RPF0530-How_to_Build_a_Useful_Home_Armory_That_Wont_Lose_Monetary_Value_and_May_Save_Your

00:00:00.000 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas,

00:00:05.000 | and amphitheaters nationwide. With Sweet Hop's 100% ticket guarantee, no hidden fees, and

00:00:10.500 | the personal high-level service you expect with a premium purchase, you can relax knowing

00:00:15.000 | you'll receive the luxury experience you deserve. Visit SweetHop.com today to book your premium

00:00:20.340 | tickets to your favorite teams, artists, and all the must-see live events to Sweet Hop

00:00:25.000 | around LA. It's more than just a ticket. Here at Radical Personal Finance, we love

00:00:32.460 | to take topics that most people won't touch with a 10-foot pole and pull them apart and

00:00:37.480 | use them for personal knowledge and personal insight, but also to use them as lessons to

00:00:43.920 | study other related topics. And today we're going to do that with the subject of guns.

00:00:49.200 | Quite frankly, a gun can be a wonderful, wonderful investment. In fact, it's actually very hard

00:00:57.560 | to lose money with the purchase of a gun, unless you do it the wrong way. I'm going

00:01:02.480 | to tell you today some ideas on how you can do it in an intelligent and practical way.

00:01:09.480 | In the world of investing, people frequently talk about things that have intrinsic value.

00:01:15.520 | This often comes up when talking about monetary theory. Many people get frustrated with fiat

00:01:20.360 | currencies like the US dollar and like the euro, like basically every modern currency

00:01:24.680 | around the world and say, "Well, it doesn't have any intrinsic value." And so they like

00:01:29.500 | to compare that to something like a gold or silver coin and say, "Well, at least the

00:01:33.520 | gold and silver coin has an intrinsic value, a value of the metal." And although I will

00:01:38.700 | concede that a gold or silver coin has a little bit more intrinsic value than something like

00:01:45.320 | a $20 bill, I don't actually buy that argument because I can't do a lot with a gold or silver

00:01:52.120 | coin. I don't know what intrinsic value means, but I can say it doesn't have much

00:01:58.160 | practical value. That gold or silver coin serves no purpose other than to sit there.

00:02:07.160 | Now of course, my friends in the hard money camp will quickly say, "Well, Joshua, you

00:02:10.320 | can make a beautiful piece of jewelry with gold." That's true. Or, "You can use

00:02:14.040 | silver in industrial purposes." That's true, but it can't do that for me. I don't

00:02:19.320 | take coins and turn them into jewelry. I don't take silver coins and turn them into electric

00:02:25.320 | doodads or electronic doodads. I can't do anything with it. It doesn't help me in

00:02:30.340 | any way. So really, it doesn't have that much intrinsic value to me. If I'm starving

00:02:37.120 | and I've got a gold coin, well, guess what? I'll get rid of the gold coin and buy some

00:02:40.920 | food. If I'm thirsty and I have no water, I'll get rid of the gold coin and I'll

00:02:45.400 | trade it for water to save my life. It doesn't have that much intrinsic value. On the other

00:02:51.320 | hand, a functional firearm actually does have intrinsic value because it does something

00:02:59.560 | really, really important and really, really valuable. And this is the case with many tools

00:03:07.400 | that we face in our life. A tool that can be used, a shovel has intrinsic value. It

00:03:12.240 | can perform the function of digging a hole. A hammer has an intrinsic value. It can perform

00:03:18.840 | the function of banging in a nail. A chainsaw has intrinsic value. It can perform the function

00:03:23.280 | of cutting down wood. A car has intrinsic value. It can perform the function of transporting

00:03:28.560 | you and your goods from one place to another. But most of those things are not quite regulated

00:03:34.460 | the way that a gun is. And most of those things are not quite so portable as a gun is. And

00:03:42.080 | most of those things don't quite perform the same functional value that a gun does.

00:03:50.340 | So a gun is something that has true intrinsic value. Now you better think ahead and recognize

00:03:55.920 | that if you don't have any ammunition to load into that gun, it doesn't have that

00:04:00.000 | much value. But still, ammunition is much easier to come by than guns. And so they're

00:04:04.800 | a really, really good and interesting investment. Now there are downsides to guns, of course.

00:04:13.360 | They are, in many countries of the world, heavily regulated. It's hard to get them

00:04:18.300 | across a national border. There are other assets that have many benefits that are superior

00:04:26.360 | to guns in that regard. You can load up some Bitcoin in a digital wallet, memorize all

00:04:31.120 | of your security keys, and that Bitcoin can be carried across any border in the world

00:04:35.720 | for you to use. That's what's so valuable about something like a cryptocurrency. So

00:04:42.400 | a gun is hard to get across a national border, but it's actually maybe not that hard. The

00:04:47.240 | US government and the Mexicans seem to have a good deal of sending some back and forth

00:04:51.320 | from one party to the other across our southern Mexican border. So you should be able to figure

00:04:56.340 | that out if you ever had to figure that out. One of the benefits of a gun in terms of its

00:05:00.240 | monetary value, it's durable, relatively small, it can be stored without any significant

00:05:05.920 | trouble. You can tuck it aside and stick it away for a long time. As long as it's stored

00:05:12.400 | properly, it doesn't fall apart, it doesn't stop working, it doesn't pose any danger

00:05:16.760 | to anybody if it's stored away. So that's a benefit. A disadvantage is, of course, that

00:05:22.360 | a gun is very subject to political risk. And in this case, it shares the stage in terms

00:05:31.360 | of political risk with most other assets. The president of your country can start talking

00:05:37.540 | about new tariffs and all of a sudden your investments can plummet in value. It's called

00:05:44.480 | political risk. The president of your country or the prime minister or the great leader

00:05:49.580 | of your country can declare gold coins illegal, like the US government did about 70 something

00:05:58.420 | years ago or so, and say that they are forbidden for you to have. Because after all, one day

00:06:04.180 | they're fine, but another day they're not fine. You just can't have them. That's what

00:06:09.240 | happens with gold coins. And of course, there are other things that can happen. Bitcoin

00:06:14.340 | or other cryptocurrencies face similar political risk. And guns face that exact same

00:06:19.540 | political risk. Because after all, the government of your country or your state might wake up

00:06:23.540 | someday and decide, "You know what? A standard capacity magazine for your firearm that you

00:06:27.580 | have plenty of that's very useful to you and sits locked in your safe, well, it's built

00:06:33.300 | from the factory to take 30 cartridges within it. But we've decided that 30 cartridges is

00:06:37.820 | too many and nobody needs 30 cartridges. So we're going to outlaw that 30 cartridge magazine

00:06:42.980 | and make you a criminal because you own such a device, as has happened in various US American

00:06:50.860 | states in the past few years." Or as the state of California recently came out with, "We've

00:06:57.980 | decided that the functional way that your firearm operates is not satisfactory. We're

00:07:05.740 | going to require you to completely change the design to minimize its function, and if

00:07:10.500 | not, you're a criminal." So of course, you are subject to political risk. It's a major

00:07:16.500 | problem with guns, but that also can be a major benefit. If you want to see the value

00:07:23.020 | of your investments go up, just hope that the government starts making noise about outlawing

00:07:28.140 | your investments. They go up quickly. You can sell a gun more in the inner city of a

00:07:34.980 | big... Sell a gun for substantially more in the inner city of any major city in the United

00:07:40.620 | States of America than you can going out in the countryside because of the change of laws.

00:07:46.620 | A disadvantage of guns is an investment. They, of course, don't create dividends. This is

00:07:50.860 | a major problem, same problem that we face with an asset class like raw land or gold

00:07:56.140 | coins. They're not really productive. They're not creating an income. So that's a problem.

00:08:03.700 | Guns aren't really fungible the way that other things are, but gun components, of course,

00:08:08.460 | could be. Fungibility is the property whereby one part or quantity of something can be replaced

00:08:16.820 | by another part or quantity of something else. If you have a $20 bill and you give that $20

00:08:23.660 | bill to person A, and then person B gives you a $20 bill, those $20 bills are fungible.

00:08:31.220 | They're fully interchangeable. And of course, guns lack that a little bit. They're not fully

00:08:34.860 | fungible. But many of the parts and components actually can be. So it's an interesting thought

00:08:40.940 | market to apply to it. Guns do have a broad marketability. In fact, much broader than

00:08:49.020 | something like a gold or silver coin, in my opinion. But that marketability is not unlimited.

00:08:55.940 | You always face the challenge of who will buy this asset from me if I want to sell it.

00:09:02.120 | You can sell that gold coin and you know right where to go. Many more people would be interested

00:09:06.820 | in buying a gun, but it's hard to know how to start that conversation with them. And

00:09:12.020 | guns have the benefit of they can be sold quickly, but not necessarily immediately,

00:09:16.220 | at least not for the highest of prices. And so they don't have quite the same marketability

00:09:21.100 | as currency does. You can take a $20 bill and you can sell it to anybody, anywhere in

00:09:26.420 | the world for $20. Currency is the most marketable commodity that exists. Everything else has

00:09:33.680 | certain disadvantages. And so there's a very valuable case to be made for guns as a quality

00:09:43.220 | investment item. But of course, the value of guns goes far beyond that. Both the personal

00:09:49.420 | benefit and also the personal risk. A gun is one of those things where if you need it,

00:09:57.380 | you really need it. And if you have it in your hand when you really need it, you probably

00:10:02.780 | wouldn't part with it for any amount of money. On the other hand, it is something that you

00:10:07.900 | have to take great care with because it poses certain inherent dangers, certain inherent

00:10:15.540 | characteristics that can cause you great harm, cause your family great harm, cause others

00:10:20.940 | great harm. So I want to give you some thoughtful analysis and advice. And my hope is that this

00:10:27.580 | show will be helpful to you if you are not a gun owner to give you basically a track

00:10:34.300 | to run on. I hope that this show will be helpful to you if you are a gun owner that you can

00:10:40.300 | pass along as some practical advice to other people. I'm just going to give it to you from

00:10:44.340 | my own perspective and my own analysis of the market. It's important that you know first

00:10:49.760 | off that I don't really consider myself much of a gun guy or a gun nut. That's just not

00:10:54.380 | really me. I enjoy, it's always fun to shoot guns, but I'm not one who obsesses about all

00:11:01.940 | of the details and characteristics. I have a broad generalized knowledge, but it's not

00:11:06.060 | that big of an interest for me nor is it that big a part of my life. So I probably approach

00:11:12.580 | the subject in a more practical way than a lot of other people do. And I am however firmly

00:11:19.780 | convinced of the value of guns for you, for you to own. And let me give you just a few

00:11:28.860 | pieces of our way to articulate that. The time at which you have to think about getting

00:11:37.660 | a gun is not when you need it, because when you need it, it'll be too late. And the value

00:11:43.900 | is hard to say exactly when. In just a moment I'm going to go into the purposes for guns,

00:11:49.460 | what are the actual purposes for them, because once you understand your purpose for the gun,

00:11:53.820 | you'll understand what to get, how to get it, etc. But sometimes those things are hard

00:11:58.100 | to predict. I'll give you just one story by way of example. I know a guy who lived in

00:12:05.100 | the southern Philippines. And one of the interesting things about the Philippines, it's a very

00:12:09.540 | fractured nation geographically, made up of I think thousands, at least hundreds of individual

00:12:15.740 | islands, only some of which are occupied and some are not. But my friend was down in the

00:12:19.860 | south. And in the Philippines, there is a strong Muslim population in the south and

00:12:24.900 | many hardcore Muslims who are very focused on building a Muslim culture and a Muslim

00:12:30.980 | society. And they are in a war of sorts with the central government. They're the rebels

00:12:37.440 | in the local area. Well, my friend had a business on one of these Philippine islands and there

00:12:45.060 | was a terrorist attack in the local area and it wound up destroying his business. Several

00:12:50.620 | dozen people were massacred in the town. The town then quickly cleared out and my friend's

00:12:56.380 | business collapsed. He ran out of money, his business collapsed, and he was in a very difficult

00:13:01.580 | place. Well, what wound up happening was as he was trying to put his life back together,

00:13:08.740 | he was in a situation where he was leaving to go to another place to try to earn money,

00:13:13.740 | but he wasn't able to take his entire family with him. But one of the things that was valuable

00:13:19.060 | for him was he bought the safety of his family as he was leaving with an old handgun that

00:13:29.020 | he had, which the local rebel leader wanted. And so he was able to trade and barter his

00:13:35.940 | handgun for the protection and the safety of his family in exchange for the local rebel

00:13:42.060 | leader's guarantee that no, he wouldn't actually come after him and he wouldn't kill and persecute

00:13:47.940 | his family. So that's a scenario that's impossible to predict specifically. It's easy to predict

00:13:55.460 | if you just look around the world. You see this happen every day, all day, all around

00:13:59.180 | the world, but it's hard to predict specifically that that would happen to you. But the point

00:14:04.700 | was they were in an economy, a very heavily gun-controlled economy and lots of laws and

00:14:10.380 | whatnot in the Philippines, but they were in an economy where the money had less value

00:14:15.940 | than the tools. So just one story and I'll share more stories in today's show. Let's

00:14:20.140 | talk about what are the purposes for guns. I see three basic purposes, self-defense,

00:14:26.060 | offensive uses, and personal enjoyment. In terms of self-defense, the first one, which

00:14:30.940 | will be either important or unimportant depending on where you are, is self-defense against

00:14:35.900 | animals, against non-human animals. This is something that many people who live in an

00:14:41.020 | urban environment don't think about. It's just not a part of their daily life. The only

00:14:47.380 | thing they know of in terms of animal danger is the neighbor's dog that comes out and barks

00:14:52.980 | at them from the front yard on their morning run. This is, of course, something that many

00:14:57.140 | in the rural environment certainly think about frequently. And there are many people throughout

00:15:01.780 | the United States and throughout the world who would never venture away from their house,

00:15:06.260 | property, or vehicle without a significantly sized handgun on their hip for protection

00:15:13.300 | against bears or wolves or similar types of animals. So animal self-defense. Animal self-defense

00:15:19.980 | is very hard to – it's very specific to what you're concerned about. If you're

00:15:25.220 | concerned about snakes, then you'll carry one certain type of gun. My family grew up

00:15:29.860 | in the ranching family. So, of course, if you're out on your horse and you're riding

00:15:33.740 | across the mountains and you need a gun that's going to kill a rattlesnake, you don't need

00:15:36.860 | a hand cannon. You need a small – a very small gun to shoot a rattlesnake with. But

00:15:41.300 | that's very different than if you're in bear country and you need to protect yourself

00:15:44.280 | against a bear. I am incompetent to give advice on that subject. And so that's not a significant

00:15:51.820 | factor for me and for this show. If you are worried about that, you'll, of course, make

00:15:56.740 | your own decisions. Self-defense. The second category is against individual criminals,

00:16:02.540 | either random or specific threats to your life. Now, if you have specific threats to

00:16:07.980 | your life, if at all possible, I'd encourage you to eliminate the cause of those threats.

00:16:12.780 | I've never been threatened by a local gang warlord who wants to say, "Well, Joshua,

00:16:18.700 | I'm going to come and get you because I'm messing with his business." I'm not involved

00:16:22.340 | in that and I hope that you're not involved in that either. I want to steer clear of anything

00:16:26.340 | like that and just simply eliminate the risk. If you're under threat by your criminal competitors,

00:16:33.380 | the best way to minimize a threat is stop being their criminal competitors. Stop breaking

00:16:38.580 | the law. Stop being a criminal competitor and then the threat may go away. The way to

00:16:42.660 | handle that threat is not to arm up and get ready for war. So please, just avoid that

00:16:48.420 | threat. It's a lot easier to always avoid that threat whenever possible. The individual

00:16:52.860 | criminals that would be more appropriate to consider are either random acts where you're

00:16:59.340 | riding the train to work and some guy comes out and starts attacking people. You are teaching

00:17:06.340 | in a school and some guy comes in and starts shooting people. You are accosted on a dark

00:17:10.980 | alley, similar types of things. Somebody is angry at you on the highway and runs you down

00:17:15.820 | and starts to attack you. Or if perhaps you're being targeted due to your opinion, you've

00:17:22.020 | been exercising your rights to free speech and now you're being targeted by the racists

00:17:27.420 | or the fascists or the whomever you are going to be targeted by. Those are legitimate threats

00:17:33.260 | and they need to be taken carefully. So self-defense against individual criminals is probably one

00:17:38.780 | of the major reasons that people purchase a gun, probably the major reason.

00:17:43.060 | I think you should also consider the importance of self-defense against government agents.

00:17:48.700 | Your most deadly force in the world, the force that will always kill the most people is always

00:17:55.620 | the government. If we were to go back and do an accounting of the last century from

00:18:01.220 | 1900 to 1999, you would find that the government killed far more people than individual non-government

00:18:09.260 | sanctioned criminals did. The estimate that I use by Professor Rudolph Rummel from the

00:18:17.340 | University of Hawaii, he estimated after dedicating his entire career to studying the subject,

00:18:23.620 | he estimated that the governments of the world were responsible for 262 million murders during

00:18:30.220 | the 20th century. So 262 million people were murdered by government. That number does not

00:18:38.960 | include the number killed during war. So that doesn't include officially declared war, that

00:18:45.900 | doesn't include World War I, it doesn't include World War II, that doesn't include the Civil

00:18:48.940 | War in the United States. That number is flat out government murder against their people.

00:18:54.400 | He coined the term "democide" to refer to this and the word "democide" includes, it's

00:19:00.820 | defined as the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide,

00:19:06.620 | and mass murder. And he specifically uses the term murder in that estimate. Now you

00:19:12.180 | can go and research those statistics, but when I look at people who are concerned, rightly

00:19:17.340 | as they should be, about the murder of a dozen or a couple dozen people or a hundred people

00:19:23.420 | here and there, I mourn for those. But I always keep in the back of my head the fact of 262

00:19:32.820 | million murders. That's the death toll that we can lay squarely at the feet of government.

00:19:41.620 | Now various governments, of course, are better or are worse at this. I think many of us,

00:19:49.620 | and of course the bulk of the listening audience of Radical Personal Finance is US American,

00:19:54.060 | many of us who are US Americans would like to think that we are without guilt in this

00:19:58.140 | regard, but we are certainly not without guilt. We have the blood of many hundreds of thousands

00:20:02.420 | of people on our hands. But I must concede and confess that I was a little bit taken

00:20:09.260 | aback at the gall over the last few weeks as the United States of America is embroiled

00:20:13.620 | in an argument over gun control. I was a little bit taken aback to read the output from the

00:20:20.780 | Chinese news agencies, the government news agencies, recommending that the United States

00:20:26.380 | of America should just simply remove all the guns from their people. After all, mass shootings

00:20:30.900 | don't happen in China. Well, as one who has a particular interest in the tens of millions

00:20:37.580 | of people murdered by the Chinese government, I would have to say that there have been plenty

00:20:44.260 | of mass shootings in China. A similar thing, the leader of Iran, a similar thing. As someone

00:20:53.740 | who takes a bit of an interest in the tens of thousands of people, I don't know if it's

00:20:58.240 | hundreds of thousands or millions, but the very conservative tens of thousands of people

00:21:02.820 | murdered by the Iranian government, I would have to take a little bit of an issue with

00:21:06.500 | the fact of the... I'd have to take a bit of an issue with that. And I trust my fellow

00:21:13.500 | US American citizens very much. I trust the US government very, very little. So self-defense

00:21:24.700 | against animals, individual criminals, and government agents. Those are the purposes

00:21:29.140 | for guns in terms of a self-defense scenario. On terms of offensive uses, you have, of course,

00:21:34.900 | the hunting of animals, the intentional going out and hunting and harvesting of animals,

00:21:39.940 | or prosecuting a crime or war. My hope would be that you would never be involved in prosecuting

00:21:45.260 | a crime. And my hope would be that you and I would never be involved in prosecuting a

00:21:49.900 | war. However, I have to concede that it is a possibility. And especially, I think it

00:21:55.220 | is important to maintain the authority and the sheer strength in the people so that the

00:22:04.580 | government doesn't go to war. Because you may have to go someday and keep your national

00:22:09.140 | government from going to war. Governments find it exceedingly easy to go to war because

00:22:14.900 | they don't send their own children. They use other people's money and send other people's

00:22:18.420 | children to go and be killed. People find it very difficult to go to war. And I always

00:22:25.740 | want to keep the hands in the people. I want to keep the power in the hands of the people.

00:22:31.100 | That's one of the reasons why it's so fundamentally in the United States of America. It's so fundamentally

00:22:35.140 | important that the Second Amendment is so clearly codified and is so clearly defended

00:22:39.940 | at every turn legally. And most importantly, that the Second Amendment is defended in practice

00:22:47.620 | by you. Not just, "Oh, I support it in theory," in practice. It's one thing to support free

00:22:54.980 | speech in theory. That's great. I'll do that. It's another thing to support it in practice.

00:23:01.160 | When somebody says something that you don't like, that's when free speech matters, is

00:23:06.100 | when you support their ability and their authority and their right to say something that you

00:23:10.180 | don't like. It's one thing to support free speech in theory. It's another thing to make

00:23:15.540 | sure that whatever method of free speech is used is being used. You should be using it.

00:23:21.480 | You should be using modern methods of speech. You should be being a pamphleteer if you have

00:23:26.940 | something to say. You should be on Twitter if you have something to say there. Use and

00:23:30.960 | exercise that free speech because the more people use and exercise their right of free

00:23:35.500 | speech, the more peace we have, because when people can't talk, that's one of the times

00:23:41.340 | they go to fight, they go to war. The more peace we have, which is important, the more

00:23:46.860 | truth we can attain, which is important, and the more we maintain that right to free speech.

00:23:51.220 | That's why free speech is so important. Second Amendment is obviously the same thing, but

00:23:54.900 | every other right is actually the same thing in terms of, for example, your Fourth Amendment

00:23:59.100 | rights or your Fifth Amendment rights. You should make a habit and a practice of never

00:24:05.180 | letting government agents into your home, not because you have anything to hide or not

00:24:10.020 | hide, because it's your right and you should exercise it. When somebody is working as a

00:24:14.780 | government agent, they should have an intense respect for you and your rights, and that's

00:24:20.020 | only going to be maintained if you maintain it. So don't allow a government agent into

00:24:25.540 | your home without a warrant, period, for any reason, any time, no government agent from

00:24:30.800 | any agency. There has to be that culture of respect for rights. When you start to lose

00:24:35.740 | that culture of respect for rights because people stop standing up for rights, you wind

00:24:40.260 | up with a culture of jackbooted thuggery and people who come together and disrespect rights.

00:24:46.740 | Same thing, when your rights of privacy are invaded by the government censors or by the

00:24:52.660 | National Security Agency scooping up all of your data, you should stop, you should stand

00:24:57.980 | up, and you should encrypt and privatize your data, not because you have anything to hide,

00:25:05.300 | because you've got to push back and exercise a right. If you don't exercise it, the people

00:25:09.700 | who lust for power will always go after it, and the people who lust for power are the

00:25:16.980 | ones who are going to go after it in government. And if that government is not restrained by

00:25:21.860 | the people, which is what's so special about the United States of America, if the government

00:25:26.140 | is not restrained by the people, that the power is in the people, the sovereignty is

00:25:29.800 | in the people, you're not a subject of the king, I'm not a subject of the queen, I'm

00:25:33.420 | not a loyal subject of anybody, the sovereignty is in the people, and the people temporarily

00:25:38.340 | grant to a government entity for specific limited purposes some of their sovereignty

00:25:43.700 | and authority. But it's an ongoing battle, and in the thousands of years of recorded

00:25:50.140 | history that we have to look back at, you should never slow down, should never stop

00:25:56.020 | fighting for liberty. And I use fighting there metaphorically. I don't want to fight with

00:26:01.700 | violence, I want to fight with ideas, because the advance of liberty is never certain.

00:26:10.420 | The final category of the purpose for guns is, of course, personal enjoyment. Sport shooting,

00:26:15.100 | it's a hobby. You enjoy going and shooting three-gun matches or skeet shooting, whatever

00:26:20.220 | you do. You enjoy collecting them, or you enjoy investing in them. There are certainly

00:26:25.460 | some interesting collections that can be put together, and there are certainly some interesting

00:26:29.900 | guns that could be invested in. But I'm not going to be going into those esoteric areas

00:26:34.780 | here today. I'm talking about normal people. I'm going to lay out for you an approach that

00:26:38.740 | I consider to be very practical, that will help to fulfill some of these goals, but to

00:26:43.740 | do it in the way that is the most practical, not to go to the extreme scenario. We're not

00:26:49.300 | going to go immediately to the fact, "Well, my government's going to come and kill me,

00:26:51.920 | so I need to go ahead and be prepared to fight a war against them." No, that would be silly,

00:26:56.860 | especially if you're in the United States. That would be relatively silly. It doesn't

00:26:59.860 | mean you shouldn't be prepared for that, but that shouldn't be thing number one. It's a

00:27:03.820 | lower level of threat right now. Now, if you were living in South Africa, or if you were

00:27:08.700 | living in the Philippines, or if you were living in Iran, this threat is different,

00:27:13.660 | and you, of course, would have to, or Syria, you would have to, of course, go through it

00:27:19.580 | yourself and perform your own analysis. So I'm going to give you a budget. I'm going

00:27:23.900 | to start with very, very inexpensive and talk about just the functional, practical thing.

00:27:29.900 | The most likely reason for you to need and use a gun would be to protect yourself and

00:27:36.200 | defend yourself against a random criminal attack or a random animal attack. That would

00:27:42.180 | be the most likely reason in which most people need a gun. And that's one of the most important

00:27:47.320 | ones to prepare for because guns are a phenomenal equalizer, especially for the weak, especially

00:27:55.860 | for the old, especially for the young, and especially for women. Guns are the great equalizer,

00:28:05.940 | and that's why it's what's so powerful about them. Without a gun, size and strength and

00:28:12.740 | physical vigor will generally win. I'm a large man. Most people, if we got into a physical

00:28:21.460 | confrontation and they didn't have superior skills, most people would lose just simply

00:28:25.800 | due to the virtue of my size and my strength would lose in a physical confrontation. If

00:28:32.580 | you're young or you're old or you're a woman or you're physically frail, you would lose.

00:28:40.340 | And that's how it was for a very long time throughout history until the gun was created.

00:28:47.280 | And the gun gives a 75-year-old grandmother the ability to not be a victim to three young

00:28:56.780 | strong thugs who want to attack her and steal her purse or break into her house. A gun gives

00:29:03.420 | a weak 18-year-old girl the ability to defend herself against a large, aggressive man. And

00:29:13.180 | so no matter how young you are, how old you are, how frail you are, you have the ability

00:29:18.700 | to bring slightly more equal odds, which is why it's so fundamentally important that the

00:29:26.300 | weak and the young and the old and the frail have the means of self-defense in order to

00:29:32.100 | minimize the aggression by those who want to go out and commit crime.

00:29:36.100 | Now, of course, you couldn't guarantee anything. Somebody who was trained or somebody who worked

00:29:41.860 | at it could certainly take a gun away from somebody or could certainly press through

00:29:46.140 | it regardless. You have no guarantee in anything in life and a superior army can defeat an

00:29:52.100 | inferior army even though that inferior army is well-prepared. It happens all the time.

00:29:56.820 | But in the most normal common circumstances of life, the gun is the equalizer. And so

00:30:04.900 | on the lowest budget, I think the most sensible thing here, the cheapest, most reliable, sensible

00:30:10.300 | gun that would give 80% of the effect and the usefulness of guns for most scenarios

00:30:17.140 | is a simple snub-nosed revolver, either in a caliber called .38 Special or .357 Magnum

00:30:25.980 | Revolver. If you're on a budget, if you're young, if you're broke, if you're old, if

00:30:31.420 | you don't have a lot of money and you just need a simple gun to protect yourself against

00:30:36.760 | a random criminal attack or I guess a random animal attack as well, a snub-nosed revolver

00:30:43.120 | is probably your ideal solution. You can purchase one new for $300, $350, $400. You can purchase

00:30:51.500 | one on the used market for $200 to $300. And the revolver is really special because it

00:30:56.740 | gives you good, decent firepower. Usually it'll be either five or six shots. It gives

00:31:02.380 | you good, decent firepower without being too heavy or too hard to deal with. The operation

00:31:10.120 | of a revolver is very simple for anybody to learn and there's very few things that could

00:31:14.460 | possibly go wrong with it. Just about any time you want to make a gun go bang, if you

00:31:21.100 | have a revolver, you squeeze the trigger and the gun goes bang. If the gun doesn't go bang,

00:31:26.340 | you just squeeze the trigger again and the problem gets rotated out of your way and the

00:31:30.060 | next cartridge goes bang. Sometimes with semi-automatic handguns, which are wonderful, I'll get to

00:31:34.900 | that in a moment, sometimes with semi-automatic handguns, they don't go bang for various reasons.

00:31:39.660 | And when you're learning how to use one, you have to learn a drill of how to clear a malfunction,

00:31:43.400 | how to seat the magazine, how to fix the problem, but that requires extra training. But anybody

00:31:48.420 | in the world, a frail 75-year-old grandmother who's never held a gun in her life, can pick

00:31:54.480 | up a revolver, squeeze the trigger and make it go bang. They're fundamentally simple and

00:32:00.980 | they're fundamentally reliable. As a handgun, one of the great benefits of a revolver is

00:32:08.000 | its versatility. It can go with you into places where you're really not going to take a rifle.

00:32:15.100 | The AR-15 is a wonderful platform for a carbine, which is a small rifle, but you're not going

00:32:22.280 | to take it with you most places. But a small handgun, a small revolver will go with you

00:32:27.840 | to most places. It has enough firepower to be useful and effective. A .38 Special or

00:32:34.580 | a .357 Magnum size of cartridge is very effective. For years, that was the exact cartridge that

00:32:42.220 | the local police officer would carry, the exact gun and cartridge. Carry a Smith & Wesson

00:32:47.740 | revolver, usually not a snub-nose, and I'll explain that in just a moment, but a Smith

00:32:51.540 | & Wesson revolver. The FBI for years would carry .38 caliber revolvers. They're very

00:32:56.460 | effective, very, very useful. Now what I'd recommend for the first one is to start with

00:33:02.260 | something small that can be concealed. And so a snub-nose is just a slang term that would

00:33:08.040 | refer to something with a small barrel, about a two-inch barrel. You can get a revolver

00:33:13.040 | in a two-inch barrel, a four-inch barrel, a six-inch barrel. You can get one with an

00:33:16.060 | 11-inch barrel. But you're going to have a challenge of what's easier to shoot and what's

00:33:22.740 | less easy to shoot. If there's any chance that you're going to carry it with you concealed

00:33:26.620 | on your person, your most comfortable and easiest to conceal option will be to have

00:33:31.620 | a snub-nose revolver to get something with a two-inch barrel. The problem with a small

00:33:37.540 | barrel like that and a small gun is that it's very uncomfortable to shoot. Now if you have

00:33:44.660 | to use it, you can use it. And if you need to train with it, to put a box of shells through

00:33:48.960 | it to use it, yes, it's good you can do it. But it's not going to be very fun. The smaller

00:33:54.680 | the gun, the harder it is to shoot. The bigger the gun, usually, the easier it is to shoot.

00:33:59.220 | So if you were just never, you said, "I'm never going to carry this with me," go ahead

00:34:02.220 | and get one with a slightly longer barrel. Get one with a four-inch barrel or even a

00:34:06.060 | six-inch barrel if you're just going to keep it at home or keep it in your car and it's

00:34:08.820 | not going to go on your person. You can still effectively conceal it on your person with

00:34:13.340 | a four-inch barrel, and it'd be much more comfortable for you to shoot. The best thing

00:34:18.300 | here is, the best advantage to a revolver is to get maximum bang for the buck. Yes,

00:34:25.780 | unintended, maximum bang for the buck. With a couple hundred dollars, you can get a good

00:34:31.420 | quality serviceable revolver that will protect you and protect your life in a circumstance

00:34:37.220 | where you're being attacked by a person or if you face the risk by an animal. Animals

00:34:43.860 | do attack. There was a woman last year that was killed by a couple of pit bulls that her

00:34:47.980 | neighbor owned. So I think you should be prepared for that as well. But for a few hundred bucks,

00:34:54.180 | you are going to be well squared away. Another great thing about a revolver is it doesn't

00:34:58.980 | require a lot of extra accessories. Generally, of course, with a revolver, you don't need

00:35:05.140 | to buy a whole bunch of extra magazines. There are ways that you could learn to load it more

00:35:10.860 | quickly than individually putting shells in one at a time. But you can pick up a speed

00:35:16.180 | loader. If that's what you want to have, you can pick those up inexpensively. You don't

00:35:19.260 | need too many of them. So a couple of boxes of cartridges, a revolver, a good holster,

00:35:26.220 | and maybe a speed loader or two is about all you need. And so total, you're in it for 250

00:35:32.860 | bucks, 250 to $300. If you're looking for the most sensible way to purchase your first

00:35:40.500 | gun, I think that's the best way to go. If you have the opportunity, purchase, I think

00:35:45.540 | it's in your best interest to purchase a .357 Magnum size instead of a .38. If you're new

00:35:51.660 | to guns, all these different numbers refer to the size of the actual cartridge that you

00:35:57.820 | insert into the gun. And a .357 Magnum cartridge has the same diameter as a .38 special, but

00:36:08.020 | it's a little bit bigger. So you can shoot, if you have a .357 Magnum revolver, you can

00:36:12.940 | shoot .357 Magnum cartridges. You can also shoot .38 special cartridges in that same

00:36:19.620 | gun. If you have a .38 special revolver, you can only shoot .38 special size cartridges.

00:36:27.340 | You can't shoot the larger .357 Magnum. The .357 Magnum is slightly more powerful. It

00:36:33.460 | has more powder, and so the guns are built a little bit stronger, which might be a disadvantage

00:36:38.260 | because it would be a little bit heavier, but it would be built stronger, and that can

00:36:42.700 | be of help. So what most many people do is they'll buy the .357 Magnum. They'll shoot

00:36:47.780 | .38 special cartridges out of it while training because it's a little bit easier to shoot,

00:36:52.420 | and then they'll keep their .357 Magnum cartridges in it for self-defense if they ever needed

00:36:57.540 | to. While you're at it, make sure that you buy some quality self-defense ammunition.

00:37:02.340 | Don't just buy the cheapest stuff that you can get down at Walmart. Buy some quality

00:37:05.780 | self-defense ammunition. Usually this will be what's called a hollow point bullet, which

00:37:10.380 | is a bullet that's designed to come apart when it goes into your attacker and to cause

00:37:15.460 | maximum damage to them without going through them. If you're just shooting ball ammo, which

00:37:21.860 | cheap stuff that you usually would use when you're training, there's a big risk that if

00:37:25.380 | you shoot somebody that you will not just go into their body, but you'll go through

00:37:29.540 | their body, the bullet, and it won't cause maximum damage and may not stop them. So purchase

00:37:33.940 | some quality self-defense ammo. But if you're looking for just the simplest way to own a

00:37:38.580 | gun that is simple, reliable, start with a revolver. That's my first recommendation for

00:37:48.020 | you. Financially, it is very hard for you to go wrong. You'll always be able to sell

00:37:53.820 | that for what you have in it. You probably won't be able to sell it for a profit because

00:37:57.280 | these are essentially a commodity, but you'll always be able to sell it for what you have

00:38:00.860 | in it, which is really helpful. One final tip that I think is at least, I guess, worth

00:38:08.060 | considering. If you're shopping, I wouldn't make this a do or die, but if you're shopping,

00:38:13.700 | if you have the choice, if you're actually shopping for a new one, you'll have a choice

00:38:17.340 | of different kinds of metal. You can buy a titanium revolver, which is very, very light.

00:38:22.220 | That's really nice if you're going to carry it every day. It makes it a little bit harder

00:38:25.580 | to shoot because it's lighter and a heavier gun is easier to shoot because the weight

00:38:30.300 | of the gun will compensate a little bit for the power of the cartridge when it explodes.

00:38:38.620 | You would have a choice for that, but you'll also have a choice between buying something

00:38:42.260 | that's silver or chrome or black. If you're choosing, I think there's a very small argument

00:38:48.740 | that is, in my mind, persuasive about buying a black one. When I read last year, I read

00:38:57.900 | the book that I profiled on the show called Arrest Proof Yourself. One of the comments

00:39:03.020 | that that particular author made in his book as a criminal defense attorney, he said that

00:39:08.540 | he thought that the ideal gun for anybody to carry for self-defense was a black snub-nosed

00:39:13.660 | revolver. The great thing about a black snub-nosed revolver is it's not a threatening gun if

00:39:19.580 | you're ever in court. If you ever shoot somebody in self-defense, you're standing in front

00:39:23.300 | of a jury. If you're in there with some giant tricked out hand cannon, perhaps the prosecuting

00:39:30.180 | attorney would try to paint you as some kind of lunatic nut that goes around wanting to

00:39:35.180 | kill people. It's hard to make that claim about somebody who just carries a simple revolver.

00:39:41.780 | One of the other benefits that he said about having a black one is many times these kinds

00:39:46.260 | of events would happen at night in the dark. A black revolver is very hard to see at night.

00:39:53.180 | If you wind up pulling it because you feel threatened, but you don't wind up pulling

00:39:58.420 | the trigger because you realize, "No, it's actually not a threat," and you choose not

00:40:02.180 | to shoot, then you run a lower risk of other people seeing it, which means maybe your actual

00:40:08.060 | draw would be never come to the attention of law enforcement, never come attention to

00:40:11.940 | the prosecuting attorney. But it would also help you to run a lower risk of being accused

00:40:18.240 | or charged with brandishing the weapon because fewer people would have been able to see it

00:40:23.420 | just simply because it was black. I thought that was a good argument. Not a good enough

00:40:27.180 | argument necessarily to go and sell a silver colored gun to get a black one, but if you're

00:40:31.380 | buying another one, a black one sounds good. So something like, if you're looking for a

00:40:36.340 | particular one to look at, something like Ruger's LCR, which stands for Light Compact

00:40:40.420 | Revolver in .357 Magnum, probably around $300 to $350. You can get cheaper ones. Great gun

00:40:48.580 | for you to get. You won't lose your money. Next, if you have a little bit of money and/or

00:40:54.140 | want to spend a little bit more money or you'd like to have a gun with more capabilities

00:40:58.540 | and you're willing to put in a little extra time for training, or if you'd like to have

00:41:03.740 | a gun that's just more comfortable to shoot, then I think your either next purchase or

00:41:09.180 | ideal first purchase would be a semi-automatic compact or mid-size pistol. In my mind, you

00:41:17.900 | can't go wrong with a Glock 19. There are many gun people who want to constantly argue

00:41:23.580 | about these things, but for non-gun people, let me explain essentially how it works. There

00:41:29.140 | are so many high quality handguns today. There are many inexpensive high quality handguns

00:41:34.140 | today, but the one that has come out on top with decades of history is the handgun designed

00:41:40.860 | by a manufacturer called Glock. They have proven again and again and again that their

00:41:47.660 | handguns are extremely reliable, are extremely effective. Some people don't like them because

00:41:53.380 | they're partly made out of plastic polymers, but they are effective, and there is a giant

00:41:58.180 | marketplace available for them specifically. The way that the Glock platform works, some

00:42:05.980 | of the gun parts are slightly interchangeable. Generally, you're going to choose a caliber,

00:42:11.860 | and a caliber could be 9mm as a caliber, or what's called 40 Smith & Wesson, or 45 ACP,

00:42:19.740 | and they have different guns of different sizes that will work in these different calibers.

00:42:26.300 | If you buy a large one, the large one will of course be the most fun and easy to shoot.

00:42:32.500 | You'll shoot it the best because it has a longer barrel, and it'll be very comfortable

00:42:36.060 | to shoot. So in 9mm, which I think is probably the best one to go with, in a 9mm, that's

00:42:42.860 | a gun called the Glock 17. It's a wonderful semi-automatic handgun. It's very capable.

00:42:49.820 | Right out of the box, it is an extremely capable gun. Brand new, you can pick it up for about

00:42:54.620 | $550. Comes with a couple of extra magazines. Brand new out of the box, you could take it,

00:42:59.980 | and you could take it to many situations, and it would be extremely effective. The standard

00:43:06.220 | magazine capacity of the Glock 17 is 17 rounds. It has what in gun nomenclature is called

00:43:13.340 | a double stack magazine, which means it's a little bit thicker, and it has the bullets

00:43:18.660 | are, the cartridges are side by side in the actual magazine, and it's a wonderful, wonderful

00:43:24.500 | gun. It's very simple. You just point the trigger and shoot. It's effective. It's reliable.

00:43:29.780 | But it's a little bit big to conceal, and so you can get a slightly smaller one that

00:43:34.260 | has, it's called a Glock 19. That's their model. It's 9mm, and it's a little bit, the

00:43:39.180 | barrel's a little bit shorter, and the grip is a little bit shorter. So it's smaller,

00:43:43.100 | and it's a little easier to conceal. Then of course, they would have the smallest, the

00:43:47.020 | compact version, which is a Glock 19, sorry, a Glock 26, and then if you needed to get

00:43:52.780 | smaller than that, you would go to one of their single stack thinner versions, which

00:43:59.060 | in 9mm, I think is the Glock 43. Glock 19 is basically the perfect all-around, will

00:44:05.860 | do just about everything you need to do gun without too many compromises. It's hard to

00:44:11.540 | go wrong with a Glock 19. The great thing about it from a financial perspective is there

00:44:17.220 | are tons of them on the market. You can buy them new for 550 bucks. You can sell them

00:44:24.220 | just about any time you want to anybody who wants to own a Glock, and as long as it's

00:44:28.660 | not obviously been destroyed, it's going to be great. It's going to work, because with

00:44:33.900 | it being a Glock, anybody even who has problems with it can swap out all the pieces without

00:44:38.340 | much trouble. And so it's just a wonderful, ubiquitous commodity gun. You can buy cheaper,

00:44:45.540 | and there are many brands that are cheaper that are very effective. However, from an

00:44:50.540 | investment perspective, I think you're well served by buying something that if you ever

00:44:53.980 | needed to sell it, if you ever needed to trade it, you're buying something that has a broad

00:44:57.900 | appeal. If you buy another brand, for example, something like the CZP-10, a lot of the gun

00:45:07.260 | people really love this particular gun that I'm referencing. Something called a CZP-10

00:45:11.980 | is a 9mm striker fired pistol. It's fantastic, but you're going to find a lot fewer people

00:45:17.740 | outside of the gun world that know what it is and how it works. So I think a Glock 19,

00:45:23.460 | you can't go wrong. The great thing about the Glock 19 is it's a good balance. You can

00:45:27.820 | conceal it. You can also shoot it well. It's comfortable for you to train with, unlike

00:45:32.940 | that snub-nosed revolver, which is very uncomfortable to shoot. The Glock 19 is a dream to shoot,

00:45:39.180 | and you can train with it. And that's probably the most important thing, is to actually have

00:45:43.300 | a gun that you're going to train with. So consider that being your next option. What

00:45:49.380 | I'm essentially trying to do for you is create what gun people like to refer to as just the

00:45:53.780 | five gun challenge. If you only had five guns, what would you do? And then from there, it's

00:45:58.020 | up to you. But each of these, if you had each of these, they fulfill a unique function.

00:46:02.580 | I don't think you'd be wrong to have a revolver and a Glock 19. Start with a revolver, and

00:46:08.540 | then move up, get a Glock 19 as well. After that, I think your next gun should either

00:46:12.380 | be a Ruger 10/22 or an AR-15. Let me explain the differences. A Ruger 10/22 is a .22 caliber

00:46:21.180 | rifle. It's a very small, very lightweight rifle. There are other good brands of rifle.

00:46:27.800 | I'm just telling you what is ubiquitous. And I like to have stuff that has an easy resale

00:46:32.620 | value. I like to have stuff that there are tons of parts for. Some people, that's why

00:46:37.060 | I'm not a gun guy, I don't want to have something that's weird and interesting. I want to have

00:46:41.220 | the standard thing. If I'm going to drive a pickup truck, I want an F-150. If I'm going

00:46:44.620 | to drive a car, I want a Toyota Corolla. Just give me what everybody else has, and let me

00:46:49.580 | go about my business. The Ruger 10/22 is a wonderful .22 caliber rifle. It is semi-automatic,

00:46:56.260 | it's effective, and it can be made to be all kinds of different things. There have been,

00:47:00.940 | I don't want to say millions, I would guess without looking up numbers, I would say there

00:47:04.780 | are millions of them out there in the marketplace. But a Ruger 10/22 is very inexpensive. And

00:47:10.980 | with it being a .22 caliber rifle, it's inexpensive to buy and it's inexpensive to shoot. It's

00:47:17.580 | also easy to use to train people, to train yourself and to train other people to use

00:47:23.260 | a rifle. You can go out in your backyard with a box of .22 cartridges and you can shoot

00:47:29.200 | all afternoon and you're out of pocket a dollar or two. It's so inexpensive to shoot a .22

00:47:35.020 | caliber rifle. It's much more painful to shoot a larger rifle in terms of the cost of ammunition.

00:47:41.100 | And a .22 caliber rifle is one of the most versatile, useful weapons that you can own.

00:47:47.220 | You can use it, of course, to kill small game. You could use it in self-defense. You could

00:47:52.500 | certainly kill somebody with a .22 caliber rifle. But you'll use it and learn the skills

00:47:57.740 | of effective rifle, the effective ability to use a rifle. It's two to three hundred

00:48:05.460 | bucks to buy a new one, depending on whether you buy a black one or a wooden color, wooden

00:48:10.980 | one or whatever version you buy, whether you buy a stainless steel barrel or not. There's

00:48:15.420 | a little bit of range, but they're ubiquitous and they're wonderful weapons. You can adjust

00:48:20.300 | them and build them to be however you want it to look. If you want to build it to look

00:48:24.540 | like a scary black rifle, you can do that. If you want to build it to look like just

00:48:28.500 | a standard rifle that every rancher would just carry around in his truck with a woodstock,

00:48:34.240 | you can do that. You can buy large magazines for them, 30 round magazines for them. You

00:48:40.060 | can use standard box magazines. You can put a scope on it. You cannot put a scope. It's

00:48:43.900 | just a wonderful rifle. I don't think you go wrong with buying a .22 caliber Ruger 10/22.

00:48:50.780 | The next option, and these are not necessarily in order, but the next option that could also

00:48:54.620 | work well is to go ahead at this point and buy an AR-15. An AR-15 is a wonderful rifle

00:49:01.780 | platform. I'm intending to release to you an entire show on the AR-15 platform because

00:49:06.500 | I get so annoyed with hearing people yell about it without actually understanding what

00:49:10.340 | it is. The AR-15 is a wonderful, wonderfully effective rifle. In short, it is frequently

00:49:18.580 | referred to as a modern sporting rifle because that was how it was originally designed. The

00:49:26.460 | AR-15 rifle was designed in about 1945 by a man named Eugene Stoner, and he designed

00:49:33.580 | it for the civilian marketplace to be a versatile rifle, a versatile sporting rifle. And it

00:49:39.540 | was designed around a caliber called either 5.56 millimeter NATO or 2.223 Remington caliber,

00:49:52.980 | which is a relatively small bullet size. It was later adapted and taken on by the US military

00:50:00.620 | where it became the famous M16 rifle that has been used by the US military for many

00:50:05.860 | decades, but it was first designed for the civilian marketplace. When the rifle, Stoner

00:50:13.380 | went on, he left ArmaLite, they sold the patents to Colt who continued to produce it. But what's

00:50:20.540 | happened is in the last couple of decades, especially the last decade, the AR-15 marketplace

00:50:27.620 | has been completely open to competition. And there are so many people that have been creating

00:50:34.460 | AR-15s. And so the range of accessories and the range of parts and the range of quality

00:50:40.260 | of all the different parts of the rifle have been, it's just been phenomenal. It's incredible.

00:50:45.540 | And so you can take an AR-15 and you can transform it for many tasks, for just about any task

00:50:52.420 | that you need. Now, it has some disadvantages. For example, the AR-15 platform shooting the

00:50:59.100 | standard 5.56 millimeter NATO bullet or the .223 Remington bullet is too small to be effective

00:51:07.340 | as a large game rifle. It would be too small to be effective at shooting a deer, for example.

00:51:15.020 | You generally want a larger rifle round for that. It's a relatively small round, but it's

00:51:19.460 | very effective for hunting. Many people use it for hunting. It's also very effective and

00:51:24.120 | can be adjusted for many different approaches to effective self-defense. And the AR-15,

00:51:30.740 | because it has so many different ways that it can be adjusted, you can do something like

00:51:34.020 | add in a .22 caliber conversion kit. And so if you want to train with the rifle, if you

00:51:38.340 | didn't want to buy both a Ruger 10/22 and an AR-15, you can go ahead and purchase an

00:51:42.540 | AR-15 and then convert it with a .22 caliber conversion kit so it can shoot less expensive

00:51:47.420 | ammo. Because the actual size, the diameter of the bullet of the standard rifle is the

00:51:54.340 | same as the .22. It just has more, the large, the normal AR-15 cartridge simply has more

00:52:01.740 | powder which makes it come out as more velocity, but it's a lot more expensive to shoot. So

00:52:07.420 | an AR-15 is a wonderful first rifle. I think you should have one. I really do. I think

00:52:12.420 | you should have probably a couple. AR-15 has certain limitations. It's not going to be

00:52:17.220 | a tremendous long-range rifle. It's not going to punch through cover if you ever needed

00:52:22.660 | it in war. There's a reason why the older battle rifles from the military were always

00:52:28.300 | built on a larger caliber bullet. But it's just a great gun. And today, there's never

00:52:32.820 | been a better time to buy one because it's so inexpensive. You can get a new AR-15 for

00:52:37.580 | about $550 to $700. Now you can spend a couple thousand bucks on one depending on how fancy

00:52:44.140 | of a one that you buy. But you can get a great rifle at a great price and it's just a wonderful

00:52:49.540 | rifle. So I encourage you, if you don't own an AR-15, go ahead and get one. And if you

00:52:52.860 | don't own one, get one today so that you can practice shooting with it and that way if

00:52:57.940 | the legislatures do change any laws that you already have one. And most importantly, get

00:53:03.540 | one so that you can go ahead and teach other people how to shoot with it and dispense with

00:53:08.100 | some of the mystique of the AR-15 rifle. I'm appalled at so much of the commentary that

00:53:14.020 | I see about the AR-15 rifle specifically. It's just apparent that people have never

00:53:18.320 | shot one. They don't know how it works. They don't know what makes it good. They don't

00:53:21.220 | know what its disadvantages are. It's appalling. And you see it all the time on the news, etc.

00:53:26.340 | So go get yourself one, use it, and then take your friends out and teach them to shoot.

00:53:31.540 | It's a whole lot more effective for you to take a friend of yours who doesn't like guns

00:53:36.260 | or is scared of guns, take them out with an AR-15 and teach them how to shoot it. That's

00:53:40.180 | a whole lot more effective than arguing about gun control legislation online. Next and finally,

00:53:45.580 | or sorry, next two weapons would be get yourself a shotgun. It's hard to go wrong with a Remington

00:53:52.980 | 870 shotgun, basically the standard pump-action shotgun. The wonderful thing again about the

00:53:58.220 | Remington 870 is it's the ubiquitous gun of shotguns. There are tons of them out there.

00:54:03.260 | You can buy a good one in the used marketplace. You can buy a good new one. They're relatively

00:54:07.420 | inexpensive. But while you're shopping, pick up a couple of barrels. Pick up a short barrel

00:54:11.860 | and a long barrel. Pick up a short barrel to use if you needed to use it as a home defense

00:54:16.020 | gun or around your house. And pick up a long barrel so you can take it and use it to shoot

00:54:21.300 | skeet or to shoot birds or to shoot animals or whatever you're hunting for. The great

00:54:25.140 | thing about a shotgun is the variety of ammunition that you can use for it. Everything from deer

00:54:30.540 | hunting with a slug to buckshot to birdshot. You've got so many different choices. You

00:54:38.980 | can even shoot all kinds of interesting novelty rounds out of your Remington. So get yourself

00:54:45.740 | a shotgun and get a couple of barrels for it that are interchangeable and learn how

00:54:50.040 | to use them. A shotgun is one of the most useful imposing weapons. If you're dealing

00:54:56.980 | in a situation, it's funny, a few years ago there were a bunch of riots in London and

00:55:03.140 | the number one selling thing in London at the time was baseball bats. People were buying

00:55:10.220 | baseball bats to try to protect themselves from rioters. Well, sorry, but I don't want

00:55:14.500 | to stand with a baseball bat and try to protect myself from rioters. I'm going to turn tail

00:55:18.200 | and run the other direction. But I'd be happy to stand outside of my car or my house or

00:55:24.340 | my store and people are marching through lighting stuff on fire. I'd be happy to stand there

00:55:29.380 | with a shotgun and most people will make a tour around it. And I think it's a very effective

00:55:35.180 | persuader. So get yourself a good shotgun. And then last couple is at that point, if

00:55:41.020 | you can expand your home armory a little bit more, look into getting a long distance rifle,

00:55:48.020 | a scoped long distance rifle, which would be useful for hunting large game. And then

00:55:51.780 | consider purchasing a larger caliber, semi-automatic military style weapon, a good proper heavy

00:56:00.100 | duty rifle, a battle rifle. So there'd be variants, maybe an AR-10 or some of the various

00:56:07.540 | variants that you can look into. There are some really good ones, but that is important.

00:56:12.300 | Now when you're doing this, those basically, what do they do, five or six guns? Those five

00:56:17.460 | or six guns put together constitute a very effective home armory. If you're looking for

00:56:25.500 | a good collection to put together for each of your children so that when they graduate

00:56:29.660 | from high school or graduate from college or at their, you're giving a wedding present

00:56:34.580 | to them or whatever, if you could put together over the course of years, put together that

00:56:40.420 | five or six gun armory, you're going to put them in a situation where they're very well

00:56:44.380 | equipped for the future. And they're very well equipped for all of those strategies.

00:56:48.940 | In that home armory that I outlined, you have very effective guns to protect yourself from

00:56:54.740 | animals, to protect yourself from criminals and to protect yourself from government agents.

00:56:59.580 | You have very effective guns for the offensive use of hunting animals and for prosecuting

00:57:04.660 | a war if you ever have to be involved in one. And you have very effective guns for personal

00:57:09.300 | enjoyment that you can use for sport shooting. And in terms of collecting, those aren't really

00:57:15.020 | going to be collector pieces, but at least you're going to have a decent investment in

00:57:19.380 | the value of those guns. It's hard, unless you destroy them, it's hard for their value

00:57:23.940 | to go down. Because if you can sell them into the secondary market, you're always going

00:57:30.820 | to find someone that's more willing to pay a little bit more to be able to buy them from

00:57:35.900 | a private party versus buying them from a dealer. If you buy firearms from a dealer,

00:57:43.220 | then you have to do all of the required federal paperwork, which means you wind up filling

00:57:48.540 | out forms, you wind up having background checks done on you, et cetera. Now, there are a bunch

00:57:54.160 | of laws restricting the power of the federal government to use that data, to store that

00:58:01.500 | data and to use it to build lists and registries of gun owners. But I think you should always

00:58:07.340 | be skeptical and always be a little bit paranoid about that. There's simply too much strong

00:58:12.660 | history to look at throughout history of registration that is used to then later as a disarmament

00:58:24.820 | technique. Many people are rightly paranoid about that. I don't know how to say what you

00:58:31.940 | should be paranoid about all of it, but I would say that you should not purchase all

00:58:35.260 | of your firearms through a federal firearms dealer. I think it's good to buy some of them

00:58:42.260 | in the private party and you should be willing to pay a little bit more in the private party.

00:58:47.260 | Now, let's talk briefly about accessories and then let's talk about risks because it's

00:58:52.100 | important to recognize that guns fundamentally can be very dangerous. So we have to manage

00:58:57.980 | and mitigate those risks. And it's important that your investment not wind up killing you.

00:59:03.660 | That is one thing that a gun is very effective at that a gold coin or a stock certificate

00:59:08.940 | may not be so effective at. With regard to accessories, once you have a basic home armory

00:59:14.780 | put together, the power is in the accessories and the power is in your personal skill. So

00:59:20.900 | if you have set aside for yourself, let's say you have a budget of $500, I think you're

00:59:25.580 | better served to buy a snub-nosed revolver for $250 and to go and buy a class on how

00:59:33.260 | to use it than you are to go and buy a $500 Glock 19. Budget for training and budget for

00:59:39.740 | ammunition to use in training because the actual gun is not the key thing. It's your

00:59:45.060 | training. So whatever your budget is that you set out for yourself, focus on making

00:59:51.540 | sure that you don't spend it all on the actual firearms platform. Make sure that you're saving

00:59:58.220 | and setting aside money for training and for ammunition. And that is the fatal flaw of

01:00:04.380 | guns, that the actual cost of the firearm is not all that much. But all of the other

01:00:11.740 | stuff to be proficient with it is. And you can't really sell that. If you buy a class

01:00:18.100 | for a few hundred dollars to go and take a weekend class on how to effectively use your

01:00:22.640 | handgun or how to effectively shoot your AR-15, you're never going to be able to sell that

01:00:27.540 | knowledge and experience to somebody else. You can't sell the expended ammunition. So

01:00:32.900 | there are straight up costs with guns that make them not a great investment. Now, you

01:00:37.980 | could stack your safe full as many gun people do with guns that you never shoot. And in

01:00:42.900 | that case, maybe you do get a good investment. But we have to acknowledge that if you're

01:00:47.820 | going to actually use, the point of a gun is not financial necessarily. The point is

01:00:52.620 | to be able to use it. And in so doing, you're going to be burning money in ammunition and

01:00:57.860 | training. But it's hard for me to imagine anyone ever regretting that. I've never heard

01:01:03.780 | of somebody who has had to defend their life and lives of their loved ones or their property

01:01:08.700 | with a firearm, who ever regretted time spent at training or money spent in training or

01:01:14.540 | money spent on ammunition down at the range to practice with it. I can't imagine somebody

01:01:19.260 | regretting it. Let's talk about safety. With safety, it's important that you recognize

01:01:25.420 | that there are risks to gun ownership. The risk of getting shot in a school shooting

01:01:33.340 | is infinitesimally small. The risk of getting killed by your government is not so infinitesimally

01:01:39.740 | small. Again, 262 million, I think we'd be hard pressed to find. If we were to go over

01:01:46.220 | the last 30 years, we'd be hard pressed to put together, I think, what are the numbers?

01:01:50.020 | 900 people killed in mass shootings and in school shootings, something like that. It's

01:01:54.700 | a very statistically small number. The government number is harder to parse because it's very

01:02:00.300 | big but it's very much a big difference as far as where you are in the world. We need

01:02:07.020 | to account for those things. You have to recognize that guns are fundamentally, inherently dangerous.

01:02:14.020 | Let's talk about how they're dangerous. I often hear gun people relate things to, they

01:02:21.540 | relate guns to something like a hammer, for example. They say, "Well, a gun is a tool

01:02:26.500 | and a hammer is a tool. You can use a hammer to build a house or you can use a hammer to

01:02:29.980 | bash somebody's skull in." I think that's an accurate comparison. It really is. It's

01:02:36.100 | true. But I don't think it's quite honest for us to compare a gun to a hammer. A hammer

01:02:44.540 | can be used to bash somebody's head in but it's not nearly so destructive as a well-placed

01:02:49.900 | gunshot. I think it's better to compare a gun to something else that's inherently dangerous

01:02:55.220 | like a chainsaw and to recognize that it's not so simple. You could pick up a hammer

01:03:01.180 | and if you're learning how to use a hammer to build something, then the worst you might

01:03:04.980 | do is bash your finger a few times. But most people don't kill someone while they learn

01:03:09.420 | to use a hammer. But you can kill somebody while you learn to use a gun just like you

01:03:14.540 | can kill somebody while you learn to use a chainsaw. You need to be very careful and

01:03:19.020 | respect the actual tool and its destructive capabilities. So take training and learn how

01:03:26.900 | to use it and be very, very careful. One of the most important things to do is from the

01:03:31.060 | very beginning to train yourself properly with good safety practices that will eliminate

01:03:39.180 | the potential of a negligent discharge, an accidental discharge, and/or mitigate the

01:03:44.640 | risk of a negligent discharge. So in talking about the dangers of guns, because many people

01:03:51.380 | say, "Well, I don't want to have a gun because I'm statistically dangerous." With that, you

01:03:55.540 | need to recognize that there are basically two categories that comes down into the danger

01:03:59.220 | of a gun. One is a negligent discharge and the other is suicide. But the great thing

01:04:05.220 | about these risks is these risks can be mitigated. So the great fear that of course any of us

01:04:11.300 | would have would be somebody accidentally getting their hands on a firearm, one of our

01:04:15.340 | children. You buy a snub-nosed .38 because it's supposed to protect your life, but then

01:04:21.660 | you just stick it in the dresser drawer and then your seven-year-old child goes in and

01:04:26.020 | starts playing with it and it goes bang and kills your other child. That is not a scenario

01:04:30.180 | that any of us want to wind up in. And sadly, that's a scenario that many people have ended

01:04:35.340 | up in and it's a great danger. It is your responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen.

01:04:43.860 | It's your responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. Rights come with responsibilities.

01:04:53.260 | I believe it is your absolute right to keep and bear arms and that that right must not

01:05:00.300 | be infringed upon by the government in any way, shape, or form. But it's your responsibility

01:05:08.660 | to exercise that right carefully. So plan ahead and make sure that you're proactive

01:05:19.460 | in mitigating the risk. There are certain risks with young children who are too young

01:05:25.380 | to be trained in the proper handling of firearms. It's your responsibility to make sure that

01:05:30.780 | one of your guns never winds up in the hands of a young child. Do not take this lightly.

01:05:38.300 | Buy proper receptacles to keep them in. If you're going to keep it by your bed, buy a

01:05:43.180 | proper locking case for it. Buy a proper safe that won't tumble open when it gets knocked

01:05:50.660 | to the ground. Buy a proper safe and install it and make sure that the gun is either on

01:05:55.060 | you or in the safe. In addition to that, you have to teach your children. I think this

01:06:02.380 | is so fundamentally important. You have to teach your children how proper gun safety.

01:06:10.020 | I'm a young father, so I'll just tell you what I'm doing without any claim to saying

01:06:13.820 | this is the best thing to do, but I'll tell you what I'm doing and why. Number one, I

01:06:18.660 | never allow my children to play with my guns, period. I actually seek to entrap them to

01:06:26.340 | make sure that they won't. A few times as a test, I give them careful instruction. I

01:06:32.980 | show them, "Listen, this is what a gun is. You may not touch it." Then I'll unload it,

01:06:37.940 | make sure that it's rendered safe, and I'll leave it in a way that we might be tempted

01:06:40.980 | to touch it. I'll set a trap and wait and see how effective is this going to be. I also

01:06:46.260 | am a nut about teaching gun safety. You need to practice, back to other risks as far as

01:06:52.380 | how to protect yourself against the risk of accident, you need to be a nut about gun safety,

01:06:57.780 | which means you never play with guns. You always practice safe unloading. You're very,

01:07:02.020 | very careful with where you're pointing it. You keep your finger off the trigger. Just

01:07:05.700 | like a chainsaw is entirely safe, a gun is entirely safe until you touch it, until you

01:07:16.020 | turn it on. You can have an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine loaded up, locked, cocked, and ready

01:07:22.660 | to go. You can put it in a safe and it'll sit there for hundreds or thousands of years

01:07:27.540 | and nothing will change to it. It will never become unsafe until you touch it and start

01:07:35.160 | waving it around. Just like a chainsaw can be loaded with gasoline, it can be sharpened

01:07:39.540 | and ready to go. You can have that thing ready to go with a pull of the cord and it'll fire

01:07:44.420 | up, and it's nothing unsafe at all about it. It'll sit there for thousands of years and

01:07:48.460 | never turn itself on. But the instant you turn it on, you've got a deadly weapon. So

01:07:53.620 | you've got to deal with guns in exactly the same way. Take them seriously. Practice the

01:07:58.260 | fundamentals of gun safety. Practice the rules of gun safety. And don't ever allow an exception

01:08:04.060 | of any kind for any reason. That's got to be your attitude. And if you'll do that, you'll,

01:08:11.220 | number one, remove the risk of a negligent discharge just in gun handling, and you'll

01:08:16.620 | lower the risk of a negligent discharge if it did happen, actually harming somebody.

01:08:22.240 | Back to children. Keep your guns locked up away from your children, but not forever.

01:08:26.960 | Teach your children how to use guns and ensure with them that they practice good rules of

01:08:31.580 | gun safety, that they learn how to shoot and they learn how to shoot effectively, and then

01:08:36.020 | instill them a moral calculation of when you shoot and when you don't shoot. One of my

01:08:41.620 | biggest concerns for me is that I want to make sure that I never lose my sensitivity

01:08:47.940 | to the horror of violence, to the horror of war. I don't ever want to feed the animal

01:08:55.960 | side of my soul to say I'm going to glory in violence. And so for me personally, I don't

01:09:03.620 | watch violent sports. I don't watch boxing. I don't watch MMA. I don't want to feed my

01:09:10.360 | bloodlust of combat. I don't watch violent movies. I don't want to, especially not if

01:09:15.860 | the violence is glorified. It's kind of like nudity, for example. There's a way that you

01:09:19.700 | can watch a movie that contains nudity in which the story wouldn't be told the right

01:09:26.380 | way without nudity. I'm not scared of nudity, but I want nudity to be presented the way

01:09:34.100 | that it is in Schindler's List, not in a way that glorifies and sexualizes the nudity in

01:09:40.500 | and of itself. Same thing with violence. I'm not scared of violence, but I want to make

01:09:44.380 | sure that violence is always horrible and awful and presented as repulsive, not as attractive.

01:09:53.580 | And I think we need to do the same thing with our children. We need to expose our children

01:09:57.140 | to violence. I'm not opposed to martial arts in this meaning not specific. I'm not opposed

01:10:02.780 | to somebody learning how to fight, fight effectively. I think that's important. But that fighting

01:10:07.860 | cannot be disconnected. The violence cannot be disconnected with the moral foundation

01:10:12.020 | of right and wrong. People like to make fun about, after a shooting, when someone talks

01:10:16.860 | about violent video games. I don't see how you can make fun of it. When you feed the

01:10:24.260 | violent tendencies and make it a sport, that has a corrosive effect on your soul in exactly

01:10:31.940 | the same way that pornography does. If you feed the sexual lust and objectification of

01:10:37.380 | women and sex the way that pornography does, it has a corrosive effect on your soul. And

01:10:42.540 | you stop viewing people the same way. You start viewing people as animals and not as

01:10:47.020 | people. And so you have to accompany physical instruction with moral instruction. Those

01:10:55.700 | two have to be there. And I think that, especially for children, we have to do a good job of

01:11:00.340 | making sure that our children live in a morally clear universe. When is force appropriate

01:11:07.220 | and when is not? When is violence appropriate and when is not? I ask you those questions.

01:11:12.740 | Here are some challenging questions for you to consider. I ask you this question. When

01:11:18.580 | is it okay for you to hit a man? When is it okay for you to hit a woman? When is it okay

01:11:28.820 | for you to shoot a woman? When is it okay for you to shoot a child? When is it okay

01:11:37.420 | for you to shoot a cop? That last one's probably the most explosive. I ask it again. When is

01:11:44.820 | it okay for you to shoot a cop? Now, grapple with those questions. And we've got to be

01:11:50.060 | the kind of society who deals with those questions seriously, that doesn't pretend that horror

01:11:58.060 | doesn't exist, but that doesn't glorify it and worship it. Rather, we need to be a society

01:12:05.180 | that puts it in its proper moral context. I think I understand school shooters a little

01:12:12.100 | bit. I get it. It makes sense to me sometimes why they do the things they do. I'm not psychoanalyzing,

01:12:18.860 | but when I look at all of the factors, it makes sense to me and it's pretty awful. Now,

01:12:25.300 | there's many factors, of course. We all have a tendency and a bias to go to what we're

01:12:29.460 | comfortable with. So when people who like guns look at a school shooting, they immediately

01:12:33.260 | notice the fact that if you had a gun, you could protect yourself and you could save

01:12:37.620 | innocent life. Whereas people who don't like guns look at that and say, "Well, of course

01:12:40.500 | the shooter had a gun. How did he get the gun?" And everyone sees the same facts and

01:12:44.980 | they all look at it and draw different conclusions. A teacher may look at it and say, "If only

01:12:50.060 | I had noticed that this child was being bullied." And that's true. A parent may look at it

01:12:57.820 | and say, "Oh, if only the parents had been able to pierce that through." Somebody who's

01:13:02.300 | adopted children would look at it and say, "Adoption. We've got the emotional issues

01:13:07.740 | with adoption and how do we deal with these things?" And there are dozens and dozens

01:13:12.300 | of accurate points of analysis. We've got to be careful about applying only our own

01:13:18.460 | thing and say, "This is the way it always is." I'm getting a little bit of feel. Let

01:13:22.460 | me go back to suicide. The major risk with guns is suicide. More people are killed with

01:13:27.300 | suicide with guns in the United States than any other factor with guns. Negligent discharges

01:13:32.500 | are usually result of bad gun handling. And I encourage you, be the one to stand up and

01:13:43.860 | walk away. When I see people doing bad gun handling, I hate to always be the bad guy,

01:13:49.540 | but I'm not willing to take a risk with my life or with the lives of someone else because

01:13:52.820 | somebody being lazy and sloppy, passing loaded guns around that haven't been cleared or engaging

01:13:59.140 | in unsafe practices. Be the person who stands up and raises the level, especially if you're

01:14:04.140 | a gun person, if you're involved in the gun community. Make sure that you're the person

01:14:07.900 | that raises it because negligent discharges are unnecessary. Nobody needs to be hurt by

01:14:15.500 | a gun and it shouldn't happen. Thankfully, people are generally very safe, especially

01:14:20.220 | in the United States of America, and very few, statistically speaking, actually happen.

01:14:24.260 | Most people killed with guns deserve to be killed with guns except for suicide. So let's

01:14:27.220 | talk about suicide. Major risk with guns is suicide. Now, I don't know how you connect

01:14:34.940 | this causal factor of what makes people commit suicide versus not. I don't know how you do

01:14:41.420 | this. And we live in a very weird time with regard to suicide as well, speaking culturally.

01:14:49.140 | Many people glorify suicide, and I'm concerned about this being glorified more and more.

01:14:55.740 | You'll often hear people, when somebody commits suicide, you'll often hear people use phraseology

01:15:01.220 | such as, "Well, at least they're at peace now." Well, you don't know if they're at peace.

01:15:07.660 | For all you know, they're burning in hell. Now, of course, we use these euphemisms because

01:15:13.940 | we're trying to make sense out of an insane situation, but I think this is very damaging

01:15:19.060 | for us to use these euphemisms. "Well, so and so, at least they finally found peace,"

01:15:23.900 | or "They're in a better place." I hate the lies that are told at funerals. I really do.

01:15:30.580 | And what happens is suicide has this multiplying effect where when somebody who is psychologically

01:15:36.620 | unstable and is in a very painful place hears that, well, they want peace, wouldn't you?

01:15:42.260 | Now, let's say that you supported suicide. And I use that word advisedly because many

01:15:47.340 | people do. One of the biggest concerning political issues to me that is encroaching in the United

01:15:51.980 | States of America faster, and very few people are talking about it, is assisted euthanasia,

01:15:58.060 | physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. This has a horrendous history, especially

01:16:04.860 | worrying if you look in Europe and you study what's happening in Europe where physician-assisted

01:16:09.340 | suicide is legal. And it's happening in the United States and many of our states. And

01:16:14.060 | what's more worrying is that the moral argument is not being had. It's worrying to me. And

01:16:21.300 | so suicide is seen by many people as a good way out. Now, let's pretend for a moment that

01:16:28.100 | you believe this. Let's pretend that you support the concept of suicide. And now, you might

01:16:33.260 | put your own restrictions on it. You might say, "Well, if somebody has an incurable disease

01:16:41.200 | and they're living in great pain and suffering, then I'm going to support their right to take

01:16:46.860 | their own life with the help of a physician." Well, if you support that, then it's hard

01:16:51.580 | for you to ever say anything bad about suicide. It really is. And be consistent. Because,

01:16:57.620 | and this is what's happened in Europe with physician-assisted suicide, is the definition

01:17:01.580 | of what is pain and suffering has transitioned from what we would all agree is pain and suffering

01:17:10.020 | to what some of us might say is normal life. But yet, to that person, it may feel like

01:17:16.060 | unbearable pain and suffering. Now, in a sense, if you're supportive of suicide, suicide

01:17:22.700 | by gun is probably one of the best ways to go. If I think through all the different ways

01:17:28.020 | that I could commit suicide if I wanted to, I would choose suicide by gun. I've never

01:17:34.560 | understood why people hang themselves. To me, that sounds very painful and stressful.

01:17:39.660 | I've never understood why people ground themselves. That sounds very painful and stressful to

01:17:43.980 | me. I've never understood why people throw themselves off of buildings. That sounds very

01:17:47.700 | painful and stressful to me. I understand why people take medications to commit suicide,

01:17:53.940 | but that sounds not so guaranteed to me. If I wanted to commit suicide, it's hard to imagine

01:18:00.200 | a better solution than a gun. And so I understand why people do it. And I think that if you're

01:18:08.540 | promoting suicide in your ideology, and if you ever say things like, "Oh, they're at

01:18:13.020 | peace now," or "I'm so glad that finally these things happened," or "So-and-so was

01:18:17.020 | in such pain and I'm glad that they were able to escape from it," then I think you better

01:18:20.900 | be careful and not say, "Oh, it's against guns," because I could make the counterargument

01:18:24.900 | that guns are a great way to commit suicide. They're sure, they're quick, they're pain-free,

01:18:30.820 | they're accessible. You don't have to be rich to get a prescription from a doctor. Any poor

01:18:35.820 | person that wants out can commit suicide. But I do think you better pay attention to

01:18:40.620 | the fact that a lot of people die by suicide. I don't think you solve the suicide problem

01:18:47.140 | or make any dent in it by guns. I think they almost have to be separate. But I do think

01:18:53.500 | that if you find yourself with suicidal thoughts, you better get rid of your guns and talk to

01:18:58.740 | somebody. Or if you know somebody with suicidal thoughts, you better get involved and you

01:19:04.620 | better take their guns away. We have a responsibility to one another to get involved in one another's

01:19:11.620 | lives. You have a responsibility to get involved in my life if you're my neighbor, and I have

01:19:19.580 | a responsibility to get involved in your life if you're my neighbor. And that involves guns.

01:19:27.620 | Number of years ago, I had a neighbor who was starting to fail mentally. This neighbor

01:19:31.900 | was starting to exhibit some worrying symptoms of dementia. Their behavior was starting to

01:19:38.420 | be a little bit strange. We got involved, especially with regard to guns. Of course,

01:19:44.860 | I knew this neighbor had guns. Many people do. And so I immediately went and talked to

01:19:50.460 | the family, talked to the son, and said, "Listen, hold on a second. Does this person have access

01:19:54.020 | to any guns?" Now, thankfully, in that case, they'd already done the right thing. The son

01:19:58.020 | had taken all the guns away. The house was completely free of guns. All the guns were

01:20:01.420 | locked up and the older person did not have any access to guns. That's how it should be.

01:20:06.740 | You have a responsibility exactly the same if you're concerned about anything. If your

01:20:11.860 | neighbor is suicidal and they're talking to you, you have a responsibility to get involved.

01:20:16.500 | Now, I don't know how to cut this politically, and this is the great challenge. It's because

01:20:22.300 | I'm very uncomfortable with the federal government designating what is mental illness and what's

01:20:26.460 | not. I don't have much confidence these days in the practice of psychiatry and psychology.

01:20:32.620 | I used to have a high opinion of these practices, no disrespect intended to those of you who

01:20:36.860 | are engaged in this, but I go to zero now. In my mind, you're at zero and you've got

01:20:42.620 | a lot of work to do because I've seen the damage that's happening in people's lives

01:20:50.100 | because of psychiatry and... I always get messed up. Saying, "Oh, well, yes, in fact..."

01:20:56.220 | I have a family member. "Well, yes, in fact, sir, you should take a knife and slice your

01:21:00.500 | penis off and mutilate your body. And yes, we're all going to love you and support you.

01:21:06.220 | I'm sorry, but you're at zero in my book and you got to build it up." I know I have a few

01:21:10.700 | good psychiatrists in the audience, just like I've got to deal with the financial planning

01:21:14.940 | industry. But the point is I'm not real comfortable with a giant bureaucracy stating what is and

01:21:22.980 | isn't mental illness. I'm not real comfortable with the same people that believe that the

01:21:27.460 | President of the United States or the Vice President of the United States is mentally

01:21:30.820 | ill and who've lobbied that allegation again and again and again, saying that somebody

01:21:40.120 | can't have access to a gun. I'm not real comfortable with that. I'm not real comfortable in a

01:21:44.540 | society that says that when you think that Jesus talks to you, then you're mentally ill.

01:21:50.060 | Well, we can have that debate. It's a worthwhile debate. We can have it in a formal setting

01:21:55.940 | and we could talk about it, but it's a worthy debate. And I'm not so comfortable with people

01:22:00.740 | saying what for millions of people is an integral part of their life over thousands of years,

01:22:08.140 | well-documented, saying, "Well, this is a mental illness." It doesn't inspire a lot

01:22:13.820 | of confidence. Governments are very bad at most things. They're very good at killing

01:22:20.860 | people. What else do they do this good? I don't know. It's hard to say. But they're

01:22:27.380 | very bad at most things and adjudicating mental illness is not one of those things. But you

01:22:32.140 | and I can observe what's going on. And I do think that if there is a role for government,

01:22:38.620 | it should support individuals who are going to get involved. You know what's happening

01:22:43.300 | in your life. You know what's happening in your wife's life. You know what's happening

01:22:47.380 | in your brother's life. You know what's happening in your neighbor's life. And it's your responsibility

01:22:51.620 | to get involved. Now, I think one of my hopes that comes out of this Parkland shooting is

01:22:56.440 | hopefully people will even go to another level. There were a lot of people that got involved

01:23:00.380 | and did the right thing. And it just shows you cannot trust government agents, period.

01:23:05.540 | It's not that they're unnecessarily untrustworthy. Thank you to the... I know many of you who

01:23:09.940 | listen are government agents, but the systems don't work. They work very rarely. Just like

01:23:18.860 | self-protection. The police have no legal duty to protect you. Did you know that? In

01:23:25.780 | many court cases, there was one that brought this out a few years ago with a guy who was

01:23:29.580 | slashed in the New York subway while the police officer stood by because they weren't sure...

01:23:35.460 | The story... What was the guy's name? The story was that they were looking for a guy

01:23:41.220 | who had killed three people, four people with a knife. And this guy got up in the morning

01:23:48.380 | in New York City, he was on the subway. And while he was on the subway, there was what

01:23:53.580 | he thought was a crazy person, which was banging on the door of the cabinet or the compartment

01:24:02.580 | where the engineer was. And so he thought, "Okay, well, we'll stop him." But he said,

01:24:10.020 | "Hey, listen, man, leave it alone." And the guy turns around with a knife and attacks

01:24:14.980 | him. He winds up fighting him, finally gets the knife away. And then at that point, the

01:24:19.620 | two cops who had been in that very next car watching the guy that they knew had murdered

01:24:24.500 | either three or four people in the last 24, 48 hours, watching that guy, they didn't intervene

01:24:33.580 | and help save him until after the Good Samaritan had already disarmed the guy. So they also

01:24:39.860 | didn't offer him medical aid. One of his fellow subway passengers offered him medical aid.

01:24:44.300 | And then he wound up suing them. He sued the police, the NYPD for, I forget what the exact

01:24:50.560 | charge was that he gave, but the court order indicated the police have no special legal

01:24:55.320 | duty to protect you. And there are many other cases that have affirmed this as well. But

01:25:02.260 | the police do not have a legal constitutional duty to protect somebody from harm. That's

01:25:11.620 | the legal scenario. Now, thankfully, there are many men and women who get up every day

01:25:17.660 | and put on a badge and a gun and go to work. And their reason for doing that is to protect

01:25:22.820 | others. But there's not a legal duty. So, in summary, it's your responsibility to protect

01:25:32.500 | your life and the lives of those around you. Nobody will care about them more than you.

01:25:40.400 | As we saw with the recent Parkland shooting, thankfully there were many police officers

01:25:46.400 | who eventually did come in and try to put a stop to the situation. But there were also

01:25:51.580 | police officers that didn't. Now let me ask you a question. Let's say that you're in that

01:25:56.300 | situation. If you have the means of defense, and this is your student, or your classmate,

01:26:05.220 | or your children, are you going to care enough to get involved and stop the carnage? I think

01:26:11.020 | you are. So you have the responsibility to protect yourself. You have the responsibility

01:26:18.880 | to protect others. You have the responsibility to exercise your rights and means of self-defense.

01:26:29.780 | And thankfully you can do it. And although I don't know exactly how the money will work

01:26:34.300 | out in the long run, there's a pretty good investment case that those guns will be useful.

01:26:42.300 | Guns are one of those investments, however, that you kind of hope doesn't work out. I

01:26:48.820 | really hope that a mutual fund goes up in value and I'm not real happy when it goes

01:26:52.420 | down. But man, I hope I never have to use a gun. And I'm sure you do too. But if you

01:26:59.840 | ever do, or if you ever need it for the worst case, your national government is coming after

01:27:08.860 | you and 40 million of your fellow citizens, or 10 million of your fellow citizens, or

01:27:14.620 | 5 million of your fellow citizens, or 50,000 of your fellow citizens, even those unlikely

01:27:20.540 | cases we have abundant historical evidence to demonstrate that there's a good reason

01:27:26.300 | to prepare for those. So act and arm yourself accordingly. I hope that the show has been

01:27:33.100 | useful for you. Hope it's been practical. I try to do keep things that are practical

01:27:37.840 | and interesting. So my hope is that practical to you and don't get distracted by other things

01:27:46.100 | I didn't talk about. I was going to talk about force multipliers and anyway, I'll skip it

01:27:50.900 | for now. I was trying to make this about investments, but I should have done more on magazines and

01:27:55.140 | scopes and night vision and all the rest of the stuff, but we'll save that for some other

01:27:58.420 | discussion. Snubnose 38, Glock 19, Ruger 10/22, AR-15, Remington 870, scoped long distance

01:28:05.000 | rifle and a .308 battle rifle. That is a start of a good home armory. And that is a start

01:28:11.620 | of a good collection that you'll be proud to have, hopefully you'll never use, and you'll

01:28:16.780 | pass it down to your great, great grandchildren, who all talk to each other about how wise

01:28:22.020 | you were and how overly paranoid you were and are thankful that you were.

01:28:28.980 | Thank you for listening to today's show, you radical you. Before you go, I have one question

01:28:33.300 | for you. Was there an idea in today's show that helped you? Were you inspired? Were you

01:28:38.460 | motivated? Did you get an idea on how you can earn more or spend less money or invest

01:28:43.640 | more wisely or perhaps protect yourself from catastrophe and insulate yourself from financial

01:28:49.400 | disaster or just improve your life and your lifestyle? Well, if so, I have three requests

01:28:54.020 | for you. Number one, take action. Listening doesn't improve your life. Doing, however,

01:29:02.020 | can revolutionize your life. Number two, take the idea or concept that you learned from

01:29:07.640 | me and go and teach somebody else. If you want to really learn something, go and teach

01:29:13.520 | it to others. That ripple effect of you to someone else will systematically transform

01:29:19.500 | your life and the lives of all those around you. Number three, if you thought there was

01:29:23.620 | financial value in what you just heard, I'd ask you to come by and pay for it at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:29:31.180 | Now however much you want to pay, that's up to you. But if the show is worth a dollar

01:29:34.920 | a month, come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and sign up to support the show at a dollar

01:29:39.480 | a month. If the show is worth $20 a month to you, I'd be happy to have your $20. Hey,

01:29:44.360 | if it's $1,000 a month, write me a check. Don't send it to me on Patreon, but I'd

01:29:49.320 | be happy to have that as well. radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron is where you can do that. Thank you.

01:29:56.560 | Don't just dream about paradise. Live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with

01:30:02.360 | Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep

01:30:08.480 | into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and

01:30:14.480 | just $798 for value. Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com. That's FijiAirways.com.

01:30:22.520 | From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways.

01:30:25.520 | (upbeat music)

RPF0530-How_to_Build_a_Useful_Home_Armory_That_Wont_Lose_Monetary_Value_and_May_Save_Your_Life