun. You don't tend to hear a lot about those stories. You tend to hear a lot about the stories where the gun is used in a nefarious way, but not where a gun is used to prevent some crime from being…

Robert Hansen

This is actually my, probably one of my top two biggest beefs with the advertising world or the journalism world. The first is the advertising model. Then the second is this. The motto is, if it bleeds, it leads. They want to see some helpless young girl who's been cut in half by the whatever. Because that is sensationalist in the way that gets people going, “Oh, my gosh, that's terrible.”

They really want to tune in to that. But if some bad guy gets thwarted from a crime, well great. I mean, that happens 1000s of times a day literally.

Grant Shaw

But we don't hear about that. It's not sensational.

Robert Hansen

We don’t. Because it doesn't bleed. That was one of the few cases, the one you mentioned. That was one of the few cases where they did actually advertise that. That particular story. I was shocked that that actually made it to mainstream media at all.

I think it largely just, I think people forgot that that didn't fit their narrative. It leaked out. Then a bunch of other people picked it up. Then it was more of a thing. But I don't think you're going to see that very often. That might happen on a weekly basis and we might only hear about it once a year.

Grant Shaw

But that's counter to the narrative that wants to be told, that your media wants to tell. They don't want to. If they show that side of the story, then it undermines the argument that all guns are bad period. Right? That an armed law abiding citizen can impact a crime that's going on in a positive way and prevent that crime from happening.

Robert Hansen

There's so many amazingly awesome positive things that are happening in the world that will get zero coverage ever from a reporter. They can't get it through their editorial committee because it won't sell any ads. No one will ever click on it. They don’t care. That’s terrible.

I mean, this all comes down to this ad model. Because if it really wasn't an ad model, and people just wanted to write good, fluffy stories about how great the world is in any given moment. I mean, granted, there's bad things happening at this moment. I'm not saying that at all. But there's a lot of positive things that are happening around the world as well. Extremely positive.

Grant Shaw

Right. I don't watch the mainstream media news anymore.

Robert Hansen

I do when it's in the airport. When I was bored.

Grant Shaw

I like CBS Sunday Morning because they tell happy stories.

Robert Hansen

Occasionally, I will actually intentionally sit down and watch hours of a number of different news stations to see how they're handling any given.

Grant Shaw

I think that's fair. I think all of us who like to make our own decisions, who like to see the world through our eyes then make a decision on whether something is. Just make a decision on what our opinion on that is. We like to get our information from different sources. Then we may lean towards Fox if we're Republican

Robert Hansen

I mean, I think they're all just as bad.

Grant Shaw

They're all skewed.

Robert Hansen

They're extremely skewed. But all equally bad in the sense that they're all ad driven. That makes them push to certain directions, extremes. They're pushing certain narratives instead of just reporting the news. You don't really see people reporting the news anymore. They have, everything's in editorial now.

Grant Shaw

Right. It's true. It’s changed. It really has in the 50 years that I've been around, which is hard to admit. But it has changed.

Robert Hansen

School shootings are one of the, that's the hot button. That's the one where everyone says, “Okay, guns gotta go.” Mainstream media uses this as the icon. The thing that everyone should be pointing their finger at. We've got to stop this. Kids are dying. Before anyone thinks that I'm not empathetic about this, someone who's very close to me was in a school shooting.

They did not shoot anybody. They were there when it happened. This same individual also had, one of their relatives held a gun to their head, as well. Pretty horrible upbringing as well as drug dealers being around. Guns being present but not in a positive way. Bad things are about to happen sort of sense.

This is an individual, this woman who has gone through the better part of her life being terrified of guns. Literally just cannot, just extremely squeamish for very good reason. I mean, I can't blame her at all for feeling that way. We started going to the range specifically because she wanted to overcome it. She said, this is an irrational fear. The gun itself isn't the problem. It's the people who were the causing this issue.

It took me six months of working with her before she could actually shoot an entire magazine by herself. It was a big day when that finally happened. One magazine was it. It didn't go to two. But now she can actually go on her own. It's desensitizing her. She's finally relaxing around it. It's not as big a deal. It's not a splash of things that happened in her life.

Grant Shaw

It's not a trigger. Pardon the pun.

Robert Hansen

That's a good pun, actually. But I think if anyone's feeling I am not taking this seriously, it's only because you don't know the people I know. I definitely feel for people who have gone through that. I understand their pain. I'm just not sure that there is a credible solution to that problem.

Grant Shaw

Well, I agree with you. I also think about the role media plays when we talk about news and their coverage of those events. I mean, prior to Columbine and Colorado, I can't think of a school shooting. That was the first school shooting that I became aware of.

Robert Hansen

Copycat crimes are a thing.

Grant Shaw

Copycat crimes are thing. If you look at the news when you get mass coverage like that. If you're somebody who is mentally deficient, having issues with depression, and anger and things, you're going to see, “well, that's how I get people's attention. Everybody will listen to me then.” There has to be some responsibility that the media shares as well for glorifying, not glorifying. That's not the right word.

Robert Hansen

They sure do.

Grant Shaw

Maybe it is the right word then.

Robert Hansen

I mean, I think that's exactly what they do. They spend every waking hour analyzing it. Then they haven't, no news is even coming out yet. All they have is that some report. All of a sudden, choppers are on scene.

Grant Shaw

But to your point, though. What can you do within the realm of being reasonable to prevent things like that from occurring?

Robert Hansen

How do you have a law that both prevents innocent children from being mowed down by their classmates, and also allows 2.5 million crimes to be avoided per year? I just don't know that you get. It seems like it's really, really awful collateral damage that we just don't have a good solution for.

Grant Shaw

Well, unfortunately, these shootings aren't everyday occurrences. But they do happen. When they do happen, it sells. It's a story that people are interested in. But I think the practicality of how you implement that becomes more difficult if you're trying to be realistic.

I'll be honest. When I go to my daughter's school, her elementary school, she's in first grade. There are armed guards there which to me is way more disconcerting. I didn't have armed guards at my elementary school. What does that do psychologically to the children?

Robert Hansen

It's funny. I was thinking about this. People were like, well, we have active shooter drills. They're like, how horrible is that. They'd spent a lot of time saying that it's terrible. That they have to think about that. But I don't know if you had the same experience, but we had nuclear fallout drills when I was growing up.

Grant Shaw

Everybody did. If you grew up in the 70s, or 80s during the Cold War era, at the height of the Cold War. That was part of it. I mean, again, it goes back to…

Robert Hansen

We actually had a bomb shelter at our school. Yes. I mean, talk about a clear and present thought on your head every time you walk past it. You're thinking, that's where I'm going to have to go when the bombs drop.

Grant Shaw

Right. Right. When you think about, go back on your time machine to the mid-80s. You think about how the role of media, the role of Hollywood, I mean, there were lots of films. Lots of movies and shows that were all about the Holocaust. All about World War Three happening, and nuclear Armageddon. That was a pervasive theme throughout the 80s. When the USSR, when that collapsed, Soviet Union collapsed, it changed the dynamic. I don't know. That's a great, I'd be curious as to your old school, if they still do drills for…

Robert Hansen

It’s a good question. I don't know. That’s a pretty rundown bunker. I don't know.

Grant Shaw

Probably in all honesty, not in an effective way of…

Robert Hansen

I'm just telling you, that's not going to do much against a nuclear explosion.

Grant Shaw

I’m with you. The same way getting under your desk when you have a tornado. I'm not sure that does much but.

Robert Hansen

I think the two by fours would have been toast. Yeah, that's pretty junky. I want to round this out and talking a little bit more about your product here. I gotta know, who do you think your customers are? Do you think your customers are, I mean, I was actually curious. I looked it up just because it's like, how is it possible you have so many customers?

There are 1.6 million persons living without a limb in the United States as of 2005. This is old stats, but say it's in that range. There's an average of eight guns owned per gun owner. Some people have 50 guns. Some just have one. It does make sense that you could theoretically have a whole bunch of one-handed customers. I don't think that's what's going on.

Grant Shaw

No, I don't either.

Robert Hansen

Then I was looking at the other possibility if you want to go down that path. I also don't think this is true, but let's just go down the path. There could be a lot of people who are thinking, well, what if I get injured in combat? Wouldn't it be great to have a way to still use my gun? Let's say I hurt my hand or something. This is an alternative. At least I have some way to stay in the fight.

That actually feels more plausible to me. I think there could be a lot of people thinking along that dimension. It's just a safety thing. It's just another feature of a gun that might be able to satisfy some condition that I might find myself in. That seems plausible. I don't think it's true but it seems more plausible.

Then there's this other thing. Which is, I think there's a whole lot of people who just really don't like what the ATF is doing, and feel that guns should look and operate more like an SBR. These PDW's that they sell let's say for instance. They don't say how they're used. They don't even show photos of people shooting them. They just describe them as a PDW with a brace. What is your feeling about your customers? If you were to put a finger into the wind and guess what your average customer thinks about your product.

Grant Shaw

I think most of our customers, if not all of our customers, are law abiding gun enthusiasts who may be drawn to the product because of the aesthetics. The way it makes the firearm look. It doesn't look all quirky and redundant safety devices put in place. It looks cool. It’s a cool-looking firearm. I think there are a lot of people who were drawn to it by the aesthetics.

But I think when they start to prosecute it further and think about the reality of a firearm with a 14 inch barrel versus a 16 inch barrel, and realizing that it really, when it's all said and done, isn't going to matter. That doesn't really matter that much. I mean, it's in the minutiae. It's only a deal if you make it a deal. A belief that…

Robert Hansen

Or a slightly different weight or whatever. This crazy thing. 26 pages of nonsense.

Grant Shaw

People push back when they feel like there's undue regulation or constraints that are placed by organizations in the name of safety. Because I think most gun owners realize that a gun is a gun. It's a deadly instrument. There no doubt about that. There's a point in which if you're going to allow people as citizens to own firearms, you allow them to own firearms.

I think there's a better use of resources to regulate background checks. Better use of resources to focus on gun education, shooting education. There are way more effective ways to spend our taxpayers money, our money, whether it relates to guns and reducing firearms fatalities than controlling the look, the feel, the action, the operation of a firearm.

I think we overlook the educational aspects. We overlook the opportunity to educate people and get them aware of gun safety, proper protocol. I mean, where's the federal program that talks about, you're a firearm owner, great. Here are the top 10 things you should need to know about gun safety. I mean, there seems like so many…

Robert Hansen

These are things that you could put in your product too if you felt like it.

Grant Shaw

These are things that especially during the pandemic when we were at the range, we saw so many firearms. A lot of firearms being sold to people who never owned firearms. But we were pleased to see that the follow through on the desire for training was very, very high.

Robert Hansen

You offered it right then and there.

Grant Shaw

We offered it right then and there. That uptake was very positive. It shows that people understood. It's not everybody, but the vast majority of people that understood even if they were anti-gun before and now moving into that pro-gun camp, that they need to know how to operate it safely. I think that's something even if you're anti-gun.

I think everyone should know how to check and see if a firearm is loaded or unloaded. What safety means. What safety on the gun means. Your basic rules so that if you find yourself in a situation where neighborhood kid pulls out a gun, you know what to do. You leave. That's what I would instruct my kids to do. Get out of there.

Robert Hansen

It's funny. I heard a joke that the ATF sounds like a corner store or something where you should be able to get alcohol, tobacco and your firearm. I think that they have so lost on all three battles. Can you get alcohol? Yes. Can you get tobacco? Yes. Can you get firearms? Yes.

They are such a failure of an organization in so many ways. They're just, they're so hapless and so broken. I think your customers look at them as a useless organization and dislike what they've done. If I were a betting man, if I were to go pull your customers, I think that they would not feel particularly kindly towards the ATF.

Grant Shaw

Well, I think, again, going back to what I said with respect to the way a firearm looks. I think most firearm owners, just because a gun looks cool, or looks more consistent with what you see on TV or the movies, that doesn't mean it's deadly. It's just as deadly. A gun is a gun.

Most people feel if they're a firearm owner, that they should be able to make some degree of decisions on their own, right. You shouldn't have to prescribe to me every single detail of owning a firearm. I should be able to own them. I should be able to have what I want as long as I use it lawfully.

Robert Hansen

I understand why they'd want quality. It's like, well, this barrel has to be able to withstand these pressures. If you're talking about this public safety, which makes sense when you're talking about alcohol. I don't want something that’s halogens. It’s going to make me go blind. I don't want additives in my cigarette that's going to cause undue amounts of cancer. Of course, there is cancer for sure coming, but whatever.

Beyond that it seems like your customers would just say, “Look, you guys just don't know what you're doing. You don't know enough about guns to actually do what you're doing well.” You're trying to interfere with what they believe their Second Amendment right actually says, which is, shall not infringe.

Grant Shaw

Right. Yeah. That shall not infringe, I think, is the crux of it. Right. I mean, people don't want to feel impaired or overly regulated when it comes to things that are afforded by the Constitution or amendments thereof.

Robert Hansen

Grant, I want to thank you for coming in.

Grant Shaw

Thank you, Robert.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. We've talked about a lot here. I am sure we're going to have questions and stuff popping up. I am sure we've missed a lot because this is such a deep topic. I was talking with Chris outside. I think we both said that this is going to be one of the harder ones we go through because of how deep it is. It’s so complex.

Grant Shaw

It is complex. But it's also I think, part of our heritage. It's something for me. I've enjoyed firearms. It's been a great place for me to hang my hat, a second area of my career. I'm doing something that I like. I'm doing something that people like. They feel it. They're interested in. Nobody is interested in software, at least not at a friend level. But people are interested in this.

I think the fact that we don't have enough intelligent discourse going on, I think that's more of a danger than anything else. I think we should be able to have conversations regardless of what side of the equation you're on. We should be able to have conversations that are based on facts. Let's understand each other and not get polarized by either you have to be pro-gun, anti-gun. I don't think that shoe fits everyone necessarily anymore.

Robert Hansen

Hear, hear. Where can people find you?

Grant Shaw

You can find me at, I’m at the range. I love to shoot. Just come on down. I think you can find me at the range. Follow me on Instagram at Gun Shaw. I tried to go for gun show. That's the reality behind that. John Shaw, which is my last name.

Robert Hansen

I think it works better.

Grant Shaw

It works better. I agree with you. Hit me up at Gun Shaw. Let me know if you have any thoughts, comments. I love to talk about this stuff. It's my passion.

Robert Hansen

Thank you so much for coming.

Grant Shaw

Of course, Robert. Thank you.