Checking in, quick updates, what's going on in the world

Ta-da! All right, so full disclosure right now, I'm going to do everything I can not to drool during this video. Um, and lighting is going to drive me crazy, but that's okay because we're not trying to be all perfect. Like, we're just going on because we have something to say. Um, so this half of my face is totally numb, hence her comment about hopefully not drooling today. But I had to try because in about 45 minutes I have an interview I got to do. So I figured I'd talk to you guys first for a few minutes to see how this actually works. Um, all right. So I already forgot what the heck I put in the description, but that's okay. Wow. Talking with half a, a numb face is harder than I expected. All right. So what's happening this week? All right. We are closing. Hey, BBQ. Uh, sorry, Jonathan. You know, I don't know if you're all incognito, 'cause you know, you're over on the evil Facebook side. Hey Tara. I'm assuming this is actually for Tara, but anyway, what am I doing? I am talking to you guys. So anyway, thanks for popping on. This should be quick. 'Cause like I said, I'm trying not to drool 'cause this side of my face, like all the way to my ear is swollen and not swollen, numb. There we go. But I'm like super excited because why, uh, it was only a cavity and they filled it. I don't have to have a root canal, so yay for that. All right, so super exciting week, a little bit crazy. So jumping on because, uh, tomorrow's Thursday, dropping number 4 in my instructor series, which is gonna be— number 4 is going to be Julie Golub from Team Smith Wesson. At least I'm pretty sure she's still on Team Smith Wesson. Um, Oh, well, you know, now we can get the party started because Fiona is here on the YouTube side. Um, well, see, the beauty of you being on the evil YouTube side, then, you know, this way, uh, I don't know, you can give me a like on Facebook and a thumbs up on YouTube, so it all works out. So, uh, tomorrow, 7 PM Eastern, is what is my instructor series. Julie Golub is dropping tomorrow. If you want to see any of the previous ones, we have Kellyanne Pidgeon was number 1, Kerrianna Clare is number 2, our wonderful leader from DC Project, Di Mueller is number 3, and then Julie Golub is number 4. In about half an hour, I'm going to be interviewing number 8 in the series. And this weekend— all right, so that's tomorrow, 7 o'clock, interview instructor interview series. Friday afternoon I shall be hopping on a plane and headed to Detroit, and I will be helping out with— oh, like, I really have to look up what the acronym means before I say this because it makes sense, um, but if I don't, I will just say it and it will just be, um inappropriate, inappropriate, something like that. Uh, Rick Ector is going and, um, he's, he's organizing this thing in Detroit where there's going to be a bunch of us. Hey, Vanessa Kitty. Um, in Detroit, and we are training, uh, as many women that sign up for free in that 24, 48 hours of, um Saturday and Sunday. So Friday afternoon I am jumping on a plane, heading out to Detroit, meeting up with a whole bunch of other crazy instructors who are also donating their time from all over the country. So if you're in Detroit, do totally take advantage of this. Sign up, it's free. Vanessa, I know we were talking about the other day too, that when are we gonna do something free in Connecticut? And so my plan is to go and totally pay attention to all the stuff, like how does Rick run this? This is number 11 for them, and be able to bring some of that back to Connecticut and maybe go to CCDL and see if we can put something together like this for Connecticut so we can do another free training. Um, yeah, so probably not, although I've considered it actually. Uh, once I turn 35, I'm like, you know, I can actually just send ballots out to people and have them sign them and I could actually be a candidate without a party, but I could run for president. But who would want that job? For real, everyone in politics is crazy, including me. So that's Detroit, and that's this weekend, the 30th and 31st, and it should be awesome. I can't wait to learn from how they're doing this crazy event. Women are showing up for 2 hours at a time. First, first run's 9:30 to 11:30, and then we've got— I don't know if we have any race in between, so it's, uh, it's all good. I can't, and that's fine with me. What can't you do? I don't even know what you can't do. You can't run for president? You're not old enough yet, that must be it. So anyway, um, so that's going to be an amazing weekend, but the sad part of that is I will not be here this weekend for any of my students. I am open in the morning I did open up my schedule, so— and I actually made it earlier, so on this Friday you can start scheduling at 9 AM. And if you go to do that and it says no, let me know. So 9 to 12, I am still teaching, and then 12 to 2, I am packing and getting my butt off to the, uh, um, whatever you call it. Oh, you're old enough, you just weren't born here. I see how that works. Hello, DJ. All right, so how far did I get? All right, Thursday night check out the instructor interview series Friday. Book for to see me early in the morning, 9 to 12. Saturday and Sunday, I will not be here at A Great Start Shooting School. I will be out in Detroit with Rick Hector, Charlie from Riding Shotgun with Charlie, and a boatload of other people. Paul Lathrop from— oh wow, I was about to say Eye on the Target Radio because I already jumped ahead to Amanda Suffocool. So Amanda will be there, uh, Paul from the Flight Society Podcast, and a whole bunch of others. So who knows what kind of content is going to happen over this weekend. So yay, it's going to be exciting, um, to hang out with a whole bunch of other instructors. On the other hand, for my students, I apologize, and I appreciate your understanding for me not, not being able to teach you here this weekend while I'm teaching for free out that way. Who else? Hey, BS. BS. Yeah. Okay. After I said that out loud, I had to think about that. But it's always funny when I'm putting stuff on the calendar for my son for Boy Scouts and I wanna abbreviate, I'm like, I'm just gonna write Scouts instead. So, all right, so that's this weekend. August, we are coming up on vacation time for Great Start Shooting School. Great Start Shooting School is going to be closed for a weekend. Thursday, my birthday, August 18th, and all the way, and that's it. So that weekend, August 18th through the 22nd, 21st, there will be no classes here at a Great Start Student School. So that was kind of the update on what's happening here at a Great Start Student School. Shall we delve into the legally armed in Detroit? Thank you, DJ. I was trying to look up what Rick Ector says, which is— is it legally armed in Detroit? Oh, that is it. Awesome. All right, so what Rick Ector says, for those of you who are not familiar with him, he says get laid with Rick Ector, because if you take L for legally, A for armed, I for in, and Detroit, there we have— we have Detroit. There we go. Yeah, so anyway, so that's what we're gonna go play. And yes, you can come visit me because other than this weekend and my birthday weekend, uh, A Great Structure Tools open tonight. I am teaching online because I do offer an online pistol permit class. And for those of you who don't know, the way that works is it's 5:30 to 9:30, we do the classroom stuff here online, and then you come in for your live fire. So there's that. And finally, and sadly, which the part of this will not make it evergreen other than we're talking about this weekend, the rifle ban bill has made it through its first line of politics. Oh my gosh. And for those of you just joining us, this side of my face is currently numb because I just came from the dentist, and this is all very weird feeling, and the fact that it's numb all the way to my ear because I need extra, extra, extra amounts of painkillers when they start drilling my teeth. So, um, if you have not called your senators, your congressmen, and said rifle bans are stupid, please do so. Um, and no BS, I do not know what the Guardian course is. There are 5 million different types of training out there, and it's sort of a bit like Fight Club to me in that, like, when when I got it, like, when in my 20s, back in the 1990s, um, we would watch Shooting USA and we would see all these competitions all over the country. So Florida, Arizona, California, and we're just like, wow, that's really cool, but they're all not here. And then we got into competition here in New England and we're like, oh look, they are here. But until you're into it, you can't find it. Same kind of with, um, Oh, what do you call it, with training, is that when I was brand new, I didn't know anything about anything. Finding firearms training seemed like finding, you know, Ahab's white whale. But then once you get into it, you're like, oh my gosh, there's training here, here, here, here, here, here, depending on what flavor you want. And at that point, you have to know what flavor you're actually looking for. My training has primarily been shoot fast and shoot accurately. Oh, all right, another teaser for y'all. Uh, you know, keep your fingers crossed that I get to the editing table tonight. But guess what I did? I did the 40-yard challenge. I did. Uh, what I did actually— should I tell you now? Should I make you wait? I don't know. I don't know how I'm gonna edit it, so— but what I did is I started at 10 yards, 15, 20, 30, and 40 with my itty-bitty little Sig. Um, the 365 XL. And I say itty-bitty just because for me it's itty-bitty even though it says XL. Um, so to DJ's question, um, it's not pulled, it was passed. Uh, so it's now— it was either passed in the House and is on to the Senate, or it was passed in the Senate and is now on to the House. Uh, it's, uh, there's so many moving parts. I'm not gonna lie, I don't keep up on it all the time. So there we have it. There is a little bit of everything. I think I managed to not drool during this, so that was my number one goal. Uh, upcoming closures is this weekend, the July 30th and 31st, and also the weekend of my birthdate, August 18th through the 22nd. So if you're looking for training, get the training in now, Fiona. Oh, Fiona, I am also offering an instructor course in October. I post that up in A Girl and a Gun because I'm offering it to my Girl and a Gun members first, and then I will be putting it out to the rest of the world. No, we don't have a weekend yet. It was funny, Gabby and I posted up the same day, and there's also going to be an intro to IDPA for A Girl and a Gun. In October as well. So she and I need to discuss dates to find out so we don't overlap in October. And so, because I know you're interested in the instructor course, and there are only 6, uh, 6 whatever those are called, 6 seats in that class. It's not going to be all girls. Well, it might be if the Girl and the Guns girls all take it before any— I get it. Go, let it go. Holy moly, I'm gonna blame it on the Novocaine. Yes. For, um, Maggie, who just got here, uh, I just got a filling, and so I'm— my goal, number one goal today is not to drool on y'all. So the DC trip, let's see if I can do this in a little tiny little thing. We went, we saw, we came home and didn't throw up. No, sorry. Um, so the DC trip was quick and hard in that got in the car Tuesday night, got our hotel. When we got there, the, the hotness of the heat was lovely waiting to get into the building for the hearing. We got into the hearing, uh, listened to, uh, I don't know how to— anti-gun, pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-gun, anti-gun for the panel. The witnesses that were there to talk to our representatives. And it was challenging because the whole point of the, the hearing was to talk about Parkland, the shooting. And so the anti-gun people, the thing that I really noticed is they are super, super really focused on making stuff as graphic and emotionally painful as possible. And so because of that, it was very hard because a tragedy is a tragedy, and I don't care which side of the fence you are on, people dying in the streets and getting shot when they're supposed to be enjoying their afternoon at a parade is a horrific tragedy without a doubt. The showmanship though of having coordinated all of their testimonies to make sure that certain words were said over and over and over again is a little bit contrived, and it's hard to imagine where the feelings truly are. And if you didn't watch the whole thing, because it was hard to watch, it's, it's, it's one of those things is like, this is where violence prevention is something that shouldn't be a political thing. It shouldn't be Democrat versus Republican. Violence prevention should be an American thing, and we should actually want violence prevention across the, across the board. And the thing that for me was distressing was that the anti-gun people are purely just anti-gun, because our pro-gun people, they were in there, And it's not even that we're pro-gun, we're really pro-freedom, right? It's not like we— I don't know how to explain it well in a short amount of time, but the strategies that we are aware of as folks who choose to understand what the use of a firearm is in self-defense— and I've told everybody this before, it's like, I'm primarily a competitive shooter. I am not here to be your self-defense guru in any way, shape, or form. But because I'm in the gun world, I absolutely pay attention to this stuff. It's like first rule of self-defense: to win the fight, avoid the fight. If you can't avoid the fight, de-escalate. If de-escalation isn't working, make space and time between you and your aggressor. You know, and these are the things that get glossed over when we're talking about guns. And, and, you know, they think, oh, you carry a gun because you want to shoot someone. I'm like, no, that's really absolutely 100% not what we're there for. So the fact that threat assessment, the idea of de-escalation, the idea that people need mental health here in America— people are screaming for mental health. We don't have enough mental health services, we don't have enough mental health clinicians, we don't have any beds for people. It's really, really quite horrible and The folks who understand how to actually prevent violence and are putting out all of these different options, the gentleman, the first gentleman who spoke, and I'm trying super hard to remember his name, but his group goes around and looks at K through 12 and they look at holistic ways to prevent violence because we know violence is in certain demographic areas within certain cities. It just is. And his whole thing is go into K-12, look at a holistic approach. Do they have food? Are they being taken care of? Stress management, all of these things to help kids. And they train the teachers, they train the admins, they train people to actually be able to see what kids need for help because if we're going to talk about gun deaths in the younger group, it's one of two things, and it's horrible. It is suicide and it's gang violence. And his group goes in and actually prevents these things from happening in the first place. So that was our first one. Hello, Miss Heidi. Um, and then the second gentleman is the president of, um, what is it, African-American Black Gun Owners. And I apologize, I actually just looked at his card this morning, and he was just talking about how important it is for freedom. And he was talking about the racism of all the gun laws. Pretty much every gun law is racist. And he talked about how important it is that women specifically, because African American women are the largest growing population of new gun owners currently in America. And so he talked about how important it is for them to have the freedom of choice and to be able to take care of themselves and how empowering it is and so on and so forth. So those are pro-gun conversations in that room. So that's where I don't have to yell because It is hard, and I did cry. I mean, like I said, tragedy is tragedy. There isn't a single person who doesn't feel the Parkland shooting was a tragedy. However, the fact that they just stomp their feet and say, get rid of the guns, get rid of the guns, after in some of their testimony they actually said they actually know that that won't solve the problem, but they want to get rid of it anyway. Oh, and here's the other part that drives me nutty. I'm a data queen. I love my FBI, DOJ, Department of Ed, CDC, all of it. I love my raw data. And one of the things that would drive me nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts, totally nuts, my pet peeve, they said true things out of context that to me is just totally horrible. So they want to put Clinton's ban back in, in, in, in, in, right? They just want to ban rifles. And from 1995 to 2005, they banned rifles— or 94 to 95. And so this is a fact. Something else is a fact too. In that time crime went down. So two facts. The problem is they don't have anything to do with each other because that 10-year period is when the DOJ, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Education put forth so many crime prevention programs. And I wish I could remember some of them off the top of my head, but I think they're on Save Thousands, Not Just One if you want to check them out. But so in that time period, crime went down. It had nothing to do with the rifle ban. So it's like they have these two facts that are truth, but they have— there's no overlap when you look at the raw data. Long gun crime actually went up there. Now I say that while I'm going to go back and look at my, look at my stuff again, because I went through 2019 to 2005. From FBI Crime Database, and Barbecue actually has that because I sent it. Yeah, so this was the thing that was driving me insane because he was like, well, in this 10-year period crime went down. I'm like, son of a biscuit, because it's true that the crime did go down, but it had nothing, nothing to do with the rifle ban. And the amount of articles that people have shown to me that talk about You know, crime going down in that 10-year period is just like, oh, so it's true, but it sucks. So anyway, so that was probably my biggest thing and why I'm going back into my data and updating my charts and verifying what I'm telling you right now is true because it's been a while. 2013 when Sandy— 2012 when Sandy Hook happened, I don't even know, 12 or 13. It's horrible, I don't know the date. But anyway, I was— all I did for like 2 years was put information together and look at the raw data. Um, sorry, I'm gonna look and see if I can drop this for you guys. Um, and look at what the programs are that actually prevent violence, because every report that I've ever put forth has— or sorry, every report that I've read has not— has said that crime is not impacted by passing of laws. Crime is impacted by putting forth programs that actually help prevent violence. And this is one of my other little pet peeve things, is that people want to talk about gun violence being an epidemic and this and that. I'm like, Stop. And this is my testimony back this spring in Hartford. Let's talk about violence as a whole, because guess what? There's this much violence in the world, in America, right? There's this much gun violence. And one of the things that senators here in Connecticut were complaining about was they've been focusing on gun violence, a little tiny piece, for so long and they don't feel like they're getting anywhere. I'm like, well, yeah, because you're focusing on the smallest piece of violence possible So if you're into research at all, you understand the smaller your sample size, the harder it is to make an effect. If you looked at violence as a whole, we can actually make a bigger difference. So there we have it. Ooh, I will try to edit my 40-yard, um, 40-yard challenge thing so y'all can see it. It is a little different than what everybody else has seen as well. Sorry, it's a little different than the ones I've seen already. So hopefully I'll get that up before I go to Detroit. Love y'all for popping in, saying hi, that sort of stuff. Um, Save Thousands, Not Just One is a website that I created decades ago, a decade ago. Um, I haven't updated in a while, but it's kind of cool because it will give you reports, programs for suicide prevention, violence prevention, all that kind of stuff. So if you don't want to write Save Thousands, Not Just One, ready? Yes, Maggie, I am going to Detroit after saying no to Rick Ector when he asked me directly. Then we were on that panel on Get Off My Lawn last week, and I threw in the towel because what is greater than volunteering my time and helping women get trained and getting to hang out with a whole bunch of other instructors who are donating their time as well for this? So yeah, I caved. I, I said no initially, and then I'm like, never mind, we're gonna go. So with that, I gotta go. I've got my next instructor interview coming up, uh, that I'm recording, our number 8. And I can tell you who it is though, because I think I like this telling you a week at a time who's next, so you don't know who's in the lineup. So anyway, I will talk to y'all later, uh, hopefully see you tomorrow night at 7 PM for the first instructor interview— sorry, number 4. Yeah, that's what I meant to say. And, uh, yeah, who knows, they'll probably pop up lives over the weekend in Detroit. No guarantee, but possibly. All right, love y'all, have a great day. Like, share, all that fun stuff, and see you later.