We Have A Guest Now: Live w/ Karl Dahl

at Little Saint James. So who knows, right if I suddenly disappear and those pop out on the internet, I'll figure out what happened. But in all seriousness, right, we do have a guest, a friend of mine, Art Wolf. Thanks for coming on, man, hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, so this is gonna be a little bit different than the normal live shows. It's gonna be a little bit more topical. We're gonna touch on a couple things guests here.

As you know, he has a small FFL business, right, and we're talking about one obviously the two a situation in our state of Virginia, but also this kind of assault on small businesses. Some of this is immediate and legislative. Some of this is broader trends, things that make it difficult for you know, normal middle class people to start a business, right to do something pro social. And of course I think you know, people are familiar with the

broad strokes of what happened electorally in Virginia. If not, use Google you can figure it out, but I'll throw it to you man, just as kind of a you know, a broad overview of you know, what you do. And then maybe if you could talk a little bit about the you know, the legislative impact of this most recent election.

pick out a gun, and you buy it. Well, actually, there's thousands of people around the country who have the exact same licensing to sell guns and make guns that these gun stores have, but instead of a commercially zoned business a retail store, they'll actually run the business out of their home. And there's really no difference administratively or legally in the status of a home based FFL dealer.

So when it comes to the service we provide, it tends to be a little bit more bespoke, a little bit more tailored towards the clientele in the local community. So you could have a home based FFL maybe out in rural Virginia that really just has a kitchen countertop style, you know, you go in, you fill out some paperwork,

and it's very casual. And then you might have a home based FFL who maybe takes it to another level, you know, maybe fortifies part of their home, plans to have a much higher volume of business, and maybe has a professionally formatted website with a catalog on it. And

then you have everything in between. But the key difference is a home based FFL is really more for a customer who knows exactly what they want and they want no other bs, so they don't want to stand in line, they don't want to you know, do paper forms that take forever to fill out, And then you know, maybe the employee isn't entirely competent, or they're distracted, or when these customers are only using the business for a transfer, maybe they just want somebody who receives the box notifies

the customer same day that it's ready for pickup, whereas in a gun store they're too busy for that. Maybe it takes five days before they even think to notify the customer their guns ready for pickup. Well, for these people who don't want all that bs, they don't want all the fluff, They just want to pick up their gun and get out of there, home based FFLs are the perfect option for them. And so I started this

business in twenty nineteen. After doing a couple of transfers, I actually myself went to a home based FFL and I figured, you know what, I could do this a little more efficiently. I could apply some of my real world career experience, you know, maybe project management organizational skills, and I could do this a little better. I I could do it a little more efficiently, and maybe I could have a nicer website. And so I just rolled up my sleeves applied some of that true American grit.

I converted my garage into an office and a workshop and replaced the garage door with the reinforced cinder block wall with skiff rated steel doors, bought a bunch of safes and.

does it specifically for gun businesses. It was very easy to set up, so I eventually grew to have a full on professional website with the catalog so customers could order whatever they want from me.

I get people in and out the door anywhere from seven to fifteen minutes usually, and I just do it on a rolling basis, all by appointment, day in, day out, and eventually grew to have a very good reputation as a result. It's a key niche service and it fits in really well in the area that I service, which is northern Virginia.

this business. Why you're exiting it, and so bears mentioning what are your customers like and are those the same customers who tend to do bad things with firearms?

like the gun buying process even works. Whereas if you have a brick and mortar store that's open to the public, it's open to foot traffic, kind of any person can just kind of wander in and say, oh, it's a gun store. This is where I go to buy guns. All my services are done by appointment only. Nobody is ever welcome to just show up and walk in. So I do have people. I have had people kind of

randomly show up thinking it's a gun store. And I guess the fact that this is a single family home in a quiet suburban neighborhood was not enough of a hint that hey, this is not like a gun store in that sense. But you know, there's ways around that. You just kind of clearly list your business as FFL services by appointment, don't call yourself a gun store, and

that kind of helps weed out the riff raff. But no, all my customers, out of all of them, just to give an idea the scale of the business of the business that I do. I've had I've done transfers for eight five hundred items over the past five to six years. I've had maybe four thousand unique customers, so a lot

of repeat customers, but maybe four thousand unique individuals. And I would say, if I had a kind of just guess, I would say, ninety nine percent of them are totally cool, could not give me any kind of bad vibes whatsoever. And it was all just business, maybe a little small talk, and they just come in and out and don't give me any trouble out of that very large volume of transfers. Okay,

what can possibly go wrong? Well, somebody could commit a crime with the gun that you, the FFL dealer transferred, and then there's a follow up investigation with the state police. But that's usually very simple. They show up, they say, hey, we need the records for this guy, the firearm transaction record, which is the form you fill out when you do a firearm transfer, and in the state of Virginia, we

have a separate form for the background check. So you simply provide those and then they can subpoena you as a witness if necessary. So to put it in perspective, with all the transfers that I've done, I've had maybe ten to fifteen where I subsequently had to provide records to the police, and I've had zero, well, I've been subpoenaed, but none of them ever panned out where I actually had to show up in court, So I've had zero court appearances as a result. And at least one of

my customers did kind of a high profile thing. I guess he was driving around speeding and shooting at cops, which is pretty bad, and he was eventually apprehended I believe in prison now. But even there, I mean, it was kind of open and shut. I never had to deal with anything. I imagine it's a lot worse for brick and mortar stores just with the way their business is set up, They're going to have a lot more random people walking in, a lot more troublemakers, and a

lot more issues now on the side hustle angle. So that's where maybe I'm lucky right this area, and the service I provide really is for people who have money to spend, so I'm more likely to make sales, and you know, frankly, you know, wealthy wealthy people are just better.

I mean, they're polite, they're not penny pinching. They're not gonna, you know, say, oh, well, you know I could buy this from you, but if I spend an extra two hours researching, I could save eight dollars if I go with this other business, right, you'll have a lot less of that. And again, they're generally know how to carry themselves. They're respectful, they respect your time and your business, and

in return, I treat everybody very fairly. I'm very professional and polite with everybody that I interact with, and I think people appreciate that. You know, contrasted with a full time brick and mortar gun business, where you know, there's high costs, so the costs of the products are going to be much higher when when you purchase them in store, and then, like we covered earlier, the actual third party transfer services they provide are not going to be as efficient.

And again, you're not interacting with the owner who's put his heart and soul into the business directly. You're interacting with a wage employee who you know, and there's there's going to be varying degrees of competence there when you deal with me. You're dealing with me only there's nobody else. I know every aspect of this business. I've done thousands of transfers, uh, and you know, I've kind of dealt with all kinds of clients, with all kinds of different PaperWorks.

So generally, I'm going to be quick to know, Okay, here's what you need in order to get this transfer done. So when I say that I bring some outside experience into this, I mean that can be a lot of things, right, I mean there's a lot of things that go into being a truly effective home based FFL servicing maybe mid to higher end clients. Communication skills, organizational skills, Understanding a thing or two about things like cloud computing, website design,

inventory management, data science. Right, so if you want to sell guns these days, and we'll get into this, I'm sure you have to understand data science. And then beyond that, there's just a certain way to present yourself.

by the firearms industry large. And obviously this certainly you know, matters with proposed laws in Virginia massively expanding the sort of law fair that can be uh you know, brought to bear on guys like you, but also just on the purchasing level right where everything has become very commoditized and look like I'll be honest, I do this right.

If I'm looking for, you know, a certain item, I'm smart enough to figure out what the UPC is, how to look that up on Google and and you know, find whoever's going to save me a marginal sixty cents. Similar with you the FFL. And again there are you know, large distributors. I'm sure you know them better than I do. Who you know, because of economies of scale, can basically

win that game. Either you know, honestly or dishonestly. So to what degree do you see there being sort of a you know, high and low squeeze versus kind of the mid sized businesses in that industry.

put in large orders and that keeps things simple for us. Oh, by the way, there's also we're also in America, so there's also big civilian markets. Let's make some sales there as well. And the way that works is there's gun stores. There are stores that have an inventory, and they have employees, and they have costs, and people go to the gun store to buy the guns. Uh, and that's about it.

And so they'll that that's sort of how they how they set up the whole paradigm, and now inherent in that, you know, if that, if that really were the way things work, and there is no such thing as you know, online sales and people understanding what UPC codes are and understanding how to use UH search aggregators that you know, find the lowest possible retail deals on those UPC codes.

You know, if it really did work in the traditional set, well, then it would make sense to just establish an MSRP and then what's called a minimum advertised price, which is we the manufacturer will ban you and cut you off from the wholesale distributors if you list any deal be below this magic number for this product, okay. And the ostensible reason for that is, well, we're trying to protect

the brick and mortar businesses. They have costs, they've made investments to be a gun store, and it would be it would be uncool of us to allow people to just, you know, when all said and done, make a net profit of eight dollars per item, but make the most sales as a result and take advantage of that economy

of scale. So to put that in simple terms, the industry is saying, hey, you know, we set these minimum advertised prices and you can only list at this price, and it's kind of expected that you should keep an inventory, right. They really pushed that, like keep an inventory, the more you buy, the more you save, etc. Well, here's the problem with that. Here's what happens when you, as a home based FFL dealer or even a brick and mortar

gun store, try to keep an inventory. You're going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on that inventory, and then you're gonna sit on it and eventually sell it at a loss. Now why is that. It's because it's a game of whack a mole. Right, there's going to be these small warehouse operations that crop up all over the place, and they'll sneak in the products at a lower price closer to what they're willing to make that's under the minimum advertised pricing policy. Okay, now, once you're

on their radar. There's these software companies that I'm sure approach the gun industry as consultants and they say, hey, you know, there's all these dealers trying to list your products below your policy, and our web crawlers scan for these websites and these deals and flag them so that you can keep these policies in place. And once you're on that radar, you'll start getting these threatening emails if you ever list anything below what's called MAP minimum advertised price.

So from the top, it's let's recap, right, Okay, you want to be a gun dealer, great stock an inventory, because any legitimate gun dealer would stock an inventory.

they're selling it at. Now again they're saying it's because, well, we need to protect small businesses that have costs and you can't undercut them. But here's the problem with that. First of all, the margins are insane, right like, and I'm going to pick on sig Sour. The most aggressive MAP policy enforcers. It's like, I don't know for sure how big the margin is from you know, manufacturing cost a wholesale price, but wholesale to minimum advertise retail price

is like four or five hundred dollars. Now, what's the service that's really being provided. Well, you're doing paperwork for people, you're keeping an inventory, and you're selling the gun. So it's completely unreasonable. And I suspect it's because they want the downstream prices to remain high for two reasons. One, I guess it helps their book so it helps it helps them value their like their future production in like

you know, quarterly projections with shareholders. Or maybe it's having your price, having your products priced highly maybe raises your your profile with the public, makes you come across more like a premium brand.

like thirty fifty sixty dollars on top. You know, you're never going to make a sale because everyone's going to know, actually we could get it for a lot less than you. So you're stuck listing these expensive products at a very high price, and you have to somehow thread that needle. You have to communicate to people, well, actually we could sell it for lower, but I can't tell you how much until you reach out to me. Average online customer

isn't gonna bother. They're just gonna click somewhere else and uh and buy somewhere else. So that would be the top down squeeze uh. And then you know, from from the other end, a lot of a lot of the younger generation, I suspect, you know, they understand like you said, they understand UPC codes, they know how to search gun dot deals, they know how to find deals posted on Reddit. They're maybe under the radar. And actually there's a retailers

who gained that system. They'll sell guns at a huge loss, specifically just to build up their profile. And you know they'll call it like an advertising cost. And then so people on social media, let's say Reddit, they'll see those deals, and then once that deal occurs, they will never buy that same product, even at a price where you could even make a slight profit, because it just it's been ingrained. Hey, these things can sell for this low, why would you

ever pay a penny more? And we're talking under dealer cost. So really the only way to have a viable business model is the transfer services at the end of the day. Now these are generalizations. You know, not all manufacturers are the same. Some are more reasonable than others, and a lot of times the margins will balance out in a way that the price that you sell it at is still very reasonable when you take into account that you're also doing the transfer for free as part of the sale.

And that's sort of where it lands. But if you try to open up a gun business, you will fail. Okay, unless you have and this doesn't apply to people with millions of dollars of investment backing. This doesn't apply to people who already have some kind of major operations going on. But if you're just a small time business person, unless you have a range where you know, if you unless you have some kind of other service that you bro the table that people need, h Like, if you're an

expert ak builder or if you do Sarah coding. If you're just trying to buy and sell guns as a business model, you will fail. If you try to get a commercially zoned property anywhere with any kind of in any kind of area that has a substantial population density. It's just it's just been gamed out. You know, your local costs, uh and other like cost facility costs, overhead costs.

That's just going to ruin any possible margin you can make because again you're being squeezed between industry and the customer base.

it was a horrible experience. I wasted a ton of time incidentally, right, Like, these are jobs for you know, normal middle class, pro social people, right, people who are interested in building something on their own, you know, providing a service to their community, and again doing more than kind of simply you know, their soulless corporate job, right, actually building something. So I want to pivot slightly to the new legislation, right, and some of this will be

hyper specific to Virginia. But I thought we'd bring Carl on because look, man, I'm not trying to tell everyone where you live, but you're behind enemy lines, right, you have gone through a similar process.

is brought in. So I'll kick it to you, Carl, and then maybe art Wolf and I can react afterwards.

with like hunting backgrounds and stuff. But you know, they're let's say they're in a union type industry and or that's dominated by a union, so they're they're members of the unions, and they're like, yeah, it makes sense. You know, I like having a union. There's good things about that.

And you know, they vote Democrat for you know, all the all the old kind of classic normal reasons, and they don't like a lot of the kind of stereotypical things about conservative politicians, especially that some of the more performative elements are like gat related stuff. Right as we as we get into the more modern era, so what eventually happens is that you know, elements those populations are you know, the public face this like, this is the

base and that and this is what we're doing. We're doing all this for you, for all these good thoughtful reasons, but the actual political machine before too long, starts saying, well, what we need to do is secure total victory forever as as our primary condition, and then we can ram everything down their throats that we want and we'll put a nice face on it. But what we're really trying to do is eliminate our position first of all, and

then punish the Chuds who oppose us. And so, you know, the Chuds who oppose us like small arms, right, and they don't actually bother people or cause problems with these weapons. Our clients are the ones you know, buy and large that fit that bucket, and so we will never acknowledge. You know, it's not the eighties or the early nineties where we're going to acknowledge that the problem is coming from our client, you know, a small segment of our

client base. Instead, we're gonna we're going to scapegoat our

enemies for all these things. And they just oppose safety and they don't really care, you know, they're willing to sacrifice all the children in the world and really, what they're doing is they're trying to uh set us up for conditions of anarcho tyranny where uh, you know, they legalize crime, uh and they outlaw the means self defense or let's just say very carefully like opposition to same right and opposition to to state policies as well as

enforcement of those state policies. Because again, you know, Don Quavius with his Jay Burden approved Draco is not a problem, even though he is the problem, right and and so you know, defending yourself against him, we're going to send the ag after you who might have your children, you know, murdered. It's it's really, it's it's really quite insane. And when you put it really at what the table stakes are, they'll accuse you of making it up. But in reality,

that's the revealed preference. Like you don't get rid of all the gun stores and then throw the guy out on the street, you know, after he's arrested for attempted murder like within two hours and then he kills someone again and be like oopsies, that's been the case in my state for about six years now. And so yes, getting rid of all the gun shops, restricting the means of self defense and let's say appropriate collective self defense

in the traditional sense. That goes back to a well established background in our state, you know, from the early settlement until let's say the nineteen twenties, Like that is bad and real street crime isn't happening, but when it

happens to you, it's good. And if you defend yourself, will crush you from the state level because like your actual community and your sheriff might be opposed to that, your sheriff who's elected by you and actually has to deal with crime, like we've lately had actual sheriffs on the street, like doing police work in a huge number of jurisdictions because they one they have to because their staffing has been so bad and keeping staff is really bad,

a real big problem for them. But they're in this contentious relationship with the state government, particularly screeching females in the legislature accordingly, and so it's this, it's this struggle, and you really see it as a form of political warfare. After some time passes and just the naked obvious again, like you put it, revealed preference versus what their stated preferences.

But obviously you know the anti two A stuff has been punishing and needlessly punitive, right, So for instance, you know you have the you know, the sort of AWB you would expect the most recent version would make it effectively, uh, one year in prison for owning a magazine over twelve rounds. That an odd number. I guess we're really passionate about forty caliber blocks. But cool, I guess point is right again. Obviously, this sort of needlessly punitive thing similarly restricting how much

land you have to have to shoot a gun. I mean, Artwolf. You can think of guys with you know, at or around five acres who shoot guns in a completely safe way, or you know, might have some pests to take care of.

Well that's a crime. Now, you know, any number of things that are relatively normal and in no way threatening have been made crimes, whereas you know, there's no more mandatory minimum for you know, burglary or rape or any other number of crimes right, They're they're decriminalizing public vacrancy like all of these sort of you know, an RC tier any esque laws. I'll kick it to you, man, if you think I've missed anything there.

after federal employees and then by extension, federal contractors. There's a massive population of federal employees and contractors in a cluster around northern Virginia. So if you look at a map of Virginia for those who don't know, the entire state is quote unquote normal folk and then Richmond, Charlottesville

and Northern virgin are kind of blue cities. There might be an oversimplification, but that's essentially what it is, right, But they have the highest population density and then through the electoral processes, they end up owning the entire state. Well, so Trump and Doge pissed off the entire Northern Virginia

community by going after federal contractors and federal employees. And then I think in parallel to that, the major election platforms were running on affordability and abortion right, So you know you're going to have all kinds of Democrat voters in the state focused on these key issues, but maybe less so you know, maybe only five to ten percent of them actually think that we should reduce mandatory minimums

for violent crime, sexual crime, et cetera. You know, maybe a lot of them own guns, and they own magazines with more than ten round capacity. Well, it doesn't matter. The Democrat party in the state has seized this election victory on these key issues and now are using it as an excuse to steam roll the entire population with

the most aggressive, extreme policies you can imagine. So I won't cover them all, but the one that most directly affects the gun industry, I would say, I won't read the whole thing, but it's the title of the bill. You know, it's proposed, it's still in committee, but we're

going to assume everything will get rubber stamped. Firearm firearm industry members standards of responsible conduct COMMA civil liability, and ultimately it provides that firearm industry members may not knowingly or recklessly create, maintain, or contribute to a public nuisance as defining the bill through the sale, manufacturing, etc. Of guns. So what that means is essentially, hey, you know, have you in any way, shape or form been affected by

any kind of a gun crime. Great file suit and our judicial industry will help you punish the gun industry with lawsuits that essentially increases your liability risk. And even if you win these cases, with these frivolous lawsuits, you know you're you're out tens of thousands of dollars. So the processes of the punishment, I would say that's the

real death sentence for the gun industry in Virginia. The only thing that's going to be left is major big box stores that can afford the increased costs and risk to continue to continue operating. It's going to reduce access to home based ffils. Obviously, guns are going to cost more. They're adding sales tax to guns, which makes it virtually impossible to compete with out of state retailers. But then beyond that, I did want to touch on the attitudes

of the Democrat voters. Right, So many of my customers are Democrats, and they have assault weapons. They have very cool, expensive assault weapons that they love, and they have huge collections of them. And they have many, many, many magazines in their possession that have capacities more than ten rounds. So you might wonder, well, gee, if this is so important to you, and you've invested all this money in this hobby and pastime of yours, how can you possibly

you know, actively vote for this to happen. And it just boils down to cognitive dissonance and denial. And you know, look, like I said, I'm polite to everybody. I'm professional, right, I don't grill people like, hey, you know you voted Democrat, Well, how do you like that? No, but I do kind of say, hey, you know, what are your thoughts in some of these bills? And it's universally just denial and

cognitive dissonance or just changing the subject. Right, Oh well, you know the governor is going to veto this.

at the federal level. It is the average person doesn't want any of this stuff, and it's basically getting rammed through because, as Carl put it, they want total victory. They want to remove any form of opposition. So now they're going to redistrict everything so it'll be like maybe one Republican senator at the state level moving forward. And they want to punish the chuds for you know, there are dangerous hobbies. That's really what it boils down. Dude,

It's a form of class warfare. I'm sorry, I think you're on mute.

there are things that could be done, right. You know, I see another guy who worked as an FFL in chat talking about you know, straw purchases, and I mean, look, man, I've seen these happen, right, you know, I've seen a rather you know, well built young woman there with her boyfriend, you know, where he's picking everything out at the pawn shop. Like you don't be a genius.

cool stuff. Right. Generally it's you know, cheap garbage. Not saying we should, but clearly right it is what you said Ardwolf, right, it is we don't like the chuds, make them go away. And also you know this plays well in suburban white women, right, that's another part of it as well. So Carl, I'm curious, right if you could kind of you know, share your experience for someone who's you know, gone through this, how did first the chuds react to you know, these sort of you know,

aggressive bills. And also, you know, how does this kind of prototypical you know, liberal gun owner react Because if I remember correctly, you were sharing a story in a very good episode of Thomas's show, You and Andy Edwards, where you know, you were talking about, you know, driving through the middle of nowhere and you know, coming upon you know, kind of your prototypical you know, Pacific Northwest hippie, you know, armed trapesing through the woods and you know,

long hair of bearded. Yeah, passled all over right. Just obviously an amusing anecdote, but I'm curious to get your thoughts on that.

firearms ownership. That that's never happened in your delusional and it's like no, if if you look at the all of the uh, the various gun control organizations and the stuff that they talked about throughout the twentieth century, their goal was total disarmament, total civilian disarmament. Like uh Feinstein talked about it all the time, you know, Chukshuma, like all those people. They've been very candid about it, but

then they always put on a different public face. And in the sixties it was very brazen and it I will point out that the NFA, the reason we have the short barreled rifle short barrel shotgun is because originally handguns were included in the National Farms Act of nineteen thirty four that was dropped for because it was just untenable.

So anyhow, when we think about this and the different people that are talking about this, a lot of the people pushing for the most egregious forms of gun control right now in these state legislatures are relatively recent immigrants from let's say India or Bangladesh or Pakistan. It's incredibly common. And I'm not saying that they're the first people who've ever pushed for gun control. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is gun control is incredibly Gun control against the American population is incredibly popular for those people, and if you've ever let's say, encountered them in political discussions online, you would understand why. And the thing to understand about the places that they come from is that gun laws are for other people, and they break the law.

That's just the way other cultures work in the vast majority of cases, like you have strict gun control, but like their political parties will have weapons and then they will arm themselves around the time of elections, let's say. And it's incredibly common around the world. Your leopard skin looks lovely, by the way, mister Burden, it looks really cool.

what really eats into you. And if you have a restriction where you'll still be able to buy some variant of a gun that you want to get, but the magazines are going to be a problem, and you know you're going to buy it the next couple of years. Buy the magazines. And when Carl Doll tells you to buy magazines, I'm saying, like, buy at least like ten magazines for a rifle and at least six magazines for a pistol. That's just that's just how I think. Then

you look at the ammunition restrictions, YadA YadA. If you already have stuff that you can work with, there's there's ways around things. But the truth is is that people just violate these laws all the time the people that push them, and like if you were to go to, for example, a a store run by a Bangladeshi person who voted for for this individual in Virginia who's pushing these documents, he has illegal firearms that were brought in from out of state because he doesn't follow the laws.

Like that. That's just the way that it works. And people get busted for that stuff around here all the time. So like people really need to change their their point of their their frame of mind about the way that people follow or violate the laws. And they'll they're pushing these laws to control you, not themselves, and uh, they just they just ignore the law. So I know, I'm kind of rambling here. What what what really happens though, is that you will you will have How how do

you fight back against this stuff? One there's uh, there's the legal means and the the other one is not

illegal means. But it's more like public rallies and things like that to draw attention to things, and you know where you see successes, like for example, Oregon had a very broad gun control law put into place that was a little too broad, and actual implementation of the the rules by were put onto the counties, and then the counties actually ended up suing over it, and the lawsuit it basically required some additional laws to be pushed through,

which again with total control by the Democratic Party because again they implement mail and voting, et cetera, so that they can and then also broad like motor voter type registration rules where it's up to the state and and and it requires the FEDS to come in and clean up the voter rolls, you know or not? Right, we just had like a million fake or dead registrations removed.

That is more than Like all of these things are always more than enough to sway elections because what happens is that the actual party machines at the county level just stuffed the ballot box to get the results that they want. And then then the state level would never question it because they're controlled by the same party. So that's the future of Virginia if you guys can't stop it or have a severe federal intervention, which is hopefully

what will happen. But then you also have the you guys had the rallies around eight years ago, eight to ten years ago where gun owners were coming out and basically doing good patrol in front of the Capitol, which can be effective, but that's only if you have a responsive legislature, in which case, you know, you don't. And my guess is that that would as as a right winger, my my belief is that would not be tolerated now and and in fact it would probably be a big problem.

But you know, so that becomes a I wouldn't recommend it, but do what you got to do kind of a situation, because it's a waste of time around here to do that stuff. So it's all done in the courts, legislature and then finding little niches that allow you to work around them.

run for their benefit. And I wonder if that's part of the freak out we're seeing from kind of the you know, the good hearted boomer cons. Do you think I'm correct their art Wolfer? Am I missing something? Yes? One?

But I would say to a greater degree the country was more unified and people were less alienated than they are now. And so I could see how in the past one might think, Oh, these these democrats, they're so stupid. You know, we just got to engage in more debates and win them over and eventually, you know, it's like, uh, well Buckley kind of approach, like we got to just be respectable and lead by example, and and surely they'll come around our way of seeing things. Uh, it's this

is not the case at all. This is not a good faith disagreement. Uh, this is not based on ignorance.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. They have all kinds of these legislators, have all kinds of bug men just doing industry research on their behalf and really feeding them, Like how how do you most effectively screw with your average gun owner, both in direct ways just you know, broadside attacks on things like owning assault weapons, owning magazines, but also all these peripheral ways like banning concealed carrying parks, and and I guess what I would really want to ask,

Let's say a system believer, is you know, is it just ignorance when you have a trifecta of number one reducing mandatory minimums on violent crimes, number two reducing legal gun ownership and access to guns by you know, messing with the industry, and then number three removing qualified immunity from police, meaning all the competent, effective police officers are just going to leave the state and go find jobs

and other departments. You know, what possible reason would you have for wanting these three things to come together?

a solid majority, there was a blue wave. They're redistricting to prevent either the house, state house, state Senate, or governorship from ever becoming Republican again. So there will never be a barrier again. And they want it all. This is not and yeah, you know, yes, of course we have the court system in place, But here's the problem, right, those things take years to resolve themselves.

any effective way of changing it. So it is very much like, yeah, I think all you have left is the Buddhist statue approach. And I guess what most directly affects people is you are going to see a change in your day to day life. And by the time

that change arrives, it'll be too late. Now, people who are a little bit more savvy or maybe understand or maybe i'd say they're a little more realistic about the way politics works, right, and maybe we're a little bit more terminally online looking at videos about crimes and and civil unrest in other places. We kind of know what's coming, right, We're gonna have tent cities full of drug addicts. I have a you know, And you know what's so tragic

about this is I love Virginia, right. I love everything from the geography, I love the climate, and I love Virginians. And I also love what Virginia represents historically. And I love my home. I put my heart and soul into creating a home here for my family. I don't want to leave. But what's going to happen is I have this beautiful creek near my home where you could take a nice, you know, three or four mile walk, and in the heart of northern Virginia, you can't even see

a building. You see nothing but trees and a trail and a creek. I love taking my dogs there. Well, how long before we get Ms thirteen gang bangers hanging out there? How long before we have drug addicts hanging out there who are going to be increasingly bold in approaching your family when you're not there. And guess what. There's signs at the entrances to at all the entrances to this park and trail, as there are in many

other places in Virginia that say no firearms allowed. There's a picture of a Bretta pistol with a big, you know, line through it, and it says having a valid concealed carry permit is is not an exception to this rule. So it just kind of they're really screaming at you with a bullhorn. We don't like you, we don't care if you die, we don't want you to be able to protect yourself, and we don't want and we're going to remove any barriers to the criminal element in society

from victimizing you. I don't understand how that's still not enough for I would say, a critical mass of voters. They still very much believe that. Well, you know, this is just an honest disagreement. It's politics. It is what it is. But it'll sort itself out. I don't see it that way.

but I do appreciate the donation nonetheless. And then Arthur and Kelly, a very good substacker, asked any action so far from the NRA and other two A groups against proposed Virginia legislation beside more fundraising emails. I haven't seen a thing, Ardwolf, have you noticed anything on that front?

Those really are your two options? Ultimately?

don't I don't have any easy answers. I don't even have any practical advice, but just ultimately this is wrong and it can't continue, and there it will, and eventually we will find a way to just be able to live normal, decent lives. I don't have an answer as to how exactly that will happen, only that I have faith and certainty that it will ultimately happen.

country anymore. Sorry to break this to you. Canada exists in opposition to the American political establishment. Okay, in opposition. They exist in relation to the American political establishment. So, for instance, you guys got a gunman because of American domestic politics. Sorry about that. That sucks, doesn't make sense, seems to be incredibly punitive, But you know what, at least guys on reservations still have clapped out Chinese sks is, But yeah, I hope that. I hope the Toronto Police

helps you all out because clearly you need it. Carl relinks. Where can people find.

as well. One more Nope, shoot, I can't Big Ben I can't put that up. Sorry, exact X comment on from on why it's not a federal climb to employ or rent to illegals with ten k per incident fine, millions would self deport within six months. I mean that's true. If that or the law, and if it were enforced, millions of people would leave. However, no one actually wants that. And when I say no one, I don't mean like

you and I X or anyone here. No one wants that because, as we found out with you know, the conservative conservative luminary brill and Hollyhand, renting to illegal immigrants is a phenomenal business model, right, both on the small scale for people you know, slum lords, and also for

right large you know, institutional investors. Basically right, Yeah, the JR Bazaar has a more direct answer, but similarly with UH employment, it's the same thing, right, There are a lot of industries that depend on that, and there there simply isn't the money to make it happen. To be honest, I'll kick it to you guys if you have other thoughts on that, I'm.

away from us. Yeah, colloquially anyway. And so I descended into this house in a neighborhood that my grandparents lived in and were driven out of in the fifties by a demographic change that had caused problems for their oldest child. And this this fellow had been living there for more than sixty years, and he had sixty years of junk in the basement, like newspapers stacked to the ceiling that

we like walked down this little narrow area. And then there was like seven elaborate train sets set up, which was really cool. And then he just had like sheet metal gunlockers that all of the guns were in, and we did the paperwork and it went pretty smoothly. And he had the biggest collection of broom handle mousers, strange Chinese like Warlord pistols, and then Ingless high powers. He had every variant of English high Power as well as every variant of Webley that I've ever seen in my life.

He had at least twenty four Webley's, So I got to play with all those things very carefully while he did the paperwork on a Styre M forty for me.

Of course, he takes the last time slot and is late, and then pulls his car up in the driveway, and I guess he notices the sign is gone, and that confused the shit out of him, and he left, came back another twenty minutes later, so he's ultra late. Comes in and of course, as an entitled boomer, just has cops in attitude. But whatever, I sit him down, get through the process, only to realize, sure enough, we can't even transfer the gun because there's a one handgun per

thirty day limit. So anyway, he leaves, and I think while he was pissing me off, me being professional and polite, I was trying to tell him to fuck off politely. So I told him, hey, you know in the future you might be better served going somewhere else, meaning a gun store, so I don't have to deal with you, and he subsequently, I just want to read what he wrote last night when I had a very difficult time trying to locate your business due to poor illumination and

the fact that you removed your sign. You mentioned you were going out of business. I agree that it would be preferable, safer, and more compliant than trying to run a quasi gunshop out of your basement. And so I'm interested in purchasing your business.

You're not a bad deal. Right when I was doing the paperwork, the police comment, and you know, they're talking to the owner. So I'm, you know, not trying to eat drop. But after they leave, I ask, and this is a you know, one of those indoor ranges right where you can rent guns or whatever. And apparently this aspiring astrophysicist had rented a gun, put it in his book bag and just left and then robbed a store with it. And as I'm sure you're aware of both

Carl and Ardwolf here, you have to win. You rent a gun at a gun store, show them your ID. So he had, you know, skated, he'd gotten out of the you know, the store he'd knocked over, and the police, you know, kind of putting two and two together, figured like, oh wait a minute, you know this is what happened. We got called about it. You know that this gun

was stolen. The guy with a gun that matched the same description robbed a store, right, it really show up, get a photocopy of his driver's license and leave and apprehensive within fifteen minutes, point being, it was an astonishingly stupid crime, right, like really just not our best and brightest. So point is you you hear interesting stuff when you go to small businesses. But guys, I'm gonna have to run. It was great speaking to both of you. Again, deeply

sorry obviously to all my Virginians. Not my idea, but nonetheless here we are.