[MUSIC] We're in D.C., we'd waste away. [MUSIC] And now, from the secret hidden bunker in the Rocky Mountains, it's time for MBTV on the radio and your host, Michael Bain. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] How about we start out with some banjo stylings there? That is Abigail Washburn. Great, great banjo virtuoso, also a stalwart in Americana music. That song, "Rock-a-bye Dixie," I think from a current album. I'm not totally sure there. She lives in Nashville with her husband, Bella Flack, who rumor has it can also play the banjo. A little humor, very little humor there. What a tremendous amount of talent. I love that kind of music. You still listen to it a lot more than I do now. So anyway, Abigail Washburn and her banjo. I'm Michael Bain and this is my podcast, MBTV on the radio. Now, in our 20th year, brought to you this week by Hunter's HD Gold and the MTM case guard, our pals there. And as most of you guys know, it's been a tough week around here. We were essentially a couple of miles away from the Alexander Mountain fire in Colorado. You can stand on our patio the first couple of nights and look at a wall of fire, which is hardly comforting. I mean, it's just a guy I got said last week. It's like having all of a sudden someone has released a monster in your yard and it just sits there looking at you. You're next. I'm going to eat you. You're the next thing I'm going to eat. So there's a certain amount of just plain fear. Plus a lot of that was coupled with, of course, Newt. All of you know, Newt the Beagle. Newt has her own followers on Facebook. Quite the famous Little Beagle. She has just before the fire, you know, she got ill, had to take her to the emergency room, the Colorado State University, a veterinary hospital emergency room who handled her rattlesnake bite last year. And coughing, they didn't know if something was caught on her throat and didn't know if it was a virus. Although Newt isn't around other animals very much. Other dogs certainly, for exactly that reason. But she was really coughing pretty badly and we were honestly pretty worried. And so with the combination of a sick dog who's keeping you up and the gates of hell which opens up down the street, right? I think I slept about two hours a night all last last week. And I'm still not quite a hundred percent back to tracking all the time, you know. But anyway, I guess it's the Southwest instant management team one. It's done an amazing job with fire. I mean, it was a bear of a fire. I went from 100 acres to 9,000 acres, quick like money, burning in Roosevelt National Forest up toward Estes Park. Really beautiful terrain. But when it's 95, 100 degrees in humidity is hovering below 10%. It's, everything is flammable. And boy, it went up and it was bad. But luckily within three or four days they were able to establish a perimeter on the east side of the fire for, because, I mean, there's a lot of houses here, you know. The fire was moving at one point to the southeast. And, you know, if it managed to jump a couple of rows and things it would be in Loveland, in the city of Loveland itself, in some of the neighborhoods. But they did a great job of controlling the fire. And you're able to get the fire lines in and first hand lines they had bulldozers in. And you can't thank them enough. I mean, to me, the, working those fire lines, I've had friends who worked the fire. At the beginning of this fire, in fact, before it really blazed up and they bought in bigger teams, friend of mine was actually the instant commander. And he'd worked hot shot teams and things. And I know how much that took out of him. And it's a scary thing. Fire is a scary thing. And so, just, there's that kind of weight on it from having, having been around, been around the thing for a week. You know, what you do is you, you know, having gone through this before a couple of times now, you prepack. I sorted firearms, the guns that would go with me and those that I would leave behind to the fire. And yeah, I have really great fireproof safes. And yeah, I have no illusions that those safes are actually going to work. You know, the important papers and pictures, pictures of my sweetie, you know, pictures of our animals, the things that we needed to take with us, the important papers, clothing. We have to do all that in advance. And you do it like a robot, you know. You got checklists and things. You go through it like a robot. And what you, what you don't want to think is that, that the moment you walk out that door and, you know, you get a vact. You don't want to think that when you close the door, it's the last time you'll ever see your home. But unfortunately, it's happened to about 25 people in this fire a lot more in the Cameron Peak fire in 2020. Oddly enough, we were not evacuated. And I guess it's really a kind of a weird thing. But I hate to think that anything good came of a Cameron Peak fire in 2020. But in fact, what happened to this fire, the Alexander Mountain fire, is it ran smack into the burn scar left by Cameron Peak. Cameron Peak was somewhere between 200, 300,000 acres. And it went on forever. We were a vact for two, two and a half weeks, something like that. But when the fire ran into that burn scar, there's no fuel. You know, very little fuel. It didn't have a fuel to continue. So it forced it to go west. You know, forced it to go in, deeper into the mountains into the, some of the communities in the west, Drake, comes to mind, poor Drake. Beautiful little town there between here, between Loveland and Estes Park. But basically, that's what gave the firefighters the edge, is that the fire couldn't go where it wanted to go, because the fuel wasn't there. And I said this last week, I'll say it again. Anybody who's been through this, you think about those words in the movie "Backdraft", right? It will movie "Backdraft". And the words are, the only way you can really understand a fire is that it's alive and it hates. And I swear, that's the only way you can understand a fire. It's a living thing and it wants to kill you very, very badly. So a lot of people, I think up to that one point, I think 530 people were on the lines over there fighting, incredible aerial attacks, because there's really not much else you can do in some areas here. This is the Rocky Mountains. So, you know, all you can do is fly planes, fly retardant tankers. They had huge tankers, just like, God, man, huge jet tankers. Medium sized tankers, you had the smaller scoop planes, and scoop planes basically. Think of birds. You know, think of a pelican scooping up water, these scoop planes drop about 1,000 gallons of water, and then it fly to a reservoir, in this case, a horse tooth reservoir, which is close by, big reservoir, dip down, fly along the surface, fill a plane, turn around, come back and drop the retardant. At the height of the battle for the eastern line of the fire, it was one tanker after another. One would fly from the north, the other would fly from the south. They would dump retardant. And then when the tankers had to go back to the field and be reloaded, then the helicopters and the water drop planes took over. It was just amazing to watch. I mean, and I do not even absolutely stand in awe of the people who fight fires, because here's all these people who, I said this on Facebook, you know, as a thank you, I'll say it again. Here is a thank you. There's all these people down over there, you know, a couple of miles from here scattered all through, whose names I will never know, and who have been fighting 24 hours a day since Monday, a week now on this huge fire. And all you can say is, wow, for people whose names they don't know. And all you can say is thank you. It's really absolutely amazing. And again, as I will say, as I've said many times, people who fly airplanes into fires are crazy, but thank heavens for them. So that's kind of where we are now. We're kind of rolling back to some level of normality, e.g. we're working. I haven't shot on my range yet. I'm actually going to shoot a little bit this afternoon, not a huge amount, you know, at the weather is not breaking into a Wednesday, but I got to get some B-roll and some stuff done. And, you know, I have very good steel targets in a very contained area. So, you know, I'm not going to add to anybody's woes. But I talked about this this week on Trigger. If you go to Trigger, and one thing I hauled out, when you're sorting guns, right, you have to go through your safe. You have to do all that. And you have to say, "Okay, this one goes, this one stays." And an interesting side effect of that is that you come across guns that maybe you have not used in literally years. And, you know, partly what I do, and I evaluate guns, and I buy a lot of guns, I evaluate them. I shoot a lot of guns, shoot a lot of different competitions. And so, you know, it's sort of like -- I don't just sell them again when I stop doing such and such a competition. Instead, I might just focus on, "Well, let's set this aside and see if it's something I'm going to need or want to use in the future." So, you know, over this week makes sense, right? I also especially always hang on to my competition guns, you know, because we kind of talked a little bit about the concept of guns. It means something to you, and certainly guns that I've competed with do meet that category. They mean something to me. I put a lot of work in them. Oftentimes, I put a lot of money in them. And a lot of -- they've been in my hands a lot of times. You know, that's how the finish gets worn off, you know? But, you know, those I keep. And just -- one of the things, when I was sorting through guns -- and you can go ahead and go over to trigger it, and you can certainly see it -- is I fished out one of my earliest rock island armory guns, and it predates their ultra-attack series. Essentially, it's a large capacity, which a higher capacity, 15 rail magazines, 17 rail magazines, something like that. Nine millimeter. Now, it came in a match kit. You've got the nine millimeter barrel, 22 TC in barrel, and you could change the spring systems. It was kind of a neat setup. But what I wanted was -- actually, at that point, we're still shooting a lot of IPSIC, or USPSA. Sorry. You know, we date ourselves when we say IPSIC, International Practical Shooters' Confederation. But I was shooting a lot of IPSIC. And I -- for the last few years, I'd been shooting a STI edge in '40, Smith & Wesson, which was kind of the definitive USPSA-limited gun. And unfortunately, you know, we got kind of in a financial bind just before television and everything. And, you know, sometimes things go out the door. But I had, oddly enough, another nine millimeter from ParaUSA, Para Ordnance. And, yeah, I'd known those guys a long time when they were in Canada. I'd been up to Canada at the shop and everything, and hanging around with all the -- you know, Todd Jarrett was their factory shooter, and Todd Jarrett was, and does remain, a very good friend of mine. And so I'd had, interestingly enough, shooting one of their light double-action guns. That was just -- it was, you know, every so often, the river branches off with little streams on the side, and they only go a little ways, and eventually they dry up. And the light double-action concept was that. It was very much a light double-action system grafted onto a 1911. And I liked it. Todd Jarrett liked it. Todd Jarrett did some amazing scores with it. A lot of people didn't like it because interest -- not going to stop saying interestingly enough, don't I? But when you release the trigger, you know, if you're carefully riding the trigger, it was two clicks, not one, so it went to click, click. And people say, "Well, I can't ride the trigger." Well, you shouldn't ride the trigger anyway. But, you know, that's one way of shooting a gun. There are better ways to do it. But I'd done a lot of shooting with a full-size 1911 LDA 9 millimeter. Hang on. Ready to revolutionize the world of sport shooting? 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But the result of that is you always, always, always have a flashlight in your pocket. It's, we all should have one all the time, but in a situation like I've been in in the last week, I wouldn't know what to do without it. And I have a couple of different Streamlights that are with me a lot. You know, one of the really super-smaller rechargeable ones, which the finish is worn off because it's been in my pocket for a long time. But something that I like, it's kind of, it's a new version of the Streamlight wedge. You know, wedge is kind of the oddly shaped light. And it's flat, which, you know, thank you. How many times in the dark have a flashlight rolled off something like only once last night, but you know, the wedge system is flat. It's about a third shorter than the previous wedge system. I think it's got a lot of aluminum, a lot, flame thrower, rechargeable. And that has been with me hands-on for the last week. You know, I don't think I know what to do without it. You know, so when somebody says, do you have a flashlight? Yeah, I always do. But so it is, they call it the wedge XT. It's a great light. What I do is I, you know, when I went to bed, plugged it in and left it plugged in. And in the morning when I pick it up, it's charged. And we go the day. So Streamlight, Streamlight builds products. A lot of those firefighters on the other side over there have used Streamlight products. They have a whole line that's aimed at first responders and firefighters, et cetera. So to me, Streamlight is a hands-down choice. Yeah, is this like a total like plug for Streamlight? Yeah, yeah, it is. I would not know what to do without them, honestly. So anyway, talking about competition guns. I shoot a pair of LDA and we had 17, 18-round magazines using extension. I forget what the rules allowed us to have, but that's what I had. And this is a long time ago. Like I said before TV, BTV at the very beginning of shooting gallery, maybe. I think that's how, at the very beginning of shooting gallery is shooting Ipsyk. And one of the ad people came to me and said, "You don't think about Rock Island Armory?" I said, "Yeah, they're the Philippines. They make a lot of 1911s. And now you've just heard my entire knowledge base on Rock Island." And he goes, "Are they any good?" I said, "I don't know. I haven't heard anything bad about them." And he goes, "Can you tell me within a week or so if they're any good?" "Sure." So we've still got these things. This is amazing. I don't know if you do this, but paper used to come in the mail. A big, thick thing. Magazines, they were called. One of them was called shotgun news. And, you know, I'm sure it had articles in it, but it's sort of the same relationship with articles as penthouse was, you know, to articles. Everybody's like, "Yeah, I just get shotgun news, not for the naked picture, but for the classified ads." Because it was the most comprehensive classified, pre-internet days, classified ads, listing that we had, add listing that we had. So I went to my fire news and I always read your articles, David, 40-year, honestly, always. But I went down to somewhere, one of the big shops there in shotgun news, and lo and behold, you know, they had a Rock Island Armory in 1911 for $389.99 free shipping to my FFL. I'm like, cool. So bought it, shipped to my FFL. And went, picked it up, took it to a match. And, you know, in the course of a couple of weeks, shot the crap out of it. And it shot well. I mean, were there things I could pick on? Yeah, sure. But there's things almost with every gun I could pick on. But for a $389 gun that I did not do a thing to, except take it out of the box and take it to a match. I thought, what's this really neat? So anyhow, you know, shooting the LDA is our regular match gun. And then Rock Island came on as a sponsor very, very early on in shooting gallery. And I thought, well, if, you know, they support me, I should support them. So especially because I did like the 22 TCM. Fred Craig's friend, the two-awesome Craig Magnum, 22 TCM. That's one of Fred Craig and Martin Twassen's projects. And it was really neat caliber and everything. But yeah, so I ended up with a nine millimeter large capacity gun. And I said, well, what do I have to do to take this gun and use it to turn it to a competition gun? And at that point, I was working with sailor's guns, the late Jim Anglin. I think that's right. And it did great work. And so I sat him in the gun and I said, you know, I'm not looking to do a hell of a lot of work to it. We'll change out the beaver tail. You know, we'll change out the trigger. Typically at that point, all my 1911s had STI triggers in them and setups. Clean everything up. Give me a fiber optic front. Do those things. It's also got like a lot of skateboard tape on it, like it was assaulted by Tony Hawk. And I started shooting in matches. And you know what? It shot really well. It's got kind of an adjustable sight. You know, we're like, well, it's not a ball bar, but you know, what was then. But it's a good sight on it with a fiber optic. It's an excellent sight. I think it's a Dawson fiber optic on it. It shot great. And even better, it took para-USA magazines. So I know sometimes when people who don't shoot competition hear all that talk about like magazines, they go like, what's the big issue, guys? You know, guns come with two magazines or three magazines. What's the big issue? For a competitor, as we've said before, and we'll no doubt say many times again, a magazine is a use them up commodity. You know, a magazine is a big deal. And you drop them. They break. They wear out. You've got to replace the spring. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. But in short, the more magazines you have, the easier your life is. When you're competing. So I already had a stock of para-USA magazines, and they fit and they worked and they ran, you know, slide a lock back, all that happy stuff. And so I took it and shot it. You know, I think I was shooting limited, shooting limited minor. I mean, you know, I knew I wasn't going to win the Cadillac. But honestly, you know, after I saw my STI edge, after I saw my 40, I never had that much urge to go back to 40 again. You know, there was a period of time. And I think there was a period of time for a lot of us that we saw 40 Smith and Wesson as some sort of panacea round. And I know Columbia Invitational, the first IDPA badge, big IDPA match, which you've heard about from me a million times. Shot it with Jim Cerillo, my friend Jim Cerillo. And, you know, I shot there. I shot a browning high power combat 40 Smith and Wesson. And so all of us felt really studly. You know, we shot a lot of 40 Smith and Wesson because the way USPSA's power factoring was set up, you really had to shoot 40 Smith and Wesson and limited. But I just didn't want to anymore. You know, instead I had a really good 9 millimeter and lots of really good 9 millimeter magazines. So I thought, what the hell, let's shoot 9 millimeter minor because, again, it's unlikely I'm going to win the Cadillac. Even were there a Cadillac. But so, yeah, it turned out to be a really nice gun. You know, I don't recall it ever really malfunctioning. I don't recall me going like, ah, I thought I was a berm. I just remember it working. And so when I was kind of going through guns this week, I kind of got it out and thought, well, you know, it looks like crap. Which is where, you know, honestly, I wasn't aware of the guy. That is where my competition guns end up. You know, you shoot the guns a lot. They wear. If you run them in and out of your holster, like one time, two times, ten times, a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, no matter what finish you get on the gun, you're going to start wearing some of it off. You know, that's just kind of the way it works. I know I've replaced this fiber optic bead in it maybe two or three or four times because it shoots off. It's a thin bead one, you know, because I wanted a very specific sight picture. Not shooting red dots. I wanted a very specific iron sight picture. And I would carry with me extra light rods, you know, in matches. So, you know, during a match, if I looked up and I realized there was no magic green light coming in the front of the guy, it was a matter of putting in another fiber optic rod, sealing it at both ends with the match and motoring on. So, you know, the grips are, I think the original grips that came with it. And for some reason, I don't really understand about half the screws have fallen out. But the grips are still on. As I said, you know, my Tony Hawk Memorial grip main strap is a skateboard tape. And I do have a checkered main spring housing for it. I believe actually they have bought that and sent it off to sailor's guns. You know, I bought that. I didn't change anything on the safety system. I didn't think that was significant. But main thing, like I said, I wanted exactly the trigger pull on one bit. I want to run all the time. And honestly, that's not that much different than what I do right now with every gun that comes in here. You know, I'm not looking for perfection, but I would like it to work. So, I don't know though, here, since, and you're thinking like, we're just going, Michael. You know, are you just going to meander around for like the next year or something on this? I don't know. What I was thinking of doing is, you know, we've talked a lot about the Rock Island 10 millimeter project, right? Basically, it's my ultimate 10 millimeter carried in the woods gun. It's got a Trichicon CC. It's 1911, 10 millimeter. Trichicon CC, red dot on it, back up front sights from excess. Internals from Ed Brown. If you're going to have sponsors, try to have sponsors who are the best in the entire world at what they do. So, it basically becomes, to me, a great woods gun. You know, you call it a bare gun or whatever you want to call it. That's somewhere near getting done. You know, some things that needed to get shipped out this week didn't get shipped out this week because really I couldn't leave the house. But I'm looking at this because it's a series 70 style 1911. You know, there's no trigger. There's additional firing pin safety that drops down. I can actually maybe think about putting a red dot on this gun, which might be kind of an interesting gun. Yeah, I've had some fun with Rock Island over the years. One of my absolute favorite guns is a Rock Island long slide, large capacity, 10 millimeter, and designed specifically for hog hunting. And it's got a frame mounted dot. So it's like essentially using USPSA open technology, you mount the mount for the optic, which is a point T2. You mount the mount for the optic and on the frame, so it's not moving. You know, it's a heavy gun, but one of the reasons it's done in USPSA open class is because it's the most stable way in the world to shoot. Because the site itself is a movie, the gun is reciprocating, but the site itself is not moving with the gun, like it would say if you've mounted the object on the slide. I love that gun. It was a spatter painted by Sean McSheedy. It shoots crazy good. I mean, with some of the double tap ammo, wow, it's, it's, it will, you know, the proverbial like tack driver. We talk about that, but with, with the double tap ammo and a good rest and, and that, that dot site mounted on the frame, the gun will shoot incredibly well. But so, you know, that gun from Rock Island, the Rock Island baby rock, you know, we talked about this a lot. Because what we're seeing is people who, you know, people who probably shouldn't have moved to many nine millimeters, micro nine millimeters, and then said, wow, these things hurt. You know, and, and in the game of self defense, it's a zero sum game. Only hits count. You know, you say, well, it's a really powerful nine millimeter and I failed to hit you with it. So that actually, you know, you don't get points. Introducing the all new Taurus G3C with key new features and enhanced customization potential for shooters and everyday carry practitioners of all ages and abilities. To learn more, talk to your local dealer today. MTM believes that a great day at the range or out hunting starts with having the right equipment. In 1968 family on MTM case guard dedicated self fulfilling those needs, fulfilling. If I use it 11 more times, it will be my word. From shooting tables to ammo storage, MTM has you covered. And believe me, I thankful for those MTM boxes when I was staging, getting ready to potentially have to evacuate here in last week. Anyway, we're talking a little bit about the baby rock. A 380 rock on armory miniature 1911. I love it a lot. Of all of 380s I've shot. I believe it's kind of the most out of the box accurate one I ever shot. You know, I shot in a bunch of 25 yards and it's like, this is great. To me, it's a gun that does a good job of splitting the difference between a 9mm and 380 because what you end up with is a 380 that instead of being a little teen tiny thing that you might accidentally swallow, you have a 380 that you can shoot well. And I don't have to go into more than a couple of zillion million times right about how self-defense, as I mentioned earlier, zero sum game only hits count, only hits count. And the other thing, and again something I caught some crap for, but there's a surprise, but one of the things that I like about the baby rock is shooting at 25 yards. Because it's not inconceivable that I might have to use a concealed carry gun to shoot a little bit farther out. I don't think anybody even argues about that anymore. We first talked about that on shooting gallery, people were like, "Holy cow, you must be insane. Don't you know that muggers never farther away than three feet? Yeah, hell yeah." Anyway, but I think we all got past that, right, like a bad virus. But, yeah, so I have an inclination to go ahead and red dot this old rock island. Rock Island now makes much better, not better in the sense of the qualities better, but better in the sense of features, functions, racing strikes and the like. They're tack ultra series. They have a larger capacity tack ultra competition pistol, 9 millimeter. They also have a 40 and 45, and 10, that my long slide, 10, is a tack ultra series. And they are great guns. Very little you need to do with them to pick them up and go race. But it'd be fun. It depends. I think a C&H precision would probably do the work. C&H, one of the things they have, in addition to doing the work on the slide, the C&H cross adapter plate, where a slide is milked to take that plate, the plate also comes with a rear sight on it. Kind of a nice setup, kind of a nice setup. So we'll see. One thing I am going to do is shoot the old war horse here, and that'll be fun. The other thing, the other thing I'm working on right now, a project I've kind of jumped back into that was in a bayon for the last week, is I've been working with my pal John Allchin. Of course, makes Allchin mounts. And John, amazingly, I don't know if I mentioned this or not, because my brain is still fuddled. But you have no John forever, you know, a couple of forever's. And he recently retired from his real job, and his wife have an ice cream truck that they take to like drag races, car, races, car events. Because everybody always smiles when they see an ice cream truck, John rocks. Still, of course, making sight bases, but he sent me a sight. In fact, I just got it, one of his sights, for a fast-fire, fast-fire three, Burris. And what we're doing is fitting it onto a Rossi .357 revolver. You know, that's kind of the goal of doing this. See just exactly how good a fit, how everything's going to work. So far, so good. I looks like I probably got up against some holes punched in the top strap of the Rossi. But other than that, I think we're in really good shape here. I'm looking forward to putting that on. I'll keep you in the loop on that. It's not a huge project. You know, we're just kind of pressing on. Also, just briefly want to come back to self-defense here at the end of the show that, you know, given the stresses on our culture right now, given the stresses, just incredible, incredible stresses. Yeah, I was reminded again last week of what a role those stresses play. You're on really, really tearing you down, slowing you down, doing all those things. Remember, we're in the scariest times of our lives. We're in a situation where basically everybody that got arrested or anti-Israel protesters, defacing public monuments, federal monuments, tearing down things, and shoving people to the ground, doing all sorts of stuff. They got arrested. They all got let go, right? Huh? And the J-6 people are still in jail. Yeah, it's hard to remember what America was like when it was equal justice under law, isn't it? You know, it's a hard thing to imagine. But that has to be in the forefront of your mind, you know, in your situational awareness. One of those, you've got like a little yellow pasted note in your head that says, "Remember, there's no such thing as equal justice under law. Should I have to defend myself from someone who is sanctioned under the law, the consequences will be higher for me." And as a consequence of that, you know, you do have concealed carry insurance, you know? Get it from me. Again, I'll be on the new board of directors of Citizens Legal Defense Fund. Armed Citizens Legal Defense Fund, go there. USCCA, there's a number of other... I'm looking at a couple of other organizations, by the way. And I'll have a little bit better report for you a little bit later. Maybe, you know, if you've been insuring with USCCA, maybe there's another path you need to go down. But, you know, that's something I'll fill you in on as I know more about it. But yeah, that insurance becomes critical, becomes absolutely critical in times like these. The other thing is the necessity of awareness of your own community, of what's going on in your own community. Some of these communities where they had anti-Israeli rights, very small. And, you know, this is going to go away, right? We're literally on the brink of World War III. And honestly, you know, what can I say? You know, I don't like Democrats at all. I don't like you. I don't like you people. However, I didn't think that that should you take power, that you would have figured out a way to bring this to the brink of nuclear annihilation. What the hell is wrong with you people? But so, you know, there's that much more tension on the system. If you, you know, if you have the opportunity to not go to a blue city, don't go there. If you're living in a blue city, you got, you know, the pressure's on you to figure out how this is going to work. And I think the way it's ultimately going to work, I fall back on some talks that I've had with my friend Kevin Creighton and other people is it's going to only work through community. If you're living in a blue city, and again, I've lived in New York, I lived in New York, I lived in Tampa, lived in Memphis, which is a blue city where, you know, even bread trucks had tail gunners, right? I've lived in big cities. I've spent a lot of time in big cities. And I think the way that it's coming up in these times, the way you survive in a big city is through community. Your neighbors, the people around you, you know, you need to structure a community with the people around you because the outside community is arguably batshit crazy. So that's the way that has to work. Let's go back and think about 9/11 a little. I think just looping around here, I think the hardest part to deal with the soup that we are actually in is the fact that it's a moving target. You know, when we talk about the changing landscape for self-defense, and it's something I've talked about now for a couple of three years, and I'm glad to see it moving more and more into the mainstream, but that landscape itself is moving. It's fluid. It's fluid. You know, it depends a lot on where you are. It depends a lot on politics. It depends a lot on the endless number of illegal immigrants. Somebody said, "Oh, you're not using the right terminology. How about this?" People who come over the border illegally, who basically should be either sent home or fed into a wood chipper. Boom. There you go. A lot of respect. A lot of respect. It depends. It depends. And it depends is a dangerous place to be. You know, it's not a safe, secure place on the board of play because you don't know. You know, you don't know. It's one of the reasons I feel very, very strongly, very strongly about being armed all the time, including at home. You know, don't follow the lead of my father and put a gun in the underwear drawer, a gun in the sock drawer, a gun in the refrigerator, wanted a baggie in the freezer, two under the cushions of the couch. You know what? Put it in your pocket. Put it in your pocket. Or leave it on your belt, either one. But if you're like, "Ah, you know, I'm at home. I don't want people to like that. I got people coming over. I got to do it." All those things, put it in your pocket. I am in my office at the secretine bunker in the Rocky Mountains. You know, where I'm surrounded by electronic perimeter alarms, alarms, all kinds of things like that. And I have a gun in my pocket because I always have a gun on my person. Except when I shower, I haven't quite gotten to the point with Larry Mudgett. Not showering with Larry, but with Larry Mudgett who, you know, all those years in LAPD, a gun in the shower becomes a critical thing so nobody can sneak up on him. And he has a lot of enemies. But the point being that because the situation is fluid, because the landscape changes sometimes on an hourly basis, all we can do is make sure that our reaction skills are up to par. And one of our key reaction skills is having a firearm, having a non-lethal. Maybe gas, you know, having maybe impact. Maybe having a knife as something else. Maybe making sure you have a first aid kit. All right. You know, there's all the stuff that you need to think about depending on what your threat level is. And the situation is here now that basically you have to revise your threat level. Let me say, at least on a weekly basis. It's not like you have to sit down, have a plan, you know, gosh, get shirts printed up, say this week's threat assessment, you know, free shirts for everybody there. But you do need to evaluate whether your primary threat assessment is still working for you. Example, and I'll let you get out of here. Denver, you know, as Denver has become flooded by illegal immigrants, illegal migrants, scum, garbage, trash, the sewer leaving of multiple companies, companies, countries, it's become increasingly dangerous to be in Denver. And budgets, you know, the police budget itself has been taken reduced to, so some of that money can go to taking care of those beloved newcomers, all of whom answer to one of the big cartels. Gosh. So, I mean, the situation in Denver has markedly changed in the last six months and not for the better. And that's what I mean by a constant evaluation, reevaluation, thinking through what our threat level is. You know, this week we got our ass beat up here because there was a fire. Dude, did I, do I know fires start up here? You bet. Do I know that sometimes they're real scary and I have to run like a scared rabbit? You bet. Have I done everything in my power to make it that my house has a chance to get through? No, there's more. Reality slaps you and luckily we're going to have the opportunity to make some of those other changes. In any case, a few thoughts. I'm going to think this through and put it in a little more coherent form. In the next couple of weeks we'll talk more about the shifting landscape and how that has been changing even now. So, now that I've run over, let's get out of here a little bit. I don't know. How about bad Rodney? Yeah. Bad Ronald. I'm sorry. I got the bad R. It's a, it's a good song. It's called Barkatron 5000, which is probably could do a name for Newt. But anyhow, I'm Michael Bain. This is MBTV on the radio. We're in our 20th year in our award-winning podcast. You can find us at Michael Bain dot TV where we'll have links of everything we have mentioned here and you'll have any number of podcast services that you can sign up for and make sure that you can get us every week. And so, with all the mechanical barking going on in any case, think about your threat assessment and make sure you stay safe out there. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] I cast on the John. [MUSIC PLAYING]
