The Howie Carr Radio Network
Meet the Experts: Bryan Ganz of Byrna
If you own or have considered owning a gun, you've likely asked yourself the question, "Would I pull the trigger should that time come?" For many, it's a moral dilemma. But what if you could eliminate that worry and, instead, non-lethally incapacitate a threat? This week's guest, CEO of Byrna Bryan Ganz, has just the solution for you.
Join Howie and Bryan as they discuss the self-defense inventions at Byrna Technologies, including launchers and non-legal pistols, that give weapon-owners peace-of-mind when deciding how to keep their loved ones safe.
Interested in learning more about non-lethal self-defense? Check out byrna.com.
- Duration:
- 27m
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) - Welcome to another episode of Meet the Experts with Howie Car, a podcast featuring long-form interviews with guests who have a specialized field of expertise. If you own or have ever considered owning a gun, you've likely asked yourself the question, "Would I pull the trigger should that time come?" For many, it's a moral question that could have dire consequences no matter the answer. But what if you could eliminate that worry and non-leathily incapacitate a threat? That was the motivation for the people at Burna Technologies who produce multiple self-defense products, including launchers or non-lethal pistols, giving their customers peace of mind that their loved ones can be safe without taking a life in the process. Join Howie as he discusses the details of Burna's flagship products and how they're implemented nationwide with President and CEO of Burna Technologies, Brian Gantz. Here's your host of Meet the Experts, Howie Car. (upbeat music) - Welcome to this edition of Meet the Experts and with me today is Brian Gantz. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Burna Technologies. They produce, in the United States of America, launchers. Brian Gantz, first of all, thanks for joining us here on Meet the Experts and what is a launcher? - First off, Howie, thank you very much. Just so pleased to be here with you. A launcher is the term for a non-lethal gun. If it's non-lethal, it's called a launcher. And when we first started Burna, we had signs all over the office, never call it a gun. But you know what, we're all gun guys and we just refer to it as a non-lethal gun. - So if it's a non-lethal gun, what does it fire? - So the Burna looks like a gun, it works like a gun, but instead of firing bullets, it fires projectiles. And these projectiles are either a hard, high-grade polymer, so they can break windows, they're very painful. If you hit somebody, but they won't break the skin, they won't cause any permanent injury, they certainly wouldn't cause death. And we have projectiles that are filled with pepper and tear gas. So when they hit somebody, they burst, they form a cloud around that person. And that person is incapacitated for the next 30 to 40 minutes. - Is it more or less effective than tear gas? - Well, first off, it is tear gas. So it's very effective, it is more effective because you have a range of 60 feet. So the big issue with pepper spray or tear gas is that it's a close quarter combat weapon. It's good for somebody five to 10 feet away. Well, you know, I've got three daughters, they all weigh 110 pounds. They always carried pepper spray. But honestly, I was always concerned that by the time it was effective, the assailant was too close. - Let's just ask you right off the top here. You know, there was this infamous incident in Boston after a World Series game where there was basically a riot going on, a celebratory riot, and the Boston PB fired what they thought was a non-lethal gun. And it ended up killing somebody. What's the difference between your product and what killed that co-ed? - In that tragic incident, that was a launcher made by FN Herstal, was an FN Herstal 303. The round was both lead and tear gas. So it was an eight gram round. It carried too much kinetic energy. So our rounds carried 10 joules of energy, this carried 30 joules of energy. Once you start going above 20 joules of energy, you're in that gray area between non-lethal and lethal. And it was just too powerful. - So this couldn't happen with your product? - No, we've sold tens of millions of rounds of ammunition of projectiles. There have been thousands of real use cases. There's not been a single death or permanent injury. - So what prompted you to become invested in the field of non-lethal defense products? - Well, my wife passed away many years ago and I was a single dad of three daughters. And Howie, let me tell you, there's nothing that focuses your attention on safety, like being a single dad of three daughters. And I got them pepper spray and I, but they're all 110 pounds. And I was concerned that by the time that was effective, the assailant was too close. So I wanted to design something that they could use. Also, I'm a gun owner. I carried my whole life, but like most reasonable gun owners, I haven't thought how quick would I be to pull the trigger? And the answer is probably not very quick. I mean, you pull that trigger, your life changes forever. Legally, financially, psychologically. So I wanted something that I could use to protect myself, that my kids could use to protect themselves without the risk of taking a life. - Explain how big the gun is and how you carry it. - As I said, I've been a gun owner most of my life. My favorite firearm is the Glock 19, 9 millimeter. - Okay. - I have a couple of those. - You're not old school revolver. - I have a revolver as well. But I like the semi-automatic 9 millimeter. In any case, our launcher, the Burna SD, is the same exact dimension across the barrel as a Glock 19. It's the same dimension down the grip as a Glock 19. It is a little bit wider because we fire a 68 caliber round, but it is basically the size of what's called a compact handgun. A compact handgun is kind of a misnomer because if you've tried to carry it, you know, particularly in the summer, it's not that easily concealable. I carry it on me all the time during the winter. In the warmer weather, I generally don't carry it on body. I carry it in my backpack or body. - So a woman would carry it in a purse? - In a purse, yeah. - Holsters, you have holsters. - We do have holsters. In fact, we've got a broad range of holsters, including level two holsters for law enforcement, which means nobody can yank it out of the holster without pressing the release button. - So the reason you'd prefer this over pepper spray is because you can use it if you sense danger. You can take somebody out at 60 feet. - At 60 feet. - 60 feet, 20 yards. - Yeah, you know, it was interesting. My youngest daughter is a doctor. She would get out of the hospital late at night, Boston Medical Center. Scared to death. - Bad area. - Scared to death to walk to her car. And I said to her, you know, honey, just have your purse in front of you, have your hand on your burner. I gave her a burner with a crimson trace laser on it. I said, if you feel threatened, if somebody's following close behind you, turn around, put the red dot on their chest. If they mean you no harm, they will turn on their heels and apologize and head in the other direction. And you know what, you should probably apologize too, 'cause they just probably pooped their pants, you know, when they saw that red dot on them. But it gave her a sense of empowerment. I gave her the ability to live safe. And that's really what we wanted to accomplish. - Now, do you have to get a license or training to buy a burner? - First off, you should get training to do anything because as law enforcement officers say, you never rise to the occasion, you fall back on your training. But you do not need a license, you do not need a permit, there are no background checks. If you have a felony, you can still buy a burner. And it's easy to train in your backyard or your basement because it's quiet. It's 1/16 is loud as a real firearm. - Even if you have a criminal record, as you know, there's a lot of people have records way back in their past. Sometimes you need to even go to the governor to get a pardon, to get the right to legally own a firearm. There's none of that with the burner. - No, and once we advertised, if you're a felon, you can buy this. We took a lot of BS for that. But there are a lot of people that have a felony for a non-violent crime. They want some way to protect themselves and their family. - Burna, I should say, is proudly American, it's manufactured in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And you can visit burnabyrna.com/howawaynow for an exclusive 10% discount. That's byrna.com/howaway for an exclusive 10% discount. Can I buy this at the local target? - We are available in Bass Pro, Sportsman's, Shields, and about 500 other firearm stores and sporting goods stores. But 75% of our sales are online, both at burna.com and at amazon.com. - What is the price, generally speaking? - We have two pistols, the Burna SD, which is kind of our halo product, and that's $379, and the Burna LE, which we developed for law enforcement, and that's $479, but it's also available to consumers. - Why is that cost $100 more? - It's more powerful. It's a more powerful launcher, carries more energy. - You need to buy ammo. - What do you call it? - Well, it is ammo, but we call them projectiles, not bullets. - Projectiles. - So they are, you know, a spherical round projectiles. Again, we offer a kinetic projectile, which is a high-grade polymer. It uses pain compliance, and there's actually a video of me getting shot with it. It's very painful to get hit with it. That said, it doesn't break the skin, it doesn't cause per-minute of serious injury, and it certainly doesn't cause death. Law enforcement often use that round to break a window in a car, and then they can fire in our pepper or tear gas rounds into the car, which caused people to get out. We've got a number of law enforcement officers on our law enforcement training team, and they said to me, "Brian, the most, "the scariest thing that we ever do "is come up upon a vehicle that's refusing "to put down the windows or open the door." How do you know what's inside? The ability to break the glass and fire pepper into the car, these guys get out coughing, choking, hands in the air, very effective. - So you have a choice between buying the polymer or buying the pepper spray/tear gas? - Yeah, and honestly, you should buy both. I load my burner so that the first two rounds out of it are the hard polymer, and then the next three rounds, it's a five round magazine, are the tear gas and pepper. And the reason for that, first off, oftentimes, all you need to do to stop in a sale is just to present the launcher. I was being interviewed a couple of years ago on a two-way radio show, and they said, has it ever been used to stop a crime? At the time, it was hundreds, it's now thousands of cases. But I said, it has been, but interestingly, a lot of times, people will pull it out, and they never have to fire. They never have to pull the trigger. And he said, the NRA actually has a stat that 92% of the time, when you pull out a handgun to stop a crime, you do not need to fire the trigger. - Because it looks like a semi-automatic. - It does, but part of it is just, the criminal is looking for the easy mark. They're not looking for somebody willing to fight back. So that's why the police say, scream, yell, do anything you can, and that will usually be enough. - Like with the bear, exactly. - And you can also put the red dot on there, the red dot on somebody, so that's kind of like a warning. - Yeah, when we first developed the product, we made it in less lethal orange, because we wanted people to know that it was a non-lethal device. And we crappled with, do we make it in other colors so it'll look much more like an actual gun? We had a customer who was a private security company, they wanted it in black, and they wanted it in black because they wanted people to think that their guards were carrying real guns. Black has become our most popular color. I carry a black launcher. Why would anyone want any other color? There are some people that are concerned, what happens if the police see me with this? - Oh, I got it, okay. - And we're saying, guys, this is kind of social Darwinism. If the police are around, you don't need your burner. This is for when the police aren't around, so do not pull out your burner in front of the police. - So then you usually sell the magazines with the five rounds that have two and then three, two polymer, and then three with the pepper spray tear gas. - Correct. - You can get the magazines with all of the-- - First off, like any magazine, you can put whatever ammo you want in it. So that's just my personal preference of how to load it. The launcher comes with two five round magazines. It uses CO2 for propulsion, so an eight gram CO2 in the burner SD and a 12 gram CO2 in the burner LE. And you can generally fire four or five magazines on one CO2 canister. - Do you recommend that people train with this before they use it? - I always recommend that people train because when your adrenaline is flowing, when your heart is pumping, you don't want to be fumbling with the safety. You don't want to be pulling the trigger for the first time. So training is critical. Law enforcement always says nobody rises to the occasion, they fall back on their training. So the beauty of the burner is unlike my actual firearm where I've got to go to a range, I've got to take a couple hours to go use it, you can fire it in your backyard. It's no louder than a nail gun. We train in my backyard all the time, I've got a place down the cape. My kids and grandkids are over, we're cooking, we're shooting cans off the dock. You can actually train inside your house. We create these targets that will collect the rounds when you shoot them. So there's a certain element of fun to it. But if you think about a real firearm, how 99.9% of the time, it's used recreationally. It's used for people training and having fun with it. Sports shooting is fun. And shooting the burner is also fun, but with the purpose of making sure you're comfortable when you need to use it in a real world situation. Now are there any restrictions transporting the burner across state lines? The burner is legal in all 50 states, and it is legal to carry on a plane in your checked luggage. Really? Yeah. And you do not have to go through the same rigmarole as you would if you're carrying an actual firearm. With every burner, there's a card that you put in the case with your burner, it tells TSA what it is, it is legal to carry. There are certain cities in the United States where it is illegal to carry. So New York City? Of course. San Francisco? Of course. Washington DC. Of course. And Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon. In New York City, though, it's a $50 misdemeanor. So we can't sell it into New York City. Tell us about the demographics of your customers. Our customers tend to be more gun owners. So I would say 60% of our customers are gun owners like myself that want a non-lethal option. But 40% are people that have never owned a firearm, either for philosophical reasons or often they've got small kids at home, they don't want a lethal weapon in the house. It tends more male. I would say 65% are male, 35% female. It skews more conservative. And again, I think that goes along with being gun owners. But I break people down into sort of two categories. There are those of us that are going to protect ourselves and our family and there are others that are going to wait for somebody else to do it. Right. When seconds count, police are minutes away and all saying, but it's true. And the average response time to a distress call in the United States is five minutes. Well, you don't have five minutes. You are your own first responder. Are a lot of the men buying it for their wives or daughters or females in their family? So we have a lot of burn-a-dedicated stores. We've got 20 of them around the country now. And we offer classes. 70% of the people taking our classes are women. So the men always say, I know how to use this. I don't need a class. But we are seeing a lot of women taking the class. So we're not sure in the sort of 65% of men that buy it, how many are buying it for their wives? So you have retail stores? We do have retail stores. Where's the nearest retail store? We're going to be opening one here in Massachusetts this summer. But they're spread around the United States. And if you go online to burna.com, byrna.com, there's a dealer locator. And you can find the nearest store to you. And it's a good time to mention again that if you visit burna.com/howaway, you can get an exclusive 10% discount on your purchase, byrna.com/howaway. And howie, if you fail to go in through the slash howie and you get to the end, and there's a promotional code, put in howie10, and you'll get the same discount. Howie10. What government agencies are using this, if you could say? We're in with about 300 government agencies. Federal, state, and municipal. So on a federal level, DEA, ATF, Secret Service, Homeland Security, all carry burna. Really? Yeah. And then Hawaii sheriffs and across the United States, we do not focus on law enforcement. Because law enforcement is a very slow sale. There's bureaucracy and budgetary constraints. But a lot of people in law enforcement listen to you and listen to Sean Hannity and listen to Glenn Beck. So they reach out to us. And we have a whole law enforcement training team. Law enforcement is important to us because they actually use the burna a lot. So when I first bought my Glock, I bought a box of 50 hollow points, self-defense rounds. I've never fired one. I'll probably go to my grave, never firing a self-defense round. I've fired thousands of practice rounds. But the same is true with burna. Most people will use it to practice. They hope to God they don't actually need to use it, but they're prepared to use it if they need to. Law enforcement uses it all the time. So probably 50% of our real world cases are law enforcement. So they're important to us because they help us improve the product. They give us good feedback. And they prove to consumers that this is a real product. It's carried by ATF. You know that they did a lot of testing before they carried the burnout. How many rounds do you think you need to have in reserve? The average consumer buys 100 rounds a year. Now, a lot of that is just practice rounds. You know, you can buy a five-count pepper. You can buy a 25-count pepper. So yeah, so how much would a five-count pepper? A five-count pepper is $20. Okay. So it's like four bucks. Four bucks a round. Yeah, but again, as I said, you're probably not using those very often. You're using the practice rounds that are, you know, well under a dollar a round. Now, I guess you wouldn't want to be shooting off a pepper sprayer tear gas inside the house. The first time, we package them in 400 counts for law enforcement. We get an order for 400 counts of pepper, and I'm saying, "My God, why does somebody need 400?" Should we call the FBI? I mean, what's going on? They're planning on knocking over a bank. So I called the guy up. He says, "I take it in the woods with me when I'm hiking because if there's any bear or any wild animals, the pepper has a really amazing effect on them. You know, of course, bear spray is a pepper spray." And although the EPA will not allow us to advertise it without an EPA license, we can't advertise it for use on wildlife, there's been a lot of our customers that have told us that they've used it to protect themselves, their family, from cougars, mountain lions, bears, pit bulls. So very effective on animals. And again, those animals move very quickly if you're, you know, having to reach for some pepper spray. Yeah. And these animals have an olfactory system that's 600 times more sensitive than a human. So they are really affected by this. You send something their direction, they're going to head in the other direction. Why would this be better for a woman, like your daughter at BMC, than having just a little canister pepper spray in her purse? Well, first of all, we sell pepper spray as well. We sell something called the burn a bad guy repellent. And I keep pepper spray right in the side pocket of my car because if I'm getting a hassle of the car, I'm probably not going to shoot somebody point plank range even with a non-lethal gun. And I would use a pepper spray in that case. But if somebody's more than 10 feet away, the pepper spray will not be effective. So this is really to be able to stop a threat before it escalates. That's really what you want to be able to do. So if you're in a threatening situation, if you can stop it when people are still far enough away, as law enforcement says distance equals safety. When you say that the projectile contains pepper spray and tear gas, what do you need the tear gas in there? If you've got the pepper spray, the tear gas is actually a little bit more powerful than the pepper. So we sell burn a max, which is basically a pepper and tear gas formulation. But there are a few states that do not allow tear gas, CS. So for those states, we sell 100% pepper. So and your website will tell you what state, you know, what states this is allowed to. There's an FAQ section. You can go in and see what's, but also if you try to check out with something that's not allowed in your state, you'll not be able to check out. Oh, okay. So everything's set. So you don't have to worry about. No, we're not sending you anything that you're going to get in trouble for. Okay. And you could get this at Cape Gun Works, one of our big advertisers. Yeah, there's over 500 gun stores around the country that carry this. And again, to make it clear, when you go into Cape Gun Works or online, you don't have to produce an FID. You're not going to get into trouble like Hunter Biden did. You're not going to have to fill out a form, anything like that. You just, you just buy it. Yeah. So a lot of first time gun buyers considering the burn up in 2023, there were 16 million gun purchases of that 4.8 million were first time gun buyers. How we, what percentage of those people would have considered a non-lethal option if they knew it existed? A lot. So that's why, you know, we were so grateful to be able to be on your show and help let people know that there is an alternative to lethal force. Now I will tell you, I didn't get rid of any of my guns. You know, I am still a proud gun owner and a supporter of the Second Amendment. But I want something lower down on the continuum of force because not every situation should be a life or death confrontation. How many people have used guns to defend themselves? This is an amazing statistic. As of last count, it was 25.3 million Americans have used a gun to protect themselves. It's approximately 500,000 a year from people or animals. No, from people. Just people. Just people have stopped a crime. Now again, 92% of the time, all they have to do is to present the gun. So that's also an interesting statistic, NRA says, you know, if you introduce a gun to stop a crime, 92% of the time, you don't need to pull the trigger. Now, you can't use a toy gun because 8% of the time, you do need to pull the trigger. We've seen something very similar with burner, that the majority of the cases where somebody pulls out a burner to stop a crime, they do not need to pull the trigger. But in many cases, they do. In hundreds of cases, they have had to pull the trigger. According to statistics, 25,300,000 Americans have pulled a firearm. To stop a crime. To stop a crime. And this is why when people think that you're going to get Americans to give up their guns, there are 25 million people that are here today that stopped a crime because they had a gun. Now, try to convince those people to give up their gun. Not going to happen. Everybody they've ever talked to, and told a story to. So explain one more time before we leave Brian Gantz how the burner works and what exactly is the burner. Okay, so the burner, if you go on the website, you'll see the burner handgun looks very much like a semi-automatic nine millimeter gun. It looks like a gun. It works like a gun, but instead of firing lead bullets, it fires these projectiles. And these projectiles, the self-defense projectiles contain chemical irritants, either pepper or pepper and tear gas. And when it hits somebody, what happens is immediately their skin is on fire. It gets into your eyes and it causes something we refer to as temporary blindness, but you can't open your eyes. Your respiratory distress, most people will drop whatever they're holding because they want to reach for their eyes and rub their eyes. And for, you know, 30 minutes, they are completely incapacitated, giving you time to get away and to call authorities. Look, if you go online, you'll see a lot of people using it. Some of them are burner videos, but a lot of these are just people that are customers that have put their own videos online. And you can check these out on YouTube, I'm sure you have a lot of YouTube, Instagram, but you can go again to burner.com, B-Y-R-N-A.com, and you can see all the videos. Again, it's available at Amazon, it's available at burner.com, it's available at various stores, including Cape Gun Works, and it will soon be a retail store opening for burner products. It's a nice gift. Thanks, Howie. So thank you very much, Brian Gantz, for being with us from Burna Technology, and again, if you want to learn more about Burna, B-Y-R-N-A.com/Howie, B-Y-R-N-A.com/Howie, and you'll get an exclusive 10% discount. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. Thanks, Howie. Thanks for joining us on Meet the Experts with Howie Car. We'll be back soon with more interesting guests you're sure to learn a great deal from. [MUSIC]