Ryan Busse: How to Stop The NRA
“The NRA and gun owners then signified, you know, the sort of comradery, responsibility, safety, sort of a bygone, I don't know, sort of an Americana, right? The Campbell soup can sort of Americana. I don't remember ever seeing or hearing about the impending demise of the Republic, or how evil every Democrat was, or how we should hate our neighbors, or how we should arm ourselves for an eventual civil war or an insurrection. That was never, that was never a part of my upbringing.”
So says Ryan Busse, author of GUNFIGHT: MY BATTLE AGAINST THE INDUSTRY THAT RADICALIZED AMERICA. Busse, who spent decades running gun sales for Kimber in Whitefish, Montana, which focused, until recently, on crafting hunting rifles and other firearms for sportsmen, quit his job last year after he realized that his dreams of transforming the gun industry from inside—or at least being a consistent voice of reason and morality—were fantasy. He watched as the industry he used to love became increasingly toxic, distorted, and militant.
In his book, which is a fascinating look at the forces within the NRA and the way they’ve radicalized America, he deftly explains all the reasons we are where we are today: Where our children are forced to practice active shooter drills at school, and where other kids—like 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse—can buy a semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle and kill two people while wounding another. And then be acquitted for self-defense. As he argues, we are on the brink of a Civil War with gun-owning, far Right militants. I know we’re scared, and he believes we have every reason to be.
Like Busse, I’m also from Montana, and know many people who hunt—growing up, guns were present but never abundant. Now, responsible gun owners are being pushed aside by militant couch commandos, who are desperate, to quote Busse, “to shoot a democrat.”
While Busse is no longer in the industry, he is firmly in the movement for common sense gun laws, arguing that our best chance for reform is to bring hunters and sportsmen on-side. As he explains, it can be done—and we can bring the NRA to its knees.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Exploring the cultural connection to guns…(12:12)
Hate, conspiracy, national tragedies and gun sales…(16:56)
Profiting off of fear…(32:06)
What do we do?...(40:04)
MORE FROM RYAN:
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
I'm curious. I mean, there are many things I want to get to, but have, has there been pushback from the NRA and the industry on the book or are they just pretending like you don't exist?
RYAN BUSSE:
The way that the industry works, at least initially, when these sorts of things happen, is very much like Republican politics and the politics on the Far Right work. The initial reaction oftentimes doesn't come from the top. It comes from this sort of empowered army of trolls, naysayers, malcontents, whatever, in the same way that, you know, Fiona Hill was attacked or Jim Mattis is attacked or so I, I get it. My kids come home and say,”Dad, you know, there's 150 pages of hate on the internet about how you should be dismembered and beheaded and all of these sorts of things." I suspect that it will come from higher levels soon enough, but it's coming from the base. Now, oddly enough, direct to me, I've been somewhat overwhelmed in a positive way with the positive reaction to it. Even from, even from political angles that I did not anticipate, certainly progressives have complimented it and have been very kind about the book, but there's so many center, center, center, right?
Gun owner types, people like you might know in Montana, or that I grew up with that essentially have reached out to me with very heartfelt letters, direct messages, everything else. Like, “I'm a gun owner. Thank you for writing this. I've been conservative my whole life. This is off the rails. I can't take it anymore. It's time somebody stands up and says it.” I mean, I got this gal from west Texas, but a big ranch owner, like 10 generation family there wrote me this long letter about how the book has changed her life and just confirmed what they thought. And they're no longer going to be NRA members. So anyway, that's been very touching. Sorry to give you a long answer.
ELISE:
No, it's it's. I am, I am not a gun owner, but I am very grateful for the book. Not only because it provides so much interesting context historically about how we got here, which we'll get into in our conversation, but also as a Montanan, and I haven't lived in the state for two decades, my parents are still there. I grew up there. My dad had a gun, which is funny, cause my dad's, you know, a South African doctor, he's not, but we had horses. I mean, we were, and my parents are ardent conservationists and I respect. I'm actually glad I want to talk about hunting as well. And I want to talk about Western rural life and this the discord or the dissonance that's emerged between rural and urban people who have so much more in common than not. And in some ways I thought it was also a beautiful defense of a certain way of life that was very familiar to me growing up, which was, and it's funny because, being a Montana kid, you know, you'd see gun racks, you'd see rifles. This was part of life. Hunting was, and I have a lot of respect for hunters. I think it's the right thing to do to, you know, I don't have any respect for big game hunters or people who are going to safari parks and shooting animals in that way. But for families that go out into the woods and hunt—I have a lot of reverence and respect. I think it's very courageous to kill your own food and, and embrace that cycle of life. It's respectful to the animal. It’s far more respectful than the way that most of us consume meat. So I just wanted to say that. It bothers me when people lump hunting, which I know has also, we'll also talk about AR-15s and the way that hunting has this vision of hunting has evolved in a not positive way.
But it's interesting too, because, and then I'm going to make you do all the talking, but so I grew up around guns, but they weren't a pervasive part. This is pre-Columbine. I never felt threatened as a child. They were never on people's bodies. And then I went home recently, maybe five years ago to Missoula and with my kids, and my husband, and my parents. And we were at the gay pride parade in downtown Missoula. Missoula for people who don't know is a liberal college town. And it was the farmer's market and the gay pride parade. And it was this like hippie utopia. And I see a family and I'm like, oh, that's a cute kid in a stroller. And I look up at the dad who looks completely normal. He is packing a gun. He is open carrying a pistol. Or I don't know, I don't know what it was, but cause I don't know anything about guns, but it was shocking.
RYAN:
He was afraid of the lesbians probably.
ELISE:
It was wild and with his young family and I was like, this is menacing, scary, deeply wrong. And so sad. It was like, for me it represented a real turning in the corner of where we are today..
RYAN:
Yeah. And it's only gotten worse, you know, if that was four or five years ago, I can tell you that the, you know, sort of the politics that I described as being, you know, in my opinion, the firearms industry, the NRA was the farm team for the incredibly divisive, heated, hateful, conspiracy laced national politics that we have today. And in that way, it's, it's only gotten far worse. Missoula is, is a bit of an island, a bit of a hopeful island, but in, in other places in Montana and frankly across much of flyover country, I use my air quotes here, “fly over country.” It's not uncommon to have to feel as though you're on the brink of arms, civil war almost daily. My book starts obviously with my young son, Badge being attacked by at a Black Lives Matter rally, just, I mean he weighs 70 pounds soaking wet the kid and he's attacked by a guy with a MAGA hat on and a pistol, just screaming unhinged words at him.
And we've got 200 of these armed people around mostly high school kids. And a few of us supporting Black Lives Matter I mean it's as if there were matches being over gasoline and it was going to explode at any time. You know, we're recording this just after a horrible event, excuse me in Boise, just a couple of nights ago where there was a shooting two days ago at a turning point, USA rally Charlie Kirk event for youth, one of the attendees got up and asked, “When do we start? When do we get to start using our guns on Democrats?” This is the world that I believe that the firearms industry and the NRA has created. And it has really, it's really put a chasm in our country.
ELISE:
Can you take us back to, you know, as you point out like you were a Republican, just sort of by default and this idea of, you know, Richard Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency.George W. Bush repaired the hole in the ozone layer. It wasn't always like this. And there was this conservativism like conserving the land was a Western idea. Part of hunting culture, obviously typically more Republican and conservative and ways that we would have recognized previously that's very different from this chapter in American politics. But can you take us back to how the NRA started to change and then the way that it is sort of the neck that manipulates the gun industry that manipulates the consumer?
RYAN:
Yeah. So maybe I'll start with a bit about my story. I grew up on a ranch in Western Kansas, uh, far north Western, Kansas, just on the Colorado in Nebraska border. My grandfather was an NRA member and also a very proud FDR Democrat. My father was an NRA member and that was back. I mean, my, my grandfather's favorite cap that he wore to ball games or to are my, you know, my, my sibling;s plays or whatever school events was this big gold and black NRA cap. But those were very different times. The NRA and gun owners then signified, you know, this sort of comradery, responsibility, safety, sort of a bygone, I don't know, sort of an Americana, right. Uh, uh, Campbell soup can sort of Americana. I don't remember ever seeing or hearing about the impending demise of the Republic or how evil every Democrat was, or how we should hate our neighbors or how we should arm herself for an eventual civil war or an insurrection.
That was never, that was never a part of my upbringing. And, and, and frankly, that's a, that's a pretty recent, that's a pretty recent occurrence on the American landscape. And when it, when we, when this all exploded in Trumpism in the last few years, it really didn't surprise me at all. Because when, after I got out of college, you know, it was sort of a dream job for me to get into the firearms industry because this was something I loved. Some of the best times of my life were spent hunting with my dad or shooting with my brother, very wholesome things. And so, so to me, it was kind of like making the big leagues, right? Like a kid playing baseball. And, and here I am, uh, in the firearms industry getting to be around all the things that I enjoyed as a kid and that so many people in rural America, um, enjoy and hold very, very sacred.
Guns are tools, true. They're metal and wood and steel and plastic and whatever. But unlike a hammer, nobody gets out their hammer the night before they're going to do something and, and looks at it and says, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm going to get to use my hammer tomorrow. It's not a, it's not a tool like that. Guns are, are nearly a religious or cultural symbol to people because like me, so many things in your life, so many of the best parts of your life happened in and around guns. Again, hunting pheasants with my dad, shooting with my brother now hunting with my own kids. And so they become very representative. Now to your question about how the NRA manipulated this. I found through my time in the industry, that once you are culturally connected and you have something that is so much a part of your identity, such as guns to so many of us, and I know there's a lot of people listening to this podcast are sort of scratching their heads about how is it that so many people across the country are so weirdly oddly connected to guns.
It's because it's part of their cultural identity. And once the NRA figures this out, all they have to do is threaten, is make people believe conspiratorial threats, that that cultural identity is going to be taken away. And then people will sacrifice anything for it. I know that our politics seems very unhinged now. It seems very irrational. And it is very irrational. But when people are convinced that their identity and the symbols of their identity are at threat, mostly through unhinged fear and conspiracy, self-created by the NRA, then they will do things that make no sense to people. They will relinquish all of their, all of these former moral standings that they claim to have like, like Trump and Trumpism has done all these things that they claim to be for a few years ago, they will sacrifice now because they believe they're under threat. vVery much like in a war time setting, right?
You forget about everything. You just care about survival. You'll. I mean, you'll do things in war time that, that you would never do in peace time. And that's the sort of mentality that I realized was being created 15 or 20 years ago. I, I at first played a role in that, I was unthinking about it. I threw variation of things. I came to a place where I realized how dangerous it was. Thankfully, my wife is a far, far better human than me. And she helped me along the process. Without her, I probably wouldn't have come to that realization, but it started to scare the hell out of me. And so I'm not surprised by the politics and the place our country is in today because I lived through the place where it was all made.
ELISE:
And the way that you describe it, I mean, it's really interesting. The book is full of fascinating stories. You describe effectively the gun industry, the people who run the gun industry, the NRA as sort of amateurs, right? Who just understand how to manipulate people and how to use fear. And they've, they've essentially, and dog whistling, right? Like this idea of attacks from within, you talked about sort of the troll, this assembling these armies of people who don't even really know what they're subscribing to, just that, as you said, it's an identity and that they're under threat.
RYAN:
I think so much of what the NRA did was accidental. Right. I think you're right. It was, I mean, I saw like QAnon was no shocker to me because I saw LaPierre and NRA officials hop up on stage in front of thousands of people. And to your point, it was almost amateur hour, but I think they were sort of like, holy shit works. They'll say things like Barack Obama is going to write the rewrite, the constitution as if, you know, they're kind of sticking their finger up in their air and the crowd cheers. And they're like, wait a second. We thought that that was kind of crazy, but they believed it. And then once, once that sort of took hold and they're like, wait, if we do that, and sort of look the other way at racism, and get everybody hating each other, and just keep concocting these crazy conspiracies, these people, I mean, they might march into battle for us. And as we saw on January 6th, that's precisely what they did.
ELISE:
Yeah. And are threatening to continue to do and to have just ratcheted things up. And meanwhile, with what's so devastating obviously is, and you've talked about, you know, all the horrific crimes that happened during your tenure and sort of the way that you get, I don't know if innured to it is appropriate, but the way then that like Columbine, like this terrible cycle that we're in, where something like Columbine, then out of fear of restriction from government, is used as a prod for gun sales. Righ? It's and now it's no one has even stopped to mourn. Like, it seemed like Columbine at least was a moment, or Sandy hook of like, oh shit. You know? Or as you would say, I hope it's not, they hope they didn't use the Kimber gun. So what’s that?
RYAN:
A lot of people don't put, make the link, I think. But if you overlay some of the worst national gun tragedies, and then the most divisive political issues our first Black president, Sandy Hook, Columbine, all of these horrific, you know, Virginia Tech, I could sadly the list is very, very long. And I don't mean to include President Obama's election in there. I'm very, very happy about that. But sadly, too many, too many in the NRA gun world, Barack Obama's election was worse than any of the other things I mentioned. So it falls in this, but if you overlay all of those events with guns, with national gun sales over a long graph, you'll see that they correspond exactly. There's a couple of different things that drive gun sales: hate and conspiracy, or fear of guns being taken away after national tragedy. So national tragedy actually drives down too. When I started in the industry there were about, and that was in 1995, there were about 3.5, 4 million guns sold a year, which sounds pretty big. In the last 12 months, I think it was going to top about 24 million guns, 24 million. So we live in a completely different world now than we did 15, 20 years ago. Yeah.
RYAN:
And you talk about, you know, and, and I thought that was fascinating. I vaguely knew that, but just like how Democratic presidents by virtue of their existence drive gun sales. And that really started, did that start with the Clintons? Um, or was it really Obama? And then, and now obviously with COVID, Biden, people are going crazy.
RYAN:
It started with Clinton, because Clinton instituted the Assault Weapons Ban, and it wasn't called that in the legislation, but that's what it came to be termed. And then that provided the NRA with an a, with an effective foil. From then on, all Democrats, all Democrats could be hated as, as if they were the other. And from that point, and then when you like, you know, Barack Obama was the absolute perfect foil. First black president, constitutional attorney, Muslim sounding name, from Chicago. It couldn't have gotten much better for the NRA. So that the person in and president Obama who was rumored to, like, they literally said, he's going to rewrite the constitution so nobody can own a single gun. That's what the NRA said prior to the election of president Obama. By the end of Obama's term, every single person in the firearms industry, they didn't use the term President Obama. They called him America's Best Gun Salesman. And there's a chapter in my book called America's Best Gun Salesman. And they called him that because for eight years, well sales doubled or tripled under President Obama of guns. Not only did the constitution not get rewritten, Obama's presidency took guns mainstream throughout society. So it was very interesting.
ELISE:
So let's talk about the assault weapon ban, because you make the point that it existed, and it existed throughout most of Bush’s presidency too. And that we did not, but it wasn't what it was specifically banning was the combination of features, right? And that, that, it's not actually what precluded people from buying assault weapons it's that the salt weapons, the gun industry had a tacit understanding that that was not the business that they wanted to be in. And as you, I think you call them the wise men of the gun industry, reviewers sort of sportsmen, hunters, et cetera, would never have, would never have condoned or allowed that or written about it. And so that's why there was no drive. And then they became this, these, these tactical guns are there, what are selling, right? These, these, these weapons of war.
RYAN:
Well, again, it foreshadows what happened in our national politics. If you think back in our politics back to the same time, 15, 20 years ago, there were the things that happen in politics today don't happen because it's legal or illegal. Things happen today that never happened back then because people are willing to break norms. What most of what Trump did, and most of what Republicans are doing now is just the willingness to break, to break norms, just to do things that say things, attack people in ways that would have never been accepted just a few years ago. That's exactly what happened. The firearms industry set this all up, right? So that, as you mentioned, during the assault weapons ban AR-15s were not banned. People think that AR-15’s were banned. They were not banned AR-15s with a list of additional features were banned. That's what, that's what actually made it into a air quotes, assault weapon, but you could buy as many AR-15s as you wanted during the entire length of the assault weapons ban.
Yet they weren't made, there were hardly any companies that produced them. They weren't cool. Nobody hardly anybody wrote about them. You didn't see them in shows. Most respectable events wouldn't allow them there. Why? Because the assault weapons ban codified a norm. It's not so much that it, that it established legality. It did to some degree, because there were some specific things like the tech nine, one of the guns, you know, used in Columbine was specifically banned. That thing was specifically ban. But the things that we think of now as assault weapons, they weren't banned. They just weren't okay. The industry knew it was in bad taste. The industry knew it was risky. The industry knew it would put society at risk if it propagated these things. So it just decided not to do them in the same way that political leaders at one point just decided not to do offensive things. But once those norms were broken and removing the assault weapons ban kind of codified that, that, okay, it's, it's, we're going to remove these norms. Then it was Katy bar, the door. And now, now we're talking about literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of AR-15s sold in single weeks now.
ELISE:
And marketed as like weapons of war, really like these cows, what do you, what do you call them? Couch commando.
RYAN:
Yeah. So not only did, not only did those norms break down, but norms that would never allow guns to be called offensive things or marketed and sort of insightful, politically insightful, evil ways. Like those were just voluntarily done by the industry. There's one other small piece Bush passed a law called placket perfection and lawful commerce in arms act. And what that did is remove the liability dangers from the gun company and from the gun industry. And once that happened, there was really no sideboards anymore. So I told the story in the book like typically guns that have been made over the last 30 to 40 years would be called things like a Kimber was a custom classic or a Smith and Wesson model 629, or a Remington model 700, which is a hunting rifle. Today, we have guns called The Ultimate Arms Warmonger. We have a gun called the Wilson Urban Super Sniper. What, what in God's name do you think that Wilson Urban Super Sniper is trying to get at? And these are marketed this way. I mean, websites are made around them. Money is spent to advertise them. What do you think the purchaser of the Wilson Urban Super Sniper hopes to do with the gun? It's just grossly irresponsive.
ELISE:
It's so sick. It's so sick. So you left the industry after realizing that you could no longer, you were attempting to try to reform it from the inside, by being an incredibly good salesman, right? Like having built a whole career in terms of being a voice of reason. And Kimber was sort of one of the last companies to fall, right. In terms of getting into this business and getting into this game.
RYAN:
I thought I could be different. I mean, I think I was, I was, I was the lone voice of dissent much, again, like the ties to Trumpism are just frightening. It's unbelievable how tight they are. But if you note in Trumpism, there is nobody that's 99%. Trumpish right. But there is no Republican that says, well, I'm kind of Trumpish. That doesn't exist. You're either all in or you're out. And so for me inside the industry for more than 15 years to fight back against the industry, to try to use the street cred that I was granted by the industry to fight back against it was a, was a razor's edge. It was very, very difficult. I wasn't perfect. I made a lot of mistakes, but I was the only one fighting back. And, but it got to a point where that the tide was just coming in so fast that I couldn't even when the smaller battles anymore.
Yeah. So I got out and, and in 2020 in, in late summer of 2020, when I just, and I wrote this book, but I, but I, but I think it's important for the listeners to know. It's not like I was just like go along and get along. I pushed back against the NRA at the highest levels. I, my job was threatened by trolls all the time. Our, our evening dinners with my wife and my boys were almost always about who was coming after me, who was threatening in my life. Was I going to get fired the next day? Like that wasn't my life for 15 years, just because I was pushing back.
ELISE:
And you were a Democrat, you became a Democrat. Evil sin!
RYAN:
Doesn't get much worse than that.
ELISE:
So is this hopeless, like, as you want, as you, and I know you're very involved, not only in land conservation, politics or maybe in, I mean, the rumors are that politics is in your future. But how do we fix this? And do you see the NRA? Do you see it coming to a head? I mean, it's interesting being, going back to Montana, being with hunters and sportsmen who would call themselves probably still Republicans, but are certainly dismayed. Do you feel like the tide will start to turn? And how do we help?
RYAN:
I think a few, a few things there, I'm both worried and frightened and also hopeful at the same time, because so many, you know, as we said, after Sandy Hook my God, if 20 dead kids isn't going to change things, what will? I just can't, you know, I can't conceptualize of anything more horrific than that. That didn't obviously not only did that, not shake the NRA, they double downed after Sandy Hook. So obviously that wasn't enough. So I, I am pessimistic or frightened because of, of those truisms and the things that I lived through. On the other hand, I think what we've seen in Trumpism in the last three to five years, and especially on January 6th and then things like our men in Michigan threatening to, you know, overturn a state government, kidnap and kill the governor and, and all these things where guns are right at the center of it. Proud Boys, guns are right at the center of it.
Three Percenter, guns right at the center. You know, all of these terror, domestic terror groups, I think that is pushing the reasonable gun owners. Like the ones that you just described to the point where they're saying, okay, enough, I'm going to push back. I've had it. Like, I think it's sad that the kids at Sandy Hook weren't enough, but I do think this upending democracy with guns at the center of it has the chance of pushing people to do that. And I think what we have to do as Progressive people, thoughtful people is not let those, not let those things exit the news cycle, and not let people gaslit us about the degree to which they're potentially horrific. Because people need to understand that the NRA has empowered a very large, I don't think, I don't think it's all. I don't even think it's half. But it's a very large portion of gun owners who now are literally wishing for civil war wishing for, and they are well-armed for civil war.
They sit around with their AR-15s, hoping they get to shoot Democrats today. That is a, dangerous place to be. And we have to not let those truths exit people's minds. We have to hold our thoughtful, you know, right of center friends. We, we can't let them then be gaslight and work. And even a lot of us who don't like being in the political fray, we don't like saying anything to our crazy Uncle Bob or being at Thanksgiving dinner and, you know, confronting some false, whatever that you hear from the family. We've got to do it. We, it it's it's past time. We just have to stand up and do it.
ELISE:
I mean, and it's, it's interesting. I had one of my first guests was this woman, Loretta Ross, and she talks about movements, not cults. And I think clearly what we're seeing on the right is, is a cult. But her point is that when we don't engage with Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving and her, everyone has, their crazy, their crazy relatives or no, or friends. But when we refuse to engage, because it's uncomfortable, we not only lose them or any potential of sort of widening the Venn diagram of beliefs and values. Calling on their higher self, challenging them around their words. I, and, and she does it in a way where it's like, this is not who I think that the person I know is this person, and this is not that. But with people in the middle and, and I feel this very strongly going back to Montana, it's like, I could refuse to engage because it's, it's not that fun. But then I lose, I lose the opportunity to sort of either keep people in the middle, or people can be radicalized, which we, we see it's like these aren't I refuse to believe that these are, and she talks about these circles. Like, you know, there's the, the 10%, the 1%, or as the stormers at the Capitol, there are people who are psychopaths, who are really ill. But the people in the middle are our people.
RYAN:
They’re testing you, right? They're testing you like, like when you're at Thanksgiving dinner. And I hate to pick on Uncle Bob here, but when Uncle Bob throws out that, you know, Hillary Clinton had sex slaves in a pizza parlor, or, or the Democrats are killing babies or whatever it is, he's, he's giving you a test. And if you're silent, you're complicit in his test. He's like, I'm gonna throw this out there and see if Elise believes this. And then if she doesn't say anything or sort of looks away while she takes a, takes a drink of wine, I'll know, she sorta believes it with me. So, I mean, are we going to pass those tests or not?
ELISE:
And I think it's, you know, there's also this fear, contagion denial contagion at a, at a point to where, you know, I had just interviewed Riane Eisler who's this futurist, you know, she's, I think she's in her eighties now, but she talks about dominator models and she's a social scientist. And she talks about what we're seeing now is a very normal reaction to people who have were raised in, in a system or in a family that's very domination based, like very patriarchal. And she's like, this is perfect, this is a symptom of, of fear and people who want to follow the leader, because it it's promising safety and security. If you're armed, you, you are armed against all of these existential threats, whether it's pandemics, or the environmental chaos that's coming our way, or Democrats. But I don't want to say that it's valid, but it's understandable as a fear response. And so part of it also feels like, how do we calm people down? How do we, how do we wake them up?
RYAN:
I think you're exactly right. That, I mean, what I saw created again, I think accidentally stumbled upon by the NRA and the firearms industry is once you make people fearful, then I mean, anything's possible. So it's, you're right. That the fear is the key. And so we have to confront the people that we know and help ratchet back, help undo some of that fear, help confront it, make people think, give them alternate, give them alternate ways of considering what they consider to be reality. Like do all those things. But we also have to go hard at the things creating fear and things that profit from fear. Things that, that, I mean, the NRA in its current form will not exist without creating more fear. And that's why, you know, I write about the Dana Loesch is I'm sure a lot of people have regrettably seen it, but it's called the clenched fists, clenched fist of truth ad in which as, as gun sales are slumping, after Trump was elected, the NRA started something called NRA TV.
And one of its first big ads was the clenched fist of truth ad. And that's where Dana Loesch, the NRA spokesman gets on, you know, in her maroon sweater and basically goes on for about a minute and a half about how you should hate your neighbor, how you should hate Barack Obama, how you should. And then it's this sort of dystopian scene as if, and it's indicating you should hate your neighbor. You should fear your neighbor. And you should hate them enough to consider killing them. If you need to, that should have been castigated from every corner of this country immediately. We can't, we can't continue to give that airtime.
ELISE:
Yeah. Well, as you mentioned, so many social norms have been broken and it's hard to imagine repairing them, particularly in this world with distributed media or the ability to like start something like NRA TV, and have access to people. Or, you know, the sub these groups all over the internet that can it's it's, as you say, it's, it's alarming and without. So what would be effective legislation? And if you had sort of your dream, your dream scenario, where you could remedy and fix things, would you be, would you, would it be about turning off some of the marketing funnels? Or would it be about sort of hate speech? And would it be, what would, what would work? And, and I know a lot of gun owners who are, you know, more reverential of firearms in the way of like they are for hunting and sport, like skeet shooting, they are not for couches.
RYAN:
I think a few things. And I guess the first thing I'll say is we should understand that living in a democracy of representative Republic, there's not going to be a perfect answer to this. Gun crime, murders, horrible outcomes. They're not going away a hundred percent. We shouldn't, we shouldn't kid ourselves. What we have to do, just like we do in every other facet of our life is work to make things somewhat better. We have to improve them incrementally. And so I don't have a panacea solution, but I do think there are a few things that would help. I think to me right now, the most important thing is to codify law. I would call on national andd if we can't put nationally across every state to codify that intimidation, public intimidation with firearms is illegal. This open-carry, threaten kids at rallies, threaten lawmakers with loaded AR-15a, 30 round magazines, no civil society can exist with one, with a person with a loaded gun standing over the other.
That's that's a hostage situation. That's not a civil society. And by the way, open carry is legal. In most states, you can carry a gun out in the open. It's harder to carry a concealed gun in most states than it is to carry an open carry gun. So these, when I think a lot of people turn on the TV and they think that these guys in Michigan, or Kentucky, or Virginia, or Montana, wherever you see it, like they're breaking a law. No, they're not. That's legal. We should make it illegal. Not so much because I care about the illegality. I care about the social messages it sends. We have to send the message that it ain't okay. In other words, we have to build back up some reasonable social norms. And I think we do them. If, if people aren't going to be responsible, like the industry used to do, then law has to do it for us.
Another one, you know, universal background checks, come on, come on. We're how many years, since we're 22 years, since Columbine. Cme on, this needs to, this needs to be fixed. Who, who wants the bad guys to get guns? That, that that's just silliness. So, I mean, that's not going to fix everything, but again, it codifies what should be a social standard and norm. And I believe that gun owners are going to have to do this. They're going to have to knock down the door. Just like, just like so many other social movements. It rarely happens from without. It has to happen from within. And reasonable people who want, who care about the democracy care about the lives of our fellow citizens. We have to be the ones that stand up and demand this, or there's not going to be a democracy to worry about.
ELISE:
Interesting too, because I mean, we're seeing this with Manchin right now, but, and this is another thing that drives me crazy about my fellow Montanans is they will argue that they are overlooked, and that they have that we, that they're being swamped by urban voters or the needs of urban voters. And I'm like, you have so much Montana has so an outsized amount, I mean, a ridiculous amount of political power. Sure, in the electoral votes, which is a silly system, but in the popular vote for president. Sure. But within the fact that we have two Senator is wild!
RYAN:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. You know, every rule state, basically up the, up the middle of the country, north of Texas, as an outsize influence on our national politics, that's just, that's the way the Senate works. Yeah. I mean, everybody can bemoan the fact that CNN is not located in Missoula, Montana, or Bozeman, Montana. And so we, we feel that there's this cultural attack. People feel like there's a cultural attack on fly over people, but I don't really believe that to be true. I just, I don't feel that at all. I think again, having lived through an entity that makes up things to make people afraid. I think that's another made-up thing. I just think that, you know, Fox News doesn't exist without creating new controversies to make people mad. And I just think that's another one of them.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, certainly. I mean, we, we, we have a media problem in, it comes back to markets. It comes back to people getting addicted, you know, gun sale or the gun industry people getting addicted to these incredible sales seasons, which are it's, it's a very nefarious and messed up vicious cycle. And the same is true in media. And it's, it's incumbent on all of us to understand where we're putting our energy, our attention, our dollars, the ways in which we're letting these outside forces drive us without conscious awareness to engage in things. Like if it's not that aren't true, but it's really hard to do that when people are stuck in a conspiracy.
RYAN:
Yeah. I think that we, I think you hit on something in that, and I've noticed this throughout my career. I write about it in the book. But once you realized that the most effective marketing tool for either your media company or your industry or whatever is hatred, fear, and conspiracy, I think it's past time to start questioning that. And I mean, essentially that's what we have. Right. And it just so happened. I think it was accidental. But once the NRA figured out that those were the things that would drive voters to poll, single issue voters, it was accidental. The industry was like, wait a second. That's exactly the same thing that will make people buy guns. Okey-dokey I think we've got a partnership here. That's why, if you look back in your life at the most tumultuous time in your life, leaving out, whatever personal things might've happened to you.
But if you think of as a culture and you think back to the last 18-months: We had COVID, we had George Floyd murder, we had, you know, rallies all over in protests, all over the country. We had armed insurrection. We had, I don't know that we've ever had an 18 months in our country like that, certainly neither you or I have ever lived through anything like that. And when do you think out of all our last decades of life, the highest gun sales were? Exactly at the time when the highest tumult was. That's not an accident. We've got to look that in the eye and we, we, and we have to confront it and we have to stop letting the conspiracy and hatred and fear propagate that.
ELISE:
I know you're friends with Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action. And you know, that you work really closely with legends. You know, a lot of legislators who are really frustrated and trying to stand by their, their moral code in the face of these scary and oppressive fronts. Where can sort of the average person, where should we, where do we, what should we do?
RYAN:
Well, I think so the NRA, a lot of people think that the NRA succeeds, because it spreads a lots of money around. That's really not the case. Money does fuel that machine, but it's not because of the money. The NRA succeeds, because it has an army of single issue voters that can sway races a half a percent, a percent here and there. And that's why people like John Tester or, you know, who's, who's a good friend, Martin Heinrich from New Mexico, or I could go on and on. There's so many good people. But that's why they're frustrated that good bills don't pass. That's why Manchin/Toomey didn't pass after Sandy Hook, because enough senators were afraid of losing a race by a point or so that they voted the wrong way on that. And the NRA made it clear that they would score it.
And that meant they would motivate their voters to do that. I think that what we have to do is start breaking. We have to find our moderate gun owning friends, and we have to break them away from the NRA. We don't have to don't think of this as a daunting project. It's not, we don't have to sway 5 million NRA members. We only have to break up, break them apart a little bit. You've already mentioned that, you know a few, you know what you would call reasonable gun owners. We have to find it. We have to find a place to break them away. I hope that by reading this book, it'll, it'll give people a lot of ammunition about the truth of how we arrived here and how we can break that apart. But think about it. If we pull 10% of NRA out of the NRA voting block, that probably changes things immensely. I mean, a few hundred thousand people probably change things immensely. And it's just sort of like pulling them out of a cult. We just got to figure out a way to do that.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, I'm glad you mentioned the money, too, because I think that is a false belief that it's really about. And clearly the NRA does make donations, but it's not necessarily the money. It is the dog whistling voters, right? The that's the fear of being called a tratitor effectively, because as you say, like as a, as a Democrat gun lover in the gun industry, you were persona non grata to the point of being threatened. So if the NRA decides that they think that you're, and they've gone after Tester, right? Who always eaks out a win, but it's very tight, but they will do whatever they can to motivate gun owners in Montana to vote against Tester under the assumption that he will take away their guns.
bRYAN:
Uh, I think too, that's something that Progressives can do is understand that you have a lot of potential allies in gun owners in fly over country. A lot more than you think. The NRA has spent millions of dollars, where they're effective with their money. They've spent millions of dollars to convince a lot of people on the coast that all gun owners think exactly the same way. That there's nobody like me that is aghast at, at the pro fascist totalitarian bullshit that has been propagated by guns and gun politics. That's just not true. But sadly, a lot of gun owners in flyover country don't feel like they have anywhere to go, right? They don't feel, they don't feel that there's anybody out there that's gonna, you know, metaphorically, put their arms around them and say, okay, come with us. We'll believe in the things you're going to believe in. And I think this is a little bit like the thing that created Trumpism, once people in red states believed that they were aggrieved and flown over and, and not really respected. I guess what I'm saying is there's, there's a lot potential political allies in gun owners across the West and the Central U.S. in rural areas. And I think Progressive's would do well to open their ears a little bit and make allies out of them.
ELISE:
No, I'm really glad you mentioned it. Because it goes back to how we started the conversation. And some of what I feel as a Montanan is sort of this immediate, which I completely understand, it's very valid, but this immediate sort of like, I mean, even just as a Montana and this, like, are you some gun-toting freak? And I think that, that's why I wanted to talk about how important I think your book is in the context of, of placing hunting in a reverential way. And so that people can come to understand this a little bit, rather like not some, you know, all the stereotypes of rednecks and you know, just whatever in their weird camo gear shooting things. But as this cycle of life, supporting food for your family in a very respectful way, and the deep reverence for the environment. I mean, you talk about Montana. The moments that Montana has moved you to tears, I grew up there. It's the place, it's the place that inspires awe in me, and wonder. It is so stunning and needs to be protected, which is also, I think, where there's a huge overlap amongst hunters and people who do not have that much access to nature on the coasts. And we need to sort of …because that's where we are all aligned. And that's what we're all trying to preserve as this sanctity of nature and the sanctity of life. To be honest.
RYAN:
You know, one of the most important part. I could write a lot of books on this and on these sorts of things. And oddly enough, this is what I'd recommend. I bet you, a lot of your listeners have read this. It's not a new one, but Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. And for those that don't know, Michael Pollan does not look like or act like me, right? He doesn't look like an average hunter. He's certainly not a redneck camo wearing Montanan, right? He's a Berkeley professor, very smart one. And, but yet in his book, Omnivore's Dilemma, which, which talks about our, our food problems and our being divorced from food in this country and how environmentally, um, horrific that is probably the most passionate defense for hunting and gathering. I've ever read. It’s a chapter in his book. It doesn't sound like it's out outdoor life or Field & Stream or off some crazy deer hunting show.
It's not like that. But he comes to a point where he realizes being as close to your food, as you possibly can, is the most morally justifiable thing you can do. The further you are divorced from your food, it's less morally defensible. And so he tells a story of a meal of him harvesting a wild hog and harvesting wild mushrooms and how out of all the meals he's ever had and written about in this book, that was the most rewarding thing for, and it's the most sustainable thing. And that's the way my family and I feel. If you happen to stumble to our house for dinner, we will serve you wild game and stuff that we have gathered. Why? Because that's, that's our love language that that's our that's from our heart. We have, we didn't just spend 12 bucks on some, whatever mystery meat down at the, at the grocery store. We were in the woods with this deer or this elk or these fish or what, I mean, we harvested them. We took care of them. It's a very spiritual thing to be connected to your food like that.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, and I think it's interesting culturally, because we have so much abhorrence for that. Yet we go to the supermarket and buy our styrofoam wrapped meat. We go to the market and get, you know, a slab of fish that doesn't look like a fish, but, and it's, we divorce ourselves from the reality of the food chain in a way that makes us feel more comfortable. But it's not respectful. And so I'm really, I really hope people read your book, too, for an understanding of hunting and a way of re-contextualizing that. I'm not suggesting, you know, veganism is great vegetarian. I was a vegetarian actually it's funny. My dad killed, shot, hunted a deer, and it was in our garage, and it had, you know, it was hanging, whatever, whatever the rites was hanging before it was prepared. It was so terrifying to me that I became a vegetarian for 10 years. But that's why. I couldn't handle the reality of facing death in that way. And hunters do that every day. And I have a lot of respect for that.
RYAN:
I recommend you not go to us, don't go to a slaughter plant, you know, beef slobbering plant, then that will, that will certainly turn you.
ELISE:
So anyway, I thank you for your book. Thank you for your work. I hope you run. Is that a possibility or is that a rumor?
RYAN:
Uh, I've got so much to do with this book and we've got two young boys and you know, my Sarah, my wife and I have been so motivated by, uh, you know, I've, I think you and I had mentioned back and forth, but people like Glennon Doyle, and Brené Brown, and JJen Hatmaker who are pushing people to do bigger and better things. There's a chapter about them in the book. And so we're always discussing how much we take that advice to heart who knows what might come from this. But right now I'm focusing on getting the message of the book out there and then we'll, and then we'll see what comes to pass, but there's lots of good that needs to be done in the world. That's for sure.
ELISE:
I really recommend Gunfight, not only because it's a pretty fascinating historical document of the radicalization of the NRA and the gun industry, but it is also a love letter to hunting, and conservation efforts in the American West, which is theoretically what everyone wants to protect. That's sort of the irony is this natural, these natural lands that we collectively own. And that's what America is, even though it's been wrapped up in this weird patriotic way by the Alt-Right. But I think it's worth understanding because I too, I would never own a gun. I have an abhorrence for them. They scare me now deeply, but when I go to Montana, my kids, you know, shoot, they go and do rifle shooting, very carefully, obviously with a lot of supervision and they love it. There's something that is very beautiful about the sport. It's just been radicalized in a way that's terrifying.
And I think that the book, and the issue, and the way that it has become a single issue for voters is a call to all of us, not to just reject gun owners and certainly not hunters, but to find ways to come together, to protect the things that we care about, like the sanctity of life and nature. And I know that seems like a paradox, but I promise that it's not. And I think that as Ryan said, this is about, you know, the NRA is holding on by these tiny margins in these states that end up having a lot of political power in Washington. And if we can come together with all of the reasonable gun owners who are also appalled by what's happening, then we can break the back of the NRA and we can start to get really sensible, common sense gun laws passed, like open carry, red flag laws. We can start to see some of these weapons of war removed. We do not need, we don't want militant couch commandos with AR-15s, bump stocks, and all of this other stuff. Anyway, thank you for listening. I know it's not the most fun topic, but it is vitally important as one of our biggest threats.