00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bitten in my case underwear. Listen, don't make you eat podcast. You can't predict anything, Okay. Larry Keen from National Shooting Sports Foundation, Larry, are you? Are you cool? If we go through a couple of things here first, they don't like, they don't necessarily involve you, but free to weigh in because we gotta do a couple of things like a lot of like us some listener email, gotta take care of some business, yeah, house cleaning. Janice had used the word, oh yeah, he had used the word accidental discharge, and a lot of people, particularly service members, rode in to say that you can't say that they go by negligent disc arch. There's no there's no accidents. They they there's military dudes, very emphatic on that point. Due to your own negligence, you know, you don't get to say that they just cut right to they cut right the negligence. You know, like in a prior life, i UH defended gun companies in product liability cases and so that the term accidental discharge or a D was used in those cases, and that was often you know, the firearm discharged because of the negligence or the um of the owner or the user, not because any design defect or manufacturing defect. But they would typically be called in the legal parliament says a d s are accidental discharge. But I think the point is well made that it's really negligence on the part of the person using the firearm. It doesn't go off by itself. Somebody has to pull the trigger. Several marines wrote in about it must be something that there must be something they talk about fair But that's the master gunny sergeants is drilled into your head in boot camp that you are responsible for the terminal resting place every round that leaves your rifle, and you are a maggot. You're a maggot. I like that the terminal resting place of every round that leaves your rifle. Yep, terminal resting place. That sounds a cob. We have a we have a very dark sense of humorous marines. Another thing, we got a lot of people writing in about we're talking about button bucks um and people asking like does a button buck shed anything meaning an antler? Yeah, good question, Typically not, but like we had read this thing where we had read this thing where you're saying, like it hasn't been known to happen in the state of Virginia, but it's known to happen to other places. But then we had people, including a lot of biologists and dear specialists right in to say, certainly happens, it happens in Virginia, and a lot of guys emailed us folk, I shouldn't say a lot of handful of guys emailed us photos of button buck sheds which looks like a little bone disc. Some guys actually wrote in who were doing a deer trapping study while listening to the podcast and started examining some button bucks, and they had some findings too. But it says that like early born fawns who have very good nutrition and tend to be the larger size, button bucks will actually form a little thing that they cast off. But the antler don't want to call it an antler, the little nubbins the disk that has cast off, it doesn't seem to cast it off in a way that's tied to photo period. It's like photo period is length of day, and photo period drives so much, you know, drive so much of nature's day length, Like like things are gonna happen within a window of time centered around day length. And and and then then like micro factors will come in. Micro factors can also influence timing. But there's a lot of natural cycles that happened in accord you know, in accordance to length of day. And he said, normal bucks seem to lose their antlers due to photo period. They think it's linked to photo period changes, but this is just linked to whatever is going on in the growth and how much gets there and when it starts growing a new antler for button bucks. Um And he said, this guy also talked about you ever hear the doppel Cops syndrome. Nope, that's so dear. Biologists talk about this. He says, unlike adult antlers, which are grown in shed based on changing photo period, infant antlers are controlled by maturity and hormonal development and not tied to photo period. If any antler ever fails to shed doppel cop syndrome, the new antler grows around own the original antler from the outside rim of the pedicle. He says, Picture your meat grinder plugged up with silver skin, squirting meat out around the blockage. The resulting grossly misshapen antlers would be obvious on any deer that failed to shed those antler buttons. Look at that like it good analogy? Um. Another big thing in the news, tons of people wrote in about the guy a jogger in Fort Collins. Did you guys hear about this? Yeah, jog for he's jogging along since it's something coming from behind him. It's an eight five pound juvenile mountain lion. It attacks him and the guy chokes it out. That is a will to live, strangles it walks three miles down to trailhead, drives to a hospital, you know, talking to the police about what went on. They said, and he's got stuff that he wanted them to retrieve. When I go up to inspect the site, they go up there, dead mountain lion land there. Wow. Every guy likes to think he'd do that, but most wouldn't strangled it. I like to think he was listening to stranglehold. Come on, come on, come on, come on baby? Uh speaking all that a in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in Tennessee. You guys hear this story? Nope? There? Yeah, crazy story. So you guys know what jin saying is right? That's my my question as we get into the story, is this now considered inedible for the bear? That's yeah, there's a lot. This story is one of those stories that makes its own greaty so great Smokey Mountain National Park, Tennessee. Some guys are out. It seems to be I don't want to like, I don't wanna, you know, I mean, the guy's dead, but I don't want I don't want to condemn the guy without knowing. But it's it's The insinuation is that they were hunting Jin saying, digging Jin saying illegally, and jing sings like a medicinal route. Daniel Boone was in the Jin saying business and once lost a fortune's worth of Jin saying and it was one of the many things that UH seemed to routinely destroy Daniel Boone financially. But anyways, these guys are hunting in up national hunting Jin singer, didn't digging Jin sang in the national park where it's illegal to dig sing. One of the guys goes missing. There's two guys. One of them goes missing, his buddy can't find him. They find him later eating by a bear. Turns out that he was scavenged by a bear and actually and had actually died of a meth overdose pretty badly scavenged by the bear. They had to identify his body by his tattoos. He had a school and crossbones tattoo and a C D C tattoo, a Confederate battle flag tattoo that said it's a redneck thing. Um. But I wonder if the bear was shrewd that he would place the needles as a cover up. I don't know. And then Mark's brought up the idea, like some people brought up, was like what happens to a bear who's ingested? Is the bear tripping? Um? We talked about one more thing to news like absolutely, I'm still trying to get my mind around uh a method bear. Yeah. Uh on a not nearly not on a not at all funny note. Um. But speaking of bears, Wylming just released a really extensive report um on the death of an elk hunting guide in Wyoming who was killed by a grizzly bear. Uh. The guy a guide, a whelming guy, was guiding a client from Florida for elk and while they were butcher in um were they're butchering and elk? A sal grizzly and a male cub charged them, charged them, coming uphill at them, and the bear grabbed the first attack the guide um the woman guide who had bear spray on his belt. He had a bear stray canister on his belt, and he had a ten millimeter pistol on his backpack. The client had a bottle of a can of pepper spray in his backpack, so they can attacked. Suddenly, the guide gets in a skirmish with the bear. The client tries to retrieve the guides handgun but doesn't know how to operate it. The air turns and bites the client on the foot. They get into a struggle. The client tries to throw the handgun to the guide, it falls short. The bear then turns back and attacks the guide. This is where the story is so strange? Is it? The clients of it? He's been bitten on the foot, and the last he sees of the guide, the guide is still on his feet struggling with the bear, and the client leaves, goes to the horses, rides a horse four hundred yards to a hilltop to make a phone call, waits for a helicopter to come, and he never goes back. They Yeah, it's a it's a it's a. I mean, the report doesn't draw you know, the reports. It's an exhaustive report, but it doesn't say things that you imagine it might say about what they means. Um. The next day they found the guide and he had the guy was dead. Um. In their analysis of footprints and what happened and empty bear spray can and his body and other things, they believed that the guy did spray the bear with pepper spray it ended the attack, but then succumbed to his injuries. Wow. Just a heart like kind of a heartbreaking story. Wow, Okay, some some lessons to be learned. They're about we always talk about where are you know, bear spray is located on our body, where the pistols are on our bodies, where you lay your rifle down, you know, as you're doing something like that in grizzly bear country. Yeah, I just ordered, I am ordering what do you what's the one you have? The airframe? Yeah? An airframe? Oh yeah, I was just ordering one of those. We got into talking about UM got into talking about revolvers versus semi autos. What I was saying is like at work, we got a lot of guys who don't have a lot of familiarity with firearms. I feel like anyone who's watched a Western I can understand the basic functioning over revolver, you know what I mean and that. But this is before I even read the report. But I was like just articulating this to John Edwards over at his gun shop, over at Schnaze. It was like my sort of I'm like, I just feel like for us when we're out working um up in Alaska, it's just like a thing that it's just easy to explain to people who don't no, who don't shoot, Um, that's what. That's what. That's what I'm fixing to get. No, Larry, Sorry, no need to apologize. N SSF. Uh Like when someone like you're at a party, You're at a cocktail party and someone says, what's that? What's the NSSF. What do you tell them? We are the firearms industry's trade association. And then the next question is what's the difference between you and the n A and the elevator speeches. The dividing line is to checkout counter as the trade association. We're focused on the bar stock being delivered to the factory to make the firearm to the south to the sale to the consumer at retail. And that's our that's what we're focused on. That's that's our core mission to help the industry grow and prosper UH. And the dividing line between US and n A is the is the is the checkout counter. They represent gun owners, consumers from the industry's point of view, and users, and we represent the industry. Uh do industry people are members of the NSSF. The companies are members um SO. In our membership be about I think the numbers about ten thousand members. Now, you know, the ebbs and flows goes up after a lot of people joining when they come to shot show. Um SO, our members are manufacturers, distributors, retailers, firearms, ammunition, scopes and basically anything you can put in on around or through a gun for hunting, shooting, increasingly for you know, personal protection, self defense, big part of the market. Um. Big companies, the biggest names you know that everybody knows household names to smaller companies, smaller manufacturers that you know most people have never heard of. You guys, they're the ten by ten booths at the shot show. You see the small little booths, but you know, all the big guys started out as small companies at some point. I think a lot of people's familiarity comes from Shot Show. Yeah, I mean it's it's a huge event. As you know, as we were talking before, UM exhibitors thirteen miles of exhibit space, and if you went to every single booth at the show, you could spend twenty two seconds at each one. So it's it's a massive Whatever people go for the first time they are their reaction is always the same. They're blown away, they're shocked, they cannot believe the breath and scope and size of the Shot show. Yeah, it's big. You feel like you can never there's so much. You feel like you never get like can look at something because there's so much. You know, you always want you always to force yourself to focus for a second, you do. Yeah, I mean we tell people that you have to have a plan, and we have like apps for people for the attendees were you know, dealers, buyers, plan your show, plan who you want to see, you can schedule it. You know. The app, uh, you know, it's a digital map. It will tell you how to get from point A to point B. You just plug in the booth in the booth number and it'll tell you how to get there. Um. And you got to plan your time otherwise you just you'll get lost, you know. And all of the stuff you see uh on all of the various booths. But we try to segment the show. Um. You know, we have the law enforcement tactical section, We've got firearms and ammunition. We've got other areas where you know, we have a new Products center, um, so if you're looking for new products, that's where you would go. And that's a big popular place. And then we have you know, areas where you know it's hunting, clothing and things like that. And so we try to segment the show so you can be in a particular area and you know, Okay, i'm gonna if you're a buyer, I'm gonna talk to these firearms guys, then i'm gonna go over here, I'm gonna talk to these clothing guys that um, you know, in place orders so nothing that there's no sales, direct sales that take place. No certainly no cash hellth that's not allowed. So it's booking orders um and people looking at um, you know, at products. It's it's really a primary primarily now the show is really a new product introduction and marketing show. Um. It's the largest gathering of outdoor media in the world. Uh it's if you took out the knives, it would be the largest knife show in the world, if you took out if you took out. The thing that pulls my mind walking around there is uh all the government agencies for foreign governments. We hear people talking every language on the planet. I think it's something like a hundred countries. Um. We've got uh foreign military, foreign law enforcement, foreign exhibitors, foreign attendees from all over the place. So we've even had people come from Pakistan. Um, we've you know, people from all over Europe, you know New Zealand, Uh, Australia, et cetera. Um, we've got lots of US military buyers there from all branches and so calm folks. They're they're the ones that can't have their pictures taken. Funny story about that, but a couple of years ago, UH Governor Romney came to see the show before or right around the time. He just a little bit before he announced he was running, and he wanted to come to see the show. And we took him around, walked him around the floor for a while. Uh and and there were some guys and military guys. They were in uniform. You know, it's like, hey, let's get a picture with you and govern to romy No, no, no, no, we can't, we can't. Okay, you're not here. This How much is the I don't want to ballut too much on Shot show, but how much a Shot show? How much was it impacted by the War on Terror? Yeah, because because we've been like engaged and you know, we've been engaged in multiple theaters right for a long time. Yeah. Um, I wouldn't say in seventeen years. You know, the War on Terror impacted the market and that impact of the show. So it wasn't like a direct impact, but it just seems like it's been such a like just a bewildering amount of new technologies getting driven by you know, driven by the you know the fact that I mean, you know, most Americans kind of lose sight of the fact the fact that we've been at war for so long. Yeah. The fastest growing part of the show is the taxical law enforcement show enforcement. Yeah, so that's that's by far the fastest growing part of the show. And I think that's a reflection of the changing market. And I think that that has driven in part due to um people that like marked that served when overseas, came back, left the military and you know, if they weren't before, they you know, they like to go target shooting, hunting, and so but I think that's helps explain the growth of the modern sporting rifle popularity. A lot of the people. Our survey show that, uh, about half of the people that purchase them our current form and military law enforcement. And it's actually we have a being on our website about the history of the rifle in America, and that that rifle would become popular was really predictable because it's that's always happened through the history of United States. After people serve, they come back, they take up target shooting. They're familiar with that platform. Uh, it's comfortable, they like it. And so if you look at the growth in the market, you know, after every conflict, you'll see, you know, certain types of rifles become very popular. People forget that all rifles were originally military rights. It is it's cycling. So if you look back through the history of wars, after you come back from World War One, everyone was using bolt action rifles. Well that's the rifle that they were familiar with, and that's with them they wanted to take back into the woods with them. After World War Two, they were using repeating rifles that were using semi automatic rifles, and that's what they want to take back in with them. And after Korea and after Vietnam, you started to see the rise in the use of scopes, which before then was kind of antathetical. You know, people at the time, if you can use the scope, you're gonna be poaching. So as you should kind of see these adoptions of these technologies as they kind of go back and forth. And it used to be that, you know, for a while, civilian technology would kind of drive military technology when it comes to small arms, and then it was then it was the push that develop of new firearms for the military would push back out into the civilian market. We've kind of seen that kind of go back around again. The military is looking at a lot more commercial off the shelf items. Uh, so you're seeing the kind of that that cyclic nature of that happening over and over. Yeah, it's not a one way street, um, but to your point males are both action rifled. I mean that is now considered the ubiquitous deer hunting rifle, right, Like no Control group say well that's that's a weapon of war, right, But you know it was at one point that I mean, it can't be used for for hunting another target, shooting, etcetera. So you know, the military does buy commercial products, and you know, so it goes, it goes both ways. I mean, consumers see what the military law enforcement used and they think, well it's good enough for them. That's what I want, And so that that ries a lot what happens in the commercial market. What I want to do, I want to return to this for sure. What all I do is I want to do kind of um like cover a bunch of brown to do a walk. You want a bunch of issues that I think, like particularly things that I know that our audience asked about around firearms issues, legislation issues, um and try to like do quick snapshots and stuff. And one thing because being here in d C and you guys have some familiarity in the space. One thing. I don't want to dwell on it too long, but we've talked a lot about on this show. We've covered a lot about Land and Water Conservation Fund, and it's kind of this story that doesn't really go away right now. You guys are involved, you guys are in some way. Yeah, like what is it? What's yours? Like, what's your organization's opinion on it? Well, we think, uh, you know, one of the challenges for the health of the industry is, you know, we need hunters to have access and opportunity, and that takes many forms right time, but also access to land, particularly out west, there's a lot of public land, and so opening up access to public lands for hunting, target shooting, fishing, et cetera. Is important. So, uh, Landing Water Conservation Fund, we think it's important. We support the Land the Public Lands package that UM is in the Senate currently. We wished it had passed at the end of last year, but we're, you know, remain hopeful that we finally get it done. But so we support that seventy four UM filed cloaks are on it to come up for a vote any day, you know, real soon, and we think it passes overwhelmingly. Yeah, it seems to have a lot of it seems to have a lot of bipartisan support. It might even pass unanimous consent. Right, So there was the vote to UM yesterday afternoon, was like, so it'll pass and then we'll see what happens in the House. So hopefully it passes as well. But we think it's important UM. We support it. We have for quite a while, particularly within uh L WCF. Then making public lands provision something we think it's very important. So to to allow to have a funding source to purchase UM rights of way and Eastman's, etcetera, UM private land to get access to landlocked federal land to open it up for more access for hunting and and shooting. So what's your what's your litmus like as an organization? What is the n SSF litmus on how to fall on issues? So like it takes something like the land of water conservation flaw and so your perspective on it is UM access is good for hunters. Hunters are good for the industry. I mean is that good for conservation? Right? So I mean so we go back. It all starts from, you know, sort of the core function of ansef our mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. That's right, And from the perspective of the industry as the industry's trade association. So that's how we you know, that's that's our sort of prism through which we view things, and so access and there's no question access and opportunity are are critical to promoting, protecting and preserving hunting and the shooting sports. As we all know, hunting has been on a slow decline for a number of years, and so we have a lot of programs and initiatives to try to address that and bend that curve. Um like the one we just started plus one. But in terms of looking at legislation, the devil is always in the details. But conceptually, you know, we want to see more public land opened up for hunting and the shooting sports. It's a big issue out west. Um, so you know, we try to balance aquities. We also got to be really you know, sort of figure out what what is doable, what is achievable legislatively. Um, you know, you can you know, I always had the pony on my Christmas list, but I didn't always get the pony. In fact, I never got the pony. So you bring up the West, But I think it's important people to realize. I don't think there's a I think I heard. I'm pretty sure this is right. There's not a county in the United States that hasn't had LWCF projects on it. You know, I don't think that maybe I don't know municipal swimming pools, like like all kinds of all kinds of outdoor access programs. So there's the thing, uh people and robertson fun. It feels like this is been like the year of the Pittman Roberts and Fund where I feel growing up, you know, and like without realizing you're doing anyone that buys guns or ammunition certain archery pointment, like you're like paying into the fund without knowing it, because when you get your receipt, it doesn't say there's it doesn't say that there's a thirteen or fourteen percent tax built into it. So you can kind of live your life as a shooter and and not realize you're doing it. But I don't know why. I just feel like there's some like tipping point where there's awareness and it's probably it's probably a smart move. It just like it seems to be in my world. There seems to be a lot more awareness now and a lot more reporting on the existence of the fund. Well that's I'm glad to hear you think that's the case. You know, the industry is try to promote that message. We've worked with Fish and Wildlife Service. In fact, a couple of years ago, probably more than a couple of now, uh, it was a seventy fifth anniversary uh Pittman Robers and exercise tax being put in place to try to you know, so there was efforts to put information or flyers and stickers and on the boxes and then some people purchased that they understood I knew that. Um so I think that's hopefully bearing some fruit trying to push that message. The taxes, you know, it's ten percent on handguns, eleven percent on long guns and ammunition, and it's been in place since nineteen. Well, the tax actually not one of them. It's not there's not one that's thirteen. There's not a third percent part not on guns and ammunition. I mean, there's thus all exercise tax on a fishing tackle, but that goes into a different fund are archery. Archery may be higher, I'm not sure, but so that the tax actually existed, what happened was the industry asked to have the you know, have the funds UM be used for conservation because at the time, if you look at the history, wildlife was not doing well in the United States. So the depths of the SPA, so you know, the industry helped fund to loophold and others. UM. You know, the creation of wildlife management is a science and that was funded by the industry. UH. And in attacks, you know, we said, used this tax dollars for this purpose. And I think it's now over twelve billion dollars or thereabouts UM. And it's the price one of the primary sources of conservation funding in the United States, as you know, it's collected by Treasury, UH, distributed given to the official wildlife goes into the trust fund, which we aren't actually isn't technically a trust fund, I guess on the sequestration battle, but from a couple of years ago. But then that is distributed back out to the states on the formula land mass hunting sales. How is the tax like what actually is taxed along the ware at what point like at the end of the year. You know, it's it used to be that the manufacturer had to pay the tax twice a month and three times in September for firearms and ammunition. When other when the tax was supplied to other goods like archery and such, they got to pay quarterly. So a number of years ago actually we UM got legislation passed to change the payment scheduled to quarterly like everybody else. Um uh and so, but it's paid basically with the first shipment by the manufacturer. UM is when the taxes is owed, and so the manufacturer's gotta you know, submit the tax receipts to Treasury to the Tax and Trade or t t B. They pay based off of sales or what they made sales. So UM. I mean, it's a little complicated, but some sales are examples some uh from the tax and um and it gets very you know, like any text tax lug. It's complicated, but basically it's a commercial sale of firems and ammuation products. At the manufactural level is when the taxes. Sales to the uniform branches are not Those sales are not taxable. UM. Sales to state law enforcement is not tax but but oddly, sales to federal law enforcement is taxable, which I don't know, I don't know how that came to be, but that's the way it is. So but it's basically, you know, and as you say, you know, the taxes baked into the cost of the goods, just like all other costs insurance, electricity, labor. You know, it's it's reflected in the price of the goods. But at the end of the day that you know that the consumer of the hunter, of the shooters paying the tax. Uh. In an indirect fashion, we like to, you know, tell hunters that you're you're funding conservation, right so they understand their Connecticut. But to your point, UH, target shooters, people who never go afield um are are actually paying the lions share of the acts because you guys, you guys did that study. People in the initially think it's higher. Intuitally you can see it, but I would never have guessed that that would be the break. So think about it this way, Steve. This past hunting season, I went out and I killed two deer this year. So I killed one with my bow and I killed one with my rifle. I probably used maybe three, let's say five rounds to check the zero on my rifle, and I put one round through the deer I killed. So that's what six rounds max that I used through my rifle hunt in your hunt with Granddaddy's rifew hunting with my with my old Resent seven thirty odd six. UM. But when I go to the range on the weekend and fire my pistols or fire my R fifteen, I'm starting at a minimum of a hundred rounds. I'm buying a hunt rounds right across the counter, and I'm going into the range, And that's what I'm gonna that's the minimum start of what I'm gonna play with that day. So you think you figure I used six rounds to hunt deer this year, I'll use that. Say you go to the range once a month, I'm going to use a minimum of twelve rounds through each of my firearms. So that's the money that's going towards conservation. Yeah. We talked about it recently because hunters I was saying, like there's awareness about Pittman robertson right, and I think and it was funny because the hunters like to vocalize about it. We like to we like to virtue signal around rovers when they're looking at that numbers of that money is, yes, seventy eight percent of that money is tied to UM. Yeah, recreational shooting, and the license sells, you know, helps fund conservation. That hunters are the original green movement. Hunters are the original conservationist, which is a fact that has become lost on a lot of people now because I think that because some of the systems, the systems have been in place for the systems have been in place for so long that people lose the people lose sight of it. Um. I said, when I had no awareness when I was a kid, I had no wareness of how like you, how your state Fishing Game Agency, which does all the work they do from disease research to law enforcement, had no idea of where that money came from. Right. You kind of live like a pretty nice life in this country, just hunting, fishing away, Yeah, with no idea like the machinations, right that it goes on behind the scenes. Um, it's uh, we're very proud of it. I mean, you know, it's because think about it, that's ten eleven percent at the bottom line at the industry willingly pays that tax, and and look the success we've had since the tax you know, was put to that purpose. I mean, the wildlife are doing pretty darn darn well in this country. I mean more whitetail, dere more turkey. You know, it's it's great success, the bald eagles off the endangered species list, all of us being you know, funded by UM the x X tax. I think you pointed out well when you wrote that piece for Outside magazine a couple of months ago where you were talking about, hey, bird watchers, you have birds to look at because of hunters. So I mean, this is and to what was the point of where we're talking about. We've got a lot of people that are going to gun ranges tell that will never step foot in the woods, and they're the ones that are helping fundness that. That's that that that's a nice segue. We were really cherish a good segue around here into uh, I want you guys explain the target practice and marksmanship training support act UM because I was gonna go there and you want to have questions, but I have questions about it. I call it pivot. You called oh yeah, I think that that's a pivot. So yeah, that's good. Yeah, because you imagine a pivot having like a point of pivot. So this is I think this is hard for some people to visualize that. So so this Pittman Robertson fund takes kind of like where the where when it comes to exercise the fund. It's like matching grants where states are doing projects and they get funding that they apply for funding from the fund to to do certain projects, and a lot of the projects are centered around wildlife restoration. There's a movement though, catching like interrupt me when I'm wrong, okay, And then there's a push though that states should have more flexibility to use Pittman Robertson money to create shooting ranges. Right, So the law now allows the states to use the money for wildlife conservation restoration. That's where the bulk of the money goes and should go. They can also use some of the Pittman Robertson for hunter education, obviously very important. They do that now and they can already now also use the some of the funds under certain conditions in the law to build or enhance public shooting ranges. So a number of years ago we have had Cobbly always have conversations with the state fishing game agencies. Right, they have an organization called uh UH Association Fish and Wildlife Agencies, very creative things. So they have meetings and we go to the meetings and because it was obviously uh things we need to dialogue. And one of the discussions was and I remember being at the meeting because I said, look, you know, we from the industry point of view, think you guys are not spending enough money building public shooting ranges and we need that. That's where the growth is taking place is in uh, the shooting sports. Uh. And we all know about the struggles for hunting, but you know it's just to your the point we were just talking about. The shooters that never go afield are the ones that are PAYINGLED you know, the excise tax, right, that's where the bulk of the money is coming from the firearms ammunition that are being used for target shooting. So we think, you guys, should you know, spend more money on us. This is what we want to see and we're paying the tacks And they say, well, the formulas very restrictive and the loss and that's one of the reasons why they just don't really do it. And so we said, what what do you need? What would you want? And that became the what we call the Range Bill because the name is too long to the target practice, marksmanship training and Support Act that it's sponsored by Senator Capital in the Senate called the Range Bill. It's easier and so all the bill will do is change that formula in the Pittman Robertson Act to allow UM more flexibility in the States to use their Pittman Robertson allocation. So there's two parts to it. There's the match part and then there's the time frame. So it extends the time period and it reduces help the match so UM so that the states have to put up less money from their allocation and they have more time to get the project done. It has no impact on the deficit. It doesn't change the XCES tax up or down. It just gives them a little bit more flexibility. So it's broadly supported. It is passed the House and the Senate in different packages as stand alone's. We have yet to get it across the finish line. But hopus because why because I want to touch more. But it just gets into it gets into a little bit of politics. It's what it gets packaged. So a lot of times because it's not controversial at all as broad bipartisan support. Well, I want to point out a controversy. It could pass when unanimous can sent us a standalone right like, which is what we tried to do. It gets bundled the package with other provisions that are that where there is disagreement or it's not as bipartisan, and so they try to use the bill as a sweetener um to try to bring people along on other on other titles in the bill. And then that big sportsman's package keeps getting bogged down and not getting across the finish line. Um. Some of it is pure politics because the you know, the sponsor is it is up for reelection and the other side doesn't want to give him a win before you know, for the election. That's just you know the nature of politics, right, I mean, the politics drives policy, as they say here in Washington. So, um, so we've tried to you know, we've we've had it in the n d A A, which is the Defense author you know Defense Appropriation Bill with funds d O D. We had it in there on one side. It fell out in conference because for a number of reasons, basically because McCain wasn't around, uh just right before he died, and so they kept the bill clean. Nothing extraneous was allowed to be kept in so it fell out there. We thought we had it done then, so it's we've been working on it. I don't know, like six maybe eight years. Yeah, but it takes that long. I was watching an interview with you and you were talking um. You were talking about just the slow, arguous process of legislation. Yeah, it doesn't. You were managing expectations, yes, like for the Airing Protection Act. Yeah, that's what that's what I want to do next pivot. That would have been a great pivot, but I got the back up. I could see a smart I could see a smart, well meaning person looking at the range bill and being nervous or leery or suspicious of the fact that you'd be pulling some of the money away from wildlife work. But I think what I would tell him in that conversation is that would tell him that, Yeah, the word investment gets thrown around a lot right in politics, like everything's an investment, but you can kind of see it as being a I think you can make a legitimate case that it is like an investment. By creating more opportunities for shooters exactly, you're probably gonna generate You're gonna generate a lot, You're probably gonna generate a larger fund and maybe and then with the goal being the end of the day, actually putting more money towards wildlof That's exactly here's the talking points that many many, many meetings on the hill, rising tide floats, all boats, shooters who are paying for conservation deserve a return on their investment. And the more public opportunities for shooting, the more consumption of ammunition, the more purchase of farms, the more funding for wildlife conservation. Pittman Robertson exercise tax dollars will increase now. And the bill does not require the states to do anything, It just gives them flexibility they want to do. So then if we get this past and then they don't, we'll be back saying now, look, you said this is what you needed, We got it for you. Now please go build some more ranges or just improve the ones that exist. It doesn't need to be mysterious because it's something it's like easily trackable. And and maybe you'd see a diminishment of um I would like to think you'd see a diminishment of shot up appliances because we use honestly, we use a lot of makeshift You kind of forced to We use a lot of makeshift shooting range and that's part of the concern to this, I mean, is one of the things that we find from new shooters new hunters is is the barriers to entry. One. Let's be honest, it's an expensive sport to get into. Whether you're gonna be shooting recreational, you're gonna hunt buying a rifle, buying licenses, uh, you know, whether you're not, you're gonna be buying access through you know, hunt leases, those kinds of things. But when you have a public access range, now that's open to everybody to go use. But again, what we're seeing here is a lot of range that have dilapidated or their ad hoc ranges. And we actually had cases out there in Arizona where people were shooting on public ranges that weren't maintained and weren't well kept, and you had a fatality of a pregnant Air Force spouse who was shot and killed by a stray around that went beyond the edge of that range, beyond the left and right let of limits and and resulted in the fatality. We want safe places for people to go shoot. It's one of the things we're working are working for UM in the council, the Federal Advisory Committee that I'm i chair, the Shooting Committee, And that's exactly the discussion we've been having is we need places where people can go shoot. They need you know, dedicated space so that they can be policed. After the Shot Show last year, myself and several other folks menaces have went out with secretaries Inky and and local volunteers, uh and you know, to clean up some blm land where people had been shooting. And it was not pretty right. I mean it's the shot up TVs and refrigerators and couches and just like it was just it was embarrassing and here was it. They're picking this trash up and bags and bag after bag after bag, and it's like, you know this this is not a good you know, if you're not a hunter, you're not a shooter. You come and saw this, it would not be you know, you would not have a good opinion of the sport or people that participated in the sport. You want to point out like I don't um, you know you're a shooter. But it does mean I condone littering exactly. But they get they get conflated. Yes, you know, yeah, I think it could become a major barrier, right Like for us, we all of us at the table can sort of like deal with that and you can like make it a safe place when you show up and if you see unsafe activity, you can walk away. But to someone that's just trying to get into it and you just you show up at a place like that, it's like you're not gonna be able to make the best of that. You're just gonna turn around and walk away. It's it becomes it leads to be a lm closing off lands, shotting lands now right to shooting. And even for us, I feel like there's never like enough shooting ranges. And all the places I've lived across the West, um, I've never lived in a town where there was so many shooting ranges were on a Saturday, You're like, oh, I'm just gonna go here and it won't be busy, right Like. So when I moved to Virginia, I actually one of the criteria for the house that I chose to live in was the the access to a private shooting range is just down the road from my house. So I mean, that's how important it is for some of us. We want to know that we can get somewhere we can shoot. And it's it's a question I get from people all the time, you know, where can I go shoot? I'm fortunate that I've got a public shooting range not too far from the house where i can go shoot swing a shotgun. And I've also got a private range where i can go shoot. Yeah, what's it called where let's go let's go shooting dot org. Yeah. I grew up a mile we could ride our bikes down to our shoot range. It was it wasn't public. It was a private gun club. Twin a gun club, and you know, you'd have to work hard to find someone there. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was nice to have. Uh. Back to the pivot suppressors. This is something that becomes like increasingly interested and I'm actually just entered into the prob I just began the process with the help of a friend of mine, um, a friend of mine at Vortex. I began the process of doing the the rigmarole to acquire one. Yeah, when I started it before I started before, but at the time there was a fourteen months delay. It's probably about nine ten months now. He was saying maybe eight maybe it's well then the shot then nothing got processed doing I think it's we asked him to tell us what the delay is, UM, and it was eight months. It's started getting it down. It's probably eight nine months. A friend of mine actually, UM, that's UM got one a year. Yeah, I want to get into that, like what that process looks like and what could remedy it. But just touched on it, kind of like my personal awareness of the issue. UM. I hunted with one years ago how many years ago? Nine years ago in Scotland, Okay, and I'm in I'm sitting there with a guy what do they call the what do they call the guy hunt? Whatever? He's like a man, he's like a game man. Yeah there, game man's just called Gillies. Shoots tons of shoots tons of deer off a big they got, like this huge private property like in the state, and this guy shoots tons of them for the market. I mean he like, you know, they sell red deer, right, they sell wild red deer. And he shoots and guts and brings to market red deer processes him now processes and but strips the hide and the only and it well, it was funny he only got from the diaphragm down, which there's they had a word for it too. Anyways, this guy hounts it a suppressor. He had a tik T three because it's to seventy that my lee with a suppressed round. I remember saying that this is years ago, and I wasn't like it's aware of them and then and I'm like, I can't believe you guys can hunt with these things, because I can't believe you don't. It's their rule. Yes, he's not allowed to not use it. That's exactly right. Only in America is there this public perception that this is some evil device only used has only one purpose, that's for gangsters and assassins, right like, and as you say, and the rest of the world that doesn't have that connotation. It's required for hunting in many parts, even the countries that have a very restrict Finland, like you, even if you're out, you know, when going around for miles, you still required by law there to use it. You can buy them like hardware stores in London. Right in England they're not. You can buy them and jailing in like they come from China. They're made up plastic and they're disposable and they cost like bucks. I've been told, um, only in America do you have this connotations. But you they are legal to possess in forty two states. You gotta jump through all the hoops, but they're legal and forty two stags and you can hunt with them now in forty states. So you know, there's the let there's the legislation that's been pending for a while called the Hearing Protection Act. I want to talk more. I want to talk theory for a couple more minutes, and I want to talk about all this other stuff because this is stuff, this stuff I don't actually don't understand. We want to talk about the theory of it from mr. Because the best argument I've heard against suppressors was from a remember just we're hunting swamp rabbits and can talk to do We're talking to a game hunting with a game warden, and I think I've told I've told this story like too many times. Are about to tell one more time that I'm never gonna tell it again. We're talking to him and he was saying how during general firearms season, hunting for him is out of the question. He's just too busy doing his work as a game ward, but he says he does like to uh squeeze in some archery hunting. He says, but my problem is I get up in my tree stand. It's bow season and it gets around prime time and often the distance pouch right. He's like something about that shot doesn't sound right, and he says that I'm down out of my tree stand heading over in some direction, and he was saying that. He also said that Facebook is a very important has become has emerged as a very good law enforcement tool. He said, like, I don't need to go out on the bois bar. I got Facebook. But he said, like that sound is important. Is an important tool for him, And he was leery of suppressor because the gunshot right. But then I think about, like and I took that in and and I thought about But then more I think about it is like the way we the way we're trained to view wildlife and in the wildlife models that we have is where we're trained to view it or not trained to. It's necessary to view wildlife at population level. So I just have the more thing. I just have a very hard time picturing that you would see even localized population impact from if some small number of poachers use that technology along with all the other technologies available to them, including cross bowls, which are much quieter. Um, I just can't see, like, I can't see their becoming significant population level declines game because of this this other tool. So let's back up. Yeah, so let's just back up a second to what your your game warden is telling you. Cause I've got a guy I used to work for him Marine Corpt. And he retired andies the game ward in Florida, and his initial reactions suppressor is the same thing. They're gonna be a tool for poachers all the time. But something the key that you said. So the game ward sitting in his tree stand and he hears this gun shot slightly different, doesn't sound like a normal gun shot, but he still hears it. So here's the point about it. I misspoke. Not No, he wasn't pointing that out where he was pointing. He wasn't saying it was a suppressed gun shot, just the timing of the gun shot, meaning a single gun shot at dusk. Sure, Okay, yeah, I got it. So you still hear this gun shot, But again, the whole deal was suppressors, is it doesn't completely silence the gun. It brings it down from the same decibel level of about a jet going off to about below a jackhammer, where it's not going to cause instant and permanent here laws, you can still hear that exactly. That's why we in the law they're called silencers because that's the name Maxim gave to it when he invented it, right like, and he's the guy that he it was he invented the muffler on cars. It is. Its function is the same as a muffler. You can still hear a car with a muffler. Without the muffler. It's a lot louder, but that's all it is. It muffles straight pipes. Yeah, so that's why we always refer to it as suppressors, not not silencers. It's, you know, even though the law of suncers, you know, to try to win the rhetorical battle is I understand it. UM. The best research UM on the on the issues was done by UM Steve Hallbrook, a lawyer. Second Amendment Abbas argued many Supreme Court cases and he's written a number of books. The UM. The reason that suppressors were put in the National Firms Act was at the request of fishing game agencies because they were concerned that people would use suppressors to poach game during the depression. That's where it came from. Yes, and it never happened. And and now they're legal in hunt within forty states and I've not seen any evidence or suggestion that you know, people are poaching and it's having an impact on population localized. Okay, but you can poach with a crossbow. No one talking about getting rid of crossbows. It's like an effect. There's plenty of if you follow the news, there's plenty of poaching that goes down with archery equipment. But no one's suggesting, hey, we should be allowed to have bows because they're so quiet and you can poach with them. But even take it outside the context of hunting, right, I mean, like if you go to a shooting range. One of the biggest complaints or issues for shooting ranges is noise complaints from neighbors. Right. Typically it's you know, the rangers in rural area and then the suburbs move in. People move next to a shooting range, and then they're shocked to learn that they're shooting at the shooting range. On Saturday morning. So if you're range that I moved next to, so it will allow people at shooting rate ranges to be better neighbors and to sort of address that concern and issue. But and if let's assume there was some evidence that developed that we got a problem in this state or this part of the state where you know we're seeing in reduction in an adverse population. In fact, we think there's a lot of coaching and people using suppressors, Well, then you can state fishing gamage. She has the power to you know, manage that and say okay, you can't use suppressors now. But I mean, if people are approaching the breaking the law, all right, I mean it's like so, but I don't think there's any evidence of that and they never used in crime. I mean, like you can't find evidence of a t come out and say it's infantesimally low. I mean, they can't zero Another thing that I think But when I look at it, as I was kind of kicking this whole thing around, is that why why why does shooters have to like why do we have to as a matter of law, except how loud a firearm is, Like if firearmer is naturally quiet. Would there be legislation that made you make it loud? So one of the arguments against the Hearing Protection Act from the gun control groups is that, you know, the police, it would defeat this technology that was developed in Iraq and now being used in some city spot shot shot spotter and the CEO of the company said no, the technology would still a coup report of suppressed firearms and all they have to do is tweak the software. So yeah, that that became the argument like that somehow bad guys are gonna get go through the rigamarole and get suppressors. I mean it's just thinking, get them now the legal and forty two states, and you don't see crimes being committed with them. The thing to nothing that nothing changed my perspectives as I kicked it around. Um, I think having kids kind of affected to because I have hearing loss. I'm left handed and I have hearing loss in my left ear. What you don't say, I mean everybody hang out with everyone. I hang out with one another. Yeah, so I have it and now it's largely self inflicted. Okay, because I've known for my adult life then and I'm bad about it. I need to be better. But I'm bad about hearing protection. Um lazy about hearing protection. When I was a kid, it wasn't self inflicted. It was just that my dad had no where the didn't have awareness of it. He probably I can only imagine what kind of hearing. A lot of emails they had from being you know, uh, combat soldier. But uh, now, man, when I when I'm with my kids we're shooting, I'm very aware of the ear thing. In fact, I made my kid we're all duck hunting, and I made him sit there with the headphones on. You know, he can't hear it. I'd be yelling at him to go grab a doct or somebody. Can't hear anything everybody's saying. But I'm just like, I'm aware of it now. And so when he's ten where we live, he can hunt with me. You can hunt deer with me when he's ten, and I'm gonna have him home with the suppress rifle. Yeah. And there's other benefits aside from the from the here, from the hearing protection of it all. I mean, it's reduced recoil, it's it's it's less of a muzzle flash. It's it's when you're trying to introduce someone to the shooting sports, into hunting, and you're able to sit there, especially if you're gonna be hunting out of a out of a shoothouse or out of a blond or you're sitting at a tree stand in close proxim need to one another. It's it's less of that shock that's coming out of the end of the barrel and the muscle blast. So it takes it up and it makes that learning experience for someone new, like a ten year old kid, it's gonna be a little bit more enjoyable, a little bit less intimidating. It takes some of that that scariness out of it. So yeah, I'm definitely saying I'm sensitive to I'm saying I don't want to like diminish the arguments against and I'm sensitive to it. But I just I just feel like it's a situation where the pros really outweighed the cons in my mind, and the cons haven't aren't the cons aren't demonstrated their hypothetical comment. The opposition to it comes from gun control groups, and they don't have any to me, you know, good case or good arguments at all. And in fact, you know it would be good for a t F because they spend an enormous amount of time and energy and money processing these paper the paperwork where and uh, you know this is not a public this is not a you know, public safety issue. It's not going to result in crime or anything like that. And they spend an incredible amount of time processing these form force you have to fill out and explain the process like would involved. Yeah, so, yeah, there's a two hundred tax that you have to pay um and you have bought this form. You have to get you know, pictures, fingerprints and the forum and send it in with two hundred dollars to a t F and notification of the Chief law enforce PRIs who does want with it nothing? Uh, And then the two goes to the treasury a t F process of paperwork, and they do a background check. Guess what the background check is? The exact same background check you go through and you buy a gun at retail, right, the exact same check. What does it take because there's just stacks of paper, you know, it's it's all paper, right, So, so ways to improve it would be electronic forms. Some of the discussions about how you might do legislation would be the The original act was to take it out of the n f A. Suppressors are also in the Gun Control Act. Right, So even if you took it out of the National Firms Act, so you didn't have to pay the two dollars, you didn't have to do the form for the same thing that makes it fully automatic. That's the same that's the same act that covers automatic. Right, yes, exactly. So, Um, if you took it out of the National Firms Act, it would still be in the Gun Control Act. So if you would, so they would still be serialized, they would still be seventy three and a background check performed on the purchase, or the same background check they do a second time when they go to pick up the suppressor, So you're doing the same same check twice. What's the point? Right? So that would like then then you know, the manufacturers could ship into license the liers and you can go in and you can have him an inventory. You can go buy one and go through the same right. So there are some but there's one bill that's been introduced in the Senate that would take it even out of the Gun Control Act. Um, you know, and it would be wouldn't be regulated or just be like any other accessory because it's not a farmer doesn't do anything and only you know, as we talked to you, just it's an attachment that you would put on a firearm. So the argument be, what's why is this being controlled at all? So you know whether that's Look, the legislation didn't move into Republican controlled House and Senate because there's a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of education needs to be done. Um, you know so, but in a Democrat controlled House where you know they're having hearings today on gun control legislation, the prospects of moving that legislation in this Congress is you know, it's not feasible in my opinion, even like even with the arguments around just safety issues. Yeah, I mean, it becomes a political issue. They're not going to pass anything like it. It's not gonna happen. Yeah, can you talk. But I mean even even when the Republicans control the House, was still difficult to move the bill and in the Senate as well. I mean it was just you know, we didn't get enough co sponsors, we didn't get enough movement on it. So it takes a lot of time. It takes years and years and years happen. I think I will. It's gonna take a while longer, So I would say you probably he He's go in a minute, or it could take another ten years. When when here In Protection Act was introduced in the last Congress, and we saw a lot of people got very excited and they kind of sat out on the sidelines. But I'm gonna wait. So I wanted to pay the tour in all attacks and wait nine months, so we're back to where we're telling him, then don't wait because things in Congress are glacial. So if you want a suppression, I would completely agree. If you're holding off anyone because you think you're not gonna pay the two under all attacks, yeah you can be waiting a long time. Unfortunately, I had dinner recently with one of the state uh with a state legislator in Montana who was um who worked heavily on the on the one that that the that allowed for hunting in Montana, and then they had had some resistance, They had had some resistance there against fishing game. Yeah, I don't I don't know if it was I don't know if it was a real strenuous resistance but there was some there was some resistance. So there's been efforts to events around the country UM done by the American Suppress Association and SPIST helped out, and RA has helped out as well. To educate state legislators. We did an event at the UM shooting Rage and Rayburn Building. Did you know that there's a there's a range and ranger New Congress. Oh, it's for the Capital Hill Police. But we had the member host an event for other members so that they could come in here for themselves. The difference between expressed and unspressed firearm and that there's still a very loud report you can hear and it's not silenced in any way, shape or form. What you see on TV, you know, like you know, like the puff of air and it's just not reality. Would you want with one? Definitely? What I was gonna add that I didn't know about, but we were looking into doing a podcast just about hearing loss and hearing protection and whatnot, and talking to a bunch of these experts, they were saying, Yeah, the one thing that it would be a very loud but important right like obviously not as so important to year old, but as we age and you start to realize that you're losing it and you want to protect your kids, on and on. But um, a lot of these guys were saying that, Yeah, it's like it only minimized it so much that it takes it down to like you're saying to it, but you're still if you don't run your protection while you shoot a suppressed going, you are still getting hearing damage. It's not a like you just put it on and you're just off you go. Like everyone I talked to you said, you should still wear hearing protection. That's probably the best argument the other side has is but when you say you know, hearing protection and they say we're hearing protection, you know, yeah, what the tonality is why you shouldn't be shooting anyway? Uh, background checks? Can you explain? I heard a story now, I heard a story I was living. I was living in Washington when I heard the story. I heard a story about how if you lie on your background check, that the prosecutors don't prosecute people who lie on background checks, and even interviewed I think someone from the King County Sheriff's department, so that the county that holds Seattle, and he even confirmed I can't remember how many people some staggering number dusing the hundreds of thousands of people who tried to buy one and led on a background check, but then don't get in trouble for having lied on the background check. Do you understand this at all? I don't even under something if I'm explaining it right. But it's a story when you fell out the forum. It's called the forum seventy three. Anyone has purchased a gun from a license dealer has build it out and then they ask you questions, are you you know, are you a felon? Just honor the discharged? You know here illegally restraining order? Right, so that like seven categories to make you a privative person and then you sign it and you swear to the accuracy of it. So you lie in the forum. Um, it's a crime, federal crime, and you get up ten years in jail. But well, so what hass So then to do the background check, right, and let's say the persons denied right or um you even have cases where people don't lie in the forum. Uh hre they lie in the forum and they passed the background check. But let's say you've fill out the form, you lie say you aren't a convicted felon when you are, and you get denied, right, So when that happens, the FBI notifies the dealer is not told why you're denied. You don't know what the counter The dealer does not know. They just know it's like you know, green light, you know yellow their delay red light. You know, you're denied, and they don't know why you're denied. And they all and so they can't tell the customer why they're denied. They can just give them information that if they wanted to file and appeal with the FBI with NIXT, which you can do if you think it was you know, they're mistaken, and some small number of times that they are because primarily in name check and so you know, somebody can have a similar name, similar data birth with somebody else and and they think, you know, this is John Doe a not John Dobe. Your buddy Kevin Murphy wanted up on a no fly list because mother Kevin Murphy. Exactly how hell Kevin Murphy. They're gonna be running out as I don't know, but so uh, but so the FBI will tell a t F Okay, there was and then a t f UM. You know, uh, it's their job to go out and track these people down. It's a yes because at the federal crime and if the firearm was transferred the persons supportive person so that so but then it becomes a resource issue. A lot of times what I've heard is, you know the let's say, uh, this is the example is given told to me. You got an eighty year old grandfather buying a gun to give to a gift to their grandchild or something like that. And you know that when they tipped that cow over in college and in nineteen fifty three, that was a felony under state law, right and they were convicted of a felony. They didn't even know it was a felony, and so they get denied. You know, are you going to prosecute that person? Is that worth using the prosecutor resources? So a lot of times h said, look, just give us the gun back. You can't buy guns your private person um and that sort of situation. Or you're the United States Attorney's Office, you have limited resources. You want to have the most bang for your buck if you will impact on reducing violent crime. They look at that, and I'm a former prosecutor, so I can understand this. Look I got I'm working, you know, on convicting these gang bangers who are selling drugs and involved in shootings and such. Or am I gonna go after Grandpa um because he didn't realize, you know, forty years ago that was a felony. How are you going to use your resources? Which is more important to impact in public safety? I mean that's a very extreme example, but but there are people. You know, if it's a convicted felon that's a bad guy and they bought a gun, those are the people they would get prosecuted. Um. So it just kind of depends on why they were denied. And you know what, what's the best use of limited resources? I mean, the government is no different than anybody else. You've got limited resources. You have to make decisions to maximize the resources to have the most impact. Can you explain where background checks that you that you get when you go, like you go into a you know, sports and warehouse by a rifle off the counter, you do a background check. Can you explain what people say when they when people talk about the need for universal background checks and where within universal background checks it like, what's your perspective on it and where in that you have where in that you have a problem. So if you ever buy firearm from a licensed dealer, that's there's a background check that's required by law m Brady Act. And you know, we the industry supports that. Actually, the idea of the background check at the retail point of purchase from a licensee, it was an industry idea long before the Brady your your organization supports. Yes, it was an industry idea, like because the deal we don't want dealers inadvertently selling guns to primitive persons, right, we can all agree it's we don't want primitive people getting firearms. What we have seen, however, is that the background check system that exists now has got some pretty significant problems. And the background checks are not always accurate, and they're not always the data. I mean, the data in the background check system is only as good as the data that's put in and if data is not put in right. So look at Sutherland Springs, there was a guy who was a primitive person, like four three or four different ways. Uh, yes, felony conviction. This aren't only discharged to domestic violence. And who do you say four different ways like he had like he was dependent, arrived independently four times, and he was involunt involuntarily committed to mental health facility and the Air Force and all of d o D, not just the Air Force. He happened to be up in the Air Force at the time. We're not putting the records into the FBI background check system of out of a like out of a intellectual opposition of just and and it's frustrating because I mean, there were apparently i G reports talking about this in the past. Nicks was aware that the d o D wasn't putting in records, so that guy was able to buy fires four times, going to a store or license dealer, buying again, passing a background check four times because those records were not in the system. East time that retailer at the counters want to make sure that he's doing the right thing, and he's running the background check on this guy who should never want a firearm, and he's coming back clean. He has no idea the deal was relying upon that background check, right, so um so, and then after the tragedy in Newtown, you know, we launched an initiative and there have been some federal legislation in the past, but it really just didn't wasn't getting the job done. We started NSSF, that is, started the Fixed Knicks campaign and on the industry's nickel, we went around and got the law change. Now in sixteen states were still working on more UH. Montana is one of them, me right, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Montana, Wyoming are the three states that we're still targeting and then we want to make improvements. But we've we changed a law in sixteen states UH to require the states to put disqualifying records into the FBI database. Primarily what was really missing was mental health records because states were not reporting mental health records because of privacy laws or states we had to change state law because they weren't allowed to under state law, and the federal government cannot compel under federal law of the states to give the information that they can't, right, so it has to be done, you know, voluntarily by the states. So we got the law change in sixteen states. We increased the disqualifying mental health records in the database, the f BAD database by two They went from about one point seven million to five million. And again there are still states that UM are not submitting, and we're going back and looking at the states, like did they just put do a big up once and then have they continue to report as they should. So we're very proud of that, Like we did that, the industry did that. Now our view is you have to fix the background sex system. Hence NICKS is the national instant criminal background check system NICKS, and I see us fixed next to us. It makes no sense to start expanding, you know, private party background checks when you you have a system that needs to be fixed in the first instance, right Like that we think is where the focus should be. Let's get their records into the database, uh and fix it before you have a conversation about expanding it, because you're just gonna have more bad background checks and that doesn't benefit anybody. Um. So, and there there are other issues with the legislation. We have concerns about we UM, but we think the focus be on fixing NIX and we the industry have been doing that. And then after sezzle In Springs sent in a corn and introduced the Fixed Knicks act UM named after our program that wasn't by accident. We advocated for that bill to pass and it did and signed by President Trump, which requires all federal agencies to submit records. UM. And we've been talking to Knicks and that's happening. UM. But even there are some some um, some parts of the federal government were dragging their feed and getting the records submitted. Maybe dragging if it's not the right word. They weren't as timely as we'd like. I think some of it is just again a resource issue. And then it gives grant money. It makes grant money available to the states, um to help them get their records into the system. Uh. There's UM a report I think we'll be coming out fairly soon about a year anniversary of the bill, to see what progress was made. But again, we we talked to Knicks on a regular basis and they say, yeah, the records are starting are coming in. That d O d S put the records in other federal agencies that had records that had not been reporting or now minting. So we're very proud of that legislation. You know, we advocated for it actually ended up passing with more Democrat co sponsors, the Republican GHO sponsors, and the lead Democrat co sponsor was Senator Murphy from Connecticut. Hardly a fan of the firearms industry, even though the industry was founded in Connecticut. Along history you created the Connecticut's economy and NSSF is still located there, as are some major manufacturers. But so we're very proud of that. And I think what that shows is, you know, there can be common ground on these issues, and we think this is a great example of that. As I said, there are other issues with the bill we have concerns about. But what would would universal background checks has normally understood with that prevent a person from inheriting you know, like I never bought I didn't buy a new firearm till as in my thirties, right like you would just like I just I for long time hume with my grand like had ownership of my grandfather's shotgun. Would would universal background checks, as a discuss, prevent the like you from getting a gun from your parents, no without doing a background check. So the bills allow for and it's changed over time. Is iterations have been introduced, like to allow a transfer within the family right father to son, grandfather to grandchild, um, would not require background check. UM. But there's so a couple of the issues with the ideas first, well, not necessarily in order, but one big issue is that universal background checks does it's not enforceable unless you have national registration, and the Department of Justice has acknowledged that in a written document. Um that it only works uh if there's national registration and that too many Second Amendment supporters isn't is just unacceptable and federal law doesn't allow registration. Um, so how do you you know, like so if you can enforce it, and what's you know you make there are what's the point? Right? Second is uh, you know, studies by the Department of Justice demonstrate that, you know, bad guys are not getting guns, you know, from licenses. They're stealing them, that's like the number one source, or they're just you know, trading them for drugs and things like that. Colorado passed universal background checks. There was this um what we call the myth con control groups were claiming, based on a very flawed, uh discredited study, that of all firems transfers are private party and with no background check and that's how bad guys are getting guns. Even the authors of that study said this is ignore it. It's no good. It's a bad study. Colorado passed universal background checks and saw not at increase about So this this idea of that you know, there are just guns going all over the place without background checks. Colorado demonstrates that that's not really the case. It used to be the gun show loop, the so called gun show loophole. The reality about gun shows is that, you know, the vast overwhelming majority of people that are selling firms at a gun show are licensed dealers. Background checks. Seventy three in the background check take place t J surveys of prison inmates incarcerated for firms related defenses. Where did you get the gun gun shows? Less than one percent? So that's just not really And then it became the internet loophole, idea that you can buy guns on the internet. Well, you can advertise guns on the internet, assuming Facebook or others will let you, which they don't. But you know, if your license dealer, it's still a face to face transaction. With seventy three in the background check, all it is is, you know, you may get pay with a credit card and then they're gonna get shipped to your local dealer, go through a gunbroker dot com. Gunbroker requires anybody using that service to that the guns transferred to inn FFL. That's that's their own policy and and a lot of those sites exist do that. So that's one problem. Another problem from the industry's point of view is you're you're asking these retailers to perform essentially a government service for the government, right and in some states that require background checks California, the dealer has no choice. They must do it right, and it caps the fee. And guess what, the fee is so low that they lose money on the transaction. They have got to spend time, energy, labor rights, a process of background check for a private party sale. Uh and and they end up losing money. But they have no choice in California. So that's that's unfair. Um. We've seen other states cap the fee. Um. And that's you know, if you're gonna let them, if they're gonna do this, that they should just be able to charge with the market will bear. I mean, it's America, you know, the government should be regulating that price. In our point of view, Another problem we see is that there's no liability protections for the retailer. So you know, Yanni comes in with the gun he wants to sell to you. Um, the dealer, I take it in I've got to log it into my acquisition record, right, I do the background check to you, you leave, and then there's an accident and then you sue me. So now I got to defend a lawsuit for a gun that I didn't sell from my inventory. And guess what my insurance company is gonna say, you didn't sell that gun from your inventory. There's no coverage. Or I make a mistake in the record, a t F comes in and finds a violation of my paperwork, I can now potentially lose my license because of course, have said a single violation of the record keeping requirements, a single willf of violation, you can lose your license. So here, I'm gonna lose my license for a record keeping error on a gun I didn't even tell my inventory. So here looks money on it, and you lost. So if it comes to another issue, I thank you for playing. So so again, let's look at the same as. So Larry is gonna be that FFL. He's gonna form that transfer and Johannest comes in with a gun. He wants to transfer it over. What kind of gun you're handing over? Honest, he ruined one of mine. Let's say he's trying to sell that. He's trying to sell the ruined gun for for twenty bucks in the case of a case of beer. So he turns that in the background check is run and uh, and it turns out that Larry's running the background checks onto both of you and you and you both pop as prohibited. Now what do I do? Now? What does he do? The dilemma of the double denial. So he's got he's got a he's got a basically a hot gun that he doesn't want to have, and he knows he can't hand it back to either one of you, can't transfer to you who intends to buy it because you're prohibited, and can't hand it back to you because it turns out you're prohibited. What does he do now? Citizens rest? So now he's got to go to court with with with a guy you know that a shape do you? And usually and he's just handed you one gun that he's he's the dealer that has um I have to go to court and file a lawsuits called an interplet and and give the gun to the court and say, look, I don't have ownership interests that are titling this. These two guys, you you court figure it out. I'm out of here, or you gotta go try to convince the local police department to take the rifle or whatever the firearm is. And what are they gonna say, Daddy, I don't know any to do with this? Not my problem, Yeah, because what are they going to do with it? You have to find somebody else to transfer the gun to. There's a lot of details about it today, Uh, because don't know what hadn't thought about it. It sounds great in theory, it really does. But once you start digging into it and then it starts to well, how do you how do you make this work? Yeah? My resistance to it, My resistance to it was based largely on how I know that. Um, how I know that like in my family, in my circle and my world, how like law abiding people, uh, you know, how we do our business, go about our business right, and so they look at I never looked at it from I never looked at it from dealer industry perspective. It was just looking at like just our common practices and ways in which they would be upset and kind of destroyed. But without you know, without really knowing the details of from the from the sales perspective. And again you do you do a private party background check. But if the background check database is inaccurate and incomplete, what have you accomplished? Why don't we work on getting the records into the system that should be there in the first place. Antana needs to change their law. I love Montana, but you know they got to change the law. And you know the and the what we found was I'll give you a real world example from our Fixed Next campaign. The Washington Navy are shooting right of place. Several people were killed. Turns out, as is often the case in these terrible events, the shooter was mentally ill, right, paranoid, schizophrenic. He um purchased a gun, a pump shotgun from a dealer in Virginia where he lived, past the background check. Um, and that's the firearm he used, and he killed a lot of people. Not long before he purchased the fire arm, he had been in Rhode Island on some work assignment and was like off his rocker, and the police get called and they take him to a hospital. He was not involuntarily committed in Rhode Island, but let's assume he had been involuntary committed. Now he's a prohibitive person. Well, at some point he gets out, it goes back to Virginia. Rhode Island at the time did not put the records into next so he would have gotten out of Rhode Island, back to Virginia, gone to the dealer, bought that shotgun, and passed the background check because Rhode Island didn't put the records in. We were working on Rhode Island to try to get them to change the law when the Washington Navy are shooting occurred and they weren't gonna do it. They were gonna study it, which is lobby code for like kill the bill. Right, they were gonna go study it. They weren't gonna pass the law to change it to require Rhodon for the records. We went back to Rhodeland and said, look what happened, and we walked him through this is exactly what we're talking about. Within twenty four hours, at passed the bill. Rhode Island now puts the records into the system. Industry did that. Nobody else. I'm really eager to get onto Sunday Hunting and lead AMO, but uh, stay on this for a second. Are there are their Second Amendment Advocate I'm not asked. I know the answer to this, but give me their perspective. There are Second amenber advocates though, who are who presumably are uneasy with Fixed Nicks. Yes, there there was. What what's that argument there that it's like a it's like a government imposition on your right. Well, there's a small segment um within the Second Amendment community doesn't think there should be background checks. We happen not to agree with that. The argument that we heard an opposition to the Fixed next legislation, or that we hear when work. The issue in the States is, you know, uh that the people who aren't prohibited their records are going to get into the system, and then people are going to be denied, um, the ability to purchase a fire when they're not a prohibited person. But there is an appeal process um that works very well. In fact, NIX is just substantially improved that they demonstrated for us when we went to visit them to the end of October. So and nothing in Fixed NIX is about expanding. In fact, we're very clear about that. We're not looking to expand who is prohibited. We just want the records of those that are under current law prohibited put into the system, so the dealer knows that when they transfer the firearm, they can rely upon the accuracy of the background check, so they're not selling a gun transferring a gun to a prohibited person. And either the fixed next legislation passed overwhelmingly seventy eight co sponsors in the Senate. You couldn't get seventy eight senators to sign a birthday card, and they all got on this bill. Those who are pro and those were against. Is the Wilderness Act? Uh yeah, after twenty years of trying to get it through and the one descending vote thought it wasn't didn't go far enough. Those days are gone, man, and get a bunch of people to something. Maybe some day will return to that, But I don't know. You know, a lot of non controversial legislation passes on unanimous consent. I mean, I think if if we tried to pass the Lands Package at the end of last Congress on unanimous consent, one one or two senators blocked unanimous consent and there was no time left unanimous um. It was Senator Lee and Senator Senator Lee, and there was a very heated exchange on the floor of the Senate between UH Senator Murkowski, Senator Gardner, uh and and UH Senator Cantwell, who were the primary backers of the legislation. And there's, as you know, lots and lots in that bill, not just the range bill, which is our primary focus. But they didn't like, uh, you know, a provision. He wanted the language change, and he blocked it because you can do that in the Senate and one person can stand up in blocking animous consent um. But so okay. So now they're doing the bill again the exact same language and running it through the you know, the parliamentary process, which takes a while. But he won't be you know, he may offer amendments and uh, you know those some mementos will either get voted on or not. Um if he offers him and uh, but he can't. I don't see how we can stop a bill passing the Senate. What happens on the House now that the Democrats are are in control, whether we'll move in house natural resources remains to be seen. I hope it will because Chairman Garhovo when he was ranking in the last Congress support of the package. So hopefully, UM, that hasn't changed. We'll see hopefully we'll see Sunday hunt really important. Yeah. I was glad to see um there were allies on this issue because it drives me crazy. And I but I see that you guys have like an industry perspective where I see that you you frame it around some economic factors. That's that's how we roll. I just frame it around like that. I just frame it around what I think, you know, just my vision of America when I at that if you can on a Sunday, you should be able to go home. I just pictured that like the fact that there are states where someone can't opt, where someone can't opt to hunt. On the side, you only got screwed by Sunday hunting laws recently over the uh the Christmas and New Year holiday. I was in North Carolina, and I mean I was halfway into the truck and uh realize, I'm like, I'm better check on that sure enough privately and only. Yeah. Yeah, it's just it's the same way I live in Virginia, saying private land only on Sundays. So that launched the Sunday Hunting Initiative. We have partners in Corrational Sportsman's Foundation, their National Assembly of Sportsmen's Caucuses and r A s c I. Um, you know, or it's really the sort of team and most people in the country have no idea that there's these old colonial blue laws. Uh. And it was thirteen states. We've made progress, but all along the up and down the East coast, the original colonies. Basically, Um, there's no science behind it. You know, it's just was a vestige of colonial law. But but it was it was I have to um has to student. That had to do with like enforcing church attendance. Uh. It was religious based, you know, no alcohol, no hunting on Sundays, and so yeah, that's why it's interesting to see like very like to see deeply conservative leaning organizations in opposition to Sunday hunting because you feel like it would put them up against the thing where they're where they're like up against a sort of religious ruling. So every it's interesting. Um, and we made great progress on our Sunday hunting and it's really important because in those states, you know, effectively for many hunters, you're doubling the hunting season. If you're you're working on you work on Monday, Friday, Saturday. You gotta take Johnny to soccer, the game or whatever. You got the honey do list, you gotta you only have Sunday. You can't haunt on Sunday, so you don't hunt, and then you don't take Johnny hunting and you don't pass down the tradition. Now something like Pennsylvania, huge number of hunting licenses. Uh, there's no Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania. So you know, we started with Virginia, then West Virginia and Maryland and North Carolina, South Carolina. We actually got a build out a committee for the first time in the Pennsylvania Senate eight three yesterday yesterday. Is that's an enormous step forward for now. Is the opposition the religious community or the interesting thing is it is, uh the opposition varies from state to state. In Pennsylvania, the primary opposition is the Farm Bureau. In North Carolina it was the Christian right. I can't tell you why, they just know we don't do that in Pennsylvania just because we don't, just because we don't know, we don't. Uh So in Maine. Uh, oddly enough, one of the major forces in opposition is the guides. They don't want to work on Sunday. You don't have to work on Sunday. Don't was making you work on Sunday. I'm not kidding. So the farm Bureau that I don't want the In Pactsylvania, the farm Bureau would say, uh, you know, uh, the farmers don't want to be disturbed on Sunday because if you know, they don't want people coming on the land on Sunday. Or you know, if they shoot the deer one piece of property and it goes onto the farmer's property, they gotta they gotta get permission to go retrieve the deer. Right. So that but um, but it really wasn't a persuasive argument. We said we'll put well, we'll pay for signs. Do you can put up saying you know, no hunting. You know you can post no hunting on Sundays and you know, so a lot of times it's okay, private land, We'll just do private land to take whatever we can get or public land. And we got to change in North Carolina, you know, private land because the party argument we would encounter it be from like hikers or a questrian people like to ride their horses in public. You know, say, well, you know we don't want to get you know, accidentally shot by a hunter. You know, Well, it doesn't happen on you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. What makes you think it's gonna happen on Sunday. Well, that's our day. We should be our day. Um. So we you know, we sort of whatever we can get, you know, and then just go back and try again from more later. But we made great progress. Um. You know, yesterday's vote in Pennsylvania was it was an enormous step forward for us. Explain what happened there from one of our one of our guys, Brodie Henderson, he's Pennsylvania. We've got a couple of Pennsylvania gays we worked with. We talked about this all the time. So we were able finally to get a bill out a committee in the Senate eight to three in favor of, you know, giving the State Fishing Game Agency the authority will permit Sunday hunting, doesn't require I mean, the Commission wants it. They support it. They publicly come out and said they support it. So but to your earlier point, so one of the things we did his industry is to try to say, you know, that's access we want to pass on the tradition. You know, you can do all these other things on Sunday. You'll play golf, you can fish. You know, golf, by the way, is a four letter word. Those are not the birdies we think you should be shooting. You can go shooting, but you can't hunt. So but then part of what we did was to show the economic impact allowing Sunday hunting with and it's significant. Right, So you look at Pennsylvania and so what happens is if you're in New York, you won't go on a hunting trip on a weekend to Pennsylvania because you can only hunt on Saturday. Right, So Pennsylvania says that kind of an opportunity. New York ust Averigh frictions so high used averished factions and they've been shipped away at over time about I don't know, maybe ten years ago, we put a real focus on like how can we really what's the way we can really drive the needle on hunting and said it's it's changing, sunny honey laws on the East coast. And you know, we're making progress, not easy. We're still fighting into Maryland right now. Maryland is there are some counties and so now there's the push to finish up all the rest of the counties, to let the counties go, and it's it's that progression here and there. So used to be Maryland wouldn't even touch it, and now they were in county by county. We're pushing a little bit more and more as well. I mean they're pushing a part of that same Families a Field program. You're pushing the mentorship bills to try and allow so that way you can take your ten year old out hunting. Where you can take someone even an adult who wants to get out and hunt the first time, and they don't have to buy. It's kind of a try before you buy program. You can buy a license at a reduced rate as long as you're going out with someone who's gonna mentor you through that process. We did that in Michigan this fast spring and it was great. It was real nice. So we had some guys never been had never been hunting. We're curious about it, um, you know, for for a bunch of reasons. It was they lived in California. It was like a bunch of reasons that would have been hard for them to get through, just owners for them to like, hey, let's go hunting turkeys all of a sudden and then do hunter safety. But in this case, with a mentor program, you're able to you know, you're with them, you're physically next to each other, able to take them out on the first hunt, and which winds up being and that kind of relationship. I feel that that mentords standing next to each other relationship, its being like very educational. It's around even you know, around safety issues. In fact, I think if you're gonna have someone who if you're gonna have an experienced hunter with an inexperienced hunter, I feel that that time together is as instructive or probably more instructive at that phase and their journey than sitting through like right class, the incubation of a new hunter. You're you're teaching them the traditions, you're teaching them the rules, the left and right. So this is where you step, this is where you don't step. This is how you carry your rifle. This is when you load your rifle. This is when you don't have your rifle loaded. Those are all the things that we were we were taught by our folks when we don't want out and learned from the folks you taught us and and there's a little bit of a gap. We want to we want to kind of close. I mean, you know, someone's not gonna wake up one morning and say I think I'll try hunting. You wouldn't know the first thing right, how to get started. So people do do that and they struggle successful, but mostly you know that's the exception, right, people just say I don't play golf because I can go get a lesson right down the street. So mentoring is critical to passing the tradition and the heritage on. Yeah, I like, I like the program, and I think, you know, I notice to talk about And in this case, there was any age big factor one year. These guys were you know, guys, you can do it some some states gold to two years. You could do it too before you had to show up with the problem Hunter. Yes, I don't have the numbers in front of me. But um. There was a press conference at SACO about Families of Field and reached a milestone and a number of apprentice licenses and uh it's been very successful. Uh and the work continues to and there was a lot of resistance from Hunter ed guys um to the Families of Field effort. Let's just oh yeah, but but it's a collaborative effort, and it's the seffest part of its Sportsman's Alliance, National Wild Turkey Federation and the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation and their National Assembly Sportsman's Caucuses, and the work continues. My resistance to it was based on bitterness because when I was a kid had in Michigan. In Michigan, when I was if you had four teen, yeah, my dad did pay a whole lot of attention to that. But you're supposed to be fourteen to rifle hunt deer, And all of a sudden, I'm talking to buddies of mind from back home and they're out there with their ten and eleven year old I'm like, dude, what do you do. You're supposed to wait forever, you know, I mean in your teens and still watching your days, watching your dad. What really but drove the families of field was you know, studies coming out that showed that, you know, if you did not get a young person in the field by a certain age, you lost them. Right They're they're playing video games, they're getting you know, their their time is occupied by other things, and it's very hard to get them, you know, the start when their sixteen seventeen, right that you gotta engage them earlier, otherwise they're you know, you're not gonna be able to do. There's two bunch competition out there and it's it's proven to be pretty successful. Where where I live. My boy can no boy. My boy am a girl and my other boy can hunt with me when they're ten and then hunt unaccompanied after they do hunters safe once or so. He's kind of in the days man, and there's a youth there's a youth season there for deer, youth season for waterfowl. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. Uh So we did Sunday hunting. We jumped ahead of ourselves and got into some youth stuff. Let ammo. Yeah, big, big challenge, but some would say it's the biggest threat to the industry banning lead ammunition like we saw in California. So our you know, our view on on the issue is is this. You mentioned the point earlier. You manage wildlife populations, you don't manage to prevent harm to individual animals. Because if wildlife management becomes about preventing harm to individual animals, guess what you just made the argument for banning hunting right and fences and glass windows. So so our view is that decisions on this issue should be evidence based, based on science that's clear that shows that there's an adverse population impact, and then if that's the case, the Phish and Game Agency should look at what are the options available to address the problem to to turn it around, and that may or may not include banning ammunition certain types of ammunition, but you should look at what are the full spectrum of of things you can do. And then we think a factor and the decision should be what is the you know, what is effective and least costly to the hunter, because if you know increase cost, you know, just basic economics, right, you're you're gonna have less participation that may or may not result in banning lead ammunition in an area. And we think the the solution should be is local lost is necessary? Um, you know, if you've got a problem in a particular localized area, that doesn't mean you have to adopt the statewide band. California started in the Condor region and then expanded statewide. We think the question that uh a good part of the push for banning lead ammunition comes from the anti hunting groups. I mean, when the Humane Society of the United States, UM, you know, support spanning lead ammunition and wants people to hunt with copper ammunition, I mean, are you serious. I mean, now hs US is okay with hunting as long as you're not using lead ammunition. Let's laughable on its face. So if there's a part and we don't see population impacts, right, I mean, even with the condor, it's clear that lead. They were getting lead from other sources, paint chips on on the water towers. And the core of the basis for the law in California was um a study that is totally flawed and not credible that was pushed by the folks out there too became the basis for why they banned lead ammunition from hunting in the entire state. And we said, uh, look, if you do this, here's the consequences. You're gonna people are gonna hunt less, and they're gonna hunt outside the state. And end there is not enough lead ammunition or non let ammunition produced in the country to meet the demand of hunters in California. So the industry makes non lead ammunition alternative ammunition. In response, to consumer demand, and that demand amounts to less than one percent of the entire ammunition market. Is that right? Yes? What if I when you break it down to the center fire, so nine of ammunition is um metallic lead ammunition, five is alternative ammunition. Four of the five percent of shot hill. The rest is uh, you know, for it's some of its frangible ammunition a small part. But that's that's how much demander is for non let ammunition. And our view is, look, if hunters want to use alternative ammunition, that should be their choice, right, I mean, and the initial will make it in response to consumer demand, like any any other product. That's the thing that's like an annoyance I find in this debate is if people are it's becomes so contentious that if people talk about how they use monolithic bullets or use copper, some people feel that just a simple fact of you using it as condemnation of lead, even though I first became introduced to it, certainly by people who are just motivated by performance. Right. But it's like, but sometimes people jump on you, you know, if you use solid copper, they'll act like somehow you don't support lead, And I think it's just like one of those things that it's just a sensitive world because we're all like really embroiled and it's a passion it's a passion based thing, and there's sensitivities afloat, But it just winds up being like a really interesting conversation of individual like to say, like individually, for whatever reason, performance um concerns, and they don't seem to be the people have concerns about ingesting bullet lead absent any documentation that hunters have elevated lead levels doesn't exist. In fact, quite the contrary, right, But regardless, like you might whatever reason, like someone might decide to do it. And I think that again, industry will match up with people's choices, but there's there's needs to be ability to say, like, this is what I personally choose. Does that mean that I want to legislate it? Does that mean I want to legislate it and make it mandatory for all people to conform to the decisions that i've personally may And we think it's the hunter's choice if they want to use that product for performance or because they think it's more environmentally sensitive. You know, the more the industry will respond to consumer demand and more will be produced. Those just are the facts that it's less than one percent. We don't think it's really you know, this should be a decision for the state fish and game agencies. They're the professionals, they're the ones with the expertise and wildlife management. We don't think it should be regulated by legislature because other you know, that's you know, that's why the state agencies exist. Although I mean if you had an out of control state agency, maybe you would need legislation, uh, if they weren't making a science, science based decision. But you know, so it's you manage populations. If there's a population impact, and you determine it's coming you know, from lead, I mean a's and what are the options? So for example dove you know, if you ban um lead shot for dove hunting, I mean, it makes dove hunting really expensive, right, and so what happened? What would happen to dove hunting? Here we go down precipitously. Do you need to ban lead for you know, dove hunting? Well, I don't see any evidence of adverse population impacts on doves. I mean people have been shooting doves in Argentina for example, like crazy amounts of lead shot and there there's no shortage of doves in Argentina, for example, both Harvested Game Animal America and I've talked to, you know, the former director of Fish and Wildlife, like because Missouri, for example, was looking at, you know, banning the use of lead shot for dove hunting. And you know, are there other things you can do short of banning the product that would adequately address the problem. And one of the things you can do till the soil, right, turn the soil over so it's not accessible, or rotate the duff fields. Um. So there, you know, there are things that can be done short of an outright ban. And again it there's you know, shouldn't ban it unless there's population impacts. What's your perspective? We hear a lot in this like the bald eagle is used as the symbol of the other side, right, It's evokes a lot of emotion, right, and it's eagle populations are soaring, pardon the pun, right, And most states don't even bother counting nesting pairs anymorekers, they're so plentiful. But we see story after story after story, you know, um, and they're almost indistinguishable it's like a cookie cutter. And this is coming from you know, from anti hunting groups were convinced, you know that they hold up a single eagle, um that's in a in a you know Avian rescues thing and our place, and they extrapolate that, you know, there's this big problem and you have to band lead ammunition when a reality, you know, the populations of eagles are soaring, and there was that study in Iowa done a couple of years ago. You know, it's like like it's a guy at federal who works on conspation issues, Ryan Bronson, and you know Ryan, great guy, he often said, and it's some of these state fishing Game agency means that we go to is like, look, if you look for uh, sick people in the hospital, guess what you're gonna find sick people. But you can't extrapolate from the sick person in the hospital that there's this problem outside of the hospital. And that's what that study in Iowa did. It actually went out and looked at you know, you know, the eagle population and said there was fine, there wasn't any evidence of a problem. So they know, they find one eagle, they bring it and they extrapolate from there and say, well, we gotta band lead ammunition when you know, and it's the hunters and the conservation dollars back pivoting back to Pittman Robertson, who paid for the restoration of the Eagle Hunters dead. You can think a hunt it right. So you're gonna you're gonna ban traditional ammunition without evidence that there's a population fact, and there's even less evidence that there's a human health risk. I mean to study the CDC did in in North Dakota, hunters had lower than the average, than the pop than the control group, lower than the average person walking around on the street. Everybody in this we all have some level of lead in or butt, right, it's but probably probably a uh factor predominantly rural, yes, so, and hunters who had hunted the longest had even lower levels. So if there was this idea that well, if you keep eating game harvested with traditional ammunition, lead's going to build up in your blood, well then these hunters that have been hunting the longest should have had higher readings, and I actually had lower readings. So that study probably like diminished exposure to all diminished exposure to all the other ways you'd just led. And nobody in the study had a lead level that was remotely approaching the threshold of concern for a child, let alone adults. Right, And there was one person in the study, as I recall, um, that had levels about the level of concern for a child, but this was an adult. But they had no that they couldn't say that lead was sourced from consuming game. And I always been checking the blood lead levels of their people in the state for years, right, a lot of hunting in Iowa. They've never seen it. There's never been a documented case of anybody in the United States having elevated lead levels, let alone lead poisoning from consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition. So what was your perspective in the early nineties when they banned lead ammunition for migratory waterfowl? So, yeah, you it predates me. But what I've heard is that, um, that this is just what I've heard in over the years, is that there really wasn't good science that that it was having a population impact. But basically came down to judge saying either you agree to this or I'm gonna ban waterfowl hunting nationwide, and and so sort of that's how it came to be. But I mean, we're not debating you know this issue now thirty years later, right, So, um, my dad said that, but he did have an impact on on duck hunting in the United States. My dad talked about because I was just starting hunt then, um, just starting legally hunt. My dad talk of people quiting hunting. Yeah, but the people adjusted to it over time. But so, but as an organization, what's your what's your perspective on um? Like, you represent industry, okay, and you want things to be smooth for the industry. What is your perspective bond cases and that, Like, let's say around letters other hypotheticals, Uh, where wildlife management agency is making a wildlife based decision. Here's a good hypothetical. I heard a story one time. I heard a story that Florida used to Florida that thing where they allowed rifle hunting for turkeys in the spring. Okay, let's just say there's a there's a there's a state that allows rifle hunting for turkeys in the spring. And someone points out that you don't wear hunters orange when you're hunting turkeys because they see the orange. And there s movement. Um, people are on the ground, people are mimicking the sounds of female turkeys, and the turkey hunting community. Let's say, in a hypothetical state, the turkey hunting community says, man, let's just keep let's just stick at the shotguns, because then we're everyone's safer out in the woods. And this is traditionally, you know, all across the councient people huntle with shotguns the spring, and we're going to conform to that norm as suggested by turkey hunters, the game agencies behind it. Now, what if someone looks and says, what might be a hunter issue, a game management issue, but someone looks and says, no, that's a gun issue. You're infringing gun rights. How do you, like, how do you navigate that? If? If you do that, the state fishing game agencies, you know, I have the authority to regulate the seasons, regulate the implements used for taking game. We have no problem with that. So if that were going on, I mean, I think it's a it's a safety issue, right, And the bullets from a rifle travel a lot further than pellets from shotgun, so instinctively you don't see that and think that's a fight. I'm gonna wait into That's not a fight we would get involved in. I mean, thinking about it, it's even even where I live in Virginia, there are some counties that are closer here to to the DC area where you can only hunt with archery equipment because it's so so so densely populated. And then as you started to get a little bit further out, okay, you can hunt with a shotgun. And then once you get to these counties, okay, now you can hunt with a rifle. We don't have an issue with that. I mean, that's that's a safety issue. But you could see as much as uncomfortable with that stuff. You could see if that becoming a tool used by anti hunters. And so it's like, I guess that's the kind of the broader point I'm making is you always need to consider the source some things because there's ideas, like they said, like the abuse of the abuse of lead AMMO bands in California, where there's there's an isolated instance or an isolated case with migratory waterfowl. Say, we're looking like from a management perspective, this makes sense. Someone then looks and it says huh um, I'm gonna now use manipulate this and use this as a general tool to curb people's rights. You're seeing that half right now in Oregon. So in Oregon, they've got several bills that we're trying to push back on that would include, uh, you know, a fourteen day waiting period, a limit of only twenty rounds a month, and five round magazine capacity shot around a skeet traps season. But on top of that, you're also looking at their their debating right now where they're going to have a ban on lead immunition for anyone between the ages of eighteen. I know that, and they the argument they make is its public health. See, this is what I'm this is what I'm talking about where you wind up in new situations where it's just it's like so clearly coming from the perspective of someone who is like I want to whittle away at I want to whittle away at this community or whittle away at people's rights. What are the things I can use to get there? So what we're saying is, uh, Connecticut, they was a bill introduced to a fifty tax and ammunition. Um, we've seen that in Seattle, Cook County, Illinois outside of Chicago, and you know, we see this in Oregon. The other thing we're seeing is, you know, we saw it in Florida. You know, say you cannot purchase long guns until one. So federal law now says you can't purchase a hanggun until one. So now you're eighteen nineteen and twenty. Federal law now says you have to be twenty one to purchase the hand control right. Yeah, so if you pan under state law was like in Florida for example, and there's lawsuit pending the eighteen nineteen and twenty and you can't purchase a long gun, you also can't purchase handgun. You're an adult, you could be in the military or you know, you could be the spouse of somebody in the military, you could have a child, you could you know, Um, you can't purchase a gun for target shooting, you can't purchase a gun for hunting, and you can't purchase a gun for self defense. To us, that is clearly a violation of the Second Amendment. We don't even think that's a close call. So again, you're looking at someone eighteen years old, fully vested in their rights. They can vote, freedom of speech, freedom, exercise of religion, free assembly. But you can't exercise your Second Amendment rights. You can't buy a gun until you twenty one. I wonder why we're twenty one because the drinking laws. I think it's an arbitrary number that they picked out of the air. I mean, you know, in long before Hella was decided, right, So you also can't buy handguns across their lines. I'm trying to think of how I had I had even from a dealer seventeen. I'm trying to think of how I guess my dad just gave me any But you couldn't. You cannot walk into a gun store license e and purchase a handgun unless one and you're in my Tanna. You cannot drive into Wyoming, go to a license dealer in Wyoming and purchase a handgun from that dealer, even if you're older. You cannot buy a handgun across state lines. So yeah, I mean in case of point, when I was in the military, I could buy a handgun in any state I was stationed in because virtue of my my military orders. Now, my wife, I was in a Hampshire resident while I was in the military. My wife is a Texas resident, she maintained her Texas residency. For her to buy a handgun, she would either have to go back to Texas or she would have to change her residency every three years every time we moved. So you're putting that a huge burden on people. What is the what is the issue with the limit? The Oregon thing which I can't picture's gonna get youwhere? Or am I wrong? The twenty rounds? So what is it again? So you can only buy twenty rounds a month at Oregon State? Shock on? She state built five? One? That one out? And again, how do you enforce next month? So that's not gonna go anywhere? Is it? I would not I would not say no, not in Oregon? Right now? Yeah, So, I mean it's a thing about it is we go to We're going to go out duck hunting, and I'm a terrible shot and I can't shoot anything. So I blow through twenty rounds right away, trying to shoot my first two ducks, and then I'm like, I'm out of AMMO. I look at you and say, Steven, let me get some shal from you so I can continue shoot. Am I violation to law now? Because I'm now transferring AMMO to me? Are you violating law because you're answering handing AMMO to me? I guess I can't ask you to pay me back for well, he's only got twenty himself. So luck what other uh? What other things are you guys watching for that make you? Um, you know, I guess like not not ones that not pieces of legislation. Again, man, I don't know, that's very hard for me to picture. Uh, I don't know. I don't know the the political climate there. That's very hard for me to picture. Passing California. It's it's tough your listeners that live in Oregon and pick up a phone, call your state senator and call your representative. Make sure they know how ridiculous that is. It includes shotgun shells. Okay, what are the what are the pieces of legislation that you're looking at? And uh, the ones you're most leria of coming up? We base you spend some time on age basis a concern attempts to ban monitors boarding rifles. We see that, you know, Um, we're looking at that and in several states, Yeah, maybe Nevada, maybe Oregon, maybe in Colorado's Colorado yep. So we're concerned about that. Um. Those are by far the most popular rifles being sold in the United States. Articulate from your perspective on it, it's a semi automatic rifle. UM. They are like the ninety four and that was in place for ten years. They would be banning the products based on cosmetic features. There's no um effect on how the fire and functions. Semi Automatic firems have been in civilian possession for well over a hundred years. UH. The studies that were done by the government on the Clinton gun band showed that it had absolutely no impact on reducing crime in the United States. We also had a magazine capacity restriction for ten years. It had absolutely no impact on reducing crime. Uh. It's that no impact on reducing crime in the states that that have passed it. UM, So you're just denying people a rifle that they want to purchase for lawful purposes. Primarily target shooting is the main use, increasingly hunting, and also for UM personal protective self defense. I was, you know, I was, I don't know. I was out of high school but didn't follow things as closely. Then. What did the night ban was that at the time was adoption rates of a are so low that there wasn't any resistance or was that like a contentious It was extremely contentious. I didn't know if it was like one of those things where it wasn't They weren't widespread, you still it kind of went on not unnoticed, but was grown in popularity since the sun set, for partly because the sunset, and then also largely as we talked earlier, people that served in the military came back from overseas or being in military and wanted to purchase these firearms for target shooting, primarily. More than sixteen million modern sporting rifles are in private ownership today, more than sixteen million, sixteen million just since ninety four. They've they've been on the commercial market since nineteen sixty three. There's a nineteen sixty one Cult Sport had out there talking about hunting with the cult Sporter rifle, which was a nifty What what do people do in states where you know, okay, like if you're hunting, uh, you hunt waterfowl, you have a three shot limit, so you can only have three shots in the sun. And that's a not a vestige. I mean, it has to do with in order to have plenty of opportunity for everyone to hunt. State game agencies need to in federal you know, in this case US Fishing and Wildlife Service, they take measures to to limit efficacy so that you can spread that. So it's like this matter we are here like fair chase, which is a problematic term, but fair share, right, You're you're expanding things. So if you have states that have MAGA like states that have magazine capacities, what do a R hunters do if you have a state where you have a four shot limit, so you, um, you know, models with smaller magazines that are you know, cam out out and uh, you know sold for the hunting market, or you just have a larger magazine, but you can only have so many rounds and people people produce that I've never I've never hunted the one I've shot. Yeah, I mean it's it's a small part of the hunting market. I mean it's it's yeah, but I've hunted where they are, So I've hunted hunted predators. I've hunted hogs with him. Um, I don't know, people have hunted big game with them. They come you know the other side, you know, they they don't understand that it comes in different calipers, right. I mean, like what we did an exercise at a conference of state legislators. We had a poster. We had uh Remington a r in camo. It was our fifteen udly was chambered in three or eight, and then we had a black Smith and Wesson MMPO twenty two long rifle, and we had the two bullets like on the bottom of the poster and like actual size, and we asked people state legislad or small of the country, Um, okay, you know which is you know, which goes to which they invariably said, you know, like got it wrong or which, Oh that one that's okay because it's camouflaged. The black one, well that's bad, just like you know, and they would just assume that the larger, you know, because they all they hear right in the media is you know, high powered assault rifles. Most a RS mountain sporting rifles coming two two three Remington's right. Most states will not let you hunt white tail deer with it two two three Remington's it's not powerful enough. But you know, if you're prairie dogs and things like that, that's where the people use them a lot or hog hunting Farrell hogs and which is a great, great against coyotes and kyotes. Right, So, what's what's the conversation that you have with states that are that are considering bands. There's often not much you're a conversation, all right, I mean, they just nothing you can say. They want to hear. They don't care a right, I mean, it's it's politically expedient and they think it's popular politically, and they trade on the false information. They don't want to know the truth, they don't want to know the facts. I think an easy case to point is is how quickly New York pushed through their safegun Act and their gun loss that they're pushing through right now. They're literally days it's their introduction and three days later the governor signed again into law. There's no there's no public hearing in New York. Often the case, the bill isn't even written when they pass it. It's just like a concept, right, here's an outline of what will be in it, and then they write it later. No, No, there's no public hearings, an opportunity for people coming and testify against it in New York and the rest of the legislature doesn't see the bill it's decided by the you know, the head of the House, the head of the Senate, and the governor. And that's what happened, you know, the other day in New York. That the thing I'm a little bit guilty of is, you know, I've lived in a lot of states where you didn't feel that you're rights are being infringed down, and you become not only passive, you just you don't you're not aware of what's going on. You become passive about issues like you know, like I've just lived a lot of states like that. I spent time in Alaska, spent time in Montana. You just kind of lose sight of what happens. I lived in New York for a while, and living there, I really felt um like kind of like victimized. And you've got the sense that sort of like there was a there was a tacit governmental disapproval of your perspective and lifestyle, and it made to the point where you're engaged in lawful activities and you're someone who's accustomed to like enjoying certain liberties, you know, not enjoying, but actually sizing liberties and rights, and you come up against a system where you're like, man, I feel like the system is in some ways designed to make it very hard, to make it very hard for me to be above the books. I had to have a while where I could only you had to register everything, and you can only register them at a certain cadence. And being in the business that I'm in, um, it wound up being like restrictive, restricting me to carry about what I view as a legitimate business enterprise and being there, but then also seeing evidence of the way that the people who don't care about doing things by the book, how they operated, and it just felt like and then and then you had like this heightened sense and then you developed this like really heightened sense of losing your rights. You're like, oh, you know, I want to there's something I should be involved in. And then eventually like out of there and take off and kind of forget about the whole thing again because you take for granted and you can have a you can have a rifle in your truck and it doesn't need to be in a hard case, and you can lend your body your gun, and you can have a closet that has a few cases the AMMO, and you lose well, I mean so at the State of the Industry UM event at the Shot Show are UM CEO Steve Sinnetti spoke to this this sort of very issue the you know the that in America, you know, I have the right to enjoy my activities. I like, you don't have to like hunting, you don't have to like shooting, but you should respect that I do. And you should respect that I should have the freedom to engage in these lawful activities. Uh. And you know you're infringing upon my liberty, my freedom. You're not making uh the world a safer place. You're just you're just restricting my rights. And you know, in America you should respect you know, you don't have to agree with other people, but you should respect that they have the right to do these things and it's not causing problems. And to your point, all these I mean you hear it. It's almost cliche, but it's true. All these con control laws only impact the law body. We had Mark Robinson, the guy from the YouTube of Greenville's, North Carolina. You know, I'm going to obey the law, but the criminal is not right. So all these laws don't don't stop the bad guy, right, I mean, the criminal is not going to pay attention to the law. I mean it's kind of definitionaliz I mean that's and so take the case now that's going to the Supreme Court. Finally after ten years from hell, are the is finally taken a case. Now that you know you have uh cabanals on the court and gorse It's on the court, they've taken a case. Thankfully, We'll see what happens. But I think it's hard to imagine in this case. It um Supreme Court doesn't rule that a slam dun't to me. I mean I hate as they say that. Yeah, I mean it's so in New York City you can only have a pistol in your home with the permit, and you can take the pistol and go to a shooting range, and there are seven in the city within the five boroughs the City of New York and back. But the gun has to be unloaded. It has to be in a heart case and locked. Right. Um. Now, let's say you live in in uh in co Op City, in in New York, which is close to the Westchester County border, and you want to go to uh shooting range. It's opened up in in Westchester County. You're outside of the city of New York. You cannot take your pistol. Put it unloaded, put it in the case, locked the case, and go to Westchester, to that range in Western County across the city line. You've committed a crime. Let's say you have a weekend house or something like in uh in the Cat's Skill. You can't take that pistol unloaded, Put it in the case, lock it, and drive to your weekend house in the Catskills. You've committed a crime. Let's say you decide, I'm out of here. I can't take New York City anymore. I'm moving to wherever, Montana. You can't you can't take that fire. You can't take that that pistol. Put it unloaded, put it in the case, locked the case, and drive to Montana. You've committed a crime. In the District Court, the Federal District Court, and the U. S. Couarter Appeals for the Second Circuit sits in Manhattan ruled that that that did not violate the Second Amendment, like because you know, the city had an interest in like, you know, not having guns on the you know, on the street. Now, I don't know one dang banger criminal drug dealer in the Five boroughs. That is a buying by that law, right, I mean, I was just making New York City safer. I just cannot imagine I had to spend that that that court doesn't. I had just been hundreds of dollars for a permit. You're lucky to get one. And there was an article just the other day about the only people uh in New York City who are able to get carry permits are you know, the rich and famous. Yeah, and there's a whole big scandal going on about bribes that we're being taking, well within the Pistol Licensing Unit, within the NYPD. You know, some guy was caught taking bribes to clear permits. Yeah, So explain the Supreme Court case it's coming up. So that's the New York soone the individual challenge, there's a lawsuit that challenged this this requirement in New York City's law. So it's not that someone got busted and appealed up to the Supreme Court. I want to be able to you know, I should be able to go outside the city. The laws on constitutions right, that this list law is on constitutional on the Second Amendment and also violates the right you know, you have a constitutional right to travel, so I can't take my pistol with me and and that. Um, so they sued, They lost to the district court, they lost at the Court of Appeals, and now Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. And I have a hard time imagining that the Supreme Court doesn't rule that that it goes too far, that that violates the Second Amendment, because the Court and Heller, for example, has already said, uh, and the McDonald you have the right. The Second Amendment involves two rights, the right to carry, the right to keep and the right to carry. Two rights. Right, it's not one, it's two rights. Uh. And that those are common law rights that predated the Constitution. The Second Amendment didn't create those rights. It protected them, right, but those rights were already existing under English common law that was adopted by the United States, you know, after we won the War of Independence. And uh, the Court has said that the right to bear arms means to have it on your person to carry it. So there have been some courts like the Seventh Circuit that you know, you you and we've seen it in in d C. You have the right to carry a firearm self protection, which is why now every single state, UM in the country has to allow some level of of right to carry. Right that the last state was I think Wisconsin and Illinois with like the last two states that you know, even in the District Columbia. So now there are different like some states are shallice you. Some states now increasingly including now most recently South Dakota, are a constitutional right to carry. You don't need the government's permission. UM. New Hampshire changed recently. UM. So that's a trend, that's positive trend that's happening. UM. And and uh. Other states that you know, you have to prove, like in Maryland, you have to like you know, prove you have a need uh and get the blessing of the government in order to carry a firearm for self protection. Interestingly, the District of Columbia, it's it's actually through the court decisions essentially a shall issue jurisdiction. They don't can't use their discretion to deny you. And we see that a lot right in other parts of the country where you know, I like you, I'll give you one. I don't like you so much you didn't contribute to my campaign or you know, like I don't like you or you're not my buddy, I'm not gonna give it to you. And you see a lot of abuse to that discretion that takes place. It's probably having in California right now, is it's county by county, the county sheriff gets to decide, Well, Los Angeles County, good luck. You know, you go out to current county where it's more rural, and the county sheriff out there is good with it. He'll he'll unless he's got a need for you to not carry, he's gonna give you an apartment. So you're you know, your constitution rights shouldn't be determined by the happenstance of geography. Remember years ago, when my father went to get his conceived permit, he had to go up in front of the like, uh, he had to go to the sheriff's office to go up in front of like a four Some states have that Connecticut. This is a long time, but yeah, yeah, he had to go and uh and he went from I can't remember who it was, but like he went down the sheriff's office and they had a panel of people with the conduct a little interview and he got a he got his his concealed carrier, I remember, and then but the only thing he had with the twenty two. To buy my first handgun in North Carolina, I had to get permission from the county sheriff to buy just to buy a handgun. Lots changes. Yeah, only what do you got, man? I guess The one thing we haven't touched on, maybe we could touch on is what's UH the NSF doing in a proactive way about gun violence. So, actually, the industry is the long history of of having real solutions and pursuing initiatives that you know, will we think make for saying for communities. UH So one exam apple is um our Project Child Safe campaign, which we've been doing since about n where we the industry distribute UM firearm safety education kits that include a free gunlock, a cable style gunlock which fits the most number of actions. We've distributed ready for this over thirty eight million kits, thirty eight million locks in every state and US territory, partnering with over fifteen thousand local law enforcement agencies as our distribution partner. We're very proud of that. We continue to do that and as adjunct to that, since UH ninety six ninety seven, manufacturers have been providing a locking device with each new firearm that they shipped from the factory. So between the two it's well over a hundred million locks distributed around the country. And so how would you participate in the first one? You just go down. So we get requests all the time. In fact, the demand outstrips the supply of locks by three to one. Law enforcement agencies know about the program all of the country that calls say hey, can we get you know, some locks. We're gonna do a you know, a community event, We're gonna do a safety program. We want to distribute these uh gunshot. When I was in Seattle, they would do project up there, right, So we're really really proud of that. And not exclusively, but I think we've helped contribute to the decline and accidents involving firearms UM. You know, accidental deaths involving firearms is UM at the lowest level it's ever been since record keeping began in nineteen o three. It's incredibly rare, particularly for children. You know, there are some states that don't have any accidents involving children. Accidental death voming farms. You far more likely UM to die from, you know, a host of other causes, drowning, fires, reasoning that you're um, you know, with an accident involving a firearm, it makes news when it happens, right, even involves a child. But and but so we distribute these locks. That's one program we do. We also have been doing with a t F since campaign we called Don't Lie for the Other Guy. That is to assist law enforcement in educating and training retailers UH and their staff on how to be better able to identify and prevent illegal straw purchases UH. And then a public service announcement component to the program to get the word out in the community that it's a serious crime to buy a gun for somebody else who can't UM and that if you do that, you know, you lie on the three UH, that it's a felony. You can go to prison for ten years and you get a fine of up to a quarter million dollars. For those of you that have never filled out that form, the question is basically that you're are you the actual yeah, and if you're not UM, the actual buyer, it's not actually for you. So you're you know, UH, your fell and boyfriend gets out of prison and wants, you know, and convince his uh, you know, his girlfriend to go into a store and buy a handgun for him because he's gonna use it to go rob the seven eleven. And she says, I'm the actual buyer. That's a crime and you can go to prison for that, and so um. You know, we've been doing that campaign for a long time with a t F as our partner. There's educational material for the retailer to to you know, help educate their staff want to be on the lookout for what kind of questions to ask I mean, and it can be very difficult for the the retailer to discern if somebody comes in and fills out the form and that doesn't go anything that would cause you to be suspicious. Um. But again, also we have the public awareness campaign to tell the would be strung purchaser long before they were walking to the store that you know, don't lie for the other guy. You can go to prison. So that's another program we've even do it for a long time, very successful, you know, the national camp, We've done it all over the country. We've distributed the kits, the retailer education kits to every retailer in the country free. You know you want one, we'll send it, you know. We we make it available at the dealer educational summars we go on at the shot show and things like that. We're also we talked about the Fixed Next campaign. We're very proud of that. UM, you know, that's that's been great success. We're now partnering with a t F and another initiative called Operations Secure Store. So a t F came to us a little while back and and and identified a troubling trend where burglaries of gun stores were on the rise and they were stealing you know, more and more guns from these burglaries. Uh, you know, some pretty significant increase primarily gang activity. Um, the you know, sevent guns that they were stealing, their handguns and those guns hit the street and it's not you know, these are bad guys. And so we've been working with a TF on Operations Secure Store to raise awareness within the dealer community. You know that this can happen to you. Um, and you know what steps can you take that are appropriate for your business to reduce the risk, Like can you put the guns away in a gun save? Can you put put them in smash resistant display cases. You know, have you know closed circuit you know TV monitors and cameras and make sure you've got you know, solid locks on your doors and things like that. But I mean it's it's um. You know. What we see is, you know, the bad guys will take a truck, steal a truck and drive it right through the front door. Or you got bars and gates on the window, or ballard's in front, they'll just hook up a chain, put it on it and blow it right off. Or they come in from they'll breaking to the nail salon or something next door and they'll go intrough the wall. They'll just punch through the wall or through the roof. I mean all kinds of you know ways of getting in there in and out a short period of time and steal you know, a lot can steal a lot of guns. Fortunately, the most recent information that we gotten with a TF is that you know, we've bent the curve and the rate of these are starting to go down. The number of guns stolen starting to go down, and ATF believes that's been in part to the cooperative effort to get the word out the dealers that they're reacting in a responsible way to protect their inventory from being stolen. I mean, I really applaud a t F whenever this occurs. They respond, even if it's one gun that stolen, they come in force, they respond right away, They work with the retailer, you know, and they try to recover the guns as quickly as they can. And as part of this effort, if at F puts out a reward for information and a SECEPH will max that reward, so instead of like a five thousand dollar reward, it's now ten thousand. And that's a check I don't mind writing, you know, um, And we do write those checks from time to time. But we are happy to do that because it means getting the bad guys and we're very happy to see when these guys get sentenced. Uh, you know, they really get uh, they get hammered. Did you just put them away for a long time. As part of that, on the NSSF side, we're supporting legislation called the Farms the Federal Farms Licensee Protection Act, which would increase the maximum penalty that someone could get in prison for stealing guns from a licensee from ten years to twenty years and impost mandatory minimums for burglaries and robberies. Robberies fortunately are still pretty rare. UM, but you know, we've seen homicides of retailers in the commission of a robbery. UM, so that's concerning, and we worry that, you know, if you're sort of hard in the store, then they'll just come in during the daytime and come in a robbery. So we're really worried about that. Although you would think rapping a gun shop would be a special kind of stupid, but it does happen. Uh, fortunately, pretty rare. So we're working on that legislation. It's um you know, we hope to have it reintroduced in the House soon and Centatogram introduced the letter legislation in the past and the Senate, and we believe he'll reintroduce it again. We're trying to build support for that. We think that's a you know, that's not a gun control bill, that's a pro law enforcement, pro safety bill. The support of all the major law enforcement groups in the country behind that, so we're really really proud of that. And the other newer, fairly new initiative we've been working on is with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which is the largest suicide prevention organization in the country, but they actually came to us to partner with us to try to help address the issue. And I think you probably know about six six of gun deaths are suicides, and so that's you know, most people don't even hear, like you know X number of gun deaths. Two thirds of those are our suicides UM, which is a terrible, terrible thing. UH suicides of all the fire arm and when a firearm is used commit suicide, it's it's lethal and effective about the time. So the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention as a goal that we're helping them to reach, they want to reduce UM suicides by and the only way they can impact that or reach that goal is by addressing firearms related suicides because of so many of them are committed with are done with firearms. So we're working with them to get information out to ranges and retailers UM. You know through that they have state chapters and we're in our outreach to our members and other even non member retails. Give it to anybody, you know how you know, what are the things you can be on the lookout for. You know, what do you do if it happens, and unfortunately ran you see it happening at ranges from time to time, and it's very troubling for the people who work at the range. When this happens. It's very difficult. I mean it's um you know, uh most of the time the person doesn't you know they're coming where in a sign obviously, so it's a challenge, but it encourages people, not you know, gun owners, you know, information that goes across the counter to the consumer to have that difficult conversation. If you see somebody you know, you're close with, a family member or friend, do you think is struggling that might be depressed, Um, had a death in the family, you know, bad news on medical or the lost their job or something like that. Are just struggling financially, you know, to reach out to offer assistance to you know, trying to point them in a direction where they can get help. I mean there's lots of suicide prevention hotlines and things like that. So just to try to encourage people to have that conversation if somebody is struggling, you know, maybe it's somebody in your family. You know, if your firearms aren't locked up when not in use. You know, maybe you should do that, maybe you should take the firearms, offer to take the firearms from somebody if they're you know, and a lot of times we hear that people say, yeah, just take them for me, like because I'm in a you know, in a dark place or whatever. So you know, just encouraging people to have that conversation, to offer help, try to just make sure that firearms are not you know, you want to reduce access to lethal means. And that's what's really about working with the Veterans Administration and the same thing obviously we all know about, you know, returning veterans twenty two days commit suicide, again often with firearms. So we're working with the Veterans Administration on suicide prevention as well. We work with them in the past with Child Safe and provided you know, hundreds of thousands of Project Child Safe kids to the Veterans Administration that and they gave them to returning vets when we were drawing down from from Iroq and Afghanistan and big numbers, so we're very proud of that. And and you we're continuing to work with them on on their new initiative to try to help address the suicide issue with veterans, So it's you know, kind of teaming up with and we're at are UM the shooting at the school in UH, Texas in Santa Fe. We work with the Governor's office to bring child Safe to the state, and we've actually received a million dollar grant or in the process of receiving a million dollar grant from the State of Texas to run Project Child Safe in the state of Texas as part of Governor Abbott's response to that tragedy. So we we we do a lot. I mean, you know, people don't know we do these things. I mean we're you know, but we're trying to make sure policymakers understand that the industry is proactive pursuing real solutions to make for safer communities. I also having a conversation there a night about UH suicide and I've lost a very close friend and our our our body j recently lost a close friend and he was saying that to the annoyance of his other friends. Now he's always checking in with people and pushing a little bit how you doing, how you really doing, because he says now he was so blindsided by it UM that he's nervous now of like missing missing cues among his friends and colleagues. He said it made him like he now lives in this world, have been like very aware of where where people are around you. Yeah, you hear that, Like people say, I never knew, I wish I had asked, I wish I knew. Yeah, he wonders if he had missed something, and he doesn't want to miss something next time, you know, And look a lot of times it's the person that chooses to do this. It's their own firearms. So there, you know, limitations is what you can do. But you know, if you're the you know, uh parent and you've got you know, a young adult or a teenager in the house, and you know you think that it might be an issue, make sure you firearms are secured and not accessible, you know, make sure the keys aren't out there or they or they don't know the common nation or or even like you know, have your body hold the firearms and you know, if you think and that's not anti gun, right, we're not saying bad guys. We're not saying just be responsible. That's person that's like common sense personal storage stuff, I mean, like our personal choice. We once we had young kids. I don't want to say that I didn't used to store guns carelessly because it was things that were in my own secure home. We're just grown ups living at home in a home. Once we had kids, different story, yeah, because they're very like, you know, they're really interested in what their dad's interested in, and so we had to adopt um for now we have a four year old, six year old, eight year old, we had to adopt a pretty I don't want to say rigid, but we we adopt a system that's twofold, where we do a locked cabinet and an in the locked cabinet, we do trigger locks. And it's and it took a while to train myself to not be lazy now and then, because it's like, oh, yeah, you're in a situation where you're working on something or cleaning it, and then something comes up and you gotta go do something and like force yourself to stick to your own system that you have put in place when you have young kids around. And that's the thing. That's the thing I like about Project Child Safe. It's like you're speaking to gun owners but in friendly terms and not you're you're coming at them from friendly terms and not like condemning what their decisions they've made are condemning them as a person. But you're saying, like, I understand where you're at. Um, here are some tools and practices to achieve what I know, And there's no one ice fits all. I mean, if someone has a firearm that's for personal protection and they wanted accessible, then there are ways you can approach that. You know, um, a lockbox, quick access lockbox, coming biometrics now or combinations, and that's one approach. But every firearm is capable of being secured right one way or another. Just yeah, there's plenty of way. There's plenty of ways for families to find assistant that works for them. And I think just the simple fact that you're aware of the issue and thinking about it um is a step in the right direction. The great irony recently that we've seen with it with I guess flattery is what does that they say about you of them? Invitation is the greatest form of flattery. What we have seen, it's not really this isn't really uh imitation, But what we've seen is UH gun control groups like Mom's Demand Action, getting Project Child Safe locks from the local police department and then like packaging them with their anti gun literature and distributing the house. Yeah, and like taking pictures and being proud of it. And we've like had to go back to our lawforce partners say, you know, that's not really what this is about, right, Like we we appreciate that they care about safety. And it's pretty ironic because here's a group that's funded by a multibillionaire and we say all the time, you know, the gun control groups, they don't have any programs, they just you know, they don't they don't actually do anything. They don't have a gun say, any gun safety initiatives. And one of the reasons child safety is I think so successful and why this American Foundation for Suicide per Inventions approached us is you know, as the industry, we have, we have license to talk to gun owners. Right, they'll listen to us. Right. Many if if a gun control group, you know, hands out a lock, it's gonna you know, they don't they don't want to lock on the gun. They don't want the gun, right like they say, get the gun. There should be guns in the house. But so in American Foundation for Suicide Perfences, like you know, we need you guts. We need your help to communicate the gun owners. How do we communicate the gun owners? How do we get this mentions across without offending them or turning them off? You know, so that they will listen to the message? Uh, you know, and and so that's you know why I think that program is successful and we'll be successful. Yeah, it's a good one. All right, we've taken up a ton of your time. That's all right. We have a thing called concluders. Pivot to the conclusion. Do you want to conclude, you want to throw it. It's not mandatory. You don't need to do a concluder. That was a good conversation to spend time with you. We got to visit very briefly in New Hampshire at that conference, but but that's the first time we've really had a chance to have a conversation. So I welcome. It's fun. That's your Concluderay, my concluder. Yeah, I'm gonna reciprocate with my concluder. And I'm really glad that you were able to take time and walk through a lot of this stuff. I think we covered a lot of things that are probably pretty unfamiliar. Yeah, that's oh, Yeah, nobody knows. Nobody knows that a tenth or they know a tenth of what you guys do and the other nine. There's also the problem to stuff you think you know and you realize there's a little more to it. Yeah. Yeah, we have a great, great group of people that work at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, really passionate about what we do and uh dedicated to serving our members. And you know, we're really proud of our all these you know what we say, real solutions for safer communities, you know, and representing the industry UM in state capitals all across the country and here in Washington. UM. You know, the the challenge never ends. UM. I got one more question though, Any chance you guys can move Shot out of Las Vegas? Not likely. We're there, UM, you know for for many years. We we've got signed contracts going out and as I say, we were if we talked about in the year before. But next year we'll take space in MGM, and the year after that will take space in UM a building that Caesar's is putting up. The Caesar's for him will go from just under seven hundred thousand square feet to just under a million and now I'm sorry it's not open to the public. Mark Gotty Concluders. I think probably one of the funnest things that you know, I really enjoy working here with Like I was explained to you kind of before we started talking on the show, Yeah, I get to I get to talk about hunting and guns all day. I mean, this is it's a passion of mine. But uh, you know, the fun thing about it is is those of us who kind of as as I've gotten into this world and I've I've worked in it, and I've talked to other people who were kind of in this world. Uh, we work all day so everyone else gets to go hunt and shoot. So so I wish I got to get out and hunt and shooting. I really do. I don't know nearly as often as I want. So, so you know, for everyone who's listening to the podcast, for me, get out and hunt shoot, because that's that's what I'm working every day for you guys to do. So I want you to go out and hunt shoot. If you if you have a hunting season and you have something you can go out and hunt, go out and hunt it today, you know. And if if you can't hunt something today and get your gun to go down to the range and get better at shooting. So that's pretty because so many guys right in about wanting to be like in, you know, quote the industry, and I'm like, man, you know a lot of people I know that do them the most time outside are not in the industry. Yeah, industry, I'm gonna industry your way out of the wood. I'm still looking for that very rich uncle who's gonna let me just hunt and fish all this the number of times people have said, oh, you must get to go honey all the time, I'm like, actually, no, like hardly ever, Johnny Ah. Yeah. I'll just conclude with thank you for what you guys do. I appreciate you guys making opportunities for me to hunt and fish all the time. So um yeah, right now, we love we love to see what happens on the show, and we love to what's happening on the podcast. So we get to live a little vicariously through your adventure. So thanks for sharing with the world. Thanks for joining to set