Here’s How ‘Gun Culture’ Is Built – One Law-Abiding Gun Owner at a Time

The gun debate has heated rhetoric on both sides. How can we be better? National Review’s David French wanted to reach out to people who don’t understand why anyone needs to be a concealed carry permit holder, so he wrote a piece for The Atlantic explaining American gun culture to anyone who finds it foreign.

“[M]any millions of Americans don’t truly understand how ‘gun culture’ is built, how the process of first becoming a gun owner, then a concealed-carrier, changes your life,” French wrote. “It starts with the consciousness of a threat.”

For French and his family, the road to becoming part of “gun culture” started with disturbing threats and the realization that they were completely vulnerable until the police arrived. He joined Glenn on today’s show to talk about why many Americans want to own guns and how we can work together to find focused solutions to keep guns away from dangerous people.

“I just wanted to connect people with the real story of people’s lives,” French said.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: David French who is a senior fellow of the National Review, is joining us now. Hello, David, how are you?

DAVID: I'm good. How are you doing?

GLENN: Well, I've been better. I've been better.

Yesterday had to come as kind of a surprise to you because you're a guy who is -- is authoring some of the bills they were talking about yesterday.

DAVID: Well, yesterday, it was one of those moments when somebody takes an idea that you've been talking about, twists it, distorts it, misstates it in such a grotesque way that it's unrecognizable.

It was really an amazing moment. So you had Mike Pence talking about -- in a very responsible and sane and sober way, the concept of the gun violence restraining order.

GLENN: Right. Right.

DAVID: Which allows people to seek an order from a court. And with due process, with a hearing, when someone is exhibiting dangerous behavior, to allow temporary seizure of their guns when there's red flags. And the vast, vast majority of these shootings, there have been red flags, and a lot of times, people haven't had the tools to do anything about it. This changes that. And then Trump stepped in and said, no, no, take the guns first. Then due process.

And you just -- you know --

GLENN: He did say -- he said, you know, there is a different system. Take the guns first, and then due process. And I believe that system is fascism. Authoritarianism. Totalitarianism. Communism. I mean, there is another system, David.

DAVID: Right.

Yeah. Yeah. His views on due process are really interesting. So if you're a credibly accused wife beater in the White House, well, then due process. But if you're a law-abiding gun owner, then no due process. So it's a very strange system. It's a very strain of constitutional thinking there.

But, yeah, you know, look the bottom line is he's not drafting a bill. He's not proposing the bill. He doesn't really know about any of this --

GLENN: Yeah.

DAVID: -- in any detail.

GLENN: No. When he was saying that Toomey was afraid of the NRA, it shows, you have no idea. You have no idea.

DAVID: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing that was stunning to me about -- well, I am on record many times for having low expectations of this president.

GLENN: Yes.

DAVID: But he underperformed even my low expectations yesterday. And the reason is that, the NRA has been probably his most loyal conservative friend. The NRA has been relentless for him. A lot of people have criticized the NRA for taking a turn -- perceived turn towards Trumpism, where they're promoting the president as much as they're promoting the Second Amendment. So the NRA has been ferociously loyal to Trump.

And yesterday, he not only said, hey, take the guns first, due process second, he -- he essentially said, no -- no concealed carry reciprocity. He made fun of a senator for being in that pocket of the NRA, or being scared of the NRA. And then he pulled the idea of an assault weapons ban, all in the space of about 30 minutes.

And my jaw hit the floor. It was an amazing thing to see.

GLENN: So, David, the -- a lot of people will say, nothing is going to come of this, so don't worry.

This was so jaw-dropping that -- I mean, I've said this for years, long before Donald Trump, you have to have a guy in the Oval Office, whose natural first instinct is constitutional. That is -- that it is freedom-based.

DAVID: Yeah.

GLENN: For instance, when you have a problem, who you know also didn't get due process? The Japanese as they were put on a bus for an internment camp. When there's trouble and you are not based in the Constitution, that -- that is -- that is a moment that could go horribly awry, as it has in the past here in America.

When the president says, well, I'm not really afraid of the NRA, I don't think in 2021, he'll be afraid of anybody. And if we have trouble, this is a giant red flag.

DAVID: Right. So not only is it a red flag on poor policy grounds. In other words, how does the president exercise the powers of his office? It's also, look, the bully pulpit matters.

You know, this is a nominal theory on the part -- many parts of the public, that what the president says doesn't really matter. Which is just a rationalization and an excuse. The bully pulpit matters. When you're talking about the person, when perhaps the greatest public platform in the world. And they're indifferent at best to the Constitution. They're obviously here, seem to really not care about the Second Amendment all that much. Those things matter, especially when the other side is locked in. I mean, the other side is locked in on messaging. It is locked in -- has extraordinary party discipline right now. I believe it was 156 of the 193 members of Congress signed on -- Democratic members of Congress signed onto the assault weapons ban legislation that was just introduced.

So the other side is focused and locked in. And, you know, when the bully pulpit is occupied by somebody who is not as focused -- focused -- not as locked in, and apparently indifferent to core constitutional values, that's a problem.

GLENN: We want to talk to -- we're talking to David French. We want to talk to him about a story he wrote in the Atlantic. What critics don't understand about the gun culture. We'll go there in a second.

GLENN: David French, who has just written an article for the Atlantic. What critics don't understand about the gun culture. And he really tried to reach out to the other side and said, look, I know there aren't people that don't understand guns or the gun culture. Let me try to demystify this a little bit so you can at least understand the other side. David, can you take us through this rather quickly?

DAVID: Yeah, absolutely.

See, what I wanted to do was talk to folks, the Atlantic readers are mainly progressives. And I wanted to walk them through how you -- of how a person enters gun culture. And how it begins often with an actual threat or a perceived threat, where you realize that the police can't protect your family in time. And how actually walking through that process of buying a gun, learning how to use a gun, going to concealed carry permit class, getting training, actually brings you into a new community of folks. And also changes your outlook on life in a significant and positive way.

And so I wanted people to understand that this isn't a product of, like, NRA lobbying or congressional actions. It's a product of people's lived experience and how they respond to threats to their safety and their family's safety.

It just -- I just wanted to connect people with sort of the real story of people's lives.

GLENN: Yeah. You know, I just had a friend of mine say yesterday, Glenn, I -- I mean, I'm not worried about my family. And I don't -- it's just not part of anything. I don't worry about any of this.

Well, some of us do.

DAVID: Yeah.

GLENN: And some people -- mainly Hollywood and people like me have the money to be able to have an armed security guy with him the whole time. But that's not the average person.

I mean, my daughter, you know, if she had a stalker, she would want a gun. And I will tell you this, I am -- I am somebody who felt I was not responsible enough to own a gun, what? Twenty years ago. And I had to -- you know, I had to have serious threats in my life. And the gun was the last step that I took myself.

And then I really took it seriously and became responsible enough to own a gun. I know everybody isn't like that, but they should be.

And in your article, you -- you point out that we were -- as gun owners, we're horrified by the -- the killer in -- you know, at the high school, having these guns. And all of the warning flags. And the system failed. And we were horrified here in Texas, when the system failed.

DAVID: Right. Right. Exactly. You know, there's this perception. Odd, strange. I mean, how evil do you think your fellow citizens have to be, to believe that you're indifferent to what happens in Texas? But you get that rhetoric all the time, that people who belong to the NRA have blood on their hands, they belong to a terrorist organization. When the fact of the matter is, as I related in my piece, I'm not someone who can afford armed security around my family. A guy came to our house. He blocked our driveway. He walked straight up to my wife and kids when they were in the backyard. And I was -- and the police and I were many minutes away, demanding to see me. He had an empty holster in his hip. He had just been driving slowly through any kids' school. So this kind of thing focuses the mind pretty -- pretty intensely. And that's what -- you know, it's those kinds of things.

And, look, there are a lot of people who are not in the public square, who are not out there tweeting and writing and doing TV appearances. Maybe it's an ex-boyfriend. Maybe they live in a dangerous part of time. You know, there are lot of reasons why people quite reasonably say, you know, when the police can't be there instantly. And the police can't be there everywhere. I kind of need a first line of defense, and that is not unreasonable at all.

GLENN: So I've got about 45 seconds here, David. Can you tell me -- what has the response been from those who read this?

DAVID: I would say, overwhelmingly positive. Of course, some people have been very angry. One person said it was like white privilege on steroids. Something like that.

GLENN: Whatever. Whatever.

DAVID: Yeah, but overwhelmingly positive. Not so much that they say, oh, I want to join -- I want to buy a gun. I get this.

GLENN: That's all we have to do. And, look, we're never going to convince, nor do I think we have to make the effort to go after the most staunch people. Because they're never going to change their mind. But we have to at least reach people so they hear the reasonable, rational argument on the other side. And we can learn from them. They can learn from us. And maybe we can pursue, you know, truly common sense things, that will -- will protect our families and our children in school. David French, thank you so much, appreciate it.

DAVID: Thank you.

GLENN: You bet.

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

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Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

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Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

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Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

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Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

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$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

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$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

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$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

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There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

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Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

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Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.