Episode 159

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Published on:

5th Jan 2026

Guns in America: Hidden Truths Behind the Debate (Full)

Jerremy Alexander Newsome and Dave just launched their new series Guns in America, and this opener changes everything. 62% of gun deaths are suicides—mostly rural men and veterans. They cut through the noise with clear statistics, personal stories, and a sharp look at mental health, poverty, and community support. No partisan talking points. Just the conversation the country actually needs right now..

Timestamps:

  • (00:00) Trigger Warning – Guns in America series begins
  • (00:52) Introduction – Setting the stage
  • (02:51) Cultural Perspectives – Why Americans see guns so differently
  • (03:59) Shocking Statistics – The public health reality
  • (04:39) Personal Gun Stories – Jerremy and Dave open up
  • (06:51) Defense & Hobby – Legit reasons people own firearms
  • (13:25) Mental Health Crisis – The real link to gun deaths
  • (23:19) Legal Landscape – Current regs and loopholes
  • (30:54) Single-Shot Rifle Debate – Wild ideas that resurface
  • (31:41) Chris Rock’s Classic Bit – Comedy meets policy
  • (32:08) Bullet Prices as Deterrent – The $10,000 bullet theory
  • (34:18) Community Violence Intervention – What actually works in cities
  • (35:42) Poverty & Crime – The connection no one wants to say out loud
  • (38:04) Gun Education Gap – Why training matters more than bans
  • (50:50) International Gun Laws – What other countries do (and don’t do)
  • (56:50) Root Causes Exposed – It’s not what cable news screams about
  • (58:35) Final Thoughts – Where the series goes next

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Transcript
Alex:

Welcome to Solving America’s Problems — where Jerremy and Dave

Alex:

just cracked open the gun debate everyone pretends to understand.

Alex:

Turns out 44,000 Americans die from gunfire every year… and OVER 27,000

Alex:

of those deaths — 62% — are suicides.

Alex:

Mostly men.

Alex:

Mostly rural.

Alex:

Lots of military veterans.

Alex:

That means the loudest fight in America right now is over a number

Alex:

where the majority of victims pulled the trigger themselves.

Alex:

Jerremy grew up with guns in the truck and target practice on Thanksgiving.

Alex:

Dave grew up in big city suburbs where guns felt foreign — unusual,

Alex:

not part of daily life.

Alex:

Yet both just stared down the same stat and realized the conversation everyone’s

Alex:

having is aimed at the wrong target…

Alex:

[thoughtful] …and the real one’s been bleeding out in silence.

Jerremy:

Here we go.

Jerremy:

Ladies and gentlemen, we are back.

Jerremy:

Another episode, another great amount of time together to discuss something

Jerremy:

that many people find valuable.

Jerremy:

Many people find important and many people find.

Jerremy:

What's the word, Dave?

Jerremy:

Debatable.

Jerremy:

It's in conversation.

Dave:

I think it's

Jerremy:

It comes up

Dave:

I think it's just scary for folks, like it's either, just like

Dave:

super scary or I don't want to hear it.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

What would you say I, I, not debatable 'cause a lot of things are debatable, but

Dave:

what do you think the vibe is on this?

Jerremy:

Yeah, abrasive, right?

Jerremy:

It's yeah, Grumpy's a good one.

Dave:

nobody goes, yay.

Jerremy:

I think the, yeah, I think the title of this per,

Jerremy:

is perfect Trigger warning.

Jerremy:

We're talking Guns in America, folks.

Jerremy:

That's what we're diving into.

Dave:

Guns, and more guns.

Jerremy:

And I think really to just have this discussion openly and just

Jerremy:

talk about pros, cons as it builds into, as always, my ultimate thesis,

Jerremy:

which is keeping our school safe and.

Jerremy:

Education reform in America.

Jerremy:

Most importantly, make America rich.

Jerremy:

Make America happy, vibrant, and healthy.

Jerremy:

Do all those things you make America wealthy.

Jerremy:

But looking at this from a perspective of, I will absolutely be fully

Jerremy:

aware that I don't think that the second amendment's ever gonna be

Jerremy:

changed or like massively ratified.

Jerremy:

So I'm gonna go down that route.

Jerremy:

Kinda freedom of speech, you're owning your guns.

Jerremy:

Got it.

Jerremy:

High fives all around.

Jerremy:

Alright.

Dave:

but, but all the, all of those rights in there are also have limits.

Dave:

I'm very much like a free speech absolutist.

Dave:

And even when I'm an absolutist, I'm like yeah, there are certain

Dave:

things you're like, ah, like we gotta pump the brakes on some of it.

Dave:

So every single one of those rights in that constitution has

Dave:

a, an interpretation around them.

Dave:

I think that this discussion, particularly on guns, is one where

Dave:

it's okay, so where are these laws?

Dave:

Where are these lines?

Dave:

Where are all these, where, and that's why I was saying, Hey, this

Dave:

is a scary topic because there are, certainly plenty of people in that I've

Dave:

known that, that grew up with guns.

Dave:

It's like a no brainer.

Dave:

It's not something they even think about.

Dave:

And then there are people who grew up like me in big city suburbs

Dave:

where it's no one had a gun.

Dave:

It's and it was foreign.

Dave:

And it took, me having to have people in my life and learning about weapons and

Dave:

getting familiar and comfortable around 'em because I wanted to be familiar and

Dave:

comfortable around them before I was like, oh, okay, yeah, these are not a big deal.

Dave:

But I think a large segment of the population are in, are in that realm.

Dave:

Realm of, I don't know what they are, but they scare me.

Jerremy:

Yep.

Jerremy:

Makes sense, man.

Jerremy:

Firearms in the United States of America embody a big core tension

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

between, like we're talking about right now, constitutional rights,

Jerremy:

and then you have, self-defense.

Jerremy:

Then you have what you mentioned, cultural traditions of ownership.

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

And then what about sport RK hunting?

Jerremy:

Are you gonna hunt with bow and arrow?

Jerremy:

How you gonna hunt?

Jerremy:

And then heritage of like how people grew up and what we've been doing.

Jerremy:

And then you have, what about all the significant public health risks?

Jerremy:

Because it, I guess these numbers aren't gonna be exact, exact what?

Jerremy:

They're pre dang close over the last two years, 44,000 deaths in the us.

Jerremy:

A hundred thousand injuries.

Jerremy:

And of those 44,000 deaths, 62% is suicide.

Dave:

Yeah I, that deserves like its own discussion.

Dave:

So can we put a pin in that and come back around to that?

Jerremy:

Yeah

Dave:

that was like a big piece of this.

Dave:

All right we could do it now if you want to take a little bit of a side

Jerremy:

it's I think it's a number that many people don't know or

Jerremy:

haven't heard about, that's for sure.

Jerremy:

That's a big one, man.

Dave:

I think I wanted to roll back, like I, I grew up in those suburbs, right?

Dave:

So it was unusual.

Dave:

It wasn't crazy to have guns.

Dave:

Like there, my, my family did not own guns.

Dave:

But we had friends who did, and they were hunting enthusiasts, right?

Dave:

Like they, I grew up in Virginia, so back when I was growing up, you could, you

Dave:

could roll out like, a 45 minute drive and you're out in the middle of nowhere

Dave:

and you are definitely hunting deer.

Dave:

So that was pretty common.

Dave:

But you grew up in a different part of the world.

Dave:

You did, you grow up around guns and hunting and ownership.

Dave:

Was that different for you?

Jerremy:

Yep.

Jerremy:

Every day

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

it was all around me.

Jerremy:

It was very normal.

Jerremy:

It was quite open.

Jerremy:

Most people or most families that I know had one and yeah, we would hunt.

Jerremy:

It wasn't necessarily like specifically you had to hunt to live.

Jerremy:

Wasn't that, although I guess it kinda depends on the week every

Jerremy:

now and then, but ultimately, yeah.

Jerremy:

Very common.

Jerremy:

Have 'em in the back of your truck, have 'em in your

Jerremy:

vehicles, have 'em in your house.

Jerremy:

And it was something that people had to talk about, right?

Jerremy:

Gun safety.

Jerremy:

My dad actually cared a lot about it.

Jerremy:

One of the things he told me and taught me it was, every gun is loaded.

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

one thing, you gotta, every single gun, if you see it,

Jerremy:

you assume that it's not only loaded, but it has a round in it.

Jerremy:

That's how you have to treat it, even if you know that it's not, 'cause you

Jerremy:

put it, you know you're holding it.

Jerremy:

It's nope.

Jerremy:

Consider it to be loaded so you don't point it at anybody ever.

Jerremy:

You don't pull the trigger ever unless you're fully 100% ready for the

Jerremy:

repercussions of that trigger pulling.

Jerremy:

And it was just a, yeah, it was a conversation that we had,

Jerremy:

man, pretty, probably once a month as I was a younger boy.

Jerremy:

And then he would, we would do target practice and we would

Jerremy:

shoot squirrels, with a 22 rifle.

Jerremy:

And then we would start doing bigger target practice and we'd go out into

Jerremy:

fields and man, during Thanksgiving and different holidays when a lot of

Jerremy:

the family was around, it was extremely common for everyone to go get their

Jerremy:

shotgun or their pistol or their 22.

Jerremy:

And we would all just do target practice and see who had the best shot.

Dave:

So what was the flavor of gun ownership?

Dave:

What I'm hearing is target practice and some hunting.

Dave:

So it was hobbyists and hunting.

Dave:

Was there an aspect of also defense or safety around it as well, or less

Jerremy:

yeah, they're always.

Jerremy:

Is for people.

Jerremy:

Like I have pini of very pro guns, friends and they will say that it's

Jerremy:

for defense, but then they got 30 guns.

Jerremy:

I'm like, okay, if it's for defense, we're gonna shoot all of them at once.

Jerremy:

Who are you really protecting yourself from?

Jerremy:

And a lot of gun owners, not all of them, but there's definitely a percentage

Jerremy:

that's probably more than 20, that they always have this belief somewhere that

Jerremy:

zombies civil war, something wild's gonna break out and they're gonna be

Jerremy:

prepared 'cause they got all the guns.

Jerremy:

And I'm certainly not gonna say that's not correct or it's not possible.

Jerremy:

But there's always that flavor of, that's their self defense.

Jerremy:

Their self defense is, they're getting prepared for civil war or zombie outbreak.

Dave:

That, that came up in our research where 30% of the adults own

Dave:

like most of the guns, so there's like a small handful of people that own

Dave:

all of the guns, and then everybody else, has this, will have one gun,

Dave:

it's 40% of all households have a gun.

Dave:

And then of that, like a third of those own all the weapons.

Dave:

Those are the guys that have 30 guns.

Dave:

And I'm like, Hey, God bless you.

Dave:

I so

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

That's

Dave:

yeah.

Dave:

I hear you on that.

Dave:

I think, I think that there's, I think there's the hobbyists, right?

Dave:

I think that there's the self-defense, which I think, you

Dave:

know has some validity there.

Dave:

They all have validity.

Dave:

And then there's the the hunters and they all seem to be a little

Dave:

bit, a little bit different.

Dave:

Like if your main gig is hunting, that's a very, like you do it every now and then.

Dave:

And, but I, there's very much an urban rural, God, there's

Dave:

that word again, rural divide.

Dave:

It wasn't until I moved to Colorado where I, almost everybody owned a

Dave:

gun and no matter who they were, and it was really like, it was a

Dave:

no brainer because it was a tool.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Dave:

When you're in, when you're in a part of the world where it's you're not

Dave:

gonna call the police and expect them to be there in under an hour or two,

Dave:

you're going to be in areas where there are large animals that do not like you

Dave:

or if they're scared will really make you, really make you know how they feel.

Dave:

And so there are, you just have it as a tool not to not for self-defense, not

Dave:

for anything other than this is a tool.

Dave:

I'm in an area it's the equivalent of, having an extra can of gas or

Dave:

having a blanket in your trunk.

Dave:

It's and you have a gun.

Dave:

And that's really what it is because when you need it, you definitely need it.

Dave:

And they know when they need it.

Jerremy:

Yep.

Dave:

that's that urban, rural divide,

Jerremy:

yeah.

Jerremy:

Yeah, it's definitely there.

Jerremy:

And I think those are some really interesting, statistics.

Jerremy:

Here's a couple more.

Jerremy:

You have of gun owners, 107 million, adults who own guns?

Dave:

that's a lot of people.

Jerremy:

yeah, exactly.

Jerremy:

A lot of people 43% of those are men.

Jerremy:

22% are women.

Dave:

Fastest growing wom women are the fastest growing that came up.

Jerremy:

Yeah, I like that just makes sense statistically,

Dave:

yeah, it says overall female ownership holds it

Dave:

20 to 25% as of last year.

Dave:

But it's it's really been driven by self-defense concerns.

Jerremy:

no, yeah.

Jerremy:

Now here's a, I don't know, I thought it maybe be a little bit less disparaging.

Jerremy:

45% of Republicans, 20% Democrats.

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Whoa.

Jerremy:

Whoa.

Dave:

That's also saying that most republicans and most

Dave:

Democrats also don't own guns.

Dave:

That's another way of looking at it.

Jerremy:

Which is all no, but again, that's the disparity.

Jerremy:

I would not have, I would've not have guessed that your way I wouldn't

Jerremy:

think that the majority of people would not own guns in the US.

Jerremy:

'cause you, when you talk about, when you talk about guns in general.

Jerremy:

You feel like every single person is just pro army.

Jerremy:

Like they got all the guns in the backpack and they just carry 'em around all day.

Jerremy:

'cause it just fires people up and they just get, so don't take my guns.

Jerremy:

Like that's just how everyone feels.

Jerremy:

Like it just feels that way when you post anything about this.

Jerremy:

And we're gonna get tons of these comments and tons of, that's gonna flood the

Jerremy:

socials and the posts, which is great and we wanna have these conversations.

Jerremy:

But again, that's just an interesting number.

Jerremy:

I just thought it would be a lot more from a percentage standpoint of people.

Jerremy:

32% of adults own guns, which is 107000040% of households.

Dave:

Which means 60% of

Jerremy:

don't exactly, it's a minority

Dave:

Like in every single demo, what,

Jerremy:

every demographic.

Jerremy:

The majority doesn't own

Dave:

There's no, there's nothing to say.

Dave:

This is a gun owner in the United States.

Dave:

There is nothing that says, oh, that person's a gun owner.

Dave:

Is it more likely if you are in a rural area?

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

But that's it.

Dave:

That's the, that's,

Jerremy:

you're a, if you're a white Republican man who lives in a rural area,

Dave:

you're more, more likely than

Jerremy:

more likely, but

Dave:

but it's not a majority.

Jerremy:

advantage.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

It's, it is still not a majority

Dave:

no.

Dave:

Not at all.

Jerremy:

but that's wild if you think about it.

Dave:

Yeah, you think you, in your head you think, oh, that's a gun owner.

Dave:

Nope.

Dave:

You'd be surprised.

Dave:

I, let's swing back to the what came up in the initial research of this because I

Dave:

use a lot of AI and because we don't know much about this other than how we grew up.

Dave:

And I think we have an idea about what this is gonna be, but I was like, okay.

Dave:

For for those listening to this we do this big research thing and maybe

Dave:

I'll do something different this time.

Dave:

I'll actually put a link to our research in the show notes so that

Dave:

you can take a look at what we're looking at and the first batch of.

Dave:

Research I got was, I would describe it as very heavy on the, we've,

Dave:

we've got to do something about this.

Dave:

This is like the craziest thing ever.

Dave:

It's like how, the United States is insane and we've gotta,

Dave:

take away everybody's guns.

Dave:

A little bit of an exaggeration, but not it was as strictly

Dave:

through the lens of gun control.

Dave:

I'm like, okay, I get it, that sounds reasonable.

Dave:

It's something I've heard all my life and it's like more guns,

Dave:

more death and United States as an outlier as far as gun violence.

Dave:

And I'm like, okay, great.

Dave:

But then I read the research and really dug into it.

Dave:

And the thing that absolutely blew me away was how we count

Dave:

gun, quote unquote gun violence.

Dave:

And yeah, there are 44,000 people every year that die from a gun.

Dave:

And that is a scourge.

Dave:

And that is something that is an huge outlier in the world.

Dave:

Like no other nation on the planet has that kind.

Dave:

None of them post those kind of numbers.

Dave:

But the key here is one thing, 62% of those are suicides, and they

Dave:

are suicides of men, and they are suicides of men in rural areas.

Dave:

So if if you are a man in a rural area and you take your life, you do it by a gun.

Dave:

So think about this, 62% of all guns, of that 44,000, meaning

Dave:

27,600 of these are suicides.

Dave:

And I'm like, okay, then suddenly we're not talking about guns anymore

Dave:

because, that's a whole different discussion that we've gotta be having.

Dave:

It's like when we're talking about quote unquote gun control and lowering that

Dave:

number that has nothing to do with gun and gun violence because, like men are going

Dave:

to take their lives any way that they can clearly, but that's a mental health issue.

Dave:

And none of the not one of the laws or regulations, none of them address the

Dave:

main thing, which is mental health.

Dave:

Now look, there's still 36% of those are homicide, which is $16,000.

Dave:

$16,000, 16,000 people.

Dave:

That is something that we should be talking about.

Dave:

But that is, those are completely different strategies than we

Dave:

have a clear mental health problem in the United States.

Dave:

That is, is bonkers.

Jerremy:

You think you can fire up that AI and ask of those suicides?

Jerremy:

How many are veterans?

Dave:

Oh geez.

Dave:

I did.

Jerremy:

Because I would guesstimate that it's over 80%,

Dave:

Oh, for sure.

Jerremy:

Of the suicides that happened that 20,000 number, which is unfortunate

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

73%. 73%.

Jerremy:

I said 80, right?

Jerremy:

That's 73.

Dave:

This is what it is.

Dave:

I'll just read this out, huh suicides account for 62% of gun deaths.

Dave:

The intersection of mental health is nuanced.

Dave:

Most individuals with mental illness are not violent, and that

Dave:

stigma can deter, help sinking.

Dave:

Oh, here's something I didn't know.

Dave:

There is something called the 9 8 8 Lifeline.

Dave:

Have you heard of that?

Dave:

Like we all know what 9 1 1 is in the United States.

Dave:

It's hey, I need help right now.

Dave:

There's also a 9 8 8, and that's for suicide prevention.

Dave:

So if you dialed 9, 8, 8, you are connected to suicide prevention.

Dave:

And I, that is I was this years old when I learned that we

Dave:

actually have a 9, 8, 8 number.

Dave:

So that's, that is something for everybody to know.

Dave:

If they're, if you're in trouble, dial 9, 8, 8.

Dave:

So yeah, for veterans, 73% of suicides are firearms related for veterans.

Dave:

And if you are a rural man facing isolation, peer led groups like

Dave:

Walk the Talk America normalizes conversations and gun shops and ranges.

Dave:

So like there is a, an, like there is, there are veteran

Dave:

advocate groups that we know.

Dave:

They really want to scale up 9, 8, 8.

Dave:

And ensure that it also addresses these suicides with a

Dave:

majority of them being veterans.

Dave:

Bonkers.

Dave:

Like a diff it's a totally different conversation if we're talking about

Dave:

veteran suicides, which is the most of this and not one of the laws that we're

Dave:

talking about, as far as seize the weapons

Jerremy:

Ry is addressing

Dave:

is addressing that issue.

Dave:

Like that, like we're talking so

Jerremy:

That's a monumental thing, man, because I, we're over here talking about

Jerremy:

solving America's problems and here's America saying we have a gun problem.

Jerremy:

Everyone's killing themselves.

Jerremy:

Tons of people.

Jerremy:

Like you can't walk down the streets of Chicago without

Jerremy:

getting shot at by a gang member.

Jerremy:

That's not what the data says at all.

Jerremy:

There is obviously, there, there is murder in America and it's

Jerremy:

always unfortunate, always.

Jerremy:

It's never something that I'd ever condone ever.

Jerremy:

However, the majority of gun deaths are self-inflicted.

Dave:

Let's.

Dave:

Let's also put it in perspective.

Dave:

I'm not trying to minimize it because I'm I'm thinking, one of

Dave:

our conversations that we're gonna have are victims of gun violence.

Dave:

That is a thing.

Dave:

We were just at an event this last weekend about, victims of gun

Dave:

violence and it is heartbreaking

Dave:

Now, 16,000 people.

Dave:

That's nothing to sneeze at.

Dave:

That is very serious.

Dave:

Those are homicides.

Dave:

That's 43 people a day, right?

Dave:

43,

Jerremy:

Yep.

Dave:

Heart disease, that's 1800 people a day.

Dave:

Look, we're not talking about diet and exercise enough, but

Dave:

we will talk a lot about guns.

Dave:

Cancer is 1700 people a day.

Dave:

Like we're not, screaming about smoking bans and screenings.

Dave:

108 people a day.

Dave:

That is almost, two, almost two, two and two times more than two times than guns.

Dave:

That's car crashes.

Dave:

And we are not saying ban cars and wear your seatbelt and more airbags and

Jerremy:

or more control of who can drive and who can't.

Jerremy:

Or stricter laws about driving.

Jerremy:

I know that sounds wild and maybe this is way off the beaten path and you know

Jerremy:

how I am with my tangents and my rabbit

Dave:

yeah.

Jerremy:

I'd sign off on a bill tomorrow that said every car has

Jerremy:

to have a breathalyzer in it.

Jerremy:

You cannot drive.

Jerremy:

I would sign off on that tomorrow.

Jerremy:

Yeah, boo.

Jerremy:

You wanna

Jerremy:

You radical dictator

Dave:

boo.

Dave:

Would it also scan for weed?

Dave:

Would it be a weed weedly.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Any, anything that inhibits you from driving legally

Dave:

what your Tesla has all sorts of cameras on you

Dave:

being like, you're distracted.

Dave:

Should it be like, oh, you're a little boozy too.

Jerremy:

but you could have legal limits like this there.

Jerremy:

The Georgia, or maybe not Georgia, Florida, I think Georgia's a zero

Jerremy:

tolerance, but like Florida is like 0.08.

Jerremy:

So you, you could have, you can have two beers and legally drive in Florida,

Jerremy:

unless you're like a hundred pound person.

Jerremy:

But that can be really easily created.

Jerremy:

But here's the reason I'm bringing that up.

Jerremy:

Yes, guns is the hottest topic and if you go to Australia, which I

Jerremy:

just came back from, or really any other country, uk, South Africa.

Jerremy:

Bali.

Jerremy:

I'm trying to think of some other places like, Canada, everyone's like

Jerremy:

America's just, everyone's rocking around with a gun, just shooting people.

Jerremy:

That's the narrative.

Jerremy:

The gun deaths, again, we'll always preface, no one wants,

Jerremy:

I don't want anyone to die,

Dave:

No.

Jerremy:

is one of the lowest categories of humans passing away by a magnitude.

Dave:

is, we're down in the shark attack category.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Sharks and hippos and dogs and guns.

Jerremy:

Like those four.

Dave:

do get injured.

Dave:

That is like a

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

A hundred thousand people.

Jerremy:

A hundred thousand people a

Dave:

that's a lot.

Dave:

And so we're not saying that we shouldn't be doing something.

Dave:

We're

Jerremy:

dude, that many people probably get injured from fireworks.

Jerremy:

Fire up Chad.

Jerremy:

GPT, ask, it's probably a hundred thousand people get injured by fireworks also.

Jerremy:

So those are just people that shouldn't own guns, right?

Jerremy:

Those are people that should have to go through some type of screening protocol.

Jerremy:

I'm, for as conservative as I am, which is not massively conservative, I'm just a

Jerremy:

little bit more conservative than you are.

Jerremy:

that's but that's okay.

Jerremy:

We're on the spectrums.

Jerremy:

We have conversations about, that's what's amazing.

Jerremy:

The realization is I'm actually pretty for yeah, we should not only should we

Jerremy:

have stricter laws around guns and who can own them, by the way, mentally, right?

Jerremy:

Who should go in and get checks and get, Hey, yep, you can still have a gun.

Jerremy:

I feel like you're perfectly okay.

Jerremy:

I feel like you don't have a bunch of anxiety.

Jerremy:

I feel like you're not depressed.

Jerremy:

We feel like you're in a healthy place where you can own some guns.

Jerremy:

Like Dave, I love you.

Jerremy:

I'd let you have all kinds of guns.

Jerremy:

I can have all kinds of guns.

Jerremy:

Like I don't battle depression.

Jerremy:

I don't battle anxiety personally.

Jerremy:

And so I really never, ever will fall into that category where I feel not

Jerremy:

safe around guns personally, however.

Jerremy:

I also would sign off on the, let's make cars so much more of a topic, because

Jerremy:

that has way more implications than gun deaths and is way more dangerous.

Jerremy:

And there's way more people, how hard is it to get a driver's license?

Jerremy:

And a car can do more damage generally than a gun can.

Dave:

Yeah,

Jerremy:

That's ter man I, hold on one, one jerk of the steering

Jerremy:

wheel and 10 people are massively affected for the rest of your life.

Jerremy:

One little slip up with your arm, you get a, you get something, ha whatever.

Jerremy:

One jerk of the steering wheel, boom.

Jerremy:

Tons and tons of people are affected negatively.

Jerremy:

And if you are under the influence and you damage or kill someone,

Jerremy:

you are going to prison, right?

Dave:

we've we know them.

Jerremy:

We know them.

Jerremy:

We met them, we've talked to them.

Jerremy:

You will go to prison if you injure or kill someone in a car, if you're

Jerremy:

under the influence and shoot, even if you're not under the influence you're

Jerremy:

gonna go to court and the prosecutor's gonna really push for something.

Jerremy:

So the reason that I think I'm bringing up and you're bringing up

Jerremy:

in such a ve way is we aren't really discussing when people just go off

Jerremy:

of this, on this gun flip out we need to have such crazy, strict protocols.

Jerremy:

I'm like, we can increase those protocols and I'm actually for it because the

Jerremy:

people that need it, they can, bad people are gonna get guns no matter what.

Jerremy:

We, no, no matter what policies we create, bad people will do bad things.

Jerremy:

You can have whatever strict policy you want, they're gonna go get

Jerremy:

guns illegally and they're gonna go try to hurt people illegally.

Jerremy:

But they can do that with planes, they can do that with cars.

Jerremy:

They can do all kinds of things.

Jerremy:

And heart disease killing 1800 people a day and cancer killing 1700 people a day.

Jerremy:

That's 4,000 people a day relative to four to 40 people a day.

Jerremy:

That's 100 times more People every day die from things that no one's talking about

Jerremy:

in an aggressive format on social media.

Dave:

No

Jerremy:

those are the stats people.

Dave:

And it's, and it's a highly specific problem, and we

Dave:

want simple, large solutions.

Dave:

There are only three laws, believe it or not, as much as we talk about guns

Dave:

being completely over overregulated.

Dave:

That's what I hear on one side, it's like there's so many laws

Dave:

and it's not doing anything.

Dave:

Or we have the wrong laws.

Dave:

I like I can already hear my gun.

Dave:

I call 'em affectionately, my gun nut friends, screaming

Jerremy:

I got some

Dave:

all the, there's only three that are universal.

Dave:

One of them, if you're a felon, you cannot own a gun, period.

Dave:

Par none, no felon can own a

Jerremy:

When you say universal, you mean universal in the

Dave:

all over the United States.

Dave:

In the United States there are only three laws.

Dave:

One of them is, it's.

Jerremy:

yeah.

Dave:

18 USC 9 2, 2 G one.

Dave:

Every state, every sale every day.

Dave:

10 years in prison for a felon if they have a gun, that's it.

Dave:

Period.

Dave:

End of story number two, if you've ever been convicted of slapping or pushing or

Dave:

even threatening your spouse or partner or kid, even if it's a misdemeanor,

Dave:

you cannot own a gun for life.

Dave:

That one I didn't know.

Jerremy:

I didn't know this one.

Dave:

yeah.

Dave:

Any domestic violence at all, you cannot own a gun.

Dave:

Period.

Dave:

And then three, if you've ever, it's, if a judge has ever said, Hey you're

Dave:

not well, like any mental hospital, any kind of, anything that, where a judge

Dave:

has said, you've had some sort of mental health hold, you can never own a gun.

Dave:

So that means everything else.

Dave:

Everything else is this patchwork of laws across all states, which

Dave:

to me doesn't make any sense.

Dave:

It's okay, if you got one big law in one state, if you don't

Dave:

like it there, you just go to another state and you get a gun.

Dave:

Like in, in one sense it's if you want, this universally changed in the United

Dave:

States, given that we have a Second Amendment we already got three and

Dave:

they do what they need to be doing, and there's patchworks all over it.

Dave:

It doesn't make any sense when the effects are very specialized.

Dave:

And I have a feeling I'm gonna get some hate when I say this but here's the truth.

Dave:

Here is the absolute truth.

Dave:

The issues in gun and gun violence are very specific.

Dave:

So if you are a young black man who lives in a city, it's your leading

Dave:

cause of death, and that is a tragedy.

Dave:

That is insanity.

Dave:

That is a, an urban poor people who do not have, like we've talked about this,

Dave:

we've talked about this issue many times before where it's like we, like our

Dave:

issues and the money and the love and the care, we need to be pouring it into

Dave:

our cities now, like there is a huge failure in our cities and it's really

Dave:

affecting particular young black men.

Dave:

And then there's the veterans.

Dave:

They're committing suicide.

Dave:

And if you are a, if you are a white man in, in a rural area,

Dave:

that's how you commit suicides too.

Dave:

90% of rural white men who killed themselves are killing

Dave:

themselves with a gun.

Dave:

Veterans, 73% suicide.

Dave:

Now, here's another area where we can actually do some work.

Dave:

Women who are in some sort of domestic violence situation,

Dave:

things are bad in their household.

Dave:

They are more likely than anything else to be, hit, killed with a gun.

Dave:

That's a problem.

Dave:

And then and then there's children who get ahold of guns will die.

Dave:

So like these are very specific targeted areas where we are not, I think having

Dave:

good conversations rather than ban all the guns, do all the things, do it

Dave:

across the United States, like we talk about like bump stocks and and types and

Dave:

assault weapons and all those things.

Dave:

And that is all noise.

Dave:

We know exactly where this

Jerremy:

Wow.

Jerremy:

That's powerful statement.

Jerremy:

I agree with you, by the way.

Jerremy:

Yeah, I agree with you.

Jerremy:

To the point, again, if you're a malicious human being,

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

having a scope on your gun, it's probably relevant.

Jerremy:

And again, if you are unfortunately in a place where you, man I hope this isn't too

Jerremy:

overarching of a statement, but if when you're in a place of the mental strain

Jerremy:

that mental strain probably is gonna have a lot of financial implications.

Jerremy:

And you generally feel like there's no way out and there's no purpose.

Jerremy:

So your purposeless and generally purposeless comes from cash, right?

Jerremy:

No ability to create, no ability to provide.

Jerremy:

And you feel like there's no way out tho those are metrics that can be scanned for

Jerremy:

that can be thought about ahead of time.

Jerremy:

From Ready, ready, the va. What?

Jerremy:

Oh my goodness.

Jerremy:

So we have a government agency that can do preemptive health checks on veterans.

Jerremy:

Whoa,

Dave:

How about this?

Dave:

We have a government that doesn't need to be sending our young men

Dave:

and women all over the planet kick kicking over governments.

Dave:

How about that?

Dave:

That's the first thing I would do.

Dave:

We're about to, we Venezuela is our next I'm telling you,

Dave:

Cuba's next, it's God, stop.

Dave:

Just

Jerremy:

Yeah, exactly.

Jerremy:

If we have a, if we had a government that's Hey, you know what, let's just

Jerremy:

let's not send a bunch of people to war.

Dave:

How about Yes.

Dave:

How about that?

Dave:

We spend, we've spent the last 25 years in perpetual wear.

Dave:

How about we spend the next 25 years being in perpetual peace.

Dave:

I'm, I think that will solve the veteran stuff,

Jerremy:

Agreed.

Jerremy:

Agreed.

Jerremy:

Because they don't have to use guns.

Jerremy:

They don't have to go and murder people that they've never met

Jerremy:

before in the name of something.

Jerremy:

And that's gonna, because that's what the PTSD is from, right?

Jerremy:

Taking the life of other people innocently or whatever.

Jerremy:

You just don't know.

Jerremy:

You don't really know why you're there.

Jerremy:

Like why am I here fighting this war?

Jerremy:

Who's benefiting from me being on Somalia?

Dave:

And we, we have friends that have been, first tier operators who've

Dave:

done this and they've come back and it's it is like coming back and being

Dave:

reintroduced into society is the VA spends zero on that and it's who really?

Dave:

A trillion dollars to send them over.

Dave:

Zero to bring them back.

Jerremy:

Good old goose egg.

Jerremy:

You're not spending money, man.

Jerremy:

I'm with you.

Jerremy:

And, but again, to your point, and what I hear you saying pretty clearly is

Jerremy:

the issue that's actually statistically and mathematically the problem.

Jerremy:

We don't address, we're not talking about.

Jerremy:

So many people have this narrative that it's just simply the gun when a gun

Dave:

Yeah,

Jerremy:

is a knife, is a brick, is an anything, is a car, is anything else

Jerremy:

that if you want to cause damage to people, you'll find a way to do it.

Dave:

but it's not at scale.

Dave:

That's where we're going to hear from, gun

Jerremy:

Advocates.

Dave:

no gun gun control advocates.

Dave:

Like there was a period, this is also in our research.

Dave:

There was a period where there were bands on the size of magazines, right?

Dave:

Oh let's also clarify this.

Dave:

If you use the word clip, and if you ever hear the word clip in a movie show, they

Dave:

don't know what they're talking about.

Dave:

It's a magazine.

Dave:

That's what you put bullets into.

Dave:

So high capacity magazines were banned for a while, and actually the, the

Dave:

number of deaths went down like that seems, it seems pretty clear to me.

Dave:

If high capacity magazines actually do help, and yes, they are annoying for

Dave:

people who are going hunting and shooting and the Yes, they do have to change

Dave:

their, they have to change the, they have to change their clips more often.

Dave:

No, they have to change their magazines a little bit

Jerremy:

You.

Jerremy:

Who are you?

Jerremy:

Who are you shooting?

Jerremy:

Chill out.

Jerremy:

Chill, chill out, bro.

Jerremy:

If you can't get a deer in two shots, you don't need a, you don't

Jerremy:

need eight other ones, homie.

Jerremy:

Be better at

Dave:

it'd be better

Jerremy:

10.

Jerremy:

A magazine of 10 ammo.

Jerremy:

You have 10 shots that I think that's the again, most states,

Jerremy:

I think that's it, right?

Jerremy:

Like 10 a 10 unit magazine is, a six shooter.

Jerremy:

A single shot rifle.

Jerremy:

I am, I will sign off on that.

Jerremy:

I have, I really cannot if you're using this for defense.

Jerremy:

Again.

Jerremy:

Again, who are you?

Jerremy:

Who are you trying to defend yourself from?

Jerremy:

If you need an a crazy assault rifle, you don't.

Jerremy:

You don't need that for hunting.

Dave:

Here's the math.

Dave:

That changed it for me, not changed it for me.

Dave:

Like in perspective, if a 10 round magazine saves one life per mass

Dave:

shooting that is 50 kids that would be alive since Parkland

Dave:

I would take those 50 kids' life over, over a $20.

Dave:

Magazine any day of the week.

Jerremy:

Yep, I'm with you.

Jerremy:

And Chris Rock once said, he is you know how we should stop gun deaths?

Dave:

What's that?

Jerremy:

He goes, and here's what I love about comedians, man.

Jerremy:

They just think so brilliantly sometimes.

Jerremy:

And he glossed this over and people just forgot, really, in my

Jerremy:

opinion, kinda the genius of this.

Jerremy:

He goes, oh, you want guns?

Jerremy:

Give 'em all the guns you want a 40 magazine, 40?

Jerremy:

Go for it.

Jerremy:

How?

Jerremy:

Make ammunition a thousand dollars a bullet.

Jerremy:

That's that's like Chris Rock's.

Jerremy:

Give 'em all the guns they want.

Jerremy:

Knock it, dude.

Jerremy:

Go for it.

Jerremy:

Ammo though, ammos expensive and he kept going on with the bit, obviously, and it

Jerremy:

was, but it was really brilliant because I am, I'm on board with that, right?

Jerremy:

Like in the sense of if you truly need ammunition

Dave:

like there is a tax on every look, I'm not even a

Dave:

gun owner and I know this one.

Dave:

Like on, on every bullet you do buy, there is a tax, there's a federal tax on it.

Dave:

And that, that, that tax actually goes to animal conservation.

Dave:

And it's been one of the most successful things ev it's been

Dave:

in there since Teddy Roosevelt.

Dave:

It's been there a long time, between that and how you, you

Dave:

get, your tags and the rest of it.

Dave:

That's like really well thought through.

Dave:

And it's been the most, one of the most successful ways of, it's been

Dave:

one of the most conservative ways that we've looked at how to manage

Dave:

our wildlife in the United States.

Dave:

And I'm like, huh, that's something

Jerremy:

Yep.

Jerremy:

And again, if I make ammunition,

Dave:

a thousand dollars.

Jerremy:

Let's no dude.

Jerremy:

Let's just say 30% more expensive, 30% more expensive, right.

Jerremy:

Nothing.

Jerremy:

Nothing crazy.

Dave:

Alright.

Jerremy:

And then, oh, that 30%,

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

Where does that money go?

Jerremy:

Yeah, exactly.

Jerremy:

15 per 15 cents of every that additional 30% or whatever the cost is, goes to

Jerremy:

organizations that help mental health.

Jerremy:

Whoa.

Dave:

one of

Jerremy:

that's the problem, right?

Jerremy:

The brokenness of any country is in direct proportion to the brokenness of men.

Jerremy:

It is men that are doing these killings.

Jerremy:

It is, it's always men.

Jerremy:

It is men and boys who are angry, who have unimaginable anger and

Jerremy:

they have no emotional fortitude or training on how to cope.

Jerremy:

And it can be a veteran.

Jerremy:

Yes, it can be a gang member, yes.

Jerremy:

But they are choosing to do this because they have some emotional

Jerremy:

incapacity to heal and to breathe and to cope with what they're feeling.

Jerremy:

That's the data though, Dave.

Dave:

the DA here.

Dave:

Here's the one I didn't know, and this is what I want.

Dave:

I gotta, I wanna find these people.

Dave:

I want to get 'em on this podcast.

Dave:

I got to get them because.

Dave:

I want that tax money going to CVI, it's called Community Violence Intervention.

Dave:

This is frigging brilliant.

Dave:

We talked about young black men being the biggest victims and perpetrators of

Dave:

violence against each other and causing thousands of deaths every single year.

Dave:

That's exactly what CVI does.

Dave:

It is ex gang members.

Dave:

It is community leaders.

Dave:

It's people in their, in, in the community.

Dave:

It's the coaches, it's the barbers, it's the, it's men going in and actually

Dave:

mediating disputes and teaching.

Dave:

And it drops shootings 30 to 50%.

Dave:

It costs a million dollars a year per city,

Jerremy:

On so low it's nothing.

Dave:

Ah, okay.

Dave:

Fif $50 million right now.

Dave:

Just make

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Rounding error.

Dave:

Like they mediate disputes and it's okay.

Dave:

You get ex gang members who are now members of the community and are

Dave:

also, mediating disputes against people who have disputes rather

Dave:

than them killing each other.

Dave:

It's it's peers, going in and diffusing this and getting kids out of these cycles.

Jerremy:

And I can even say, listen, if you know that you're a gang member and

Jerremy:

you know you're in the violence again, maybe I'm going too far off right now, but

Jerremy:

let's say if you had to arrest them just 'cause you know their affiliation and you

Jerremy:

put 'em all in a room together and you go, Hey buddy, figure let's figure it out.

Jerremy:

Let's figure it out.

Jerremy:

Let's put you in a situation where you can work out your differences.

Jerremy:

Is it territories?

Jerremy:

Is it whatever?

Jerremy:

Because in my opinion crime is almost directly linked to poverty.

Jerremy:

And it is simply because they are unaware that there are other applications of

Jerremy:

their knowledge, their time, and their energy to create wealth for their family.

Jerremy:

Because that's really inherently probably what they're trying to do, right?

Jerremy:

A gang is trying to fight another gang because they want more.

Jerremy:

Land, which essentially is more resources, more houses, more

Jerremy:

opportunities, more jobs to do what?

Jerremy:

To provide for their kids, provide for their wife, provide for someone.

Jerremy:

That's what it is.

Dave:

violent crime is mostly related to poverty.

Dave:

I agree with that.

Dave:

And I know if you are poor in the United States, you are also

Dave:

treated differently on, like you are interacting with the state a lot more.

Dave:

You are treated differently.

Dave:

You're not believed, like it's a, poverty, we're gonna have

Dave:

a whole series on poverty.

Dave:

It's a, it is, it was an eyeopener to meet people who are poor.

Dave:

It's like they live entirely different lives than people like

Dave:

that that, that aren't poor.

Dave:

It's bonkers.

Dave:

But I'm actually wondering if most crime is that way.

Dave:

It's I think white collar crime is probably more prevalent and causes

Dave:

more damage in a lot of ways, and it's the least prosecuted.

Dave:

But that's for another

Jerremy:

That's another episode.

Dave:

I, yeah, I will say white

Jerremy:

Why?

Jerremy:

Collar crime?

Dave:

way more prevalent and completely unenforced and yada.

Dave:

But violent crime, yes.

Dave:

I think it is tied to poverty.

Dave:

It's tied to desperation.

Dave:

It is tied to hopelessness.

Dave:

There's, nobody shoots up a school.

Dave:

Nobody shoots up their neighbor.

Dave:

Nobody pulls out a gun for because they had a good day.

Jerremy:

yeah.

Jerremy:

And they're not doing it from self-defense.

Dave:

No, that is a, it is a number.

Dave:

The, it does come up, they call 'em DGU basically good guys with a gun.

Dave:

I don't remember what DGU stands for.

Dave:

What does it

Jerremy:

yeah, but it's a, that's a small number.

Dave:

gun use.

Dave:

Lawful Citizen uses a firearm to stop a crime.

Dave:

So best guess it's somewhere between a hundred thousand, 500,000 a year,

Dave:

but it's self-reported, yada yada.

Dave:

It's not nothing.

Dave:

On the other hand.

Dave:

Unarmed civilians stop more mass shootings than armed, quote unquote good guys.

Dave:

It's the moment that somebody takes to reload is the moment

Dave:

where somebody tackles the guy.

Dave:

That's what bystanders do.

Dave:

You don't, I was talking to my sister here about this podcast and I'm

Dave:

like, I. I know one of the things that you and I would be talking

Dave:

about is like education around this.

Dave:

And I know that the education around gun ownership is a joke, and I'm like,

Dave:

like I, I live, I've lived in many areas where, you know, you, you ha you

Dave:

took like the most basic of exams and did the most basic thing in order to

Dave:

get a concealed carry permit, which means, like you can be in any building

Dave:

whatsoever and just pull out your gun and, be the good guy with the gun.

Dave:

I'm like, I'm sure that they don't talk about the laws.

Dave:

I am sure that they don't understand like, the responsibilities and I'm sure

Dave:

they definitely don't talk about the type of ammunition that you have to

Dave:

have in your gun in order to actually have it in an urban environment where

Dave:

you don't start shooting through walls and into other buildings.

Dave:

Like they, they don't talk about those things.

Dave:

I am just certain of it, but I want to see.

Dave:

That education is at the top of gun ownership.

Dave:

I don't think we do nearly enough of it.

Dave:

I don't think we require it of people, like I, it is the, I believe the most

Dave:

deadly thing that we can do that has the least amount of education around it.

Dave:

That's required.

Dave:

I don't know why, you know that my friend who flies a jet has to, make sure

Dave:

that every month he has enough hours, he does enough checks, he does enough

Dave:

things in order to keep his license.

Dave:

But somebody who just buys a gun has a, has, maybe a 24 hour

Dave:

waiting and then that's it.

Dave:

Here you go.

Dave:

You have this gun and nobody's, unless you seek it, like how to use it, how

Dave:

to care for it, what the laws are, none of that is required, I don't think.

Dave:

Maybe some states require it, but do they, there's no universal,

Dave:

here's how you use this crazy thing, we'll teach you how to drive a car.

Dave:

And granted, I think there should be a whole lot more of continuing education

Dave:

when it comes to driving a car, but a gun.

Dave:

Man, I think it's, I think it's weak.

Dave:

Education.

Dave:

What is my education czar I'm looking at right now?

Dave:

What do you, how do you feel about gun ownership and information?

Jerremy:

Everything you said I agree with, I, I do and we've agreed on this for a

Jerremy:

while and again it, as ironic as it is, I definitely fall in a little bit more into

Jerremy:

the camp of the conservative nature of gun ownership is listen, you can have your

Jerremy:

guns, but it needs to come with a lot more well, education around education on how

Jerremy:

to use it, why to use it, when to use it.

Jerremy:

I have no problem with continuing education.

Jerremy:

You need to do a continuing education to have a life insurance license or a real

Jerremy:

estate license to sell people a house.

Jerremy:

You gotta go in and you gotta do this thing.

Jerremy:

Yeah, doctor,

Dave:

accountants,

Jerremy:

all of it, dude.

Dave:

education.

Jerremy:

You got a gun.

Jerremy:

Alright, cool.

Jerremy:

Every two years.

Jerremy:

Go in and check.

Jerremy:

You gotta get, a therapist to sign off.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

This person's, totally.

Dave:

are the laws that have changed.

Dave:

Here's, and to train up enough, it's okay, if you have a concealed carry permit,

Dave:

it's okay, then you can do one of those courses where you are inside and you are

Jerremy:

me fired up,

Dave:

And it would be expensive.

Dave:

And so I'd also wanna make it approachable for people who can't afford it

Dave:

because I don't think, affordability should be it's gonna be expensive.

Dave:

It's going to take time.

Dave:

It's like getting a master's degree in, in gun and gun ownership and keeping your,

Dave:

it's not just like your proficiency in shooting the thing, it's the proficiency

Dave:

in owning it and being a responsible

Jerremy:

Has nothing.

Dave:

You need to be a super citizen because you're being

Dave:

entrusted with a tremendous weapon.

Dave:

And it's I want you to own it, but I want you to own it.

Dave:

And.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Dave:

I'm gonna say right now if you don't, and if you don't

Dave:

keep up on it, then yeah.

Dave:

Not your, nobody would come in and seize your gun, but then, then you can't sell

Dave:

guns, you can't buy ammunition, you can't do, people are gonna be grumpy with you.

Dave:

It's yeah you gotta take that, you gotta take your Smith and Wesson down

Dave:

to your local gun dealer and they'll lock it in a locker for you until

Dave:

you get certified on it, no big deal.

Dave:

It will take time.

Dave:

And I know that, that might bristle, but I do know that the

Dave:

responsible gun owners that I know already do some version of this.

Jerremy:

They already do some version of it.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

They're going to the gun range often, right?

Jerremy:

They're cleaning it, they're doing the firing.

Jerremy:

They're checking it, into that aspect, like they are still putting in the time.

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

I wouldn't

Dave:

Just formalize it.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

But just formalize it.

Jerremy:

process.

Jerremy:

It's a formal process.

Jerremy:

We're like, Hey, this is what you need to do now.

Jerremy:

I'll take the devil's advocate stance for a second.

Jerremy:

It's is that going to stop bad people from doing bad things?

Jerremy:

No, not at

Dave:

Of course not.

Dave:

Like it'll always come back to the bad guys are still gonna get Yes, for sure.

Dave:

Like that nobody's stopping that.

Dave:

And if you are not too ha like if somebody is, if somebody is picked up

Dave:

jaywalking with a gun that they are not, up to speed on it, then that's

Dave:

where you get the hairy eyeball.

Dave:

That's where you do, run into an issue.

Dave:

It's this isn't your gun.

Dave:

This isn't the gun that this you are not up to speed on this.

Dave:

Like this is, you're not that.

Dave:

Now, I don't, I am also a little bit of the government doesn't need

Dave:

all this information kind of thing.

Dave:

But I, I do think that there's a space here for saying these are

Dave:

what the rules are and then it, each state needs to make sure that these,

Dave:

are met in some form or fashion.

Dave:

This is where you get the nras and things in order to put together these

Dave:

certifications and to make 'em no joke, and that, and then to make 'em universal

Dave:

across all the states so you don't, roll over to Louisiana to pick up this and

Dave:

you roll over to Florida to do this.

Jerremy:

I don't, maybe I trust government too much.

Jerremy:

I probably do and it's probably not a good thing, but I don't

Jerremy:

really mind the government

Dave:

national

Jerremy:

if I have guns or not because they know if I have cars and I have

Jerremy:

to register them every year and I have to pay every single year, every

Jerremy:

flipping year, I gotta go register my car and pay that stupid tax or

Jerremy:

whatever it is, 300, $500 per car.

Jerremy:

So they know what cars you have and they're all registered with it.

Jerremy:

VIN number and then you have to have insurance on it.

Jerremy:

Dave just the other day, like I re-registered 'cause we moved

Jerremy:

in a bunch of things and I think everyone on the podcast knows.

Jerremy:

And so we moved, a bunch of different places and the insurance company that I

Jerremy:

had were like, oh, you live in Nevada.

Jerremy:

Nevada's still with crazy people.

Jerremy:

We don't insure you.

Jerremy:

We don't insure you.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

I know Florida's the same.

Dave:

And you and I were just talking that I'm getting a car here and I'm

Dave:

just like, oh God, it's an antique.

Dave:

I hope they're not gonna charge me.

Dave:

A billion

Jerremy:

they're gonna charge you an arm and a leg.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

No one's gonna insure that car.

Jerremy:

FYI.

Jerremy:

No, you're gonna have to get a liability policy and then the

Jerremy:

rest is all gonna be up to you.

Dave:

I got

Jerremy:

You're, but you're gonna have to have it registered.

Jerremy:

If you get pulled over with no license and registration, please.

Jerremy:

You're fucking toast.

Jerremy:

Like you're gonna pay some,

Dave:

True.

Dave:

Yeah,

Jerremy:

be not good.

Jerremy:

So that's the government knowing you have a more deadly thing

Dave:

true.

Jerremy:

statistically than a gun.

Jerremy:

If the government knows that you got nine guns, the people that are

Jerremy:

afraid oh, the government's gonna come and take your gun dog if the

Jerremy:

government's coming to take your guns.

Jerremy:

They're probably gonna take other things too.

Jerremy:

Like you you

Dave:

coming to show up and get your gun, something else has gone

Jerremy:

dog, you terribly wrong.

Jerremy:

You landed on some bad list, you went to some website.

Jerremy:

You should not have gone and typed in something you shouldn't have

Jerremy:

typed into because they're gonna take your cars, they're gonna

Jerremy:

take your house and is that legal?

Jerremy:

No, they shouldn't be doing that.

Jerremy:

But you're already there.

Jerremy:

You've done something incorrect already, in my opinion.

Jerremy:

It's the registration process.

Jerremy:

I don't believe personally is something that I would be afraid of or scared of.

Jerremy:

And I'd be a gun controlling, gun owning citizen.

Jerremy:

I really do not see the negatives in that application.

Jerremy:

And if it's registered and you have to update it and you have to do

Jerremy:

some mental health check ever so often, that could just be a person

Jerremy:

that is in all gun ranges, right?

Jerremy:

So there's a gun range.

Jerremy:

I don't know how many gun ranges, but like in Nashville there's one in almost

Jerremy:

every corner in Vegas, there's like 50.

Jerremy:

So you go to a gun range.

Jerremy:

In order to be a gun range, the you have to have an employee or a or a

Jerremy:

government agency or someone there that does mental health checks,

Jerremy:

and you go in and you simply have a conversation with that person.

Jerremy:

Again, the question that the big advocates are gonna go is what's that gonna solve?

Dave:

That's legit because it's again, we're just saying that the criminals

Dave:

are not following any of these.

Jerremy:

no.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

Criminals aren't gonna follow any of these

Dave:

Is there and let's say that, I'm just gonna guess, I, I didn't get dig

Dave:

this deep, but, with most of those deaths in the, the young black communities

Dave:

in cities, a lot of them in Chicago.

Dave:

That's another thing.

Dave:

It's if you wanna solve this, you start in Chicago.

Jerremy:

St. Louis

Dave:

where are those guns coming from?

Dave:

You know what, how do we stop that?

Dave:

Who, like who's responsible for that?

Dave:

Somebody at some point had to buy that gun and it was either

Dave:

stolen from them or, like it got out of legal possession somehow.

Dave:

So who's responsible for that?

Dave:

Is it the gun manufacturer?

Dave:

Is it the person who originally bought it?

Dave:

If somebody, who

Jerremy:

who sold it to

Dave:

sold it to them?

Dave:

Who's, like certainly the person who has the gun that is not theirs,

Dave:

the legal owner of that gun.

Dave:

Like that should be a pretty stiff penalty, right?

Jerremy:

It should be tracked more than it is now, or at least

Jerremy:

discussed openly in media outlets, probably more than it is now.

Jerremy:

And again I hear the advocates very clearly is it gonna stop anyone?

Jerremy:

And the answer is.

Jerremy:

It's not gonna stop the negative.

Jerremy:

It's not gonna stop the people that are doing things wrong.

Jerremy:

But what it is going to do is provide the opportunity for the people that

Jerremy:

are very terrified of guns, that maybe they increase ownership because they

Jerremy:

go, listen, there's a lot of protocols, there's a lot of safeties around this.

Jerremy:

We actually do care as a nation, you still have all of your rights and we

Jerremy:

are listening to you as a government saying, Hey, this is the problem.

Jerremy:

Sure, we can subside some of this because we realize that here's

Jerremy:

what the bigger problem is.

Jerremy:

The bigger problem is mental health.

Jerremy:

That's gonna be the bigger challenge.

Jerremy:

Numerically

Dave:

change a lot right there.

Jerremy:

Yes.

Jerremy:

Where it's listen man, hey we did some of the protocols.

Jerremy:

We did some of the applications.

Jerremy:

We hear you gun control people.

Jerremy:

We, we're with you.

Jerremy:

So yeah, let's control it more.

Jerremy:

And here's some of the protocols that do that.

Jerremy:

Because again, that's what we're trying to do in this conversation.

Jerremy:

That's what we're doing in this podcast, is we really wanna

Jerremy:

solve some of these problems.

Jerremy:

And what I hear you saying is when you have a what?

Jerremy:

What was it?

Jerremy:

CVI.

Dave:

Yeah,

Jerremy:

have a, when you have the CVI, the communities

Dave:

deal.

Jerremy:

That are receiving more money from the the slightly increased prices

Jerremy:

of ammunition, that now you get to pour into the individuals that are going

Jerremy:

to be faced with the not only mental health challenge, but also potentially

Jerremy:

the financial problems the financial stresses, the lack of opportunity.

Jerremy:

The lack of awareness of opportunity.

Jerremy:

And you have citizens and you have community members that are really, that

Jerremy:

have the funding to go and spend the time and the energy to actually pour

Jerremy:

into the youth and the males that are going to be affected by this negatively.

Jerremy:

Now that negative becomes more of a positive and gun death can decrease,

Dave:

Yeah, so

Jerremy:

it's more or less that simple.

Jerremy:

And then we crack down on cars.

Jerremy:

I'm back to that.

Jerremy:

I'm back to it, Dave.

Jerremy:

It's oh man,

Dave:

Breathalyzers and cars.

Dave:

I, you have lost my vote.

Dave:

I have supported you from day one.

Dave:

Forget it, I'm out breathalyzers on cars.

Dave:

What?

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

I'm cutting that out of this episode.

Jerremy:

something.

Dave:

Not letting anybody hear that.

Dave:

No.

Dave:

Gotta get ahold of you and reprogram you.

Dave:

Alright, so get at this.

Dave:

California, you can own a weapon, but it is a pain in the ass.

Dave:

Like they got all sorts of regulations.

Dave:

It's universal background checks and all sorts of, regulations in California

Dave:

are the strictest in the nation.

Dave:

And then there's Texas that is basically they're, if you register

Dave:

your car, they can hand you a gun.

Dave:

Like it's, no very small.

Dave:

And the outcomes are out there like California, very populous country.

Dave:

They have 8.5 per a hundred thousand deaths in Texas that has nothing is 14.2.

Dave:

So there's a big difference between California and Texas.

Dave:

I live in Florida and they actually try to strike a balance.

Dave:

Like there are waiting periods.

Dave:

I think it's like a two or three day waiting period, and that stops

Dave:

the, somebody who's pissed off.

Dave:

It gets, it's a cooling off period.

Dave:

They do have oh, what do they call them?

Dave:

Er, eer.

Dave:

Oh, E RPOs.

Dave:

Those are the red flags.

Dave:

Like if like particularly women who are in a domestic violence situation,

Dave:

they go to the, they, there's a very simple process with the police to be

Dave:

like I'm in danger and I'm, I feel like I'm in danger for my partner.

Dave:

That.

Dave:

The person's got to go and and check in their weapons and,

Dave:

it's an administrative process.

Dave:

It is not difficult to get the red flag, and it is easy for it to be adjudicated.

Dave:

Meaning, the state doesn't seal your, we, take your weapons forever.

Dave:

So Florida's in between and the results are in between.

Dave:

Internationally, like Germany has very strict laws.

Dave:

Australia, you were just there, like they, they had a mass shooting and they

Dave:

basically took everybody's guns away.

Dave:

And Canada has, I think as many, guns per person as we do.

Dave:

And they don't have nearly the number of gun deaths.

Dave:

So I'm like, where should we be spending energy on this?

Dave:

It seems like California, even though it's a pain, actually has some results.

Dave:

And Texas, where they don't, there's some problems.

Dave:

I don't know where I'm going with this other than, like I'm, creeping

Dave:

towards the world of maybe we do need some more regulations in certain

Dave:

areas, even though we've just spent 40 minutes saying it's very specialized.

Dave:

It's, young black men and and suicides.

Dave:

And it's it's, ensuring that kids don't get guns and domestic violence situations.

Dave:

That's it.

Dave:

Like it's, it doesn't go beyond those walls.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

That's, that, that's

Dave:

yeah.

Dave:

What,

Jerremy:

taking away people's guns will never work in the US that we

Dave:

this is a

Jerremy:

That will.

Jerremy:

Cause

Dave:

Zero starter.

Jerremy:

never gonna happen.

Jerremy:

And you know what?

Jerremy:

I don't want to happen.

Dave:

No.

Jerremy:

don't.

Jerremy:

I don't think it should, I don't think there's any reason to.

Jerremy:

Just because you have a mass shooting, it's oh, take everyone's guns away.

Jerremy:

No, like looking at the statistics you gotta dive into the data.

Jerremy:

It doesn't show that's what the issue is.

Jerremy:

And again, if you make guns massively illegal, okay, no one can have them.

Jerremy:

Will mass shootings decrease?

Jerremy:

Yeah, they would decrease.

Jerremy:

And they, they'd almost have to, 'cause no one can get access

Jerremy:

to a gun, so it's very hard.

Jerremy:

So mass shootings would go down, but mass something else would increase some

Jerremy:

there would be another lever somewhere that starts to happen because evil

Jerremy:

people or people that are in massive, incredible mental anguish are going to

Jerremy:

find another way to do something to.

Jerremy:

Horrific, and I think it's the trend that we're seeing around the

Jerremy:

world that's not mass gun shootings.

Jerremy:

There's a mass uptick in anxiety, depression, cancer, heart disease,

Jerremy:

financial ruin, like those things are causing even worse negative

Jerremy:

pressures than just guns by themselves.

Dave:

Hey, look if there is gun violence, it's not because you had a good day.

Dave:

Again, it keeps coming back to that, it's like good days don't end

Dave:

with violence, so more good days.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

I, yeah.

Jerremy:

Yeah.

Dave:

gets down to, it's like more prosperity, more abundance education,

Dave:

making sure that people have, outcomes.

Dave:

It's

Jerremy:

Preaching to my heart.

Jerremy:

Preaching to my heart.

Dave:

These, urban youth and poor.

Dave:

If they have a way out of seeing any view out of that, gives people hope and

Dave:

that gets people out, building lives and not tearing 'em down, it's just ah

Jerremy:

I think if we have, again, maybe this is just my belief, but I feel it

Jerremy:

and I sense it around the communities that I spend a hundred hours a month in,

Jerremy:

and those communities are the positive.

Jerremy:

You're about to enter one in a couple weeks, right?

Jerremy:

The joda spend a 10 day meditation retreats, meditation events.

Jerremy:

I know that's a very small subset of humans and individuals, but when you're

Jerremy:

going into these self-development worlds where people are just pouring into

Jerremy:

themselves and loving on themselves, suicide's still there, depression is

Jerremy:

still there, anxiousness is still there, but they know how to deal with it.

Jerremy:

They know how to cope through it.

Jerremy:

They start seeing ways out,

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

and they are not limited to the, hey, there's only one way.

Jerremy:

And that way is by damaging myself or damaging other people.

Jerremy:

They are aware that they're making a conscious choice of

Jerremy:

either being a victim or a victor.

Jerremy:

And if they are going to choose the victim route, they go,

Jerremy:

Hey, I wanna live in this pain.

Jerremy:

I wanna live in this anguish.

Jerremy:

They start to understand why they feel that way.

Jerremy:

And if you have leaders that are not extremely divisive

Dave:

Yep.

Jerremy:

and you have someone from the top down daily and often

Jerremy:

that is simply reminding people

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

that you have a choice that is conscious to make, and you can

Jerremy:

choose to live in positivity or you can choose to live in negativity.

Jerremy:

It is a choice.

Jerremy:

If you're choosing negativity, you can choose how long you wanna feel that way.

Jerremy:

It doesn't mean that if you're depressed, you can never be depressed again.

Jerremy:

But there are biological, biochemical features.

Jerremy:

Physiology, I can't say that word, features that a depressed

Jerremy:

person is going to carry.

Jerremy:

They're gonna, there's certain ways they're gonna breathe.

Jerremy:

There's certain ways they're gonna hold themselves.

Jerremy:

There's certain ways that their body's gonna move.

Jerremy:

When you are in a depressed state, you become depressed.

Jerremy:

And the more you can start shifting that, and the more that we have leaders

Jerremy:

from the top down approach that pour into these these, the citizens of this

Jerremy:

country, and start showing them and teaching them and guiding them through

Jerremy:

light love, happiness, positivity, and awareness of how they feel, and

Jerremy:

this emotional competency, I believe that actually does make a huge dent.

Jerremy:

And I don't think we have that.

Jerremy:

A long time.

Jerremy:

My

Dave:

here.

Jerremy:

man.

Dave:

I,

Jerremy:

Where do we go from here?

Jerremy:

What?

Jerremy:

What do you think is coming next for our listeners?

Jerremy:

Because we have so many listeners that just really care about this.

Dave:

where do we go from here?

Dave:

I think we're gonna have some stellar human beings on this one.

Dave:

We're gonna, we are going to be talking to advocates, gun owners for sure.

Dave:

That's I believe we're gonna be bringing that up for the next

Dave:

I want victims of gun violence.

Dave:

People who've been shot and what their view of the world is.

Dave:

I want to get the, somebody who's sees all the guns and I want to get folks that

Dave:

are like, no, we're doing communities.

Dave:

I love this the urban programs.

Dave:

I wanna be talking to those folks.

Dave:

But I think, ultimately when I did the research, started the research

Dave:

on this, I realized that this topic is not that much about guns.

Dave:

Like we talk and we used guns as a placeholder for other things.

Dave:

It is not the guns, it's the suicides.

Dave:

It's not the guns, it's the homicides.

Dave:

And underneath that homicides, it's the hopelessness, it's

Dave:

the poverty, it's the problems.

Dave:

It's, the inability to cope.

Dave:

It's, like the problems that are underneath that, the guns are just

Dave:

a they're a method to the madness.

Dave:

Underneath all of that, there's so much more that we need to be focused

Dave:

on, so much more that we need to be talking about that we don't, and

Dave:

that we use guns as a placeholder for the real problems underneath this.

Dave:

And that's, I, when looking at the history of this, we didn't really touch

Dave:

on that, but I, looking at the history of guns and guns, ownership and gun

Dave:

laws in the United States, there were basically no laws in the United States

Dave:

until the 1930s were, when they banned alcohol and we got gangsters, right?

Dave:

And, Tommy guns.

Dave:

And that's when, that was the first time that the government was like,

Dave:

oh, we gotta do something about this.

Dave:

And they did.

Dave:

It was basically you had to register, automatic weapons, but then there

Dave:

was nothing until the sixties.

Dave:

And it and that was when John F.

Dave:

Kennedy got killed.

Dave:

And that's when actually the basis of all the background checks actually came.

Dave:

You couldn't buy guns by mail order anymore.

Dave:

And then every time we've had an a discussion about guns, every

Dave:

time it's been because of tragedy and we've gotta stop that piece.

Dave:

We can't be reactive, we've gotta be proactive.

Dave:

And it's all the stuff that's underneath this.

Dave:

It is not the guns and it is about what's underneath it.

Dave:

That's what I believe.

Jerremy:

I love that.

Jerremy:

I love that.

Jerremy:

And for all of my listeners, and for everyone who's, tuning in and

Jerremy:

checking this information out, Dave, I really liked this conversation, man.

Jerremy:

I really did because it, it brings a lot of awareness to me.

Jerremy:

I believe everyone who is up to date on this podcast, they're aware that

Jerremy:

I am doing this podcast to learn.

Jerremy:

I, I am learning because I do not obviously have all the answers,

Jerremy:

but from a political standpoint, I have very little answers.

Jerremy:

And as we keep going through this podcast, what's happening is I am

Jerremy:

continuing to learn not only where I stand, how I really feel, but more

Jerremy:

importantly the data and then the policies that I'll be able to implement

Jerremy:

to actually create legitimate change based on statistics and not opinions.

Jerremy:

Not based on how I feel, because you've already changed so much of how I feel

Jerremy:

about certain things, and I've done the same for you, and we're creating this

Jerremy:

really beautiful melding pot of yeah.

Jerremy:

It's cool you feel that way.

Jerremy:

But here's actually the data and I'm in a place where I realize I have an ego.

Jerremy:

Of course everyone does, but my ego's not strong enough to.

Jerremy:

Have the inability to go, I'm wrong on this topic.

Jerremy:

Let me actually go through what the data says and start making the

Jerremy:

appropriate shifts so that I can lead this nation into the most prosperous

Jerremy:

time that we've ever been a part of prosperous and peaceful, because

Jerremy:

it's coming and it's coming through.

Jerremy:

Just the realization that we are in a time where we have so much information

Jerremy:

and it's not being implemented, and it's not being implemented with wisdom.

Jerremy:

It's not being implemented with truth, with integrity, and most importantly,

Jerremy:

with the vibration, the frequency of love and abundance and prosperity.

Jerremy:

And as much as Maryam Williamson, when she was running for president, was

Jerremy:

continued to push love and love and love, she also wanted to change everything.

Jerremy:

And everything was broken, everything was a problem.

Jerremy:

And I was like, Marianne, I love you, but you can't take down

Jerremy:

the entire system overnight.

Jerremy:

'cause the President really doesn't have that much control.

Jerremy:

The only thing I really want to control, and the only thing I

Jerremy:

really wanna update, ultimately, is gonna be the education system.

Dave:

Yeah.

Jerremy:

You've said that word 45 times in this podcast because that's really the

Jerremy:

root cause and the root fix of most of the challenges that face this country.

Jerremy:

And with that, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, friends and family, we're

Jerremy:

gonna continue to have conversations.

Jerremy:

We're gonna continue to have discussions and we really will keep

Jerremy:

piece mailing together more of the beliefs and the information and

Jerremy:

the real statistics that are there.

Jerremy:

And we're gonna hear people, and I'm gonna continue to collect incredible

Jerremy:

data so that when I'm in a place, in a position of understanding and of

Jerremy:

power, I can and Dave and myself, and we can create real, meaningful change

Jerremy:

and policies that people can agree on that actually do put this country

Jerremy:

into a place of incredible prosperity.

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About the Podcast

Solving America's Problems
Solving America’s Problems isn’t just a podcast—it’s a journey. Co-host Jerremy Newsome, a successful entrepreneur and educator, is pursuing his lifelong dream of running for president. Along the way, he and co-host Dave Conley bring together experts, advocates, and everyday Americans to explore the real, actionable solutions our country needs.

With dynamic formats—one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, and more—we cut through the noise of divisive rhetoric to uncover practical ideas that unite instead of divide. If you’re ready to think differently, act boldly, and join a movement for meaningful change, subscribe now.