Let's talk about Mental Health, mask impacts, and other stuff.

Well, it's— oh, and I have to warn you, I, I do have COVID currently, so I'll be drinking a lot, so you might have to do a lot of the talking.

That's fine, I'm good at it.

Oh good, I think most of us are, or a lot of us are. All right, so according to the thing, we're actually live for the last 15 seconds, so DJ and Gun Websites were already here. Um, GW says he's already got the third, third, third thumbs up and we didn't even get started yet. So we must be just expecting us to be really good. So sorry, I'm gonna try to find—

you sound really good.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to find my mute button as quickly as possible when I'm going to cough so y'all don't have to listen to that.

That's better since you got it tuned up.

Oh, thanks, I am extra special. All right, so good morning everybody. I know it's really morning where you are. What is it, 8 AM or 9 AM where you are? 9. Okay, um, so thanks for getting up and coming and joining us again, Jake. Uh, for those of you who are joining, this is Brooke Cheney, A Great Start Shooting School and all sorts of other stuff. And on Saturdays we do Suicide Prevention Saturday where we talk about the importance of mental health, and Jake here happens to be in the field of mental health. So we had him on last month as a— my first bonus session, and now he is my second bonus session because he's not available on Saturday because he's a family guy, and that's his family time, and these things are important. So today we're going to talk about problem solving, the challenge with being single-focused when you're trying to solve a problem, and we're going to talk about the ever-dreaded masking. Um, a lot of places currently have mask restrictions lifted, uh, mask optional, that sort of thing, but we're still not all the way there. But, um, I don't know. With that, Jake— hi, good morning! How's your day?

So far so good. It's, uh, 2 and a half hours old, so, you know, I just, I just shoved some, uh, leftover pizza down my throat and now my stomach is protesting. Apparently that's not the best breakfast in the world.

I don't know, I had leftover Chinese for breakfast, so we're not that far apart.

No, that's not why they tuned in to hear us. They tuned in to hear us talk about mental health and, uh, and, and so forth, you know. So you bring up the mask issue, and that's— I, I don't want to say that it's, it's off my radar because it's not, but in Nevada, um, we repealed our mask mandate about a month ago, maybe 3 weeks, 4 weeks ago, and, um, various theories as to why. None of them rooted in science, which indicates that the mask mandate itself was probably not rooted in science either. So some of the speculation has to do with business with California. We have a lot of California tourism that comes in Nevada, and California being overly restrictive, uh, you know, people come to Nevada to get away from some of that stuff. Sometimes they just pack up and move altogether and buy a new home and find a new job because California taxes people into oblivion and doesn't always provide the benefit commensurate with that taxation. So, you know, a lot of times when they're on vacation, especially during the last couple of years, they come here because we're a little bit more free. Well, if California is lifting its mask mandate, it's not a good signal when Nevada has one in place. So, you know, as go the politics, so go our mandates. But I was— I spent, um, August is when the, the new, the newest iteration of this came through August of '21, and our governor, through executive fiat, uh, lever, uh, he, uh, levied a mandate on kindergarten through 12th grade. And I took personal, deep, professional exception to that because I work with children for a living, uh, children and families. I've spent half my lifetime in schools, uh, my entire lifetime in schools, either as a student or as a some sort of professional. So I know child development really, really well.

And Jay, can we expand on that just a tiny bit? Just because some people have not seen you— they didn't see you last month. So would you tell them a little bit about what your job is working with kids? Because that's kind of important.

Silly me, I just skipped right over the, uh, the introduction. So professionally, I work as a marriage and family therapist. So I'm licensed in the state of Nevada to do that. Certified nationally as a national certified counselor. And those are fancy things that mean things to some people and not to others. But, but the point is, yes, I'm licensed to treat and diagnose mental health issues, disorders, and the like. And so I own and operate a company called Zephyr Wellness. We have 17 clinicians working here and a handful of front desk staff. And We've been in business for about 7 years, and we work all through the community, and I wear several hats. You alluded to being a family guy, not like Peter Griffin, but like, like in real life family.

No Stewie in your household?

I'm not going to say that. There may or may not be. But I do have 2 kids, and on Saturdays, we do spend— oh, there we go. Sorry. We do have, we do spend time as a family, and I'm coaching both their Little League teams. So, so that's why I can't appear on Saturdays. But I do a lot of suicide prevention stuff. I would— I do work in that realm and I work in that realm with an organization called Walk the Talk America, which some people might be familiar with. It's trying to join together the two communities of firearms owners and mental health practitioners so that we can solve the issue of suicide, chiefly suicide by firearm, but suicide overall. And also, the ripple effect from inviting gun owners into mental health care is to solve a lot of the other distresses in their life too. My job is to say I can stand in both worlds as a firearms owning clinician. I can welcome in gun owners to let them know that we're not spooky and weird and of the occult, and hopefully we won't be judgmental and chase them away. And then to train up my fellow practitioners so that we're not spooky and judgmental and chase people away, because a lot of people have misunderstandings about what we do. So anyway, back to the mask things. Child development is driven largely by facial expression, and for anybody who's, who's listened to me talk, you know that I'm center a lot of my intervention strategies and a lot of my teaching on emotional functioning. And I've drawn this stuff from literature over the last 7 decades or so, 8. And we know that we develop by watching what people say. Now, that's my angle, emotional, psychological, social development. Now, there's also speech development issues with regard to watching words get formed with lips. And I just read an interesting paper. I was trying to bring it up, but it was published about a month ago saying that Yes, indeed, the pandemic and its— I hate saying the pandemic caused because the pandemic doesn't cause anything but sickness. But the restrictions placed upon society from the pandemic have caused lots of things, one of which is because we've been masking children, we're now seeing speech delays largely in children who need extra speech supports, but also across the board to the quote-unquote regular developing kids. So Masks are bad. And I took a position in August where I very vocally started speaking out against the mask mandates, uh, and I didn't do any risk calculus. I didn't say, hey, you know, check it out for yourself, parents, uh, you know, I, I believe that this is a bad thing, that masks are not doing what they're supposed to do. Anyway, all I said was don't cover your kid's face 8 hours a day in school because they're going to fall behind. For a whole bunch of reasons. Um, and they did, and unfortunately I was right, and now we don't have a mask mandate, but I know they're still in place elsewhere.

So in Connecticut, we currently have it so that we are, um, uh, parents' choice. So kids have a choice if they want to go or not. Um, and oh wait, so G23 says hi. He's going to be interviewing you on the 26th.

So nice.

He's just stalking you now, I think. So, um, yeah, with that whole thing, it's like, it's, it's, it's optional here in Connecticut. Um, some kids are, some kids aren't. I was listening to a parent talk the other day and she was saying her daughter chooses to, um, wear a mask because it's just what they've already been conditioned to do. So what's the harm in it?

Yeah, I'll tell you exactly what the harm is in it. Um, you're sending a message that the kid should be afraid of the air. That's a harm. Um, the kid isn't choosing for herself. Let's, let's get that straight. Kids only know what they're told, and we don't, we don't emerge from the womb having foreknowledge of the world. We get taught knowledge, and that goes for everything from habits to belief systems to impressions of the, of, of other people and how events play out and what your favorite ball team is.. You don't just magically stumble upon it because the cosmos intuited it into your brain. So she's not choosing. She was instructed and she was pushed a certain direction, just like certain kids are pushed a different direction and says, yeah, you could choose them out. Of course I choose my clothes in the morning too. Um, but why am I choosing certain clothes? Because somebody gave me the idea that certain clothes are more fashionable than another or more comfortable or whatever it is. Um, so let's not pretend that this kid is just organically choosing to wear a face covering when 2 years ago that same child was not doing that. And I have a very strong opinion about what I would do if someone 2 years ago had come to me and said, this mother masks her children, her healthy children, in public because she's afraid of them getting sick. I would call CPS. That's abuse.

Sorry, what is CPS? Child Protective Services. Sorry, I figured it out after a minute, but it's one of those things.

Usually I explain my, uh, my acronyms and my lingo. So, um, it's okay, I stumbled over that one too.

Well, it's like DMV, Department of Motor Vehicles in Connecticut is called something else in Mass. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, pop versus soda.

So don't ever say pop, it sounds like you're from the Midwest.

I'll go to the package store and get back to you on that.

So, um, so I don't, I don't want to pretend like it's some organic choice, like, oh, you know what sounds like a good idea now? It's like, well, why is it a good idea now, and why wasn't it for the last 100 years? We've got lots of randomized control trials, 20 or more, spanning the last several decades that suggest that masks do nothing to ameliorate disease transmission with aerosolized viruses. Like, that's, that's not even up for debate. And yet the narrative shifted, and we were programmed to believe that it was now something new and convenient. And we— I mean, I don't want to get into all the the discussion about why it happened and the, the issues. I want to deal with the fallout, right? And, um, Gun Websites has a question in the chat: will the consequence of the last few years be a stronger focus on health education going forward?

See, this is where I wish it started at the beginning, because if we were going to— it's like, okay, because like I, I have— like I said, I have COVID right now, and I called my doc and he's like, vitamin D, ginger tea, stay hydrated, go in the sauna. All of these things, and yet you don't hear any of that. I feel like if we're going to change the focus on health education, it should have started at the beginning.

Yeah, and that— but unfortunately, that's not what it's about. Uh, people will pay lip service to that, kind of like they'll pay lip service to, um, gun safety, but really it's masking gun control, right? Um, for whatever reason, it's, you know, whether it's financial or just power and control or egos, or it doesn't really matter. It's dishonest, it's disingenuous, So if it were really about health, we would be able to discuss all options to help move health forward. So right now in my field, we've got an explosion of these online teletherapy companies that I think are not good for our profession. And the reason I think they're not good for our profession is because of our own profession's failure to advance itself over the last, I don't know, 40 or 50 years.. And what I mean by that is, for example, I got taught in graduate school that I should not engage my patients in public, something confidentiality, as if saying hi to them in Costco is a breach of federal law. It's not any more than when the dentist calls your name in the lobby, it's a breach of your confidentiality. It's not. But my field, for whatever reason, decided that it was extra special among all the healthcare fields. And through that messaging over the years, We have faded into the shadows. We don't actively participate in community events. We, I mean, we're starting to now in the last 10 years maybe. Um, we don't have a social media presence except for the people you don't really want on social media.

Um, like some, some YouTube gun channels are not so awesome, right?

Right. But there's a proliferation of YouTube gun channels. There's not a proliferation of mental health channels. So let's, let's take, uh, popular culture for example. How many shows about How many medical doctors do you see? A zillion, right? And it didn't start with ER. Maybe General Hospital, maybe St. Elsewhere. I don't know. Like, it goes back a long way. But what's the impression you see of mental health professionals in media? Poor, right? Yeah. It's over the cuckoo's nest. It's the shameful appearance in the shrink's office to discuss your problems. It's not even modernized. You lay down on a couch and the person talks to you like it's 1906 and Sigmund Freud is just good, you know what I mean? Like, it's not even accurate. So we faded into the shadows. It allowed this, this void to be created and someone had to step into it. And who stepped in? People with money, big corporate interests who wanted to make money by commoditizing mental health care. If we want to have a real robust debate about what mental health care looks like, we would entertain conversations like Hey, maybe not everybody needs to be in the psychotherapy office. But in my community, that's verboten. Like, you hear some of my professors talk, it's like, you're not allowed to say that. You're going to run us out of business. Like, maybe we need to be run out of business if that's what the market calls for. So similar to COVID non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies, it's verboten because it might run the vaccine people out of business.

Like, oh no. Oh yeah. And I mean, so Gun Websites brings up M*A*S*H. And for those youngins here, MASH was about wartime. And it's funny because it was Korea. Yeah. Oh, well, yeah. So, but it's the same thing as like, I know you're reaching out and helping gun communities, but the challenges in our veterans, our veterans are the number one group that is dying suicide by firearm. Right. And it's just like, vet— I mean, it's— I know it's not M*A*S*H, but it's like, our veterans are, are the worst. And so it's like, society in general is like, oh no, you can't go get counseling. And like, my counselor— because I go to counseling, um, because I don't know, I believe everyone needs counseling sometimes. But, um, being a parent's hard, being a wife is hard, all of these things.

But it is—

he will not do anything on the phone. He needs to see all of this because our words are— maybe you probably know the, the the thing better than I do, but our words are like 20% of how we communicate. Like my shrug of the shoulders, the way my face is squishing up, all of this, my hands, right? You can't see any of that on the phone.

Yeah, estimates vary on that, anywhere from, you know, 10 to 25% is verbal, the rest is nonverbal. Which unfortunately the mask proponents will say, well, that's fine, you only lose X percent by covering the lips and nose. And it's like That's not true at all. Um, and that's a terrible trope to, to trot out to try to defend your position when you're trying to compel people into an intervention that doesn't work anyway. Um, so, you know, getting back to this, this whole issue of like healthcare discussion, conversation, normalizing, I think what's happened is unfortunately, and I will say unfortunately, the pendulum has swung from nobody talks about mental health to everybody thinks they're mentally ill. And it's not quite that extreme, but you get what I'm saying, because now we've got people who are self-diagnosing through TikTok videos and spreading the message that illness is cool. And when you've got this competition among youth for who can be the biggest victim because it gains sympathy and support and likes and retweets, uh, you'll grab anything, including anxiety and depression. And then that leads to a market opportunity for a lot of these charlatan entities to step in and represent that 30 minutes online or 280 words on the text interface on, you know, BetterHelp or whatever it is, which is one of those online therapy companies, Talkspace, is the way that psychotherapy should be conducted. And it's not. It absolutely is not. We have ethics. We have laws. Um, the ethics are embedded into law on how we should conduct our counseling interventions. And so now the fallout is I look around, it seems like everybody's got a mental illness. We're all suffering and struggling. Media messaging says mental health crisis. President of the United States says mental health crisis. CDC says mental health crisis. You're like, oh, shit, am I the only one not suffering? Like, maybe I should be. And it increases the demand on people like me. And my job now is to push back and go, maybe not. Maybe what you're experiencing is just a normal response to environment. And that's what I talk about in emotional functioning teachings and videos. I got some videos we can drop into the chat later. Is know your emotions well enough so that you can tolerate them appropriately. When life throws garbage your way, you can go, wow, this is garbage, but it's temporary. I don't necessarily need to go seek professional psychotherapy and spend lots of money solving something I could otherwise solve with myself, with my family, with my tribe, right? There was a great question too that G23 put up.

Yeah.

What do you think about most states doing away with mental health coverage and behavioral health facilities? So I think I know what you're talking about there. You're talking about the elimination of long-term care facilities for mental illness that was done away with sort of under President Reagan-ish and then carried through. Um, that's a, that's problematic. That's, that's absolutely 100%. Nobody disagrees with this. Nobody, unless you're delusional or you have some political agenda to push, nobody disagrees with the fact that The lack of long-term care facilities is contributing to homelessness, like chronic homelessness. Yeah. Because we don't have anywhere to send the people who are chronically mentally ill to house them long enough to get them well, if they can even get well. And if they're not able to get well, how do we give them a life worth living? And collectively, the government has said the state's not interested in providing that. And a lot of it was due to misinterpretation of what people thought mental health institutions were. Some of it was justified, some of it was legitimate. There was abuse going on, but, but you don't, you don't eliminate the, the thing, you correct the abuse, right? That's, that's what we should do. We shouldn't have eliminated all the hospitals. Now, to the other point about funding, uh, mental health coverage, something interesting happened with the, uh, the Obamacare, the, the, um, American, uh, what, no, it's, uh, ACA, the, I can't even think of the act.

Yeah, I can't even help you because it's like it was so ingrained to be Obamacare.

It's really hard to call it anything else.

Um, Affordable Care.

Oh yeah, there you go. Uh, it basically compelled everybody to have insurance coverage or you'll be penalized on your tax return, right? Okay, here's the problem with that. Along with that came a mental health parity bill saying that you should have equal access to mental health care and coverage as you do physical health care and coverage. Sounds great, but there's a loophole. If you have what's called a self- self-funded plan, and many of our casinos in Nevada do this as well, as well as some of the, the labor and trade people and whatnot. They have their own insurance plans administered by Anthem or United or one of the big companies, but because they're self-funded, they don't fall into the ACA's rules, which means they can carve out the mental health coverage component. Meaning somebody can walk into Zephyr Wellness, say, I want an appointment with Jake, I have my insurance, it's got Anthem on the card, and we run the benefits check and they don't have a mental health benefit. And we go, well, this is federally illegal. No, it isn't. It's perfectly legal. And that's a loophole that some of the funders now have found to carve out to save them a buck, which to me makes no sense. Because if your person's really struggling and something disastrous happens in the workplace and they find out that you didn't cover mental health care, woe be it to you when you get sued. I don't understand it, but that is a thing. They're also not funding really well at the Medicaid and Medicare levels, and that's a congressional thing with Medicare. I, as a marriage and family therapist, cannot get into Medicare's network. Uh, clinical mental health people, so they're loosely called, which is professional counselors and MFTs, cannot enter the Medicare network. Clinical social workers can, psychologists can. But when you're in a network with Medicare or Medicaid, the funding is, uh, the reimbursement is very low usually across the board. And Nevada's is okay, but it hasn't moved in 12 years.

And it's hard to run a business when gas is $5 a gallon, so there's a little bit of that. Yeah, but I'm going to interrupt you for a second because I have to say—

yeah, go ahead. So, um, the paperwork that comes along with that is really tough too. So now we got a pandemic, people are losing their jobs because things have been locked down, um, they're uninsured, they go on state insurance, and they can't find providers because we don't want to be networked with people who cause headaches for force. So it's, it's a big, it's a big issue.

Yeah. And I just have to jump on because I personally have been impacted by the fact that states don't have behavioral health facilities. Not once, not twice, but three times have I seen it where I have someone in crisis, I'm trying to get them help, they cannot get help. They're literally stuck sitting in an ER because there are no beds. Whether it's for no matter what age group. And here's the weird thing about it, right, is like I've had seniors, which actually started Suicide Prevention Saturday, um, because I was trying to help other people. And it's like they couldn't find a bed, couldn't find a bed, couldn't find a bed. And then I've— and right now we talked about this a little bit last month, but the teens and the preteens who are suicidal right now, like you said, TikTok is big about making everybody feel like they're sick or special or ADHD or trans or whatever is the color of the month. But, um, yeah, not having facilities— and I've talked to other doctors about this and they said, yeah, now what happens is the violent mental health people, or the violent mentally ill people, are in prisons, and the non-violent are the ones that are homeless and suffering. So yeah, not having mental health facilities is huge and a horrible mistake. Um, one of our senators, Christopher Murphy, who all gun people hate with a passion because he's as anti-2A as they can be. But I did actually hear him on an NPR interview where he's like, we made a mistake, we need to recreate somewhere for all these people to go. And that was like 5 years ago. So sadly, nothing much has happened there. Yeah.

And even if you had a wand and you had the budgeting and the financing to build facility— let's just say we print more money, right, and drive inflation even higher than it is, because that sounds like a good idea to somebody. Okay, where are you going to get the bodies to staff the thing? There's the real problem, right? Like, I'm— I happen to be in Nevada, which is dead last in behavioral health provision in the country. Um, we don't have enough people just to treat who walks through our front door, and I'm out there telling people to solve their own problems on their own to keep people from walking through the front door. We can't treat them all. It's— it's— I can't describe the dynamics of how overwhelming it is when most agencies in my state are running 6 to 10 week wait times just for outpatient? Where are you going to find the inpatient staffing? Like, it's, it's crazy.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's like everything else in our society. All of a sudden there's a worker shortage there. You can't staff anything. There's like the stores that I go to, like literally the deli I go to for lunch, everybody's hiring. He's like, are you sure you don't want a job? Are you sure you don't want a job? Like, I love you, man, but no, I don't need a job right now. But it's just like no one can get anyone to fill anything. One of the governor's bills we have here in Connecticut right now, they're talking about funding the police task force. It's like, awesome. Do you have any police, like you said, to fund, to actually fill those places?

I'm gonna hit Bernie's question there. All right, this one.

Yeah. Oh wait, yeah. Okay, sorry, I'm like, I'm getting down there, so Over the years, we've been conditioned to look the other way when it comes to mental health because of fear of retribution, in their opinion, in Bernie's opinion.

Well, that, that's why Walk the Talk America is so important, I think, is that we're— we have people like me going out there saying, I don't have a bat phone to the government to, to tattle on you and come take your property because I think that your anxiety is causing a pro— it's causing me a problem that you own guns and you have anxiety, right? That's, that's really the, the meta message is that the clinician can't handle the idea that firearms aren't an issue.

They aren't. But that's something you guys are— you're working on with the clinician staff, or, you know, with other clinicians.

Trying. It's, it's, it's challenging though. Um, so I'm, I'm trying to send the message that it is okay to come in and get help. Now, if somebody doesn't understand what it means to be a gun owner and they're just— they just can't get that out of your head, well, go find another clinician until you do. I'm trying to get more practitioners to come out of the closet, so to speak, is gun owners and actually announce it so that the firearms community knows who to pick, who's friendly, right, who to go to. We're working. I mean, it's— we've got— we've made some headway, but we got a long way to go. I pinged Psychology Today, which is one of the, you know, the foremost platforms where people advertise their businesses, and said, hey, can you know, I see all these like trans ally and LGBTQ ally and aviation officials and, you know, like specialty expertise areas. I was like, how about firearms owners? They're like, uh, we'll let you know.

Yeah, well, we're trying to do that locally, like in Connecticut, is like we're trying to create just regular doctors, like going to a GP, be like, okay, are they gun friendly or not? Because many of us do not like when they ask you that question, do you have a gun in your home?

They shouldn't be asking, quite honestly. And that's a debate. It's like, ugh. Suicide intervention circles among Emmy Betz, who's a researcher in Colorado. She's a physician psychiatrist. Bullet Points Project out of UC Davis. We're starting to have those conversations about why that's even asked and what's the intentionality. My favorite word in counseling is intentionality. It's the spirit of knowing why you do what you do. So if you know why you do what you do, from speech to pantomiming with your hands to whatever, it puts you in charge of your decision-making. We got to ask why we're asking that question, and it— and it— the answer should not be because the gun is scary. It's like, well, are you asking about other ways they could take their own life? Because if you're not asking for the non-exhaustive list of options, by the way, because there's no end every way somebody could hurt themselves, right? Um, if you're not asking about every single one of those, that's discriminatory, that's off-putting. And it's like, once you put that in somebody's ear, they're like, oh yeah, I guess it might be discriminatory. It's like, yeah, I guess it might be. That might be a you issue, not a them issue.

Yeah, no, it's like when they started asking that a couple years ago, most of us are like, what the heck is this? And I mean, I've been, I've been aware of mental health for a long time, like I said, because of my history. But it's one of those things where it's like when people ask that, it's just like, none of your business. I mean, it really and truly is not. So, got— guide the comments. Spike in crime, not being able to, uh, uh, what do you call it you know, not being able to read people's faces. I, I had to put together at least some masks for our thing. Uh, I had an incident where I was in the grocery store and there's basically a dude that looks like this middle guy here behind me with his hoodie up.

He just got done skiing.

That's fine. Yeah. And I was, I was not excited. I was worried about there being a crime right then and there. Those of us who are actually like aware of our surroundings It's like, I don't like this one, I don't like this one. Um, as to if the masks are totally the reason for, uh, why we have a spike in crime, there's a lot of factors, I think.

But what do you think, Jake? I actually, as much as I hate masks, I don't, I don't see that correlation. Um, I think what masking has done is it's, uh, it's symbolic of control. You're being told to do something, and it's, and it's a tangible symbol of being told to do something you may not necessarily choose for yourself. Um, and I think that, if I may birdwalk this a little bit, I think part of the psychological frustration too is that we don't, we don't mind complying with laws that we don't necessarily agree with, so long as we believe that we were heard along the way that they were being created. And by that I mean appropriate legislative discussion and debate with open meetings, you know, public input and so forth. All of the restrictions over the last 2 years have been done through executive fiat by some one person or another from some branch, uh, well, by the executive branch, I guess, but by, by some city, state, or county entity, right? It's a mayor, it's a governor, it's a, it's a school head. It's, it's not publicly responsive except for the next election term, and there's a lot of damage that can be done in between election cycles. If you're just running fast and loose with emergency powers. So I think that also is a frustration where it's like the public just doesn't— we can't get on board with this because we weren't a part of the process. And it's, it's really disingenuous to go back in time and say, well, you should have seen this coming, you could have modified your laws to throttle back the emergency powers. Like, no, that's, that's not the point. This is an abuse of authority.

Oh yeah, no, we're still 2 years into it.

Yeah, I will not let it go. We, um, we also are facing a constant bombardment— depending on how much you're on social media, it could be more constant— but we're facing a constant bombardment from the 24-hour news cycle and the 24-hour social media cycle, which is now global, telling us to be afraid of all things. Um, and whether you're on the right or the left of the political spectrum, the fears are different. Um, could be fear of government intrusion, could be fear of COVID could be fear of rioting in the streets, could be fear of gas prices. It could be lots and lots and lots of fear, right? So it's like constant perpetual anxiety. And in my experience, a lot of times people come into the counseling office and they'll, they'll present with something that looks like depressive symptoms, but it's really depression masking the anxiety that's beneath it. Because a lot of times people will get so anxious and they'll be so overworked about things that they can't control that they just go, I quit. And that I quit turns into a depressive face where it's like, I'm just— I'm kind of checked out, I'm blackpilled, I don't want to leave my room, whatever. And the danger there is we start treating the wrong thing. We start treating the depression when really it's a worry. And so I think that all combined together results in frustration boiling over, crime, Um, catching a case of, you know, the F, it's like, you know, I don't care, why try? And if I'm living in, in depression and shame, I might as well hurt somebody because it doesn't matter anyway. Like, there's that mentality. We, we're reevaluating our lives. We got the, you know, the great resignation, as they call it. People are evaluating their jobs, whether or not they want to work and go back to school. So it's a whole combination of things.

They were non-essential, right? All these people across the, the country being told they're non-essential. Um, before it disappears on me though, I want to throw this up. Back to the not having any facilities. You know, here's, here's a little tiny podcast we're doing. There's like 10 of us here basically. And it's just like, here's one more. Went to Bristol Hospital to get help with addiction. They didn't have any room to admit her. So mental health, um, mental rehab or drug and alcohol rehab, all of it is overflowing. And it's, it's, it's crazy. It's like, uh You know, hate to talk about Connecticut a ton, but it's like here, our governor, our newest bill that's coming forward, that's very anti-gun is when you go to get your pistol permit renewed, you will then have a background check on your mental health done. And if you are in a facility because of alcohol or drug abuse, you're okay. But anything else, you're going to be denied your pistol permit. So it's like they're overflowing already. We don't have anywhere to put all these people, and it's just like, it's, it's just crazy.

So I sure hope somebody fights that.

Uh, oh, we're fighting. Oh, we are fighting super hard. We are fighting super hard.

Well, that's, that's one way, one place where somebody like me can step into the fray. Um, I do want to answer that question in a minute.

I just want to click before I disappear.

Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't invited My people weren't invited into the conversation about red flag laws, for example, and we should have been. So should law enforcement. They weren't either. And both communities now, law enforcement and mental health, are looking at red flag laws going, this is a terrible idea, this is a barrier to care. And law enforcement's going, I— there's more than Second Amendment issues here. There's Fourth Amendment issues, there's due process issues. Like, we don't, we don't even know how to store these things, how to return them properly. Like, so another bill like this that says, well, you need a background check on your mental health, like, you might want to consult some clinicians before you do that. You want to— might want to make sure that they're not already painted of your own stripe, because I, I can, I can make a pretty strong argument for what they're pitching if I'm being disingenuous, and I want to tromp on somebody's liberty. I could also pitch the other argument that says you don't ever get to paw through my records.

Yeah, I know. What— when I was talking to a nurse about this, she's like, how is that not a HIPAA violation?

It's just— well, it's not, because they'll ask you to sign to waive the right.

That's how they'll do it. Gotcha. Yeah. All right, so G-Webs, any opinions on the role of religion in society and mental health issues? There are. Is there any correlation?

Yes, I have opinions. Yes, there's a correlation.

All right, next question.

Okay, the correlation is positive, I think. Um, if, if anybody listens to Jordan Peterson, uh, you may have heard him discuss this a couple of times. If you don't listen to Jordan Peterson, I highly recommend it. It's very, very good.

He is awesome.

Love him. But, uh, one conversation he's had a couple of times has to do with the idea that as religion has evaporated from society, people need an intrinsic thing to hold that's bigger than themselves. And so what they'll end up holding is something much less eternal than the idea of a God or something, you know, like eternal. Nature can be a god, that's fine. But what they're grabbing is something much more fleeting, like politics or, um, the flavor of the week of the CrossFit. CrossFit, yeah, yeah. But that's, that's a good point though. I mean, if CrossFit becomes your religion, what happens when your body starts to break down and you can't do CrossFit anymore, right? So it becomes an identity issue. And if you don't know what your identity is, you're really adrift. And more psychological problems can happen. So yeah, I do think there's a positive correlation. I myself have seen it many, many times over, um, where people who have been of a religious faith walked away for whatever reason, ended up in counseling for whatever reason, and through the course of conversation, I help reintroduce them to their religious faith, or they choose a different one even, which is really cool. Their distress symptoms go away because they're starting to look bigger. What happens when we abandon religion is we start to get really narrow-focused, very tunnel-visioned, and the walls start to close in, and, and our options seem limited. And, and then we get, we get hopeless, uh, sometimes we get helpless. And out of that hopelessness and helplessness, uh, we develop even worse symptoms. So I do believe that's a problem. I do think that we should reintroduce spirituality in a good, solid, competent way.

Um, lack of religion maybe fill people's heads with a set of beliefs before anything else can get in. And, and what little— I mean, I, I, I am totally a statistic junkie when it comes to suicide and just mental health in general, and I'm sure I look at different stuff than what you do, but it's just like pretty much every statistic I've ever seen, people without religion are generally sadder and, and less happy, and people with religion tend to be happier. And it doesn't— and, and here's the problem, is like you said, the word spirituality versus religion. And I know one of the challenges that a lot of people has, like, well, people get killed because of religion. I'm like, yes, they do, it's true. No, they get killed because people do evil things. But anyway, um, spirituality, like, like Jake's just said, you know, whether it's you know, nature, God, the universe, you know, Buddha, whatever your thing is. It's like having that belief that's bigger than you is just so important to your actual happiness. And to be called old-fashioned for that is crazy.

Yeah, well, I don't really care what I get called. All I know is it works. And, and that's what I— that's the attitude I take with people who come in, is like, if it's working, keep doing it. Um, I will always introduce more options to have something work more effectively or longer term, but, you know, if it's working for you, keep doing it. Um, I, I think it's critical that people understand that you may have been abused by a certain thing in the past. That thing may be religion, that thing may be your parents, that thing may be a job. It doesn't mean the next one will. And I think that's where we get a little gun-shy about re-engaging in something like going back to church. It's like, well, you know, last time I was there, those people really, you know, didn't treat me very well, made me guilty. And now how are you? Like, now how are you doing without it though?

Um, so yeah. All right, so GW, Jake's point about finding the clinicians that are anti— that are gun friendly. Walk the Talk America with Dr. Go, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership.

Do you guys work together? We just started connecting with them. Yeah, um, we've been aware of them for quite some time. We need to have some more robust conversations, probably have them on the podcast. Actually, we have a podcast called Guns and Mental Health. They're really good discussions. I think it's really powerful. Uh, I invite everybody to listen. So yeah, we, we need to have more— we, we need to make a more concerted effort to partner with them.

Oh, I see, he just fixed his typo. I was supposed to put this one up, not that. I knew what he meant though. All right, so this also means that the end of this po— this, this, um whatever this is, this show, um, you're gonna send me a whole bunch of links to all the things that we talked about, right? Because I don't have all of these links, um, for Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership. We talked about something else. I can easily throw a Jordan Peterson link in here, no problem. But if there's a specific, um, talk that you were talking about, by all means let me have that.

I can't remember what it is, but, um, but I'll find it.

All right, I'm trying to read this and it's really small. It was indoctrinated by gun folks. Stop thought crime. Thought criminals need to be brought to justice. That would be— yeah, that'd be amazing.

Um, yeah, no, let's not go that direction. Um, this is not Minority Report. No, to that point though, you know, it's like there's these presumptions being made that if you're a gun owner, then you were indoctrinated by the NRA and you're just a mouthpiece and a puppet and Now I'm seeing some stuff on Twitter from the people who would prefer gun control saying things like, it's bad that the NRA is targeting minorities for sales. And it's like, of course, the pushback from all my minority gun owning friends is, do you think we're not worthy? Because that's pretty racist. You think we don't, we don't want to purchase these items? Uh, white savior.

So yes, there is, it actually, when you start looking at it, there is a ridiculous amount of being racist within the gun control community.

All gun control is racist. Talk to, talk to Maj, talk to, talk to Kevin Dixie, talk to Argo, talk to Tony Simon, Rhonda Mary, anybody. Gun control is racist. I didn't understand that 2 and a half years ago when I I really got into the gun community because I've been a lifelong gun owner, but I was never into the community. I understand, hanging out with these guys, uh, and listening to their testimonies. I was like, oh, oh yeah, this history like predates the founding of America. Aha, now I get it. And yeah, I— now I get it.

So I'm ready to follow those folks on gun websites. Uh, he has my favorite anti-2A— not anti-2A, but like an explanation of how the Second Amendment has been eroded since the beginning. Um, so I'm guessing he probably has something up there regarding how racist all of this actually tends to be. And I mean, this is another one of those challenges, is like with mental health, us white folks, we are more likely to get mental health than my Hispanic friends or, sure, um, anyone with different color skin because it's an embarrassment.

Well, and that— but there's also a cultural suspicion among those groups because they've been so abused by the medical establishment over the years. There's a good solid reason that those demographics were suspicious of the vaccines when they first came out. It's like, smells funny, right? Why are you pitching this so hard on us? Last time we went through this, a lot of us didn't do so well. So, I feel that and it's the same with us. There's also a cultural component there. I was raised Italian and Italians, kind of the Mediterraneans as a whole drifting down into Central and South America, we tend to have a really tight family culture that says don't discuss family business outside the family. And really, you don't discuss it inside the family either. And so, we all just sort of are miserable together and we get angry and drunk. And that also inhibits emotional expression. It inhibits care access. We see it in the younger generations now. The Asian cultures especially, because most of Asia and Southeast Asia has never had any mental health programming at all. But the youth now are connected through the World Wide Web, literally worldwide, and they're seeing stuff like, you know, to their advantage. Oh, what's this mental health stuff I'm seeing on TikTok or on Twitter? Like, what is this? And they're starting to get curious about it, but they get nobody to ask because the older generations are like, I don't know what it is, but I'm— I don't know what it is. So it's really— it's been really interesting. One of my other endeavors is a podcast called Noggin Notes, and Noggin Notes now, um, has become this place for people to go in Cambodia and Africa. We have 3 podcasts. There's mine, there's the Cambodia, and the Africa. And, um, they're finding out how to deal with their mental and psychological and emotional struggles through a podcast because it's one of the only ways they can, because their cultures have just never broached it at all. So it's, it's fascinating. It's not all just, you know, tight, tight lockdown, don't, don't go there. Some of it's just because it's never been explored, they don't know how. And that's, that's pretty exciting to be a part of that too.

Actually, I have a question for you on that. What would you suggest? Because this is one of the things I always talk about when finding a firearms instructor. Like, I have my set of rules. I'm like, ask them what kind of training they do on a continual basis. For example, you know, what is their experience other than, oh, I've been an NRA instructor for the last 10 years? I'm like, okay, what else have you done? Yeah, yeah. It's like, for what— if someone wants to reach out and find an instructor— how— I'm sorry, a counselor— what are some of the things you would look for? Like, just like the simple high level of, do I want a psychologist? Do I want a clinician? Do I want to this? Do I want that?

How do you figure that out? Yeah, let me, let me spend some time maybe, um, talking about the different— here, I'll throw that up too— that you'll see. So, uh, I'm a marriage and family therapist, uh, by trade. That's just— is MFT or LMFT. L stands for licensed, uh, so I, I think that's implied. I don't know why people put the L, but you'll see LPC, licensed professional counselor, or LCPC, licensed clinical professional counselor, whatever. Um, then you have LCSW, clinical social worker. Psychologist is usually a PhD, a PsyD, meaning Psy.D, psychology doctorate. Um, an EdD also can be a psychologist, an educational doctorate. Now they have doctorals in MFT, doctorate in marriage and family therapy. So all these people are implied to have a license from the state to practice. Now you don't need a license to practice mental health. I know it's going to sound heretical to some of my peer colleagues when I say that, but there's people out there practicing mental health care without a license, and they're called coaches, life coaches, bartenders, hairstylists, manicurists, like your best friend next door, your uncle down the street, like, like lots of people do this work. Now, if you're looking for somebody who's going to be a professional, kind of like a professional auto mechanic versus your neighbor Bobby who just really knows a lot of stuff about cars, you're going to look for some certifications. Those certifications occur in the form of credentials, and the credentials are what I just listed off. That's your starting point if you want professional treatment. From there, questions you might ask are things like, what are your areas of expertise? Now, I'm not a big fan of the word expert because it gets tossed around too much, and who knows what it is. It's also relative. Yeah, it very, very, very— and some people self-ascribe experts, like, I'm an expert in suicidology. It's like, says who, you? Um, so I would ask more for, like, area of expertise is fine, but area of interest, area of specialty, because that'll tell you where they spend most of their time getting their training. And to your point about asking how, how they train and what kind of training, you can ask those same questions of your practitioner. Remember, and I sometimes I clap to make big points, get everybody's attention. They work for you. I don't care what the power differential seems to be when you walk in the office. I don't care if they're wearing a white coat or, you know, quarter zip sweatshirt.

As long as they're not naked, you should be good. Unless you want a nudist one.

I don't know. Somewhere. Um, they work for you. If you're not getting what you want, fire them. But before you fire them, tell them. Say, hey, I'm not getting what I want. And then it's an opportunity for dialogue, and you can create a different treatment path, right? Don't just, don't just pull the plug because they're asking some hard questions. That's our job. Our job is to make you look at things you don't want to examine. But yeah, ask them, ask them what they like to do. Ask them what their, their particular bailiwick is. Somebody comes in and says, Jake, I've heard great things about you. I heard you on this podcast, blah, blah, blah. I've got an eating disorder, or I think I have an eating disorder. Leave the diagnostics to us. Okay, don't tell us what you're struggling with. Let us do that. I would probably say that's not my specialty. I would work with you a little bit, probably do a session or two, conduct an interview, see if we're right for each other.. And if the eating disorder isn't so severe that you need medical attention, I might continue to work with you because I, you know, I'll detect that through some emotional functioning lead, some trauma history, whatever. But typically that's not, that's not my jam. So I would say, you know who's really good at eating disorders? Kat Geiger at Thrive Wellness. She's, she's the eating disorder guru. You should go check her out. But if somebody came in and said anything from parenting to you know, family systems to alcohol and drug struggles to, you know, academic, bullying, playgrounds— like, I do really well with adolescents. Come on in, right? But they should be able to tell you. They should be able to tell you their limitations.

Yeah, I know. It's just, I have— I've heard, like, uh, a friend of mine called me the other day because she had a guy calling her saying, hey, I'm suicidal, I need help. And she's like, this is not my thing, Brooke. What do you do? I'm like, I try to get them to refer to someone else and the pushback the guy was giving her was that I've already been there, already done that, like had already called the number and was not going to do that again. And I think so many people get one bad experience with a counselor and like, oh yeah, mental health sucks, mental health care sucks.

Yeah, sometimes we, we are pretty bad at our jobs, but also timing matters. Um, you know, you, you may be compelled in for forces that are not of your own doing. You know, like, it's— I, I'm glad that when people find their way in, even if the court tells them to, or their spouse, or whatever, um, because I can work with that. But I also know that you have to be here your own free will in a court, or it's just going to be less effective. You have to want it. There's an old joke, and I probably told it on the last episode, about how many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? One.

But the light bulb has to want to change. Yeah. So we'll get to, uh, guns, uh, G-webs. Although walk-talk is fairly new facet of gun ownership, what's Jake's outlook for the near future, 5-year outlook for our gun community, and a diagnosis at this point of our outlook as a community?

Are we talking about positive?

I mean, really positive. And I'll, I'll pop on top of that with, how do you— how are the clinicians you're working with receiving you, and how successful have you been at like sucking closet gun owners that are clinicians out of the closet?

That's been harder. There's an interesting dynamic. So there's, there's two, two sides of this coin. One is the firearms owners wanting care, which has been phenomenal, honestly. Like, I've been blown away at how willing, especially some of the, the, the Instagram influencers and in the gun community have been to reach out and are interested in learning more. I like very humbled that I've been taken into as, as to, you know, being welcomed in the community. The flip side of the coin is my own practice, my own practitioners. There's this weird culture in our, our community where we rely so heavily on our, our professors and our mentors and our supervisors as we're growing as fledgling clinicians into the community and evolving that We get what, uh, got a big name in our field is, uh, Carl Jung, J-U-N-G. Um, he has this term called introject, and introject is an unquestioned belief or an assumption that somebody pushes into you. We get introjected a lot through graduate school and through our internships, and those beliefs are very hard to shake. But even harder to shake are the so-called relationships with these mentors, and professors. So much so that we will start doing things in practice that aren't great for the market. We'll forget who we're serving. We're not serving our peer colleagues. We should be serving the people because they're the ones keeping the lights on and paying our bills. But we forget that, and we draw all these weird lines like, guns are bad, and I don't treat that group over there, and don't ever talk about spirituality in your sessions. And it's like these things get pushed into our heads. And we can't shake them because we think that if we shake them, we're going to lose our peer colleagues and somehow the peer colleagues are more valuable than our patients. It's like, that goes on all over the place. It's very bizarre! So for me, trying to recruit gun people, it's been way more challenging than I expected. It's been— honestly, it's been disappointing! We need to have a voice. We need to find our voice as firearms owning clinicians and I know there's a ton of them out there. But they're so afraid to step forward because their fear of being branded a Trumpy or a Trumper or a, a, a conservative or whatever the, the pejorative condescending remark is by their professors or their peer colleagues that they just don't do it. It's like, no, I'd rather be woke cuz that's what everybody around me tells me I need to be. It's like, yeah, or you could lose your entire patient base. Like, so that's been frustrating. But my, my prognosis for the gun community is honestly, it's really great. I think more people are interested in getting help. More people are coming out with their stories. They're, um, they're getting each other help. Uh, they're, they're really listening. There's some genuine interest. And, and I'll speak on Mike's behalf because he's been doing this longer than I have in the gun community. He's told me multiple times the people we've talked to, interacted with, partnered with, had on the podcast— he says 4 years ago that conversation would have never happened.. And I'm like, good, that's awesome. So it is changing.

I am optimistic. Yeah, it's— it is. I hope that it's hopeful. It's one of those things where it's like, right now in Connecticut with our current, uh, legislative garbage going on, I'm just like, okay, because when I get off this, I'll be writing legislative commentary. Funny stuff on the YouTube feed, by the way. It's really bad. All right, wait, let's see. What— which part are you laughing at?

Like, life is like a bowl of— a box of unlicensed mental health practitioners. Mental health treatment is like a margarita.

9mm is an introjection. So great. Well, see, my dad— my mom used to own a Mexican restaurant, so the margaritas were famous. And so it all came down to if you had the proper lime juice.

So, um, yeah, you know, so that's not a throwaway statement, by the way. 9mm is an introjection. Okay, because, uh, what's— what are the most popular calibers? I mean, you go on ammo seek and you see 9mm,.223, 12-gauge, you know, whatever. It's like, well, why are they the most popular calibers? Because they're marketed. They're marketed to us. We swallow this stuff. We're like, yeah, 9mm. Um, like, do— but do you stop and think about it? You know, so, um, that's, that's not, that's not a throwaway statement. It is an introjection. A lot of us just kind of like, we default to what we default to. Um, and that—

and then it snowballs, you know. I, I would guess that G-Webs is probably a.45 guy, but I'm not really sure for sure. But even that is like.45. It's like, what— when I think of calibers, I think.22, 9,.45. Like, I got 3 because I'm not that geeky person and I'm just a handgun girl. Uh, so what does Tara say? How do you deal with the fear of getting your guns taken away after seeking help? Spouses. Oh, so Tara missed the beginning. Tara, go watch the beginning. Um, but the short version is—

take it away, Jake, tell her. Uh, the short version is I have a bat phone and I'm going to take your guns away.

And I just lost my green screen.

Oh wow, what's that? Oh, that's a—

was that a cat?

My dog. Cool. I like that. Oh, and your dog is—

yeah, sorry, sorry, I apologize.

Yeah, we can answer Tara's question. So, uh, I don't know if it's Tara or Tara, but, um, is it Tara?

We always call her Tara. Whenever I hear the guys talk to her, it's always Tara. But if I'm wrong, she'll tell me at Barbecues Next Thing.

Let me, let me give you a little bit deeper answer on that because I think it's worth exploring now that we got some people listening. All right, I have a set of protections in place as a professional, as a practitioner, as a licensee that say I can't breach your confidentiality except for really darn good reason. Um, we have 4 basic exceptions for breaching confidentiality. One is an immediate or imminent— depends on what you look at— an imminent harm to self or others. Like, you can't be talked down, you're going to leave my office and go hurt somebody or yourself. I will breach your confidentiality to keep you or others safe. Okay, and it's— we don't, we don't take that for granted. Like, that's— it has to be imminent, imminent, imminent. Okay, the second one is suspected abuse of, uh, of what we would call vulnerable people. So like, uh, children, the elderly, the handicapped, uh, physically or mentally disabled. So if we suspect harm or abuse to them, we'll breach confidentiality again to keep people safe. The third is if you give us permission to talk to somebody, like you actually sign, say yes, you may talk to my kid's school counselor or whatever. And then the fourth is if a judge compels us to breach your confidentiality, which never happens. I mean, it does sometimes, but people don't know how to fight it the right way. I'm batting 1,000 for keeping my people out of court because usually opposing counsel in something like a custody hearing or custody battle will subpoena us, and I'll call them up and I'll say, hey, you're not going to get anything out of us, and here's why. And I will stipulate to my ethics, which are embedded into state law, and this is universally true, all 50 states and DC. Um, and I'll say, I'm not allowed to breach confidentiality for the following reasons. And the attorney will go, oh, I had no idea. It's like, yeah, that's fine, it's not your job to know my laws. And then they quash the subpoena. Even if they make us go to court, I'll sit there and tell the judge, Your Honor, do you realize that you're ordering me to break the law that you're sworn to uphold? And the judge will go, never mind. So I'm not going to break your confidentiality except for very extreme circumstances. One of those confidentiality breaches would be a red flag law. Now, in Nevada, the only people allowed to— and this is true for all states except for New Jersey, and I think soon to be Washington because I think they're changing theirs— um, but it, it has to be a law enforcement person or a family member who triggers the ERPO, the Extreme Risk Protection Order. I can't do it. Now, there's some people at Johns Hopkins University, for example, in their School of Public Health, who have produced a video that's trying to train physicians on how to coach family members into filing ERPOs on their loved ones, which I think is despicable and disgusting. And I have yet to do a takedown video of that, but I will someday. But we're not— we can't do that. Now, the reason that New Jersey is accepted is because their law says any person may file for that ERPO. So people get a little bit wrapped around the axle on wondering if their clinician is going to, like, tattle on them to have their guns taken away. It turns out we're just not allowed to. If we do, We lose our license. You, you, you should, if I do that to you, you should file a licensing board complaint against me and probably sue for damages civilly. Because I should not have breached your confidentiality. If you're so acute that you need a higher level of care, going and taking your guns is not the first step. The first step should be a higher level of care. Go to the hospital instead of my office, right? That's what should happen. I don't care what you have at your home that you could use to hurt yourself or others. The first level is get you somewhere where you're going to get help. So, there's a different debate to be had about that but that's essentially where I stand on it and why I'm trying so hard to dispel some of these myths about what it means to come in and say, "Hey, you know, I love plinking in the desert. It alleviates a lot of my PTSD symptoms from whatever I got my PTSD." I go, "Good! High five! That's working for you." Remember what I said earlier? If it's worked for you, keep doing it. There are people in my profession who will freak out at that and go, "Oh my God! PTSD and you shoot? We must—" take your guns away because you might shoot your kids or something. It's like, you clearly don't understand gun culture. Take our cultural competence course, available for free at Walk the Talk America.

Very nice, very nice segue. But also, that would be maybe something that when you're interviewing to get help, that might be one of those questions you ask is, hey, what do you think about this?

Whether it's ethics or something along those lines. I think, I think an easier tell would be simply to ask them Um, how well-versed are you in the cultural competence of firearms? And then you want to put somebody on their heels, ask them that. How well-versed are you in the cultural competence and understanding of firearms culture?

And they'll be like, that's where you need to give me another link to throw into the description here so that we can bring them directly to your courses.

I would say, um, an appropriate answer that I would give if somebody asked me that, I'd say, well, I'm a lifelong firearms owner. I'm part of an organization called Walk the Talk America that bridges the gap between guns and mental health good enough for you? And they're like, well, that's weird.

Okay, different. I'm sure they don't expect that answer. Yeah. All right, hun, so it's 1:04. We've gone over— we started a couple minutes late, so I figured we could go a couple minutes late. Um, and now we know that, uh, G-Webs is, uh, 9mm is a crutch that no one researched. Garbage caliber. Wait, metric garbage, to be more specific. I'm only anti-9mm. I think, think for yourself and choose a caliber. I did. That was the caliber they said I should shoot while I'm shooting IDPA. So it is cheaper than.45. We can reload.45, but it's still more expensive. Stopping power. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. So yeah, no, I, I discussed, see, again, I'm the stats girl. Like when people talk about stopping power, I'm like, dude, look at the other stats. 80% of conflicts with firearms end before a single shot is fired. So what does it matter what caliber you have? So, but anyway, um, thanks again for coming and hanging out. And, um, yeah, so we talked about masks, we talked about mental health, um, and all sorts of other things. And I hope this was helpful to everybody.

I'll send you the link to my mask article too. I wrote a 2,800-word article for our local paper, digital paper, and it's pretty Nevada-centric, but I tear down why the American Academy of Pediatrics is wrong and why the CDC is wrong to adopt the American Academy of Pediatrics' view on masking children.

So I'll send that to you too. And I gotta ask before we go, do you think that the newest CDC developmental milestones has anything to do with masking, even though they insist that it doesn't, since they pushed everyone back 2 years for everything, just about?

Maybe, maybe. I'm more concerned that they're lowering the standards at all instead of pushing them higher because it indicates to me this overall lethargy. You know, it's like, uh, well, your kid can't spell. Well, let's just, uh, lower the standard so that they, they don't have to spell till 4th grade. It's like, why? Like, why aren't we trying harder? It's just— I think it's just an overall degradation of American society as a whole. We're just— our standards are falling broadly. Oh no, um, which one? Yeah, I think that'd be great. It's a great conversation starter. Uh, ask their doctors if they have taken the WTTA cultural competence website. I think that'd be awesome. Um, and I'll— I, I want— I don't want to leave without saying this. We're trying to redefine what it means to be, um, responsible, right? So like the entire gun community says safe, safe storage, safe, safe care, safe shooting, all this stuff. But safe is mercurial. It's very subjective, and I think it's also been watered down throughout the course of the pandemic. It's like, stay home, stay safe. Oh yeah, we're trying to introduce responsible as the, uh, as the operative word, because responsible's definition, as we're trying to define it, is preventing unauthorized access. Now, you and I talked a little bit about this last time, and that's really stuck with me about the idea of somebody breaking into your home. You don't necessarily need it locked up because the initial crime is the break-in. But if you're handling and storing and training responsibly, what you're doing is taking a personal accountability for it, whereas safety says it's out there, it's safe. It's like, well, how do you define safe? I want to define my own version of safe. So we say, you know, be responsible with your guns, teach responsible ownership. Says I'm—

the responsibility starts and ends with me. Absolutely. All right, well, on that, responsible gun owners, uh, and those of us interested in mental health. I think that is the end of our show. And, uh, I don't know, we'll see Jake whenever, who knows. Uh, lots of different options. Let me see if I can check all of these real quick. So at Zephyr Wellness, Walk the Talk America, Noggin Notes— I was trying to take notes as we went, um, and I'll put a bunch of other comments in the YouTube channel. So So, and I will do my best to put them in Facebook as well, but YouTube is easier to find. So I suggest you go to A Great Start Shooting School's YouTube channel to grab all the pieces and parts. And if there's anything more, oh, we'll throw some Jordan Peterson in there, all sorts of stuff. All right, all right, sir, thanks for having me. Yeah, enjoy the rest of your day. You too.

All right, bye, Jake.