HS 167 - The Urban Shooter Host Kenn Blanchard

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It's my pleasure to welcome Reverend Ken Blanchard to the show. He's a former US Marine, Federal Police officer, intel analyst, a Christian pastor and gun rights activist. And if that weren't enough, he's also a blues singer and produces a weekly program variety show entitled the Urban Shooter. Ken, welcome. How are you, man?

I'm doing good. Jason, man, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you.

Well, the pleasure is all mine. Where are you located, by the way?

I'm right outside the District of Columbia, right in Maryland.

All right. Well, it's interesting, speaking of guns, that the supreme court actually upheld as unconstitutional, or I shouldn't say upheld, but found Washington's gun laws, Washington D.C. 's gun laws to be unconstitutional a few years ago. And that pleased me a lot. I was, I was really happy to see that. Tell me what you're involved in. I know you're writing a book that's coming out before Christmas. You know, maybe tell us about that or take it wherever you want.

The book is actually a story of the last probably 25 years of my life. Right around 1986, I was the firearms instructor for my agency. And I thought, man, this would be a great job if I could be just a gun guy in the community and help stop people from having accidental shootings and be a resource for the community of folks that grew up in the city and really didn't know that much about firearms. I had no idea about gun control and the stigmas and the fears. I was totally oblivious to the history and the political part about gun control in the United States. So you jump into a job where nobody wants your help was an eye opening experience. So right around 91, after failing a couple times of just being the gadfly on the wall, hanging out at gun shops, trying to help people, I was able to become involved in gun rights in Virginia. I spoke as a kind of an expert witness to change the concealed carry laws there. And I found out that I had a new talent and nobody really knew I had. And that was just as calm as I am now, is how I am in most stressful situations. So up against a very anti gun legislation, I spoke truth to power. And the National Rifle association said, hey, we got something here. At the end of that they passed concealed carry reform and sent me to Texas. And then I did well in Texas so they sent me to Wisconsin and to Michigan and next thing you know I was like on a circuit for a while just being a testifier, a speaker, kind of the black man with a gun. And I got involved in a political aspect and learned how much I didn't know. So I got on fire, almost like an evangelist. I wanted to show everybody about the racist roots of gun control, how people have kind of like lost this art, how it's not an alien thing and how it just needs to be told a different way. And right around 99, somewhere in there, I wrote my first book, Black man with a Gun and self published it. And I thought I was going to go somewhere with that, but I didn't know a lot about publishing either. So I made, I made the COVID way too scary.

And what was on the COVID it.

Was a black and white picture of me in A long coat, holding an automatic rifle with a US Flag in distress behind me.

Okay.

And right around about a couple of months after that book came out, it was a Columbine incident.

Oh, yeah.

Where folks had long black coats.

Yeah, right, right, right.

Bad timing. So I still was involved in the.

Political aspect, but, you know, I gotta just mention something about that that's so interesting because some people with Columbine compared it to the movie the Matrix and these last couple of crazy shooting incidents and so forth, Newtown, et cetera, that have gone on. The Obama administration and the left are so quick to blame guns and the NRA and this kind of stuff, but they never blame Hollywood. And, you know, the video game manufacturers, the. I mean, it's just all over. Is it? Just because those people support their campaigns, generally, they lean left and it's the gun.

The gun's easy.

It seems so moronic. Yeah, the gun's an easy target. Right.

The gun has no personality.

It can't fight back, can't defend itself without a person behind it. Right.

You can ban some piece of metal that won't change or save a life, and folks go for it. I've been kind of involved in almost every political argument, even Supreme Court testimonies, either in vetting the plaintiffs or doing some background on something for the last 20 years. And that's what's going to be in the new book, Black man with a Gun Reloaded that you talked about earlier. Should come out right before Christmas.

It's really crazy. Well, talk to us about the racist roots of gun control. I have a feeling I know where you're going to go with that, but tell us, tell us more.

When I first got into the space, I was just a country boy that had been trained by the government to teach police officers and diplomats how to be safe. I had no clue that in the United States gun control, all the laws were based on keeping guns out of the hands of people of color. The very first gun laws from 1630 and almost every 30 years in a cycle have been to keep away from black people. And in the 1920s, it was Italian immigrants. It's been Native Americans, Chinese, black. It's always been against somebody, some group, and that history has not been told. And as a people, we have been culturally conditioned to fear, and rightfully so, because if you got caught with even a musket ball in your possession, you could get. Your father or brother could get pulled out of his house and hung. So we have our mothers banning guns from in our house just to keep us alive. Learning all that history from the black codes, from just laws in general that were all put toward African American people to keep guns out of their hands for fear of reprisal, for rape, for robbery, for lynching, for a whole bunch of heinous crimes that I had no clue. And once I learned and found all the evidence, all the laws, I wanted to tell people.

So why do you think that is? I mean, what's the agenda behind that? It seems like so many of these high crime, minority neighborhoods. You look at Chicago, incredibly strict gun control, incredible amounts of violence. I mean, just. I think it's the highest murder rate in the country now. And in Washington, D.C. when they had so much gun control, you just had incredible amounts of violence. You know, I mean, it's just so. It's so hypocritical and counterintuitive. But do you have any beliefs as to the agenda, the reason behind this type of gun control and the racist motivation?

It's easy to use fear to pass something. You don't have to put much behind it. We have problems in our cities because of poverty, because of addictions, because of the drug culture. Those have never been fixed. We kind of lost that drug war. But the gun world, the gun war is still live and kicking, and it hasn't stopped the violence. We have a gang problem in Chicago. I mean, it's outrageous in Chicago. And that's where the issue is. The guns are the tools of the soldiers. You have a feudal Japan system kind of going on and turf battles over land, just like Japan had. You got shoguns, but these shoguns are kids, and they're fighting over dope. The same thing happened in the 90s in D.C. when crack hit real big. Here, crime has gone down because the drug problem has gone down a little bit here. It's not about the gun. It's about people. And as we get further and further away from parenting and taking care of our families and our communities, and the kids are raising themselves, they tend to go lord of the flies. And that's what we see. That's where our problem is. Our criminals, for the most part, are the same people. You have people with ankle bracelets on their legs that are on parole that are still committing crimes. It's the same number of people. And our criminal justice system is just a system. There's some issues with it. So instead, instead of us kind of fixing it, we kind of blame the gun. It's just an easy target, easy thing to throw out there without. Without fixing anything.

Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. Yeah, it's. It's crazy. So what. What concerns you the most in terms of gun policy at the moment or what are you working on right now?

I'm trying to continue my voice. I'm using my podcast and my website to do what I couldn't do before, because at first I thought this was great. I got a chance to speak all over the country, but that costs money. And not everybody wants to hear me or come out to a convention or something to see me. But if I podcast it, then I can talk to smartphones. I can podcast from the safety of my basement and reach the earbuds of hundreds and thousands of people. And right now, I'm building my little media business of just being the next Larry King, maybe just spreading the word. And I stretch it. I don't just talk about guns. I talk about what matters to the people in the gun community, the people who have gone through background checks, who are really good citizens. And that's doing really well for me right now.

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's great to hear. Well, tell us a little bit more about the book that's coming out. You're rewriting the book. Is it a complete rewrite or is it just a bit of an edit and obviously a cover change? I mean, you've got. You've got a full fledged publisher this time around.

Yeah, it's a rewrite. I have. There's some stuff in there that I learned, like what it cost me to be the black man with a gun, to have to. What it cost me as a Christian minister, as a pastor, what it cost me as a parent, what I did differently as a father, how I had to handle my job, who at one minute was afraid that CNN was recording my testimony. They were afraid I was going to be the next Snowden, or, you know, before Snowden, I was going to be a media leak in the government. So I was balancing a whole bunch of stuff, and I couldn't put it in the first book because the first book I was still employed. So I had to leave out a lot of juicy stuff that I'm putting in this one.

Yeah, so give us a couple of those juicy things.

One of them is I have a section called Superhero for my son. When my son was born, I became a father and I had beautiful family, daughter and a son. And I really didn't know about fatherhood, but at the same time, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I want to be provider for my family. And something I saw my son do with his action figure he kind of carried it around the house. And I thought, I want to be a superhero for my son. I want to have him hold me like an action figure in his heart. So I actually created one, had an action figure made of myself and was going to live up to that mantra as the black man with a gun to be provider. I was going to go past the point of fathers. I was going to try to be the super dad and be there for my kids at the same time. When the world thought I was probably the most violent guy in the world with a name called Black man with a Gun. But it was a unique growth period for me of being a protector and a parent.

Very interesting. What else? What other juicy things that you added.

Also have a big Christian part in there. As an African American pastor, I caught a lot of grief for being pro gun. Folks could not understand that kind of surprises me, actually.

But go ahead.

It's because of our culture of being. I guess you want to be violent, averse. Of course, nobody likes violence, but we kind of a test or assume that if you're a gun person, you're violent. And I had to break that stereotype up close. And I tell that story. Like there's a part where my mother was kind of worried and she says, I know how you are, but are you sure you're supposed to be doing this? Doesn't that gun make you look bad? And I said, mom, we had the same mom. Our grandmother kept a loaded shotgun in the kitchen and 35 grandkids. Nobody got hurt. She was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I totally forgot that. So there's a lot of little stories that like, remind even my parents, parents about their parents and about our life.

Yeah, very, very interesting point. Guns prevent violence. They. They create freedom and liberty. I mean, it's just every oppressive government around the world, they don't allow their people to have guns. They want to deny access to those things. That's one. One of the ways the tyrants work is they've got a. The first thing you got to do is you. You got to control the media. You've got to take the guns away and control speech and assembly and all of. All of that stuff. That's, you know, there's a reason the founding fathers created our Constitution the way they did.

It's a really big piece. It's a really huge. Because anybody who would give you a gun as a brother, anybody who would take it away from you is not your friend.

But it's hard for Americans today to really come to grips with and Believe that. I don't think any of them. Any. Well, not any. Certainly people do, but most people aren't worried about government tyranny. Oh, that could never happen to us in America. I mean, it's different here, but yet it's happened throughout history so many times, it's almost unbelievable.

The two mindsets come from where you live, if you're in the rural area where life hasn't changed much, where you still have to make sure that your neighbor is okay, where the sheriff won't come as soon as you call 91 1, where you have to a little bit more autonomous, you have to be by yourself, then that is understood. It's just a tool. But somehow we lose freedom when we come into the cities on the west or the east Coast. When you live in close proximity to each other, there's like a level of expectation that when I cut the switch on, the lights will always come on. When I turn the water faucet, the water will always come on. And those are the cities that when that stuff doesn't work, people go nuts and they revert back to a panic because they don't have the same mindset of survival that the folks in the rural have. And the ones in the coast on the east and the west coast or the bigger cities are the first ones and allowed us ones to say how this is arcane and how we don't need it anymore, but we haven't evolved as people. We will revert back as soon as trouble gets here.

Yeah, that's what's really hard for people to understand. I just don't think the vast majority of Americans can even fathom that. They just. They just don't see it as a possibility. And that's why they're so quick to say, you know, let's just give up the guns and we'll never need this. And then before you know it, either you have civil unrest, you have tyranny. I mean, this stuff is. It's been played throughout history, just so many times, over and over, hasn't it?

It's a fire extinguisher. We all have fire departments. You call 911 and the fire department can come. But if you have a gas fire on your house or in your kitchen, a fire extinguisher can save your room from being totally lost. The firearms exactly the same way if you have a home invader. Because now the economy is getting worse, people are getting more desperate. There's a lot of folks out there looking to steal, kill and destroy. If you had the means to make somebody go, ok, not this house, maybe the next house. That's it just paid for itself. It's just a fire extinguisher. That's all it is.

Right, right. I mean, the fire department can't get there instantly. That's the same thing. You've got to be responsible and have your own plan. Of course it's great when everything functions and they get there in five minutes, but that doesn't always happen.

I pray I never need to use any of the stuff that I have, but when I need it. You need it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Good point. Well, Ken, give out your website and let people know where they can find you and learn more about you and. And get the book in a few months. Here.

It's real easy. Black man with a gun.com is my website and I pretty much use that name for everything. If you do a Google of black man with a gun, you'll get me. My name Ken Blanchard. I use two ends to distinguish myself from Dr. Ken Blanchard, who we also.

Had on the show, the author of the One Minute Manager.

Yeah, he's great. Not to give him any grief, I put two ends on there. But Black man with a gun, you'll find me on Twitter and as Ken Blanchard, but the site and even the podcast the Black man with a Gun show on itunes or stitcher, you'll find me there.

Fantastic. Well, Reverend Ken Blanchard, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

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