That's all right, all right, so we'll start by giving away. I
promised that I would give people who joined ricachet um show up at in New
Orleans. Uh, they get a drink. So I got a classic.
This is a classic h New Orleans SASARAQ. That is the original cocktail um
invented by um Antoine pay showed. He's a Uh he was a pharmacist on
Charter Street. And it's herb saint rye a little sugar and then a twist.
And it's the first cocktail that people say existed. And wait, I
got ever ever? Yeah, this is it woman right three, I'm doubled.
Is anyone else coming to claim that? I think my only so thank
you for Jim Gonwild and DARNI thank you. This is Jim Gonwold's cousin,
Jim. Jim gon Wold never told me he's name. Either way, you
get free drinks, so quick complaining, thank you, that's good. I've
never had one. It's great. It's a really good drinking. And this
one the guys is like they're serious about it. Like if you're running a
bar in rold if you can't make a sass right if they get right out
of town for your sass. I need them to come to Jacksonville Airport and
open after nine pm because everything close to nine pm. They will not serve
you a drink at Jacksonville Airport after nine pm. Why because the restaurants don't
cater for people who fly late. And I thought this was a Jacksonville thing,
and I looked it up and apparently Austin has gone to three pm.
But what's the I see people drinking in an airport at seven am, I
know, but do you see him at seven pm? That's the problem.
That's true increasingly, that's the problems. Sorry, okay for a couple of
again, thank you, I'll go first. If if my five year over
here, he would open both up, both of them. Yeah, this
is Oh, this is great. I thought I was gonna see I thought
it was gonna be a Trump twenty twenty four. It's literally true. What
does it say? Thank you? Thank you? So um. It's a
T shirt and it says I drink Martini's and I know things with a kind
of a cool design of a Martini glass. This is both true and um,
and I'm true, I'm actual, so thank you, and the fact
it's actually referencing game drums. It'sn't really that's hilarious. So now I have
you I have, and I just I did I want? And then I
was fine with it. And then the dragon and I'm like, I'm out.
I just dragons like it was. It was about like struggle and politics
and um people choking jumps, heads off for money and power like that.
I get. And then once the dragons were there, I'm like, not
for me. Do you think it's weird how quickly it disappeared. It's just
the last episode came. Everyone watched it and it went yeah culture, yeah,
oh yeah, I went from one watch the next one. I talked
about it. Yeah, yeah, no one talked about it. But it's
still it's doing better than I mean, it's not doing great, but it's
doing better than um Lord of the Lord of the Rings, which was their
attempted to capture that at Amazon, which cost one billion dollars and has a
thirty five percent completion rate, which means that only a third about a third
of people watching that Lord of the Rings are bothering to finish the series.
That's horrible. It's I'm a zero present completion right, I didn't watch it
I never I'm a zero I was zero present with the Game of Thrones too,
So anyway, so you have a present. Yeah, I wanted my
five year old opens all the presents. The first present I've got to open
for myself for a long time. So I'm very excited about it and now
moderately confused. Better. Wow, look at this take. It says port
nine eleven, right, and it says ricochet on the side, an astrobox
on the top. There. I love it. I love it. Oh
and it's a metal I know it's beautiful. Thank you man. Yeah,
we're not absolutely. I mean, I'm happy to open it up now.
My better opening up at home and otherwise went safe. Okay, deal,
Well I'm yeah perfect. Well who is it who is responsible for this?
Thank you, Randy, appreciate it. Not the T shirt, Melissa Belie,
the thank you. Thank you all for coming. Um, this is
great. So, uh, if you're listening at home, you know we
have an audience. Uh, we're all gathered at restaurant on magazine and I
think seventh in the Garden, Lower Garden district. Um, we have a
nice meal. You guys have like you saw you were some time they were
here. On. They got here on Monday, Monday? Did you come
here often? No? Here, we came back for extended the anniversary,
and this is the first time back after that, so we wow, you
surely did. Yeah. Well, I love it here. This is a
great city. And who are we we have some we have at least one
native here, right, native native, a native born and raised, born
and raised. I mean, I don't know what I'm saying those of course
people are born and raised in the world. Why wouldn't they be, But
you know what I mean, like a lot of people come here like me
and like they I'm you know, I been here for a month. I'm
basically local. Uh, how's it going great? We love your mayor,
Yeah, you got a great mayor. Yeah. They managed to not recall
her, so that's it. Yeah, unfortunate, that's unfortunate. Yes,
that's right. But we are lucky if we lived in Jackson Parish. So
you think that or least parish is being blue Jefferson Parish is read. Yeah.
Uh, just say they had recalled her, wouldn't they replace her with
somebody equally bad? I mean this kind of wasn't It feels like yeah,
yeah, right right? How would they recall her. Yeah, it just
seems like, I mean, I don't know at this point, just selected
her what year ago, and suddenly a bunch of stuff came forward that the
media here didn't talk about, like her you know, her corruption, her
paying security off to the police, being that's such a great New Orleans thing
though, Yeah, like urban corruption is sort of like I don't like that,
you like, I you really think that the the citizens of New Orleans
would be shocked to know their mayor is corrupt, no worse, measurably worse.
Yeah, it's just you know, you used to get twice a week
cabage. Now we get one and we're grateful about Wow, you should recall
her, wait forgot and Newly, Man, what are you gonna get if
you got a guy run him the fan school movie. Man, it's not
gonna be good. Yeah, it's not gonna be good. God, she'stead
of the mad I mean so yeah, well that was Ray Nagan was the
mayor during the flood during Katrina, and he came from he was a cable
TV executive and so people couldn't believe that he wasn't going to be efficient or
like, like the guy is he's a cable TV guy. He's like the
people who say they're gonna be there by five and will show up. That's
like, that's him. He's the guy who took like twelve million dollars to
buy a bunch of eric conditioned school buses and then instead of using those school
buses to evacuate people who needed to be evacuated, he parked the more under
a bridge where they got flooded out. Yeah, there are pictures of that.
Yeah, my favorite, I mean it's not a fit favorite. And
then we can start. But Ice was just got a little warm us up.
So we're gonna where he are. My favorite New Orleans or Katrina story.
Um was that the chef Um John Besh, who is local Louisiana.
Guy Um had a bunch of restaurants here for a long time. And the
morning after two days, he got all of his pantry stuff together, and
the cities are still the streets are still flooded, and he got a couple
flat bottomed boats and he made a bunch of red beans and rice. His
family rescue red beans and rice, and he went around just uttering around this
giant lake that was the city, going up to people who had been,
you know, there on their roofs or wherever, and offering them their first
meal in two days. And he finds some guy sort of sitting on I
guess was on his shed and he'd been on the shed for a day,
day and a half, and they they putter over to him and they give
him a bowl of red beans and rice and say, you know, this
is for you, thank you, and he takes a bite hmm, it's
not like my grandmother made. And he handed it back and when he handed
it back that she thought, okay, well you know what, we're gonna
be okay, like, well we're still who we are, We'll be fine.
So I kind of feel that way whenever I come down here, that
all everything's terrible, but it's still pretty great city. So yeah, exactly
right, yeah right. So where do you Where do you live? Rom?
I live in New York City, which is a fisher and clean and
there aren't crazy people running around the streets, so you won't get pushed in
front of a subway train for no reason. And I said this, I
said this on a podcast I was last week. I was walking um down
Madison Avenue at night and it's a fancy shopping street, and in the doorway
of some fancy store there was a guy on a bunch of newspapers and cardboard
on his knees, facing, you know, towards the building shooting up,
which is something you don't really I have not seen in New York City since
pre before Giuliani. And then you walk a little bit farther and then you
passed Trump Tower, and Trump Tower had already been barricaded and they're already like
um tape on the ground for all the media. So it's like the CBS,
the CNN and said BC they'll had their like areas that were designated for
them because Trump was going to come in the next day. And then a
little farther down on Fifth Avenue there was a very large, crazy man who
was wearing like a little short T shirt and nothing else on Fifth Avenue just
and like people were walking by and they're like, wait a minute, did
I was that guy? You can see people just hitting people as they're like
ten steps ahead, like wait a minute, And like of the three things,
those are three things in Manhattan that you'd think would be of interest to
the at least two of them to the Manhattan District. Attorney, right,
But he's only interested in one thing, which was what was going on in
Trump Tower. He had no interest in the guy shooting up on the street
or a naked guy running around on the street. Not his job. His
job is to like come up with some nonsense charges and make a spectacle of
himself in the city and used like eight thousand, some astronomical number of cops
were involved that day in just controlling the Trump circus. Meanwhile, you know
something's got to go right, so we guess what goes is the safety quality
of life on the street. Yeah, I mean it's not like down the
beach where I live. That's why you're looking at me. Maybe maybe maybe
maybe the people who just have clothes up to here. But actually we encourage
that we're other rights. Right, it's actually a law. There's a nice
shooting up. Of course, when Trump was trying to building down here the
dream, it was the same sort you had. You had drug dealers and
drug users shooting up. You had uh homeless scheme rving around crazy and naked,
and you had Trump holdings conferences on the street surrounded by ANOPD talking about
how he's gonna redevelop Uh shot sun, which he never did. Well,
here's a private citizen then, and it's pretty good. We went about seven
minutes before you mentioned him. So that's that's Ron. Ron is something Um
I did. You're right? No, I'm no, No, you're right,
you're right. I was trying to do it in a positive way.
Um. So we are here, and like a lot of things with Ricochet,
it is entirely organized by members. You know, we're just sitting here
having a drink and the member who organizes is sitting right over here. Randy.
This how many of these have you organized? I don't know what,
probably ten or more like everywhere where do you? Where do you live?
Last May? The end of May, my wife and I and her mother
moved to Cookeville, Tennessee. Okay, we just lived in northwestern Minnesota.
Wow. Okay, so you had one here twice? Have done one in
Utah, had a huge one. In Montana had a huge one. In
Black Hills of South Dakota had a big one. There was basically a grand
tour of western Kentucky. It wasn't just in one city. We started out
in Bowling Green, visited the National Corvette Museum, went on a couple of
cave tours, went to Bardstown toward the Bardstown burbur Distillery, went to whatever
Townmaker's mark is in toward that distillery, went to Lexington for an afternoon of
horse racing. Wow, went to Louisville the Casteam boat ride, and some
of us visited the Kentucky Derby Museum. Um. So that was a unique
one where it wasn't did one city, but we did a grand tour and
then a bunch of little ones and let's see, yeah, a few went
a few times in Chicago, Fargo, We did one a million years ago
in la and then we did one in northern California, and then last year
in New York we did one. We did kind of a pub crawl,
which would have been a bigger pub crawl except that it it rained. It
like it just poured that day. So we're kind of all huddled into the
city winery. But then we we found another's place. After that was after
they were really done with us, they kind of want us to leave.
Um, we found another place that we we we hustled over to and that
was like, I don't know, it seems like part of the fun of
being Remember Ricochets is this part. Um, I mean, how are you
a charter member? Yes? Um, I mean as as they define it.
I don't know what the cutoff is, but I've got that on my
badge. It's a matter of fact. Leeden's and I joined Ricochet the exact
same day, really, April seven, really, so you know, you
can't go back. You can't go back in the list of Ricochet podcasts that
far because I was thinking it would be fun to listen to the one just
before that, or maybe two before that, because you must have made a
particularly compelling pitch that have got both of us to join up. And uh,
Ricochet's Charlotte joined up just a few days before Leaden's and I did,
Wow, you remember what it was? Was it? Well, there was
something that there was something that we're begging on whatever the ones you like listen,
Uh we ah, this is it. We're on life support. It
could have been that that. Unfortunately that those tend to work. You just
can't go to that well too often. Uh, twenty eleven, that's just
feels like like an ancient history, right, Like twenty eleven just feels like
even though it wasn't that longer. Really, I remember we were um,
we started doing the podcast first, and I think I remember doing a podcast
or having a meeting or something on election night twenty two thousand and eight,
Obama's election. I was in New York, and I remember just thinking,
Okay, well, this is either gonna be really great for us or it's
gonna be terrible. You never really know. Um, Toronado is really great.
But you know who knew? All right? Anybody anybody pre date two
thousand and eleven? Okay, what's your year? All right? Uh?
Two ten? Okay, thousand ten? Pretty good? Did you start?
You know, we don't know, Peter, I have no memory of like
what year it was. I know that it was something we were doing something
about it in two thousand and eight, because because I wasn't living in New
York then, and I was in New York because we had meetings for this.
I know that I was invited to join at a crystal starting in two
thousand and seven. Two thousand and seven, Yeah, so that would have
been. Yeah. I mean, it's a meat It's like, it doesn't
feel like a million years ago. So are there? Okay, so there's
some two thousand and eleven, two twenty ten, anybody beside the people who
just joined. Anybody joined, um, look in the past year, so
two years, two years? Okay, but what five? It's five,
like the number five. It's a lot of fives. So people for two
years? What made you join? We're listen to your podcast so much.
I'm not proud o your podcast, and I was like, all these are
the same. Last thing, Yeah, it's been interesting. What makes you
join? I learned for a long time. And then I was listening to
a podcast with Boss Bongo. Oh yeah, I said, yeah, they
have skinned the game, so that's good. Okay, so skin of the
game works kind of kind of, um, well, thank you whenever you
join, thank you. We all we really need is for you to find
two other people and make them join too. But we don't want to change
what it is. We still like the idea that you that you you're gonna
have meaningful interaction on you know, on the site, and it's reasonably civil
and polite. I mean, the standards now are really low, so it's
like for us to say that we're the most reasonable, rational, civilized conversation
on the web is really not saying much. But I still think that when
I'd send people to I mean, every now and then I'll get a log
in and I'll send somebody. Usually it's a liberal offensive liberal journalists, and
I'll say, you just just go in and like, just look at what
you can do. It doesn't have to be a swamp um. You just
have to have some rules of dress code, that's all. And uh.
I usually get back like, yeah, that was so interesting. Although there's
a lot of like a lot of people on that site who like think that,
you know, the Second Amendment means you're allowed to have firearms. A
lot of that, like like, yeah, they're conservatives, so they're gonna
say that, you know, so sometimes you get that argument anyway. Yeah,
right, I do indeed think the Second Remember means you're allowed to have
firearms. That's kind of what it says. I mean, that's that's literally
what it says, right, I am sorry. Yeah, well, okay,
do you really want me to unt have you're interested? I'm happy to
talk about cannon. Okay. This drives me crazy because Biden says this all
the times, um, and it's funny because he's wrong in both directions.
First Off, at the time of the founding, it was entirely legal to
have cannon. That is just a fact there was no law against it.
But no one would have thought this was included under the Second Amendment because canon
ordinance an ordinance was separate from arms, and the Second Amendment protects arms.
So what Biden is doing there is he's getting it wrong, which is his
speciality in both ways, which is he's saying all the time of the founder,
you weren't allowed to own a cannon, while actually you work you still
are. By the way, look it up that there are no laws in
the United States, in any state or at the federal level, against the
ownership of cannon, and that no one has ever passed this. You know
why, because you don't turn on the news and the want to go,
oh my god, another shopping center devastated by a cannon fight that never happened.
That never happened. So there's no federal laws, there's no state laws.
We've always been able to do it. It's actually not covered under the
Second Amendment. But not being under the Second Amendment was never the American standard.
And this is the point, This is not how the country is set
up. If you look at the Constitutional Convention, they were not sitting there
saying, right, what are you not allowed to do. They said,
what's the government allowed to do? So the government was allowed in some ways
to regulate the militia. There's a Militia Act. There's a militia clause in
the Constitution that predates the Second Amendment. That's it. That's it. Cannon
would common they were privately owned. They were they were anticipated. There's a
whole clause in the Constitution letters of mark and reprisal. People had naval ships
that they owned privately. They expected to be sent abroad to use them.
There wouldn't be much point sending a ship abroad to fight the Barbary pirates if
you didn't have cannon on it. You've really got me going. Now,
this is dastarday. But yes, so my point is joined Ricochet, buy
a cannon. Maybe. At the same time, I wonder, I could
you who makes them? Can you buy one? Yes? You can buy
the we are they like weirdly sort of antique things. Now, because if
I wonder how much are they? How much? How much is a cannon?
I mean small, I don't mean a big one, small one just
from my form, my own protection, right, you can get I don't
know how much, use a lot to civil we'll reenact right and right,
so like I should we should price that would be really cool, like Ricochet
premium. You know the person who goes to the most meetups. Wait,
we got wet we an answer. We have an answer. Blood power can
twenty inch long one inch? You got whole category antique maritime cannons and cannonballs
for sale. What a great country. Just the fact that you can look
that out In England you go to prison for looking it up and you can
you can probably claim Apple pay by right, you can just get it sent
to your house. You saying worried that if as a roof ascot sand a
cannon. Oh that's right. Yeah, well no with Ricoche off something you
should next time instead of offering to buy three drinks, you should say,
if you joined Ricochet will buy the first three people cannon. I'd be kind
of cool, right right. There is a shop. I don't know if
you guys have been. I don't know if any time today, Like there's
a shop on Charters. I think no, it's on Royal in the in
the quarter that's got it's like old weapons and stuff, and there's there's a
bunch of sabers and things. But there's also some great old like rifles,
and I bet you he could get I bet you he could hook us up
with a cannon. But if you go in there and you kind of like
you're your little KG about like first second Amendment stuff, a little bit like
you just kind of like just drop a few hints and you'll be there,
you should go like it's a lot long afternoon and it's really fun because this
guy is a true believer. So a lot of people don't know this,
but and this is true, that all American gun laws stop at eighteen ninety
eight. So it's a curio if it was made before eighteen ninety eight,
so a lot right, So you could go into that story. If that
gun was made in eighteen ninety seven, even if it's perfectly functional, you
can go in and buy it and just walk out with it. There's no
laws that apply it to, no background check, there's nothing. And I'll
say it again, I don't think that's a problem in our country. Right
Again, you're not sitting there turning on the news. They go yet another
eighteen fifties rifle used in massacre A blunderbush. I knew somebody who who said
a normal was normal in the fifties in New York City to watch a se
young men boys going to school carrying a twenty two rifle and because all schools
had a right had rifle range of the basement. Yeah yeah, yeah,
right are My high school had a rival range in the basement and we had
this one girl's group, one club called the Rifles, and they weren't uniform.
Where was this East High? Okay, well in the West. You
guys are weird. But I mean that took rifle read like I was like
in the boy Scouts. I didn't take it to school, and by that
time they didn't have it. But like nobody thought you shouldn't know how to
fire a weapon, like yeah right, probably when did you start shooting?
Um, I'd asked that, I'd asking Charlie. Yeah, well, it's
always illegal. I felt like I'm in a police cell here. And um
well, actually, I mean, although we don't have privately on farms in
the UK, that you do take the course at school, which we which
we did, which was run by the army, and then come in so
I guess they did that. Um. I mean when I came to America
and started writing about this, I immediately got invitations. People would say,
come to the range. So I'm probably within six months of being in the
US. Um. I mean, originally my interest in this was not at
all practical. I didn't particularly like guns. I had an interest in the
fact that, you know, the press was lying about it, and I
think that's really annoying. And the Hella decision came down and I thought that
was correct, and then I wrote about this a lot, and then people
would say, come to a range, and then I sort of enjoyed it.
And now now I've moved all the way. But that wasn't the impetus
was that there was a secondary to it. So I mean for a long
time. But you know, another thing that really irritated me on this was
and I think I actually think the press is caught onto this now. But
ten years ago, there was this idea, you know, only white people
have guns, only white men actually have guns. And this was not true
in the range that I used to go to in Connecticut, in Bridgeport,
which is not a particularly white town, and you know, people would come
over and they would share guns and they would talk, and I thought,
this isn't true. I mean, now the idea is absolutely laughable that this
is a white male thing. And finally, this is actually had become acknowledged,
is that if you look at gun sales in the last five or six
years, especially the last three, they are very heavily actually not white men,
partly because the white men already have all the guns, right, so
you've got in this market share, right. But that was that was very
annoying too. It was because you'd read about this and then you would you
would people I would accept the invitations of people in various places in America,
and you know, I went to one Denver, Colorado, and Connecticut and
New York City actually has a gun range, and it just didn't correspond at
all to what I was being in California. Got a gun range in California.
It is not just white men. So that kind of pissed me off.
In what I was in southern California, in Los Angeles, in Los
Angeles County, they had, i forget, you know, strict gun laws,
but not in Culver City, which is a little independent city surrounded on
all sides by Los Angeles. So you could just drive into Culver City and
they had a bud antique, you know, curio. I guess sales shops,
and then two or three gun ranges and then gun sellers. So the
idea was like the point of the of the kind of a um kabuki theater
for La County of saying we're gonna have no guns, like well, actually,
right in Culver City, you can buy all the guns you want.
I don't know if you can buy a cannon, that'd be cool. I'm
stuck on the cannon. We're getting a cannon. That's rule one. We're
gonnat. We're gonna figure out way to get a cannon in here. Yeah.
Sorry. I had a worker who was associated format of the Teamsters of
South Side of Chicago, Black Dude. He was also a concealed carrying instructor.
Was rescue yourself right right? Exactly? Did anybody have a like a
I mean I had a pellet gun as a kid. We have a pellet
gun, remember those Peltic guns? Was it a CEO two or do you
have? That? Was the pump? The pump. The pump was great
because you could, if you really loved it, which I loved, you
could pump it up really really and so it was you could feel it.
It was like super hard to finish and then and you're the trajectory of the
pellet was better. And if you shot it against brob brob, you're scaring
everyone. Yeah, you shot it against it. You shot against the shed
in my backyard. Anyway, you were convinced that if you're just a little
bit more pressure you could pierce the steel, which of course you could never
do. But if you if you only gave it a little bit, you
could actually love it, you I thought anyway. I was like, oh,
what if I could get my site picture, you know, the the
cluster on the target, I could get it a better. I could angle
it, you know, because as you're not going as fast. I never
quite figured that out, but I would. I would it for hours,
for hours, trying to bust through the shed until my dad got mad and
uh and just trying to lob it into the target. Yeah. I think
cannon application is going to be refused after the Testament. Well that's what but
that's what they do with cannon, right, because you you're you gotta it's
you gotta get lost, right, you gotta your ballistics ballistic Yeah whatever that
is. Yes, okay, so uh so, um, where's where where
are where are you planning next now that it's your job apparently to plan all
these. No, well, Matt Baalter is doing another one in Milwaukee to
go along with German Fest. That's like in a week, right, that's
like tomorrow. But the following follows, got a right, Okay? The
next one that I'm doing, um stad a neutral observer and my wife and
I are going to Winston Salem's, North Carolina for a science fiction convention.
And we've invited any Ricochetti you want to come by to meet us and maybe
we'll pick up somebody else wants to go to the convention too. As far
as another really big one like this, I don't have any plans. Yeah,
yeah, no, no, no, must yeah, I'll make a
Paladin's planning on. Oh that's a cool. I that's a good idea.
I think that. Yeah. I still want to do another one in New
York because it's so safe, um, and because it's easy for me to
get to uh you know what, I don't know. It's it's it's it
is safer than here. Um. But I actually do feel you feel like
this is unsafe. I mean, you read about it, but I don't
I don't know, you feel like this is a pretty trocious really got dragged
the dragged. Ye, it's just you know. And then and did go
to judge in the delayed case for a year. She did some reason.
You know, it's just yah, our grophys they just drag him one behind
the cars or you know, I'll tell you. So you know, it's
not good. That's good. It's not good. It's no, it shouldn't
be as it's literally it was whole. We're not doing We're not okay.
So Charlie, if they if if gun ownership went up in New Orleans,
what would happen. Well, I don't know, but what I do know
is that there's no correlation, given the number of guns in America already,
between gun ownership and crime, because the saturation point was already reached. I
mean, there's five hundred million guns in the United States. There's three hundred
and thirty million people. The number of guns changed between nineteen ninety and twenty
fourteen by two hundred and fifty million, and crime dropped and dropped and dropped.
So the idea that if given the rate of gun ownership we already have,
that if you increase the number, you'll get more gun crime seems patently
false. Probably the opposite is true. That's what it's going for. I
mean, if if everybody on your I mean, look and I'll live in
New York. It's not the guns, it's people. Get the people who
are likely to do that. You advance, right, because afterwards the coast
is cleaning up the nest. They don't, they can't. They can't be
right, And we're not a prevention And if someone if someone's a harmicide albaniac,
they don't need a firearm to kill people, right, you know,
we can't. Well we're just talking about this today, driving through town where
everybody's walking on the streets. You know, we're incredibly fortunate that this hasn't
caught on in the homicidal maniac community to drive people over. There have been
a few incidents, I think at the Los Angeles Olympics. Some guy plowed
through the crowd and killed a bunch of people Germany or France at some Christmas
Yeah, gathering, it occasionally happens, But imagine if that caught on the
way school shootings have. What are we going to do then? Can't outlaw
automobiles and look, we actually have irrational laws and I'll give you an example
of it. And I felt safe saying this hit because normally I get blank
looks on this. But so I looked up before I came here to conceal
carrol laws which are quite good rosive to the rest of America. I didn't
actually bring a gun, but I looked up laws because I was interested.
And the law in Louisiana, including here in New Orleans, is that if
you are if you have had as much to drink as would disqualify you from
driving a car, you're not allowed to carry. Now that sounds presumptively sensible,
but it's not, and I'll tell you why. The state of Florida
does not have that law. The state of Florida says you can drink as
much as you want unless you put your hand on the gun you can have
in your pocket. You can be smashed. Let's be frank. You can
be smashed. You can be blotted three streets to the wind. English people
are really good, by the way, at using words for drunk. Anything
works in an English accent, car park, gazebo, whatever you want,
you can be that. And if you have the gun in your possession,
you're fine until you touch it now. People think prima facie that that sounds
a bit crazy. There has never been a problem without once in a state
of twenty one million people. It actually makes sense because the thing is is
that what you're not, what you're not comparing that against, is a rational
person. You're comparing it against a crazy person. And all of you,
whether you drink or you, are more likely to be rational, even if
you've had twelve gener tonics than the person who you're trying to protect yourself against.
The only point in which you're going to put your hand into your pocket,
and don't worry, that's my phone, not a gun. The only
point in which you're going to put your hand into your pocket is if you
absolutely have to, because you have no intend to hurt anyone. I think
we need to rethink this every time something terrible happens, is it has recently
in Kentucky, in Nashville, Tennessee, all of our laws are discussed as
if the crimes that are being committed are committed by people who are rational,
who are thinking it through, who care about the consequences, and they don't.
This is the problem. Look, I'm not criticizing Louisiana's law as I
think they're pretty good, but actually there would be better if they made that
adjustment. So you said, you know what would happen if more people carried
under laws that were more lenient. Not a single person who has no intention
to hurt anyone would subsequently hurt someone. I mean, there's twenty six states,
a majority of states have now abolished permitting processes for concealed carry, and
nothing happened. You know why, because no one who has murderous intent in
their heart cares what the permitting laws are. So do I think that America
has more gun crime because there are five hundred million guns than South Korea,
which has basically done Yes I do. I'm happy to stipulate that. Do
I think that it has more gun violent than England does, where basically no
one has allowed guns. Yes, I do. That's not to say,
by the way, that you can replace one by one. America's suicide rates
much lower than most countries. People will substitute suicide instruments for something else.
So Japan's suicide rates twice what Americas is, even though they're basically are no
guns. But yes, homicides are high because of guns. Mass shootings are
higher. Because of guns. But given that that is a fact, what
you really want to do is maximize the latitude that responsible people have. And
I think this is the mistake that we make. We're obsessed with the people
who are obeying the law and not with the people who are before understand will
have guns, right, correct? What certainly crazy and it's a copycat Yeah,
yeah, everybody, Well that may be true. I mean I remember
some years back where somebody had looked out the statistics and said, actually,
school shootings have gone back to like the nineteen thirties. You know, it
just was not a nationwide news story every time it happened. We're now no
matter where it happens in the US, it's a nationwide news story. There's
a lot of crime now, there's a lot less crime than there was twenty
years ago and thirty years ago, and that's really good. But the mass
shooting phenomenon, to your point about cars, is copycat phenomenon. There have
been thirty three peer reviewed studies and I'm not a big peer reviewed studies guy,
because you can sort of hack them, but thirty three of them that
have looked at the media's influence on mass shootings since about nineteen ninety six,
and every single one of them, all of them all thirty three say one
causes the next one. You put it all over the news, you tell
people they can be famous. I don't know if you guys read this.
Hopefully you didn't because you're not weirdos. But the Nashville shooter texted her friend
just before or she did it. What was the last thing she said?
Does anyone know? She said, you're about to hear about me on the
news. Why did she say that? Because because it was true? True?
Right? Also a lot of these school shootings of people who do the
antidepressants. Yeah, yeah, but millions and millions of people are an antidepressants
who are not violent. You know, I don't know that it's the antidepressants
that make somebody crazy. It's the people who are crazy are the ones who
are taking antidepressants, and in many cases it works, and probably in some
cases it doesn't. I don't know that those people would be less crazy if
they weren't taking antidepressants. Yeah, I mean, there's something in the culture
that's either social contagion or it's some other thing some on you know, brew
more than one or two factors that's going on I by by that. Um,
this is a very depressing conversation. So I'm not gonna I'm just rying.
I'm gonna get out of my cannon. Um. But here's the question
I asked when I'm we do this, when we go on to National Review
cruise and there's always that moment You're sitting at the table and everybody se was
sitting there and no one knows who to say. And I always want to
know this question because, um, like this is where I'm not exactly widespread
in age, but close it was everybody in this room always like conservative.
Yes, is anybody in this room like liberal? Okay? So Ken was
liberal? Where was your moment did you have? Was it one moment?
I also that Charles before in college, I'm undergrounded. Was we uh we
doct our plenties? We were started off as they wanted to push it back
against our parents and our older generations and things. We were ignorant. I
guess it's the tennism likely to say it. But um, we had an
older coworker who's in his forties. He used to work on campaigns down here,
like government you've run with the Deilnor and such. He was a Republican
and he was conservative. You'd tell us that we were young men working with
him at a bar, that we'd changed our tune in about twenty years,
and give you something about ten twenty years, you'll you'll come around to change
any way of thinking. And he was right. I talked to him aout.
I was forty, and I said, yeah, I'm sure enough.
I got a mortgage, I got a responsibility, I got you know,
got out of college, and slowly, yeah you I mean, i'm running
short independent, my wife's a Republican. I'm independent. Um, but I'm
still leading towards conservatism now right. But yeah, absolutely left early twenties and
stuff. But it wasn't like one moment you're like, wait a minute.
I think at a certain point you just look around the world around you and
realize you don't really agree with the you know, most of which you're you're
in, at least in the circles I was, I was associated with.
So I don't think it was one little moment where the light came on.
But slow progress for me, slow ross How old do you know? I
meant, So, what was the first where's your what was your what's your
first presidential election? That you could vote in when you're eighteen, Like,
what's been Clinton? Right when I was eighteen? It was ninety twenty seven,
I think, so the nearest one would have been what names tenty sentence
of the one? No, here's one's two thousand. So two thousand was
I remember helped the other Bush. You are young, push Core. I
can't remember what about that election? Oh I was. I'm trying to impolitely
ask you, like where you were on that election. I'm trying to date
your moment. I was fact that I was. I was Bush. I
remember sad and growing up in the eighties nineties ran and then like yeah,
um yeah, I went. I was at the boys. I thought the
polos has made more sense of me. Basically, Um, I don't like
to say Elean specifically one way or the other. There are issues where I'll
actually disagree with, you know people, it would come on himself as stale.
You know. Republicans also bushe more in two thousand. People forget they
weren't that different. I mean they were not. It was not like,
oh my god, they were not that polar ups. In fact, uh,
they both competed to see who would come up with the most generous um
men at medicare plan. And it was Bush who said I'll give you better
the more free drugs than this guy. And medicare partis that's Bush, and
so he said, scooped up at old people. I don't I don't remember
the civil division right in that election. I remember people being very m men
to each other. They were afterwards, they were they were from the election
day on. Yeah, but up to the election day it was pretty confusing.
Yeah, any right, So who else was started as a liberal?
Start as a liberal? Yes front where Chicago. I basically in high school
kind of exact rebellious, and it was kind of a and you know,
rejected religion in such an I was kind of out there and kind of slowly
wandering my way back. But the real moment that gout that changed me was
nine eleven. This was that I was actually really on defense. I voted
Bush, but it was like I was seriously considering voting for Gore. I
found this a role. If I seriously considered voting for a Democrat, They're
going to be a monster. I voted for blood Voyevich and what ty would
happened to him? So I metter nine eleven, I saw some of I
saw what the people were doing on campus. I saw the they were saying
that the we we deserved it, we it was on our fault and we
and we should apologize. And I was like, no, I want,
I want to terrorists right, And I wanted to. I wanted to do.
That's what I realized. I did. I did want. I wasn't.
There was no spice for me on the left. I would, yeah,
when you say I want dead terrorists with them now that you kind of
can't go back there anymore, like they don't there, there's no they've taken
your chair away. That's exactly that, by the way, is exactly me
too. I had absolutely no idea what I thought about anything, because I
hadn't had to. I was born in nineteen eighty four. The economy was
great, the world was broadly safe. The West want every war got into
nine to eleven happened. I was horrified. And I heard people on the
radio in England saying America deserved it, and I thought, whatever that is,
I'm not, And that's exactly me as well. Whatever that is,
I'm not. Anybody else have nine eleven on their I mean, it was
late for me I'm old. For me, it was fall the Berlin Wall,
the end of communism, because I was told in high school and college
that this was a you know, Reagan was a madman, and that there's
nothing really wrong with communism. It's just another system and they're very happy with
it, and it's sort of a little bit like tacky to be anti communist.
And by the way, their system's fine and it's not in any danger.
And then the wall comes down and you think, oh, well,
wait a minute, what else are you lying to me about? And once
you start with that, once that domino HiT's like what else isn't true?
Then you it's like you're it's like discovering. There's a recurring dream that a
psychiatrist say that people have, you know, like you're running in sand and
then you're you're you're going to an exam for a class that you haven't gone
to. Whatever that is. One. The other dream is that you discover
a room in your house that you never knew existed. Yes, that's a
classic dream, and that's what it feels like when you suddenly think, wait,
and what else are you lying to me about? And I discovered by
reading Paul Johnson's modern times. They were lying to me about everything. They
were lying to me about Stalin, they were lying to me about uh,
Communism, They're lying to me about American politics in the twentieth century. They're
lying to me about everything. They're lying to me about welfare and welfare reform
um. And once that happens, so it's kind of over. Yeah,
yeah, I just want where's my cannon? It's like Rocky four was the
one where he goes to Russia. That's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
right right? Why have you seen what? You what? Your father?
I haven't seen any of the Rocky movies. This this actually is beginning
to feel like a Chinese struggle session, but I'll go through it. Yeah,
just explain your explain your sin. I haven't seen any of the Rocky
movies and any other movies. Besides, you haven't seen the original Rocky.
Correct? Is this a choice? I guess. I mean I wasn't forced
to out of it, that's I guess. So we need to shut immigration
down. I can till we can figure out what's going on. That's what
I think. Um, well, I don't. I'm not going to vouch
for the other Rockies because they kind of got a little bit crazy. But
the first Rocky is a great movie. It's like a great, great movie.
It has nothing to do with you haven't seen any Rockies. You can
see the first one at least it's great. It's a great movie. Nineteen
seventy seven, eight one best Picture. I mean it's a it's a really
it's a classic picture. It's really great. You should see it. Yeah,
right, that that theme is really great. I'm sorry the right way?
Um, anybody else? Who else had had that conversion moment? What
was yours? How liberal were you before? Though? Well? I was
gonna say business because for me, it wasn't a personal choice. It was
I was a fourth generation farmer, and so if you were a farmer,
you voted a Democrat for the Firth programs. Where so very very tiny little
town and sort of northwestern Indiana. Okay, yeah, nobody's ever heard of
the town, but it's about forty five miles north west Lay where Purdue University
is, Okay, so middle of farm country. So everybody was a Democrat
because you wanted the farm programs. So then I married a ranking area Republican
and started actually learning about politics through YEA, and over the years had probably
outclassed him and my conservatives and you're like, hey, slow down, Like
yeah, well, uh will you live there now? No? Now,
well still in the Midwest outside of is for you now, okay? Because
I say Indiana is an interesting state because it went through that it did it
went through that change. Now it's inconceivable that Indiana would ever elected Democrats statewide
at this point, right, I mean, it's just not possible, which
starts my sister's nuts. By the body, who still are Democrats in Indian
day? Are they? What's the part is? It's just the Democratic Party
they have like the Democratic farmers workers thing from like they from the old days.
I think it's I think it's they could never really bothered to move beyond.
I've always been a Democrats because they don't follow that much. And so
I was I had lunch today at the bar at Galatois. So I was
working today and it was like two and thirty or three o'clock, and I
knew that Galatwars open. It's my favorite restaurant in town. I'm at the
bar and it's it's Friday. Launch at Galatois is like a well, oh
you New Orleans, you know it's like it's a it's a thing. And
so there's some people come from the dining rooms just store. They kind of
come into the bar to finish their long lunch and they've all had a little
bit. And there's a crowd of people to my right and they've all had
a lot, and they're there. I mean, in their acts there's these
are real. These are accents like from a movie about New Orleans. These
are these are I mean, this is real, and they are in politics
and they're all Democrats and they are talking about politics the way I don't think.
I didn't think people talk about politics in twenty twenty three. It was
like really old fashioned stuff. It's like, well i'll tell you that guy.
I think, well she she appoints those commissioners. So there's a lot
of that, like a lot of that. And I feel like partly people
who are that kind of vestigial democrats, right, they like the order of
it, you know, it's like they like this system like and I think
you think you probably find Republicans like that in like Republican areas too, but
like it's for old, old older America in places I think it's like democrats
that are like if you give up the party system and the party hierarchy and
the party organization, than what do you have. You just have to run
for office, like like anybody, Whereas if you're part of the system,
you don't really run for office. Like everybody, You run for office and
you kind of know you're gonna win and you know you're you know, like,
I think that that might be part of the appeal. But does anybody
have friends who are I mean, how many people like I mean, I
obviously have a lot of liberal friends. Most of my co workers in my
work in Los Angeles, they're all like extremely liberal democrats. Is that is
that that's normal? Right? Like people say it isn't, but I think
it is normal, right. How many of your This is like a leading
question, So tell me I'm full of it if I am. How many
of your liberal friends say things, especially recently, like well I'm a liberal,
but I'm not And then they list a bunch of things they're not liberal
on and you're like, well, you're not a liberal, then well I'm
a democrat. I mean, I'm a Democrat, but I don't go for
and then they'll list a bunch of things You're like, well, I guess
it's news for you. You're not a Democrat if this, if you believe
all this stuff, you're you're maybe you're in the middle, you're independent.
But they don't want to lose that label. They'll still like talk to them,
they'll still act like they're, well, I'm a liberal, but I
think we're going too far in climate change, and I kind of agree with
the de Santis is like a school rules about talking about trans stuff like Okay,
well that's that's fine, right, right, but it's it makes me
feel like they're they're winnable, right, no, yeah, yeah, but
if you're talking about some issue schools yeah or right that, yeah, I
do. I mean, I'm thinking of the conservative liberal label. They're stuck
on that. I know people who are working even more conservative than I am
on some things. I'm like, you can't go around and calling yourself a
liberal. You with the most you're independent, but basically you're a conservative.
Yeah, we're proms is good. The first it seems to be yeah,
other strike yeah, and then yeah, it's a look, that's It's interesting
you brought that up because I have two brothers live in the area. One
of them is a son professed liberal. We have lunch every week, and
he said the exact same thing. I'm a liberal, but these things are
starting to you know, I don't agree with what these things are happening,
so I don't pursue it because, yeah, I hate to talk about I
love my brother I want to continue to love my brothers. So we don't
talk politics. But he's bringing it up. He's they're going too far.
But what are these things? Does he say? Uh? I think it
was the transgender that was that. You know, what is the talk too
short? But a crime? You know, we were talking about recalling the
mayor. He's a big guy for calling the mayor h crime and all the
things with the city that that should be happening but aren't happening. Uh.
You know he's so he talks like a conservative, but he calls himself a
little roal. I'm pretty sure that he would vote Democrat because that's that's just
much nationally he would vote. He would vote Democrat right in Orleans Parish,
he had to vote democratic because there are no Republicans. What about governor.
We haven't talked about it, but our governor is a Democrat. But he's
kind of an old school Uh, he's the rights. Sup Yeah, you
know, real leslie to not be alleged governor. But it's just interesting brought.
Yeah, it's weird though for me. For Democrats, just don't think
about Democrats as a party, I mean the parties. I think you're kind
of dumb anyway. And I think we're looking the volatility in American politics in
the past twenty years kind of suggests just in the market for us that people
are I mean, the country going from like George W. Bush to Barack
Obama to Donald Trump is like, you're he's either a country having a nervous
breakdown or it's just the customers trying to get the attention of the politicians.
It's the vote is trying to say something's wrong, you're not doing a good
job. And that's kind of what I think it is. It's like we're
at we're at afraid and look, these party systems don't last forever. They
haven't lasted that long. This is the longest they've ever lasted American history.
It's probably time for them to figure out something else. But what astonishes me
is like you look at almost every single American a general election or any polls,
so it's psychographic poll of the voters that are non affiliated with the party
or that don't ask the voters to be affiliated with the party, and their
ideal president presidential candidate is essentially what you just described, a Southern conservative Democrat.
In American politics, still in national politics, a Southern conservative Democrat is
nearly unstoppable, and yet there aren't any. Yeah, there's literally the category
that never gets right. It's like the answer is right there for that party.
All they need to do is to elect a Southern conservative Democrat and that'll
be there, that'll be a national figure for them, and they can't do
it. They can't. It's got to be like you remember that moment in
the Democratic primary when it was it Jim Webb and the and they were asking
all of the Democratic candidates in the primary, like, what was your proudest
moment and they're all like, oh, it was when I passed subsection seven
B of the you know, of the what angle should stairs be at Act
of nineteen eighty seven, right, And then Jim Webb was like, it
was when I threw a grenade at a Vietnamese guy and he died. And
the press was like, holy shit, that is so horrible. But the
public. I completely loved it. And then they nominated Hillary Clinton and then
the Hillary Clinton yeatives, who are no, but thirty years ago there were
literally thirty years ago, right, and he was elected twice. And I
mean, look, I'm not a southern conservative Democrat, right, Sam Nunn.
I mean you had them. They were Al Gore. When Al Gore
ran an eighty four, eighty four, eighty eight. Uh, he was
the incredibly conservative. He's a conservative Southern senator, Democratic senator. He was
a conserving, he was pro life, all sorts of things. He was
arguably as conservative as any Republican at the time. But he wouldn't be a
publi no, and he wouldn't and he didn't win the domination. I just
think it's just interesting that that that I know more people who are are who
fit that bill like your brother like is you know, he's winnable and and
and or were winnable for the Democratic Party to win a national election for real,
and um, they just don't do it. There was within the last
week's who do you fear the most for the Democratic Before I reread that,
I said, okay, just like you said, he a Southern Democrat,
cercle and the old blue Dog. Yeah, they put one up that that's
the Republican's worst night there. I agree. I agree. What the problem
is you have to choose what's out there, and the pickings are so sparse,
bad even though you're so totally devoted to a particular outdoors. Here be
your Democrats or yeah, whats go? Yeah why isn't your because you get
crushed. He wouldn't make it out of primary. We wouldn't want him anyway,
So he's corrupt enough, he wouldn't trust him. Um. But I
don't know, I actually feel like I mean, I don't. I mean,
I am now I don't care about any of these parties at all.
I think they're all terrible. Um, all of them are just terrible.
Uh. But if I was gonna like bet, I think that the Republicans
have more, you know, legitimate traditional winning candidates this cycle. But I
don't know why people are talking more about Brian Camp, governor accessible governor of
Georgia. I mean, it's all the Santa seems like he's a good governor,
right, But I don't I don't think. I don't think it.
She should walk to it. I feel like you have Brian Camp would have
been good, is perfectly good. Governor has a story to tell. Former
governor of Indiana Mike Pennce. He's gonna he's running. I mean he's getting
yelled at or apparently he's getting insulted to the now you went run, he's
sensible who won't run? He's having us though. Oh yeah yeah, but
I mean he's like you. No, he's like he. That means a
governor of a big state, important state. Um, that person's almost automatically
you talk about that versus the presidential candid naturally, like in American history.
It's weird. So as fun as this is, ye, well passed the
restaurant closing, Yes, probably, thank you. This is a lot of
fun. I hope this was fun for you. I mean we I don't
really know what we're gonna we're doing this. This will be a podcast to
figure something out. Yeah, we're gonna monetize it. Perry Well uh yeah
if uh if UM. I would just like to say, uh, this
was fun. Um, thank you Randy for arranging it. Um. And
for the future ones, thank you for to Melissa for doing all this.
Yes yeah, and also um, we'll see you the next one. And
if you're listening, to this and you're thinking yourself, how why was I
not there. Here's why you weren't there because you didn't join. So whatever
I said to some of these people here, I will say it again,
like, if you join, you get to not only get on the site
and have fun in the members section, but you also get to come stuff
like this. And if you do come to stuff like this, and you
join just to come to stuff like this and I am there, I will
buy you a drink. I made good on that promise, and a cannon.
But the cannon. The cannons later. We gotta figure the cannon out.
That'd be great. Yeah, thank you, thank you,