484: Biden's War on "Ghost Guns" and the Second Amendment (w/ Matt Larosiere from FPC)

Brian Nichols  0:12  
Ever focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Tuesday there, folks, Brian in here on The Brian Nichols Show in thank you for joining us on of course, another fun to build episode I am as always, your humble host, and today we're gonna talk about what's happening in the world of the Second Amendment. We're talking firearms, we're talking policy. Heck, why don't we just go ahead and have a conversation with our good friends over at the Firearms Policy Coalition? Matt lit. get me wrong here. Laura sear they get it right.

Matt Larosiere  0:56  
That's fine. Whatever.

Brian Nichols  0:57  
I was close.

Matt Larosiere  0:58  
Yeah, that's good enough. Okay. I'm not picky.

Brian Nichols  1:00  
It's my fault for not taking French back in school. I took Spanish I was one of those math

Matt Larosiere  1:06  
language. What was that? You took a useful language? Not a dead one like French?

Brian Nichols  1:12  
I guess that's the case. Yeah. But Matt, no, thank you. Thank you for joining the program. And definitely looking forward to this conversation. Because the Firearms Policy Coalition, you guys have been fighting the good fight behind the scenes and really helping lead the charge. And right now we're seeing a lot of wins across different state capitals, specifically in the world of today. But before we get there, I thought it'd be great for you to introduce yourself to the audience. And let's do an introduction to the Firearms Policy. Fire. Yeah, firearms policy coalition. There we go.

Matt Larosiere  1:39  
But ya know, awesome. Again, thank you for having me. It's so cool to be on here. And it's always fun to chat with you. You know, FPC is all about maximal human liberty. And that's really what the Second Amendment is all about. And it goes beyond the Second Amendment, right? We're talking about our fundamental human rights, our rights to control our own autonomy, and our rights to be secure against unlawful force. And so it's hugely important. It's way more important than just, you know, weirdos like me who like to collect guns. This right is, it's, it's for everyone. And it's an acute need for everyone to have. And so I'm so glad. You know, we've been so blessed to see more and more people kind of realizing that especially over the past couple of years, and we're finally making progress to get our rights back. Because, you know, I don't like to pretend and say it's like, oh, no, we're trying to enhance the sacrament. No, they've taken it away, right, they've taken too much away, and we're trying to get it back. We're not trying to enhance anything. We're trying to get our human rights respected and get them back, clawed back from the government that wrongfully took them away.

Brian Nichols  2:48  
There you go. Well, and let's talk about that, because this is rearing its ugly head once again, despite the winds, we have seen some still some infringement. And right now it's happening under a Biden administration. Now, yes, he just did name a brand new ATF director. And along with that some new legislation and not even legislation, it's more just an edict from on high that he is looking to ban making Yeah, banned ghost guns. Let's dig into that. So let's for the audience, maybe for folks who are not familiar with ghost guns, what are ghost guns? And why is the Biden administration making it a point to make it a point to get rid of them?

Matt Larosiere  3:24  
Let's see the term I've never liked the term ghost guns, because it's the sort of thing that's said by people who insist on being called Spectre, you know, it's just like a, it's quite a stupid moniker. But the thing that they're generally referring to here is a home manufactured firearm, which is something that has been done proudly in this country since before this country existed. And, you know, people are often getting at the 80 percents, and that's what really this rule is a is trying to get at those kits you buy, where the gun isn't complete, it's just a bunch of raw materials. And then, you know, with sufficient instructions, you can at home, you know, create an implement with which to exercise your right to an effective self defense. And these are wonderful items. These are wonderful products. And of course, that's why the government is trying to attack them because they are good. But so what they're trying to do here with this rule is not attempt to ban these guns. So that's that's something that that people have mistook we have to be very clear about what's going on, right? Because the the worst that we think we can do is respond to something that's not happening, we need to respond to it. You know, the fight for the Second Amendment is a fight. It's an ongoing fight. And so we have to properly watch our opponent telegraphing their moves and respond to them. So this rule does not ban you from making your own good at home doesn't ban anything to do with 3d printing. What it is trying to do is making a legal nightmare for people who We want to help you do that for people who want to sell you the products, right, the incomplete receivers, the, you know, the completion jigs and stuff like that. That's what they're trying to get at with this rule. It does not actually touch home building. But it touches everything around it to the point that they're trying to just raise the cost and complexity of building a gun yourself. And I think that's just as horrible as trying to attack it at its core.

Brian Nichols  5:27  
Absolutely. And that right there so that I think the that you said, a nice stage there in terms of why this is important. And number one, it goes back to kind of who we are, right? I mean, this has been as American as it comes in terms of being able to have that right to bear arms or the right to arm bears, whatever the hell you want to do. Robin Williams, great stand up. But But no, we see right now, though the conversation has been emotionally taken. And now you see the Biden administration saying, well, these are the guns that criminals are looking to use in mass. And I think it was just this past year, we had 20,000, air quotes, suspected ghost guns that were taken off the streets. So there's definitely a push. And let me ask you this, Matt, you're talking how we've seen not so much that we're in the offensive? We're mostly just trying to get back to an even playing field here. Why do you think right now there's a renewed interest in ghost guns? Well,

Matt Larosiere  6:23  
so I, I don't know if there's a reason. You mean from the government? Yeah. So this has been something that the government has sought to attack for quite some time. And I think because the you know, I don't really want to Pine too much on the strategy on the political strategy here. But I, I will say that they've, they will always seek out what's popular. And what they were attacking with, with this rule is those wildly popular polymer ad kits, right, those kits where you can, you know, assemble a handgun, it doesn't attack 3d printing at all. It's, and so that's why I'm confused as to why people are thinking that this, you know, bans, homemade firearms, or whatever it doesn't, it's trying to make it hard to do it in the most popular ways that it's being done. And, and that kind of fits with how the government always behaves, right? That it's always chasing the wave, which it's stupid. It's stupid, and it's disrespectful of our rights. And people often say that, Oh, these 80 percents, the founders never saw anything like this. You know, it's really funny. Yes, they did. And I'm not saying that's what makes it protected. Right? No, it's protected, because you have the right to keep and bear arms. And thus, when you have the right to keep something into beret, I think that necessarily implies that you have the right to acquire it in some way. And, you know, just by your name, Nichols liberty, I'm sure you can understand where I'm going with this. What is the only way to acquire something that doesn't necessitate somebody else's consent and labor? You told me here?

Brian Nichols  8:15  
No, I'm sorry. Ask your question again.

Matt Larosiere  8:17  
What is the only way to acquire something that does not necessitate somebody else's consent and labor?

Brian Nichols  8:23  
Will it be through the market?

Matt Larosiere  8:24  
Not to make it yourself? Oh, is

Brian Nichols  8:26  
it going through like an exchange? Sorry? Yeah,

Matt Larosiere  8:29  
no, no, because it's through the market, you still do have to have consent, you still do have to have somebody else, you know, making it. But if you have a right to have something, you must have the right to make it yourself. I mean, I think that follows logically, don't you?

Brian Nichols  8:44  
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and let's maybe also look at right now why there's maybe a renewed interest in getting away from, and we're seeing this across the board, I'm talking about us in in the technology world, we're seeing getting away from the traditional way of doing things with you have your big conglomerates, and your Amazon, your Microsoft and all their massive data servers. And instead, we're seeing this web three, you're getting back towards this idea of self ownership, you know, you have your own your own little servers of sorts, and it's not really a server, but you know, to give it the comparison, but like, you're seeing this almost with the advent of what we're talking about here with these new new technologies, creating opportunity, creating the ability to maybe refine and focus on doing things differently, even though it's, it's not necessarily to your point. This is the argument we hear all the time. Oh, well, the founders could never see this. Yes, they could because they wrote it explicitly for the fact that they didn't want to be hyper specific. And it's the hyper specificity that we're seeing right now. A lot of the language and law that is scary because it's picking certain areas. So where do you see this going, man, do you see this being something that the American public are gonna it's gonna you know, shake your angry fish with the sky evil government or is there actually something with teeth here that we need to be worried about?

Matt Larosiere  10:01  
Well, so let me and let me explain why the founders knew this was coming. And when that news is coming, we're aware, right of this like, type of, here's, like, you know, some of the gun finish the rest of your home. At that time, the most complicated part of a firearm was the lock, right, like on a flintlock, you know, the, the hammer thing on the side that you would caulk and then actually have the trigger to pull. At that time, people would import just the locks. And they would import barrels of them. And then they would make the rest themselves. Like, you know, this 80% home build gun kit thing, it's not brand new. It says old, as you know, locked firearms are. So this is not a new thing. It's something that's deeply ingrained in our in our history and tradition. And even if it were new, it maintains itself as a simple exercise of your fundamental right. So what I think's going to happen here, well, as you as you know, the market is so good at adjusting to these things. Not to say that it should have to, right now, we're going to be finding every way that we can challenge this that we can, but if you think that the people who came up with these products are going to look at this rule, and then just go, oh, shuck. Guess we're gonna go home. That I mean, you must really not believe in the American entrepreneurial spirit, and I still don't think it's acceptable. I don't think that's an acceptable answer. But the simple answer is, people are gonna keep making guns at home, no matter what you say. And, and they're gonna find more interesting ways to do it, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight the government for trying to make it harder, because they are attacking some of the best ways to do it, some of the most effective ways to do it. And that's a huge problem. And people are going to be upset about that, because it is also normal people who are buying these guns, these kits, right and making the guns themselves. Just like you said, people are noticing all of this insane, arbitrary nonsense, all this intense, absurd cost centering that goes on with the traditional style. Why should somebody who lives in the Midwest like you know, somebody who lives in Alaska or something? Why should they drive hours to the nearest federal gun dealer? If they could make the gun in their home? Why would they do that? Right, especially with gas now, you know, $400,000 a gallon. Why? Why would they not, you know, make an 80%?

Brian Nichols  12:36  
Well, and let's maybe look at the individual who's who's the one likely agreeing with this. Now, you know, this approach that the Biden administration is taking with regards to the ghost gun area of focus, and that would be probably a very, you know, hyper progressive individual likely living in a blue area, probably an urban area. And you know, I just got off Philadelphia, I lived there for damn near seven years, and it was seven years too long. And I can see the mentality of why do we need these in our streets? Why do we need these in our cities? And I think there has been this unfair argument that the left has really lead with that more guns equals more violence, more crime, more problems, more shootings, more death. And in reality, the exact opposite is true. Matt, could you speak to where we're maybe having a little bit of a struggle in terms of countering that emotional argument for the left?

Matt Larosiere  13:39  
I think, and it's not necessarily the left. All right, let's let's not pretend that this is a partisan issue. It comes from a place of a lack of understanding. And people buying buzzwords and believing what they're told, right? Whoever gets to them first. It's a problem. The big problem is that we on the gun rights side on the human rights side, are not good enough at embracing our own productive and convincing emotional arguments. We have emotional arguments on our side that are better than theirs. And we're not making them out in the open. And so that's why we need to push these things. I will tell you, you know, one thing that's been better for human rights for for gun rights than what commitment even the things the pandemic, when people saw their states failing to provide basic services, suddenly, it became much more real. What you know what threats you might have to address, what you know how fragile your life is. And as a result of that, we have an entire generation of people who will not be able to say, I can't imagine why you would want a gun in your home. I remember hearing that all the time before the pandemic. I would hear people See all the time? Why would you want something like that in your house? I have not heard people say that since. So that is that is one huge thing driving people towards questioning all of this intense, arbitrary nonsense that's involved in, you know, acquiring and making your own firearms. And just a whole host of other reasons these are. And let me say something else, the whole homemade gun thing. They want to tell you that these are criminals. Look at how many gun crimes that we found this, you want to know a funny thing about those statistics they push. So they'll say that we discovered like, let's be, let's be generous. Like they'll say they discovered 20,000 of these homemade firearms used in a crime. You won't know what most of those crimes are. Possession of a homemade gun in a place you're not supposed to have. She can't make it up. It's like, oh, they're stopping the gun crap. Well, the crime is having the gun. If I made banana, you know, having banana illegal, I'd stop a banana crime wherever I found a banana. As long as I used intense violence and unlock the person in the cage. I could say I stopped all the banana crime. But I'm really bad

Brian Nichols  16:14  
FBI for foils plot, led by FBI, it's the same, that means the same same situation. But there's the doom and gloom of what's happening right now. But hey, we are seeing again, the fight back and we're seeing the winds. And let's focus on some wins here. Because, hey, we're talking about sales and marketing people want to see wins. And that's what we're going to address here. The last five minutes or so being one Georgia is now the 25th state to embrace concealed carry. I know Indiana just followed suit there shortly beforehand. So talk to us now, why are we seeing right now and I know we've kind of touched on a little bit earlier. But why all of a sudden the uptick in states left and right getting rid of these restrictions for concealed carry?

Matt Larosiere  16:56  
Because the people are sick of these nonsense, arbitrary infringement on their basic right to be secure in themselves. And it is becoming impossible to be accountable to your people while also saying Oh, do you want to not be vaporized by a criminal? Okay, well give me $200. Right. That's, and that's what's happening permitless carry, we have concealed carry across virtually the whole nation, there are some horrifying nightmare zones, right? That will not under any circumstances that you carry. But this is a permanent list where it's just presumed that you have the right to be secure in your body. That's half the states. That's really big. And that's really something to be proud of. It's the people speaking clearly what they want voting with their feet voting with, you know, by clear indication, if you just look at the gun stores, right, and they're lining up. It's becoming impossible to ignore that. And so it's becoming impossible to stem that back. And this is very much a good thing. It's certainly not good enough. And we certainly have to keep fighting. And we certainly have to fight harder. We need to seize the moment, not just sit back and congratulate ourselves.

Brian Nichols  18:09  
I think it's important not only to not just sit back and put your feet up, I talked about this in sales, if you're not, if you're not, you know, having foot on the accelerator, if you're not growing, you're dying, you have to be focusing on always taking that next step forward. And you know, we're seeing across the board, the next step forward seems to right now, in terms of Supreme Court ruled than we ever really talked about in the program. But you have up in New York, it was the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs Bruin ranking if I'm wrong, and just hitting the Supreme Court, which this actually means a lot, because this is the first time we've seen a big to a case hit the Supreme Court with a leaning conservative majority. So what are the implications there? And do you see anything coming down the pike, especially with our new Supreme Court justice here being confirmed recently?

Matt Larosiere  18:57  
Well, since 2010, for sure, I don't think that one justice will sway things dramatically. One way or the other, especially given the makeup of the court. The thing that's very important in this case, is that the Supreme Court now must announce a standard for cases involving infringement of Second Amendment rights. And for those of you who don't know, this case was about it's about concealed carry. It's about the fact that New York says that, Oh, well. If you want to defend yourself, well, you're gonna have to show us that you have some acute particular need, right? Something something very specific to you, while you need to be able to defend yourself. And what this generally translates to is that oh, well, I'm well connected, and I have a lot of money. Right, which is not fair. So this is clearly being re examined. And what is the most important thing that come out of this is going to be the framework announced by the court, and the court has declined to do that on the two previous occasions. I had the opportunity. And, and this is going to be huge. This is going to have ripple effects going on for a long time. So that's why it's essential that the court put its back into the game and do its job and say clearly, that anything that affects the simple, peaceable possession of arms, right, the simple, peaceable carrying of arms cannot stand constitutional masters. Will they do that? I don't know. But if they're, you know, if they're having writer's block, I hope that they'll read this, you know, listen to this interview, and then take that

Brian Nichols  20:37  
point them this way. Yes. This way, please. All right, Matt, we are already getting hard pressed for time. And at this point, I will want to do two things. Number one, give you the floor here final thoughts and words of wisdom or action that folks can go ahead and take and then number two, obviously, you have a lot of fun stuff that you're doing behind the scenes, not over only a FPC but also in your own world. And you said you had a podcast as well. So where can folks go ahead and find that, but also go ahead support you and keep the conversation going?

Matt Larosiere  21:07  
Right on? I mean, ATF is again, up to a lot of no good if you want to help FTC fight. Go to stop atf.org There's giveaway going on there. And I think right now it's actually a gun that I built, which is fun. I've you know, that's you can support FPC there, I've got a YouTube channel it's called fog busters if you're interested in knowing about you know, tackling, explain, there's a law. It's also Firearms Policy Coalition has its own YouTube channel. And, and yeah, and my podcast is on firearms radio network. So love to see you guys. And again, Brian, thank you so much for having me.

Brian Nichols  21:42  
Absolutely, Matt. And what we'll make sure we do folks will include all those links in the show notes. So it's a lot easy for you to go ahead and find also will include the entire transcription of today's episode in the Brian Nichols show.com link. All you do go to your podcast catcher, click the artwork, it'll bring you to today's episode, where yes, you can find everything from today. Also, you can find all 485 Plus episodes of The Brian Nichols Show ballpark 500 Plus episodes, including all the other bonus episodes that we had here at the program. So folks, if you enjoy the episode, yes, do me a solid, go ahead and give it a share when you do, like we said, go ahead and give yours truly a tag at being Nichols liberty and make sure you go ahead and tag Matt as well and make sure if you enjoyed it, tell him and make sure you let them know that Brian Nichols said yes. So that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Matt Larose air. They get it right.

Matt Larosiere  22:31  
Good to see you, brother.

Brian Nichols  22:33  
There we go. We'll see you next time.

Unknown Speaker  22:35  
Later. Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

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