Author, Frank Miniter, joins Jason Hartman to discuss many of the themes that come up in his latest book, The Future of the Gun. Having extensively researched his book by talking with experienced gunsmiths and former New York gang members alike, Miniter is well-placed to be able to shed light on some of the issues and questions surrounding gun crime in the United States. He also notes how wide the disparity is between the reality we know and the media’s presentation of reality.
Key Takeaways
01.18 – The Future of the Gun by Frank Miniter takes views from historians to gang members to go against the problem of misinformation about guns in America.
03.20 – The situation is now at the point where former gang members can identify the solution, but will the world listen?
04.50 – Often it feels like the situation is self-perpetuating: streets become more impoverished because those able to spend money don’t go to those areas of the cities.
05.40 – Race has a huge impact, as does a desire not to be seen in a certain way for prosecuting minority groups.
07.00 – A group is set up in Pennsylvania where a local school teacher takes inner-city kids, helps them improve their grades and teaches them responsibility about gun-use.
10.00 – Huge numbers of Americans are gun-owners, and many of them use them as a practicality and a hobby in shooting and hunting clubs.
11.00 – The media focus always places the blame on the guns, so to combat that, the National Shooting Sports Foundation attempts to get mental health records put on databases.
12.25 – The hypocrisy of the elite with regards to guns is quite remarkable.
14.05 – Perhaps we should consider what real threat the government poses to US citizens that gives cause for such high levels of gun ownership.
16.40 – Governments preach about equality, but guns really produce the only equality and equal situations.
15.45 – With technological advances, the gun is moving from being a 19th Century invention to a 21st Century innovation.
20.00 – Schools and public locations such as cinemas which specifically say ‘No firearms’ are still some of the biggest targets for mass shootings.
22.00 – Technology has helped create the Tracking Point Scope, which creates a debate as to whether novice shooters are now able to become experienced shooters with the right tools.
Transcript
Introduction:
Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival Show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario – you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival; your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about, in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host: Jason Hartman.
Jason:
It’s my pleasure to welcome Frank Miniter to the show; he is the bestselling author of The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide, and author of new book, The Future of the Gun. Frank, welcome, how are you today?
Frank:
I’m very well, thanks for having me here.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s good to have you on the show. Just to give our listeners a sense of geography, where are you located?
Frank:
I live upstate in New York.
Jason:
Oh, good, whereabouts? That’s where my family’s from.
Frank:
It’s actually in the county of Red Hook.
Jason:
So tell us about your latest work, The Future of the Gun – that’s your newest book, right?
Frank:
Absolutely. There’s just so much misinformation out there on the gun issue, and so much media bias, so I thought it was time a real journalist who actually understood guns dug into what the future of the gun really is. Of course, I had to start with our history of the gun – I met with a historian at the NRA’s National Firearm Museum, to find out the detail of exactly how the progression has gone of our connection to the gun in America. So I went through that side of it, but I also went to inner-city gang members, believe it or not, to find out where they get their guns and how we can reduce gun-crime. I actually asked a lot of gang members what they think of gun control, and it was enlightening. They all said it just doesn’t work – they said it in more expressive ways than I can say on air, but that’s what they had to say.
Jason:
Being a gang member, the inference is there that you’re not following the law anyway, so why would gun laws matter to you?
Frank:
That’s how it is. It was in New York City where I hung out with them, and that’s true. Some actually offered to take me to the places where they buy guns to show me how they get them and how easy that market is there, and I, of course, had to say no because that’s a felony right there. Their perspective on that street was very interesting. It said a lot about guns and gun control. One former gang member actually pointed around the street and said ‘Look, let me show you what’s going on here.’ This was a former gang member who has a felony conviction and can never own a gun again. He says ‘Look, you see those stores over there? The shopowners over there should be the pillars of the society, but they’re not, because their guns are taken away and they’re victims waiting to happen. Now look around more. Okay, there’s a cop who should be the good guy in this street, and he is, but unfortunately the street doesn’t see him that way. Look over there. Those are gang members and they have guns – they might not have a gun on them, but they can go and get a gun, and they can come and kill you. They’re the real power on this street, so take a young guy coming up He’s 14 or 15 years old, who’s he going to look up to? It’s the guy who has real power on the streets.’ So I said okay, but how do we change that? What do we do? And he said, ‘It’s easy. Take my mother, who can pass a background check and spends every night by herself in this rough neighbourhood – let her carry a gun if she wants to. Let those shop-owners who can pass a background check carry firearms if that’s what they so desire. If you do that, you’ll change the power structure on the street and suddenly the good guys can step in and not just be passive observers or victims, but be a real part of the solution.’ That was coming from a former gang member in New York City.
Jason:
Wow, that’s amazing. That’s just incredible. So, I think one of the reasons, Frank, that this gun thing is the way it is, if you look at a place like Chicago – one of the most dangerous places in the country for sure, if not the world – and they’ve got really strict gun control. They’re disarming all the good citizens, as your gang member interviewee so rightly pointed out, but the problem is that most of this gun violence in Chicago, I believe, is gang-on-gang gun violence. So the regular middle-class person isn’t really affected by it, or at least not very often, and that’s why they think gun control is good, probably. I try to think ‘What the heck are these people thinking?’ Outlaws don’t obey laws, by definition, so why would you expect them to obey a gun control law?
Frank:
Right. It’s not just the murder rate that’s gone up in Chicago; other crime rates have also gone up there. There are a lot of streets there that are economically impoverished, and in that state because a person who has money in his wallet wouldn’t go to those streets. That’s because of the situation that’s created by the gun control in Chicago.
Jason:
Oh, that’s an interesting viewpoint, expand on that. I like that.
Frank:
That’s true; you’re destroying based on that criminal element because you’re allowing it to stay there and be the only guy that’s armed. You’re also not prosecuting the bad guys. In 2012, when Chicago became the murder capital per capita of the US, they also had the lowest prosecution rate of gun crime at a federal level – that’s out of all the other 60 jurisdictions of the United States – they’re not going out there and arresting these people.
Jason:
Why not? What’s the reason behind that?
Frank:
Because they’re afraid of doing something racial – if they arrest more people in those neighbourhoods, they’re arresting more minorities. To them, that by definition is racist, because a higher percentage of minorities are getting arrested.
Jason:
Unbelievable that that political correctness just obscures the truth.
Frank:
They’re literally killing people.
Jason:
Yeah, unbelievable. Political correctness is deadly, there’s your example.
Frank:
I actually found a real antidote to this thing. I spent time with a school teacher in Pennsylvania and we talked about him in the introduction to The Future of the Gun, and he’s a black man who runs a group for inner-city kids. He brings them in, he checks all their grades and he helps them get their grades up. As he does that, he teaches them how to shoot and use guns, and how to go hunting. That process of using the good gun culture comes in and helps to change it. All that kids have seen in this inner-city is the bad side of guns: the gang member with the knife tucked away in his shorts. Suddenly they see guns as something that can mature them if used appropriately and properly; that they’re then responsible and good citizens themselves. They feel a certain kind of strength from that. Over and over again, I was told by graduates of that program that it either saved their lives or kept them out of jail. They talk about friends of theirs that didn’t go through this, and a lot of them are dead or in jail for life.
Jason:
That’s very interesting. I don’t know that everybody will understand that, but it’s interesting when you teach gang members and bad people, like when they go to the military, for example, and they use weapons, when they learn martial arts and excel at it, or when they use a gun to go hunting and they use it responsibly and respect it for the power it has. It’s kind of a paradox, even to me. You’d think ‘I don’t want these people learning martial arts or how to use a gun – it’s bad enough as it is, don’t teach them’. Can you comment on that? Why is that?
Frank:
In society a good person has that power to basically just protect their own life; it’s a natural basic right. It’s also a constitutional right.
Jason:
Right, but I’m talking about a bad person – a gang member.
Frank:
Yeah, you can teach a gang member to shoot properly.. If you take them to the military, they tend not to go to that bad area.
Jason:
What about at-risk youths?
Frank:
They’re using that program to make them stand up as real individuals. You walk into the classroom, and they’re all inner-city kids and most of them are minorities, and they all stand up and they’ll shake your hand and say ‘Yes Sir’ to you. They’re being taught a real sense of honour, and it’s that real honour that’s missing from that street when you allow the power structure to be run by the criminal element of that neighbourhood. That’s what’s happening. It’s topsy turvy. The only way to fix that is let the good person come in and be that good example. It’s interesting when you look at freedom this way because it expands further than that. In this book I detail Americans’ relationship that they’ve always had with the gun, and most people misunderstand it because its history just hasn’t been taught. I also spent a lot of time with Special Forces soldiers and talking to them about their experience in firearms. Some had grown up with guns and some hadn’t, and some of the instructors told me their job in those training facilities is to create country boys. They said they spend most of their time teaching people to shoot who have no skill or have never grown up using an Air 58, or another type of firearm, and so didn’t have those skills already in them. It takes a long time to learn to shoot well and properly, and especially at that level.
Jason:
Very interesting. Good, so tell us about your other findings.
Frank:
It’s interesting – in one chapter I wanted to ask the question ‘How have gun rights beaten the media?’ This is fascinating because most mainstream media for the last half a century has been dead-set against this individual right to bear arms, yet we’ve been winning it. How?
Jason:
Oh yeah, it’s just pervasive. It’s amazing that it’s even survived, I know. Go ahead, how?
Frank:
Well, when you start to look at it, you realize there are a 100 million gun owners in this country, and by themselves, they’re already a grass-roots group in hunting and shooting clubs, and they go off in shooting competitions, all off the mainstream radar. That’s what they do; it’s a practical right and it’s a normal thing for them. So when it comes to the time to vote that freedom, they realize how practical and real that right is. The elitist and the big media outlets in the cities, however, just don’t understand what’s going on in the country and what that connection is. They’re so insulated from it, and they’re not living in those rough neighbourhoods in their own cities even. They just don’t get that connection – they don’t understand what America really is.
Jason:
It’s amazing that guns have stood up to the mainstream media, to this attitude that every time there’s a shooting, it’s ‘Oh, it’s the guns’. They never blame the prescription drugs and the media never covers that, because guess who’s sponsoring the TV show, right? ‘And sponsoring the news tonight…’ it’s one of these big drug companies. There is real evidence that all of these shooters are taking these anti-depressant drugs and cocktails of this stuff, and it causes all kinds of weird, scary behaviour, but you never hear that. You don’t hear much about the violent video games, or much at all about the violence of the movies that are on television, it’s always the gun’s fault.
Frank:
That’s very well put. They blame the gun, not the bad guy. That right there is the problem. As long as they’re allowed to continue doing that, that’s how we get things like universal background checks. If Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg and those billionaires really want to do something, why don’t they help the National Shooting Sports Foundation in their FixNICS program, where they’re trying to get those mental health records.A person who’s really found criminally insane by a court of law has those records put into a database so they can’t buy a firearm – that’s what they’re doing right now. The NSSF is running around state by state and lobbying to get those mental health records – those ones who have actually been found insane by a court of law. They want those records to be put into the Nationalistic Background Check system. You don’t hear about that. They’re having success, and a bunch of states weren’t putting any data in, but the NSSF convinced them that they needed to do this, that it was important and they needed to stop because the people who commit those mass murders almost always have real mental issues. We need to stop that, and that’s a real solution that you’d think those billionaires would be behind, and they’re not.
Jason:
It’s amazing. Yet Bill Gates, I’m sure, has body guards who carry guns. This is the problem, it’s always this elitist mentality. You see Senator Diane Feinstein and the Socialist Republic of California coming out against guns and wanting all sorts of gun control, yet she herself carries a pistol in her purse. The hypocrisy here is just amazing.
Frank:
That’s exactly right. They’re apart and they’re above. I’ve interviewed a bunch of journalists for this book; one one of the founders of CNN, who is now linked with the Shooting Wire. He was never anti-gun, but he was not into the issue for a long time until the last CNN meeting. He started the Shooting Wire and thought ‘I get it now. I grew up with guns, and I wasn’t sure for a long time, but I get it now’. In the book I go into that mentality that changed CNN over those years, and turned it into what it became. I also spent time with Stephen Hunter – he was a Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post writer – who of course wrote a lot of great novels. He’s always been pro-gun, and he grew up in a house that was anti-gun but became pro-gun over time. Now he’s very pro-gun and shoots every day, but having him diagnose the newsrooms and the way the media sees this issue is very interesting.
Jason:
It really is. I think another issue with guns is that Americans, I guess more so now than ever, but overall, I think Americans generally don’t feel that the government will ever become any real threat to our freedom. But it’s like boiling a frog – they’re just doing it so slowly that they don’t think that Americans will ever need guns to protect themselves against their own government. In other countries – I mean, Iran a couple of years ago had guns – the country would be under new management. If you saw the government just shooting into crowds and murdering defenceless people… I don’t think anybody here believes that could really happen.
Frank:
Well, I think some people do but it’s also a scary idea to talk about. I did recently have a conversation with a guy from England, and I talk about this in the book a little bit, but he was boasting about how great his country is because he’s a citizen of the world and they don’t have guns anymore. Even though I talked to Scotland Yard a lot about the crime they do have, and criminals in London do have guns. Cops in England used to boast that they didn’t carry guns, but it’s getting more and more that they have to carry guns because of that emboldened criminal situation. People are no longer part of the solution. He was very proud of it. I reminded him that in World War Two, the NRA actually started a gun-drop to re-arm the UK because they’d been mostly disarmed by that point, and they sent over thousands of personal arms. Then of course, our military sent millions more, and how we re-armed them and got them ready before they looked like they might possibly be invaded by Germany. I said ‘We’ll be there again, and we’ll help you next time you need us.’
Jason:
History has just proven it, over and over again..I’ll tell you a funny thing; I was on a date once and I was at the movies and we were watching that spoof movie, I think it’s called ‘The Whole Ten Yards’ or ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ or something like that, and these mobsters with their guns were there and I whisper over to my date ‘Oh, I have the same gun’ as the guy was holding in the movie, and she goes ‘I hate guns’, and I lean back over to her and I say ‘Yeah, guns cause freedom’.
Frank:
[Laughs]
Jason:
That’s one of the interesting side-effects about guns: they cause freedom. You would think that the liberal left would see that they preach about equality and equal rights – guns are the only thing that can level the playing field between a little old lady and a big, strapping gangster, or a group of gangsters. Guns are the ultimate in equality. That little old lady is just as powerful as that big gangster who might be attacking or killing or robbing her, or whatever. The media just doesn’t cover when guns are used for good or used to protect people. They only cover the negative side. It’s amazing. I had John Lott on the show before – More Guns, Less Crime, and a few other books on the subject – and guns are being used to protect people in legitimate circumstances. You don’t hear any of these stories.
Frank:
They don’t make the media, and John is doing a great job. He’s a friend and I just spoke to him recently. He got an article published for a student who is at Dartmouth College. She was being stalked aggressively by a guy who’s known to be a very dangerous individual. She wants to carry a gun on that campus to protect herself, and the University won’t let her do it. She’s just a little blonde girl from California, and she’s now disarmed and a victim waiting to happen – she’s scared.
Jason:
It’s something else – it’s just amazing. What else would you like to say on the gun issue? Then I’d like to just briefly ask you about the Survival Guide before we wrap up.
Frank:
Yeah, the only big part of the book we haven’t jumped into is that I also spent a lot of time with the firearms makers. A lot of the RMD Departments actually let me come in to look at how they’re pushing the gun technologically, and it’s fascinating what’s going on there. Just in the last year they’ve started using a computer program called Solid Works, where they can actually build these guns. They can build them right there on the computer screen, test fire it (the computer screen can check all the test points and everything on that firearm) to see if it’ll handle that calibre etc. What’s interesting about that is they’re beginning to take different technologies from other sectors and they’re putting them into guns. The gun is essentially a 19th Century invention in the 20th Century, which is now about to take a big leap forward. When you talk to people who worry about these smart guns – and there’s a good reason to worry about smart guns. A lot of anti-gun groups see it as a way to mandate a certain unproven technology, and they’re for now banning all the guns available, which is a real threat. There’s a lot more going on than just that. There are tracking points and so on, which are beginning to technologically marry a digital optic with a trigger system. When that happens, things really start to change and then you mandate what guns can do.
Jason:
Right, so that’ll have like a fingerprint sensor, right?
Frank:
A smart gun has that. The tracking points scope doesn’t. There are a couple of smart guns out there. Kodiak Arms has the Intelligun, which uses a biometric scanner on the clip of a 1911 pistol, so it’s actually a conversion kit for a 1911. Within one second, if it reads your finger and says ‘Okay, you’ve programmed yourself in to be approved’, it unlocks the gun, but it’s a battery inside your gun, and understandably not a lot of gun owners want to take a device designed to save your life and put a battery in it.
Jason:
I know. I would just be so afraid that that wouldn’t work. The one time in your life, when you might actually need the gun desperately, I would just be so afraid that it would fail.
Frank:
But we’ll let the market figure it out, because there are certain places where I could understand why that would be something you would try. A prison guard, for example – that’s a real place where a gun could be taken away from somebody. Maybe that’s one place where you might try to apply that, or maybe some of the school boards would be more comfortable with having a gun inside the classroom. I’d rather just feel that the owner was able to carry it, but if that makes the school board feel better, at least there’s a gun there to protect our children.
Jason:
You know, Frank, on the schools subject, it’s so worth mentioning – we’d be remiss if we didn’t. Just discuss that for a quick moment here. It is crazy to me, psychotic. These laws that say that you can’t have a gun within 1000 feet of a school, when it’s like putting up a sign ‘Come and do a mass shooting here if you’re nuts; we’re unarmed’. Why do you think these shooters go to schools, movie theatres etc. that have signs all over that say no firearms. Even in a place where it’s legal to carry a firearm, it’s just so nonsensical. I don’t get it.
Frank:
They’re victim zones. One thing that’s not talked about enough is – okay, usually there are mental health issues – but they’re also the biggest wimps in the world. They’re looking for victims they can go and dominate because of whatever issues have gone on in their lives or any psychological issues they have. It’s the wimpiest possible thing you could do, and yet that’s what they do. The only way to protect them is not to have this so-called bubble of the gun-free zone, where it’s just a victim zone, and let good people carry guns if they so desire.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s amazing. Good points. Frank, what is a tracking scope? We talked about the fingerprint reader but I never asked you that.
Frank:
The Tracking Point scope. The company is Tracking Point, and it’s interesting. There’s a digital optic on a rifle – there’s an AR and you can have it on a bolt-action rifle as well – you zoom in using digital optics. You’re not looking through the scope, you’re actually looking at a video recorder. You’re looking over a great distance of over 1000 yards away and you tag a spot or a target. It can be a moving target, it can be a game animal. The scope will actually follow that tag, actively, and when you pull the trigger, the gun won’t go off until everything is perfectly in-line. That’s taking wind and a number of other factors into consideration. The scope knows that when the trigger’s pulled everything has to be exactly in line so that bullet hits that exact point over that great distance. There are some people that are afraid of that because an ambusher can suddenly shoot long distances, and that’s actually not true.
Jason:
They would suddenly be a pro, potentially, right? Or not?
Frank:
Yeah, but when you look at the technical reasons behind it, and I spent some time with some former Special Forces snipers on it, that’s true and not true. Just taking windage out on bullets, especially over extremely long ranges, it’s really an art. It’s not usually a constant thing because it’s all changing. It takes an experienced eye to see ‘Okay, here’s where the wind is really going to push or pull this’ and people often don’t realize how much a bullet will get pushed just in 500 yards. Often, a .30-06 could easily be pushed 3ft in 500 yards. If you go to 1000 yards, this could be a very long distance depending on the conditions, and that takes a guy with a lot of experience. It’s actually not true, but it’s very interesting that when you take it to that level, you’re beginning to open out this whole sci-fi area where you can do so many different things and just use your imagination. It’s amazing what that gun becomes capable of as that technology advances.
Jason:
Give out your website and tell people where they can find out more.
Frank:
Yeah, it’s www.frankminiter.com, you can read a lot of my articles at www.forbes.com – just type in my name because I do write a lot on the gun issue there.
Jason:
Fantastic. Well, Frank Miniter, thank you so much for joining us today and keep getting the word out about this. It’s a very important topic and we’ve just seen throughout history and throughout geography around the US, the data is just overwhelming. People should be allowed to have guns; it’s crazy any other way, so thank you for getting the word out about this.
Frank:
Yeah, it’s good to talk to you.
Outro:
What’s great about the shows you’ll find on www.jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn how to finance your next real estate deal, there’s a show for that. If you want to learn more about food storage and the best way to keep those onions from smelling up everything else, there’s a show for that. If you honestly want to know more about business ethics, there’s a show for that. And if you just want to get away from it all and need to know something about world travel, there’s even a show for that. Yup, there’s a show for just about anything. Only from www.jasonhartman.com, or type in ‘Jason Hartman’ in the iTunes store.
Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth Show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.jasonhartman.com or search ‘Jason Hartman’ on iTunes. This show was produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own, and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalised advice, please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.