380: Sell Liberty with Jeremy Todd (Guest: Eric Ward)

Jeremy Todd  
What is up everybody welcome in to the Liberty lounge. I am your host tonight, Jeremy Todd and I am so glad to have you here with us talking some Liberty stuff, man. It's been a crazy week. And I am extremely excited to bring in tonight's guest. Eric is not only a as I know him, a great salesperson, a great leader. And that's how we met. But he has made the transition into working with firearms and firearm safety training. And we're going to hear all about that. But the biggest line on Eric's resume is that he will tell you that I am 100% responsible for keeping him alive in the streets of Prague one night. So with that being said, ladies and gentlemen, welcome the amazing Eric ward to the to the lounge. How are you, brother?

Eric Ward  
Mr. Todd, thank you for having me.

Jeremy Todd  
Absolutely. So glad to have you here, man. And we, boy, it's been an interesting week. And a lot of talk about guns and self defense and a few trials going on. But before we dive into talking shop, tell me in the listeners out there a little bit about who you are your background, and what it is you do.

Eric Ward  
Yeah, absolutely. So if for defense farms and training, we're all about helping people protect every day. And so we feel that all gun laws aren't infringement. But with that being said, there are certain laws and regulations and things you have to know how to do. And then most importantly, just for the idea of being responsible, and you know, responsible for your own safety and protection of your own family. Learning how to protect them from harm is an essential skill set. And the it's just the way that it is that many times the most efficient, and most effective way to protect your family is learning how to use responsibly firearm. And so what we do is we train students on that we've been around as a legitimate business incorporated since about 2014 or so it started as a hobby. Whenever, you know, we were I was running multiple businesses. And so we started going to the range quite a bit and my friends, and they're like, Hey, you should you should teach people how to do this. And so the business kind of took off from there, we've trained over 10,000 students in person, and we have an online presence and, you know, effective literature that people can use online as well as some really great products. So that's for defense in a nutshell.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, that's phenomenal man. And you answered kind of my first question, which was like, how do we get into Alright, let's do the nuts and bolts, you ready to talk some shop? Let's do it. Let's talk.

Alright, the great gun debate, this is something that us libertarians come across all the time. And I think it boils down to a couple things, but foundationally it, it always becomes a conversation about rights. So how is it that you when you are having these conversations about all gun laws or infringements with somebody who may be believes that you don't necessarily have a right to carry a gun? To defend yourself? How do you really break down the differences and rights and how that looks?

Eric Ward  
That's a great question, Jeremy. You know, it really depends on the audience and the person. And most importantly, a person's individual experiences, I find that a person's individual experiences more often than not shape their entire context of how they see and perceive these things. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I feel like you just got a handful of a few different types of people. You've got people who have never had to worry legitimately about their safety or the safety of their loved ones, you have people who always have to worry about their safety, and the safety of their loved ones. And then most importantly, I think for what we're discussing this evening on the show, the people who are in transition that have experienced both sides of that type of situation where at one point, they did not have to worry about those types of things. And then something happened in their lives. They had some experience, and then all of a sudden their misconceptions and preconceived notions were shattered. And the grand illusion was removed that hey, look at the end of the day. Ultimately, my safety and the safety of my family is my personal responsibility. And I need to have the proper tools to be able to do that.

Jeremy Todd  
Do you find that those Going through that transitional phase are hesitant to accept that personal responsibility because I mean, don't we pay for police? Don't we pay for big scary men with guns to protect us?

Eric Ward  
Yeah, yeah, I guess in a certain in a certain sense we do. And, you know, I think until someone has to attempt to utilize those things, the reality of how a situation like that transpires how quickly it transpires, those things aren't really a reality. And we have a, we have a saying, and a lot of our teachings, you know, it's hard to imagine hypothetical scenarios, until you personally experienced them, right? You know, if someone is banging on your door attempting to break into your home and kill your family and take all your stuff, you know, you don't really have the patience to wait 10 minutes for a trigger, you know, it's like, how quickly can those things happen? And I think that's something that a lot of people who've never had to worry about those things living in their bubble of safety and many times bubble of wealth, they, you know, those are things that they've never had the experience or having occurred.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think that's what's really interesting about those who are opposed to gun rights is that they never really consider the fact that, well, they are typically the people who say, Well, let's look at, you know, maybe underserved neighborhoods, or neighborhoods of different ethnic backgrounds and things like that, or areas where there may be more crime, they're actually advocating for sending police into these areas after the fact to defend people that they believe the police are racist against it. There's a lot of counter logic that goes on there. And it's because they've never had to be the person depending on a police officer in their life. That's a really interesting perspective. So let's say we're having conversations with those who because one of the keys to sales, right is you have to establish the need. And the problem initially, let's say it's somebody that we're talking to who is maybe out there fighting for restricting our right to bear arms, and they say, they come from that, more of a never had to worry about it, they've lived in that bubble of safety and wealth. How do we help frame the problem for them? And what are some of your favorite anecdotes or stories to tell that that really kind of opened their eyes?

Eric Ward  
Yeah, sure, there's a lot of different ways you can approach this. And when we really get into the nitty gritty of it, some of the things that I like to think about are, you know, from the perspective of these individuals trying to restrict our rights, it's hard, but I like to at least, give them the benefit of the doubt that they are wanting to do something for the safety and security of their community. And there is this noble, grand ambition, that maybe just maybe they have the power and ultimately the control, to manage a system from the top down and create this utopia, where everyone is safe, and dependent on others. And, you know, I think on paper, maybe that looks good. And it's, it's, it's, it can be argued that that's a noble cause. And, you know, that's kind of what we're up against. But in reality, when we look at how gun laws play out, the restriction of our rights, I was reading a report not too long ago on bearing arms about how this has all fallen apart, in in Maryland, how, despite the most draconian gun laws they have, and their incessant desire for this level of security and protection, that things just keep getting worse, and so bad guys don't. They don't they don't buy guns legally, you know, they use the black market. And no, no number of laws we create are going to make all of the black market guns disappear. So, but I do want to get back to your question and your question, how do we, how do we approach those who say, hey, look, you know, the state, the state will take care of you. Right? And the Jedi mind trick of the state? Well, how well, how well, is that working out? Yeah. How well is that working out? Just you know, just from a logical, rational, perception based person right now, like how well is the state managing our healthcare? How well are they managing our money? How well are they managing our supply chains? You know, there's this overabundance of overwhelming evidence that suggests that's not how it works, you know, right. And at the end of the day, it's a personal responsibility argument, really. And that, you know, that's my opinion, are you going to outsource your responsibilities to someone else? Or are you going to take care of it? And I don't have all of the answers, Jeremy, because I think that there are a certain number of people that will never take personal responsibility for their actions, maybe

Jeremy Todd  
10. Right.

Eric Ward  
It's it's like, how do we how do we address that? You know, they're, they're only their only solution is going to be hoping that there are good people like you and I who are willing, yeah, protect them if the state drops the ball.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah. 100%. And, you know, it reminds me of this. Back in the, it was actually the 2016 election, it was one of the good things Carrie Johnson actually did, he was approached by a woman at a town hall. And they she was like, they were talking about legalizing drugs, which I find there's a lot of parallels, just on opposite sides of the aisle when it comes to legalizing drugs and legalizing guns. And it really comes down to what you said personal responsibility. And the lady said, My daughter died of a heroin overdose. How can you tell me that you want to legalize that? And Gary actually went into like, hey, black markets are what caused this problem yada, yada. But the fact of the matter is, is he should have said, Hey, lady, your daughter died, and heroin was already as illegal as you can make it, people. And that is the thing that we all have to come to grips with is that making something illegal doesn't prevent it from happening? It doesn't make it it might add a layer of difficulty weight, but people who have bad intentions are willing to go around those the those loops, right? I think that makes a ton of sense. So there will absolutely be people who are never going to take that sort of responsibility for themselves. But they look at, I'll give you a great example. My wife, when we first started dating was like, we have to do something. I can't see any more school shootings. I can't see any more Sandy hooks, or this or that right? And not to downplay those tragedies. But how how do you respond to those situations where a bad guy with a gun does bad things?

Eric Ward  
Well, that's that's actually quite easy. When those bad things happen, how do we stop them, there's only two outcomes, the police, either stop by force with the use of firearms, this bad guy from doing these bad things, or it's suicide by cop or suicide for the attacker. And so I think it's important for individuals to take that thought process and go, Well, how many lives can we save, if there are willing volunteers on staff and the administration who wants to learn how to use these weapons safely, efficiently and effectively, to protect others and want to carry firearms to do those types of things? I can't help but mention, you know, there's places in the United States, I don't want to get my states wrong. But I believe Utah is one of the examples where teachers carry concealed on campus, and we don't have shootings there. You know, in Israel, all of the teachers carry firearms, I believe, don't quote me on that. But there are, you know, this is one of those places that security is of utmost importance. And there are procedures, and there are things that can be done to mitigate these. But I think that it takes a lot of responsibility to step up and go, you know, forward and say, hey, look, these are things that are happening, we've got the tools and mechanisms in place. But let's move those tools and mechanisms to a pre emptive position, instead of being reactionary and waiting for these things to happen and then responding after the loss of innocent life.

Jeremy Todd  
Right. Yeah. And there's, there's this idea, I think, amongst people that we believe we can, we can regulate our way into prevention, if that makes sense. And that's not how prevention works. You know, prevention is what you're talking about that sort of question before the shooter steps into the school that goes, am I the only one here with a weapon? Do I know that as a fact? What are some statistics and stuff that you talked about with gun free zones and how that basically creates a bunch of sitting ducks?

Eric Ward  
Yeah, sure. Yeah. You know, a really uncomfortable thing that a lot of good guys should get more comfortable with, is attempting to think like a bad guy. And it's a it's an interesting, it's an interesting thought process. Learning to think like a bad guy doesn't make you a bad guy. But what it does is it gives you a window of insight into their motivations and the mechanisms, right so like, an example of thinking like a bad guy, right? If I break a law, what are the consequences, right and then we're walking through the consequences and going okay is the juice worth the squeeze? What's gonna happen? Right? What's the chances and probability of these things happening. And when a bad guy looks at a gun free zone, what they're doing is they're making the calculated assessment that good people, law abiding citizens, good people are going to abide by those laws. And so there is a much greater probability that this is a soft target, and there aren't going to be people there that can stop them. And if there are, there might be two or three at the whole school, right. And the bad guys gonna know that in advance, and they're gonna most likely work to eliminate them first, or avoid them and try to do the most damage they possibly can. When you look at a history of these mass shooters, let's just say for example, if we're going to talk in context of school zones, let's talk about a mass shooter. Right? We're going to have to look at the idea of what they're thinking as a bad guys, they want to inflict the most damage possible they want notoriety, they want high body count, right, so they're looking for the softest targets. And, you know, I'll come out and say it, I really think that if there was a national federal push to eliminate these gun free zones, we could drastically prevent or eliminate or at, at, at minimum, reduce the likelihood of a of a mass shooting on a school campus.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, because you never know, when it comes down to it. And I, I think that sort of hesitation, it really puts some doubt into the person's mind. But okay, so let's say we're talking more to individuals who are in that transition. Did you ever teach the 1080 10 back in the day in your Cutco training? Yeah, sure. The 10%. Always by 10%. Never by 80%. I find that happens a lot in the way that we approach prospects, when it comes to selling them ideas of liberty, in that 10% of people, we're probably never going to convince them that guns can can actually be a positive thing and make them safer. 10% They, they're like us, they want to legalize nukes. It's the 80% in the middle. And so I was hoping to talk to them a little bit with this. Where, where do rights begin and end in? How do you define them? When it comes to being able to carry a weapon? can you defend yourself with just a nine millimeter pistol? Why do you need a big ar 15? may say?

Eric Ward  
Yeah, sure. So, you know, we encounter that quite frequently. And the, the basic concept here? Well, I have two points. The first the first point I want to address is those people are in that are in transition, they're like, hey, you know, do I want to do this is this is scary. I am not sure about guns and self protection. And I want to talk to those people first, because there's a lot that can be learned very quickly and easily. With how to better protect yourself. The people who I say are the most gun shy, right? are the ones who just have limited experience, they've never gone out and experienced it. And there's a reason for that. They don't want to go into the gun store and talk to Bubba and the cut off flannel shirt that's been shooting a gun since he was a toddler, right? Because Bob was gonna look at him, size him up as a city boy and make fun of them. And you know what, and I understory that's wrong, that should not occur. And we need more run, we need to get rid of the buzz and we need to create a more inviting conducive environment to help these people learn and the for what it's worth the pandemic and some of the social unrest we've experienced the last 18 to 20 months has helped them that a great degree. There's a lot of new shooters that are coming in and learning. But it takes just an ounce of prevention to create the level of confidence when you start to feel better. Now, I'm not sure what the demographics of your audience are, Jeremy in terms of age groups, but I think most people watching this can probably remember the first time they learned to drive, right. And we can do that at 1010. With drunk learning to drive. It's the same exact concept, right? There's probably 10% of the people that had really engaged intentional parents that taught them how to operate a motor vehicle from an age far B before it was legally possible to do so. And that was a skill set. They took the time to develop. There's probably another 10% of people that didn't know how to do anything at all until they went into Driver's Ed terms. They were just scared out of their mind to get behind the wheel of a vehicle because it was all foreign. It no idea what they were doing. It scared the crap out of them. But then you have 80% of the people that they go through the process. They learn in Driver's Ed, they practice they go out and they do their practice driving, and they get good, they get proficient and they drive well enough to pass the state mandated tests where they now can go out and drive a vehicle and with firearms training to a certain degree. It's very similar, you know, and so learning learning how to do those things. That's that's the first step. You know, reaching out to businesses like us, we have an online firearm safety training? You know, it's, there's plenty of great material on YouTube, and plenty of gritten structures, and plenty of great local ranges where you can go and learn these types of things. So but the resources are out there, for people who want to.

Jeremy Todd  
Absolutely. So do you find that getting people more comfortable with an AR 15, or an assault weapon, right? helps them become comfortable to a point where they go, yeah, it makes sense. I need this, this is something that people should be allowed to have.

Eric Ward  
So so I'm glad you brought that up. Let's go back to the original point you're making right here when someone says that, you know, the stereotypical, why does somebody need an AR 15? Why does somebody need an absurd amount of firepower? And so there's there's two important points to make here. First of all, anyone who's shot an AR 15, before knows, it is 1,000% easier than shooting a nine millimeter pistol. Yeah, but there's less recoil, there's a greater degree of control over the weapon because of the points of contact on the weapon, you're able to be more accurate and you're able to do things in a much more efficient way. So, but to circle back to the idea of why does somebody need an AR 15? Explain to the five foot tall, 100 pound female who is being accosted by three, six foot five 350 pound men? Why she doesn't mean that ar 15? Yeah, that's a great point, explained to that 75 year old who has five gangbangers breaking into their house? Why they don't need that ar 15? Because what it is it is it as a force multiplier, and most importantly, it is an equalizer. Right? So yeah, it's one thing for people to say, Oh, well, you know, you don't need more than this pistol or this bolt action, or this butter knife. But those are people who don't understand disparity of force. There's people, those people don't understand big armies beat small armies, right? So when we start getting into the weeds, it becomes very apparent that all sides are going to work to maximize their ability to pretend protect themselves. And the bad guys, they're looking to do a lot more than that.

Jeremy Todd  
That's absolutely correct. One of my favorite stories, I think this came out after Sandy Hook is they want it No, not Sandy Hook, the one in Florida parkland. They wanted to like reduce the age or increase the age at which someone could buy a gun. And I use a very similar disparity of force story. To help illustrate that, that's kind of silly. I think they wanted to raise it to 21. And I said, Okay, great. Well, you you live in a nice neighborhood, you know, I talked about how they don't have to deal with that problem. But I go, imagine a 19 year old single mother who lives on her own, and she now can't buy a firearm to protect her and her child, on the way home from the grocery store in the neighborhood that she can afford, because she didn't grow up with, you know, certain privileges like you do, you'd be denying it. So your law would cause her to die. So I think a lot of times they try to use utilitarian arguments, which is, well, fewer people will die if we ban XYZ, but you're also adding deaths that would not have occurred which never get reported. Right. Do you know anything about the details of unreported sort of where guns where people defend themselves with guns and save their lives?

Eric Ward  
You know that that's an interesting question. My friends over at concealed carry calm. Jacob Paulson is the owner over there, he did a series of articles where he talked about how it's almost impossible for us to tease out data on things like home invasion, because a lot of times these things aren't even reported to the national, the National databases for these types of things. And so, you know, we have data that reflect certain parts of this, but then there's their stuff that we don't know that we don't know, simply because there's no mechanism for it to get reported. And so we have to make, we have to make inferences for what does or does not occur. But I would imagine, you know, if you take if you and this is speculation, but if you take how many are actually reported, I mean, there's probably a factor of 10 or more, how many don't get reported, you know, you got to think about how serious something becomes to get to that point. When the vast majority of the time there is you know, there's a lot of hesitation there's fear, there's uncertainty and doubt a lot of fun, right? That keeps these things probably from ever being reported.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, and and so therefore, when they when sort of our our counterparts who want to reduce guns or you know, add infringements in laws, they bring up well in this place gun deaths went down XYZ, they have these numbers and data. But what you don't see are the unspoken numbers because of incomplete data data. And you could be just exchanging one life for another. In that case, and I don't know about you. But if I, when it comes to the trolley car problem, I don't feel comfortable pulling the lever, I don't want to create an action that kills one in order to save another because that gets down some dark roads, one of the one of the ones is, well, what if you're a doctor and you have a healthy patient on your table and you kill him and harvest his organs to save seven people's lives wasn't worth it. In a purely utilitarian exchange sense, you go, well save seven to a one makes but you know, in your heart, that's immoral. And I feel like gun grabbers don't necessarily grasp the fact that you are causing deaths with every regulation, because you're denying somebody the right to defend themselves that may have needed it, we just don't have that data in order to prove what are your thoughts?

Eric Ward  
There's a lot that can be argued with manipulated data one way or the other. And so what I like to try to do for my clients, and when we're talking to people is I like to try to keep it simple. And the way to keep it simple is to go from this macro perspective that's used for top down policy, and break it down to a micro level, make it just about you and go, do you want to be in a scenario where you lack the appropriate tools to protect your family when needed? Right? Do you want to get in a vehicle and not put your seatbelt on? Just because you've never been in a wreck before? Right? Right? It's like you put the seatbelt on before, you're not going to have the ability or the forward perception to put your seatbelt on when you perceive an accidents going to occur or don't have that time. Right. So when you are accosted when someone is using violence against you, and you feel that you're in a situation where it's reasonably necessary to avoid the imminent use of this deadly force against you with a reasonable response to defend yourself, you don't want to be thinking about all the tools you don't have, right, you want something ready to go to protect yourselves and your loved ones. And so when we take it down to a really personal and intimate level, I find that it becomes easier for people to make a decision, right? It's one thing to say, Well, how many lives are being lost because of these policies. And it's a lot easier to go, I don't want my son or daughter to get killed by a bad guy, I don't want to get held up at gunpoint and get shot over something, you know, I want to be able to protect myself. And you know, I find that that makes it a lot easier for people to grasp really the simplicity of what we're talking about Jeremy and really, it is simple. You have a God given right to be here to exist, it's your right to exist. And if anybody tries to take that from you, by force, you have the God given right to protect yourself. It's just that simple. You know, and I thought a lot about this when we were coming on the show, cuz like, man, he's gonna ask me all these questions and all these situations. And as a firearms instructor, I'm just so far removed from the idea of outsourcing personal responsibility to anyone besides myself that a lot of those types of things are at this point quite foreign.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, no, and it makes a lot of sense. But you touch on natural rights, right, which are God given. And so this is something that I find comes up a lot in the conversation is that well, rights come from the government, and the second minute says this, and blah, blah, and you have to, it says, well regulated, and we'll get to that, but there exists something called natural rights, and that is the right to basically protect your life and protect your property. It's, it's the core of libertarian philosophy, don't hurt people don't take their stuff. If you violate those natural rights, we got a problem. And so, those rights are endowed by our creator that like you said, you have a right to exist and you have a right to protect your property. Those are those are natural rights. Then the Bill of Rights in our founders come along and they try as best they can to sort of put some more you know, sort of meat to it in a document and we come across the Second Amendment which says the need of a well regulated militia being necessary for a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And a lot of people read that as militia and well regulated, but they miss that it's militia is well regulated, and then it goes the right of the people So one of the uncomfortable things that libertarians are comfortable talking about, I don't think the rest of society's is comfortable talking about is that the way the Second Amendment reads is that the reason you should be able to keep an AR 15 And if you're a libertarian, a tank and F 15, you know, hellfire missile, whatever, is because the government has that. And the government has committed the largest, most unthinkable atrocities on people in the history of the world. The government is the well regulated militia that the people writing the Constitution had just written. And they said, We will need a well regulated militia. But we know what it's like to fight one, two, so the people should never be denied the right to have equal force to their government. And people will go well, does that mean people can have nukes? And I go, No, it means the government probably shouldn't have nukes? Because at many points in history, if a government is given a weapon, they eventually turn it on their people and the people need to be able to return fire. What are your thoughts on the Second Amendment? Has it protected us? Does it go far enough? What is it? What does it say about what we are allowed to do in defending ourselves?

Eric Ward  
Yeah, sure. And, you know, I'll preface this with I'm not a historian. I'm not a professor on all things constitution. But there are some basics here. First of all, as the largest, most powerful, best funded, most advanced military in the world, we couldn't effectively eliminate people in caves. Go farmers, with AR, Middle Eastern countries, in the 70s. Yeah, individuals and holes in the ground with sharpened bamboo sticks, got the best of us. So anybody who believes the Scuse my language, the bullshit, that yeah, that the government is effective with these things are have they have their finger on the pulse of responsible usage? Or that they, you know, even know what they're doing with those types of things? Or that they can never be? Effectively? How do I phrase this restrained with the tools we have available versus their tools they're living, they're living in a version of reality that does not exist. So that that would be my first point. My second point would be that cursory glance of history, American history, specifically, a cursory glance of history, we'll quickly show people that in the American Revolution, we fought with the equivalent of the British military's weaponry, we had battleships, we had tanks, we had all the same weapons. So the notion and idea that the government should somehow have superior weaponry or that we should trust them with that. It's just, I mean, it's, it's it's false. It's, it's, it's categorically false. You know, we have, as technology has advanced and moves forward, we've allowed the erosion of some of these rights, and that's a bad thing. But you know, to, to really instill a little bit of hope and confidence in anybody who is, you know, listening to this, just look no further than Afghanistan, and then realize, you're gonna be okay. You know, this is something that if, let's just say a situation arises where individuals feel compelled to resist tyranny, that there will be a copious number of ways to do that, even with mechanisms we have in place. And you know what, quite frankly, Jeremy, maybe that's why they're working so hard to restrict our rights even more.

Jeremy Todd  
It is it is the only I continue to play it out in my head, and I go, Look why it's not getting them elected. It never seems to rise to the top of things that become political issues, economic issues, social issues, all of those things seem and there will be moments where they will try to seize the opportunity. But the people are not clamoring for, you know, changes in gun laws and restrictions and things like that. So why does the government continue to push for it? And I tried it there's it all leads back to that one road, Eric and, and that is exactly why we should have ar 15 Because with AK 40 sevens and Toyota Tacomas you know, the Taliban not good guys. I don't think highly of them. I don't think they're great people. But you know what, we couldn't crush them. We sat on them for 20 years and We weren't able to do it. And we outnumber the Taliban as citizens that are armed in the 10s of millions, at least, if not significantly more. So. You're absolutely right. You said all the good things that I love. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about what's been happening this week with that right to self defense. Just overall thoughts on the Rittenhouse case, the trial and the things going on with it. And do you see it as a pivotal decision that's going to kind of echo in our near future?

Eric Ward  
Well, this is, of course, just my opinion, I'm not a lawyer. And I can tell you that those who train individuals with firearms on a daily basis and have an intimate understanding of self defense law, and the use of force and legal use of deadly force, have known pretty much at onset, that this was self defense. Now, this is, let me preface that with saying there's a lot of angles here, right. And I don't want to go through the play by play commentary of everything that happened. But I think that we've, I think that anybody can agree that if we're ultimately trying to protect ourselves and our lives, we would not want to be in the middle of a riot, we would not want to be in a position where we are inviting the use of harm against us. Right. And that's, that's something I think that there are a certain number of valid points with, you know, and everybody really gives this individual and question we're talking about a hard time about potentially using lethal force against people to protect property. And that's, that's kind of like the lightning rod and all of this, right? Because, immediately, you know, you can jump to the conclusion. Okay, well, people are more important than property. It's like, it's not even a hard question. Absolutely. You know, you don't, you don't really equate the two, you know, but I do want to just give a little bit of context. Here. I am in Texas, I'm based in Texas, and I want to share an interesting Texas law with your audience. You see, here in Texas, we have a provision in our laws that allow for the use of force and deadly force to protect property. Right. Okay, that's allowed in Texas. And before anybody jumps to conclusions, I want to give a little bit of historical context for why this type of thing mattered in Texas. Well, let's say, let's go back a few 100 years, and you're, you know, you're, you're a cattle rancher, and you've got 100 150, head of cattle, okay, and you've got your family, and you've got your ranch, and this is what you do you raise cattle, okay, one night, someone comes to your ranch, and they don't cost you, they don't bother you or your family, but they go out into your fields, and they steal all of your cattle. Okay, you wake up the next morning, and all of your cattle are gone. And the first thing people want to say is Well, that's just you know, that's, that's just animals, that's just property, there was no harm there. But there really is an extreme amount of harm there. Because now the farmer cannot feed his family. What the criminals have come and done is they've literally killed the farmer's family. It just took a little bit longer than shooting them in person. And so you have a scenario where the destruction of property many times can create this onslaught of avalanche and cascading harm, that creates an economic scenario where you really are killing people. And so, so some historical context there. That's why in Texas, this is still a law in the books, you know, just so just so I'm clear, we never advocate for the use of deadly force to protect property, that's nuts. That's never something we want to have to do, or find ourselves in that scenario. But there is historical precedents. And it's on the books as law and quite frankly, the it's still a law because somebody somewhere considers that law useful.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, it I think avoidance, especially if you value your own life is sort of step one in safety training, is avoid all situations where this might happen. But when it comes to property, being less valuable than than life, I think you get in some tricky area here because in reality, almost all of us have exchanged our life for that property. Right? That that's what going to work and providing light, we exchange time, energy, our bodies, all of these things. In return, we get paid money and then we use that money for that property. So it's almost a, there's there's some currency involved. But in reality, that property is in exchange for the life that we surrendered in order to to get it. So to harm somebody's property is is akin to potentially killing somebody. And I, I think that's an incredibly important point to take, obviously, you want to avoid it, I, you know, I don't know if it was the smartest thing for him to be here, be there. If I were his parents or his, you know, his guidance person, I would have been like, they just like, don't go. This isn't worth it for you. But he absolutely had a right to be there. And I think one of the things that the world needs to take a look at in the Kyle Rittenhouse is that there are no bystanders hurt, you know, he didn't miss like he had his discipline down. He only fired when attacked, and he like a kid for a kid to pull that off. In a situation like that. I found that kind of impressive, because there was no collateral, you know, damage. He only shot and harm to those who were intending or attempting to kill him. So I mean, you got to give him a you got to give him some credit on his training there. Right.

Eric Ward  
Yeah, and I think that something that needs to be said here is that, you know, if you look at this, objectively, he wasn't there to riot, he wasn't there to destroy property. He wasn't there to harm others. He was there to provide medical support. And he was there to offer to a certain degree, some protection. And I think the situation kind of spiraled out of control. And only time will tell what occurs. But I think history will reflect on this as he did the best he could, and the challenging situation he found himself in. Look, Jeremy, there's this push right now in America. Because of the vast disparity between the haves and the have nots, I saw a report that the majority of the wealth in America now is owned by the 1%. The 1% of America owns more wealth now than the middle class. And if you study history, you can see that anytime there is this disparity of wealth, chaos and bad things are sure to follow in an attempt to redistribute that wealth to a certain degree, by certain means. Okay, so there's a giant push right now unseen, working behind the scenes in America to redistribute that. And there's a word for that socialism. That's the fat free, the fret, the fat free word the, the full version of that. Communism, yeah, right. Yep. And so they don't, the ones who are in charge of this agenda, they don't want you to move in the direction of personal responsibility, or personal growth or personal protection, they want you to start to backpedal into the acceptance that the state will do those things. So our individual we're talking about here, he's, he's being made an example, because there's this push to make sure no one is emboldened to maybe think for themselves and do things a certain way versus the direction that maybe things are being pushed.

Jeremy Todd  
That makes a ton of sense. If you if you view everything through that lens, things start to add up a little bit. And as Chomsky, a known communist, wrote in his book, Manufacturing Consent, it is a relationship between the powers that be the media, the boogeyman, that they all this is all kind of carefully constructed for our perception. And it really does lead to more state dependence. And I think one of the ways that you can remain independent prevent a New Zealand and Australia from happening here is to train yourself, arm yourself and be ready to defend and protect your family when the time comes. Now. A let's talk about being sort of smart with it. Being being from Texas, let's talk about waco a little bit. There's a subset of libertarians who believe in almost a separation issed idea, sort of like Waco, and they believe that as long as we arm ourselves, Well, we have you know, we make religion, the focus, we you know, we know how to be self sustaining and grow our own stuff that we can just remove ourselves from all of these situations that happen in the world. And we don't have to pay attention to politics and we don't have to be involved in winning hearts and minds of others in and I typically will point to Waco, how much how important do you see being active in politics? In, you know, having public opinion sway policy and how much energy do you think it is worth to put into that? Or can you just say, Hey, me as an individual, we're going to go our own way.

Eric Ward  
I think it's important to understand at a base level, that there is no opting out of the game, the game goes on, the show must go on, whether you like it or not. So it is far better to learn the rules of the game, and how to play the game, to your advantage rather than opting out, because opting out what you're doing is you're not actually creating any counter pressure, you're not creating a counterbalance towards the impending disaster and erosion of all that you value. What you're doing as you're just, you're just doing nothing. And and I think that I think that while that is appealing, because there's this idea that maybe we can just ignore and pretend and do our own thing, the system is currently set up where that's not feasible, they will find a way to get into whatever you're doing, whether it's taking your property or raising your tax rates and making them unsustainably, you know, something you can't sustainably pay for, or restricting you in other ways. You know, blockades that, you know, they work done. So there's only so far that line of thinking can take you now if the system starts to break down, and the powers that be, are emaciated, and they're unable to wield the power and force that they currently do? Well, you know, self sustainability and opting out may become an option. But we're not there yet, Jeremy. And I think that people need to understand that if you don't fight for what you and not like, physically fight, we're not talking about physically fighting, we're talking about with your hearts and minds and your votes and your actions and your ways that you do things to protect and preserve your way of life and your rights. Those are the things that are going to go a lot further right now. Then opting out. And, you know, the powers that be they're playing this game and, you know, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll they'll tip their hand, I think we're seeing right now with some of your, with some of the draconian measures they're attempting right now, there's already a large subset of, let's say, their followers that, you know, they're not, they're not liking these things, you know, stop messing with people's kids, you know, you must have someone's kids, they turn on you real quick. And we just saw that in New Jersey. We just saw that in, you know, other places recently with Virginia. And this is this is, uh, you know, when you get a little bit too much hubris, you know, sometimes things can tip back in the other direction for you.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, yeah. Little little swings, right. But eventually, it's it I'll go back to one of my favorite quotes, and then we'll get into final thoughts. But it's sort of like well, how did a revolution take place? Gradually then all at once? We are, they are gradually pressing but so are we and I think all at once it can, it can come crumbling down. So that makes a lot of sense. Well, I have really love this. Let's get into final thought.

Alright, Eric, tell the good people where they can find you follow you learn about what you're doing. And I will share some of the websites as you talk about it. Yeah, absolutely.

Eric Ward  
So for defense.com is our our website. That's where all of our training and stuff is featured for legal law abiding firearms purchases, and people that are interested in finding out more about those types of items and accessories, Houston guns online is where all of our inventory is, for anybody new to the purchase of firearms online. Firearms can be purchased online, but they have to go to a dealer so it's not like mail order machine guns, right, you can't do that. So we do have to things that Jeremy you may be able to drop links into the show notes, we have absolutely free. We have a free gun law guide. And we also have some space age lubricates. So the gun lubei You've got there. We have the most advanced nanotechnology possible in our firearms lubricants. It's called graphene, it's two dimensional carbon and it creates what's called Super lubricity. And so this is a relatively new thing to the market. It's got some of the lowest ASTM testing data for, for for ball bearing where without going into much detail, that just means it's super slick. And so individuals can grab this stuff and make sure that their firearms always work when intended. And so that's, that's the biggest thing, making sure your weapons work when they're needed. So the other thing we have, and this is more of a, you know, more of a freebie is our gun law guides. And so one of the challenges that I've dealt with students before is they'll come into my class, and they'll go, you know, I got to take this class, because I got in trouble with the law. And I'm like, What do you mean, they're like, Well, I did a Google search. And I, you know, I pulled up laws that were old, and they had changed, and I broke the law and advertently, because I did a Google search, and I grabbed the wrong laws, right. So we have a free gun law guide, we have a free gun law guide, where an individual can can go to the link that you'll share with them, and they can get a eight and a half by 11. Document that'll show the top 28 gun laws for their particular state. So yeah, so if you'll look at the homepage, there's a big green button at the top. And this is free. And so the the individuals, they can go and take a look and then grab their top 28 handgun laws for their state. It's an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper. And it's real simple. So it's everything someone needs, they can throw it in the glove box and throw it in their backpack or their range bag. And that's something they can have to reference the top 28 gun law guides of their particular states. So so that's that's a free offer. They just pay for shipping, and then we'll ship it out.

Jeremy Todd  
Absolutely. Well, I will drop those links in the show description and everything like that. And this has just been a fascinating conversation. Eric, I want to thank you for coming on with us. And thank you to everybody for tuning in. Make sure you tune in next week, we're going to change our time. We're going to be up a little hour earlier. So 7pm central standard time make sure you go to forward defense comm if you're in the Houston area, get you some training, get you some products and then buy from Houston guns online.com For all your firearm needs, Eric, I miss you brother. It's been so good to spend some time with you man. Absolutely. Jeremy thanks for having me. Absolutely, brother. Well, if you've enjoyed this make sure you like comment, subscribe, do all those things. And make sure you share the content as well and here's my outro video. Thank you guys for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

We are clear

Eric Ward  
and that was fun.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah

Transcribed by https://otter.ai