Your Guns Guns Guns – Ace Luciano

May 9, 2018

WTR AceL | Responsible Gun Ownership

 

Guns are at the center of heat and debate over the recent surge in school and mass shootings. But are guns really to blame? Sales and marketing executive, Amazon bestselling author, hunter, fisherman, and outdoorsman Ace Luciano talks about responsible gun ownership and the real threats that we should address. He peels back some issues to reveal our real plight, from our country’s history to the changes it has to confront today. Be ready to open your mind about gun issues and see a different perspective.

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Your Guns Guns Guns – Ace Luciano

We are getting close to the 500th episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. Unbelievable for this guy sitting here but I want to thank each and every reader because we’re all so close to 250,000 readers. One of the first guys that stood up to the plate and called Whitetail Rendezvous, “What?” was Ace Luciano. Ace is a friend. When we first talked to him, he was living in Wisconsin. Now, he’s down in Arizona. Ace is quite a guy because he likes kids. He helps kids but he’s a very successful entrepreneur, a business person, author, noted gun nut, sure proponent of our Second Amendment rights and all around, Ace is a thinker. Ace understands what it means to stand back, think, look, evaluate, all the things we do as hunters. He does it at such a level that it’s a privilege to have Ace back on the show. Ace, you’re up. What’s the subject for our little chitchat?

Bruce, first of all, thanks again for having me on the Whitetail Rendezvous project. As I recall, I was maybe the 6th or 8th guest. Now, you have 200 guests?

No, I’m close to 500.

I’ve been on once between, it was 200 something and now it’s almost 500 in a short time, congratulations. I love to see entrepreneurs build their business and have success. I will call Whitetail Rendezvous a great success. People like what you and we as guests have to say. Thanks for having me on again.

You’re welcome. To prep the audience up, Ace understands the challenge as hunters and gun owners that were under. That’s why I wanted him on the show and it all worked fine. It was funny Ace was saying, “I want to talk about this and this,” on the show. I said, “You read my mind.” We’re both thinking along the same path because we are under attacked and I know no better guy, that I know personally that could help us talk about it and dissect it and get people thinking about what they need to do to protect your right for your kids, and certainly without a doubt, for yourself. Ace, let’s dive into this thing and talk. If you don’t want to hear about current events, where we’re at, then don’t continue to read this. I’m good with that. If you want to get some strong insights, nobody else, straight from the hip, Ace is going to give it to you.

One of the things that I built my name and my reputation on, and sometimes to my own detriment, I always give people the absolute blunt proof. A lot of my clients, I ask them, “Do you want to feel good or would you like the truth?” They all say, “I want the truth.” I will confirm with them and say, “Are you sure you want the truth? I can tell you what you want to hear. I could tell you what you think might be good or I can give you the truth and you might not like the truth.” They all then say, “Yes, I want the truth.” It was certain that some of them that don’t like it. I have to tell you, Bruce. I am as concerned as I’ve ever been.

I’m going to read you some headlines. I’m very dialed in on the news, so I can mimic news. “One in five Americans wants the Second Amendment to be repealed.” “Retired Justice Stevens argues for repeal of Second Amendment.” “Supporting both Second Amendment rights and ‘sensible gun control.’” “Gun Rights advocate rally is part of the liberal plan to weaken the Second Amendment.” “Can the Second Amendment be changed? A former Supreme Court justice weighs in.” “The court says the Parkland kids’ agenda is largely compatible with the Second Amendment.” Headlines like that scare every single person that hunts deer with a gun. It should scare every person that owns a gun, whether that’s for hunting, recreational shooting or personal protection or anything.

This is one of the biggest assaults we have ever seen on the Second Amendment. They are pulling children up as the head of the attack on the Second Amendment. I can’t help but look back in history. There was another attack on firearms rights many years ago in the ‘40s, that also involved a lot of children. You might recognize the name Adolf Hitler. I hate to spell that name out. I want people to know that I do not put that name out into the news and related to the Second Amendment lightly. I don’t call everybody Hitler.

The people that call Donald Trump, and relate Donald Trump to Hitler, they’re ridiculous because Adolf Hitler was probably the worst man, worst person the world has ever seen. He convinced a huge populous that they didn’t need protection. They were there to be protected. They convinced this huge populous that murder of people based on their race or religion is okay. When he had enough people convinced, he used those people that he convinced to take power over an even greater populous.

When you've had enough people convinced, it's easier to take power over an even greater populous. Share on X

This is a legitimate and a real threat and it all started with terms and phrases like children’s safety and knowing where danger is done. While there are people that would tell you that can never happen again, I would argue that it happens. All you have to do is look around the world. In South Africa, the first thing that they did when the power transfer from predominantly white to predominantly black power, no political judgment on that was a horrible system, wrong is wrong. When they changed from a predominantly white run government to what is then and now a predominantly black-run government, one of the first things they did to try to ultra-reduce violence was get rid of the gun. If you follow the international news, but in the headlines everywhere, they’re talking about taking land from white farmers without compensation. The president of South Africa, and I’m paraphrasing here said something along the lines of, “Cutting the throat of the white farmer and the white oppressor.” That’s very scary, Bruce. If you can’t defend yourself against that having no gun, that’s what we’re up against. It scares me.

The United State of America, we started in a revolution and it took muskets, untrained militia to go against seasoned British troops, who are well-trained, well-outfitted and that’s all we had.

It’s not all we had and a lot of people say that. There are a lot of people that say, “They couldn’t have imagined what kind of technology we would have and that we would have guns that fire 3,000 rounds a minute.” My response to people when they say that is, “Are you kidding?” These were very poor word-thinking people. These were people that look and they analyze the risk to democracy and the risk to freedom across every single empire and every single area of the known world, and they accurately predicted where and how those risks would manifest themselves. It’s almost like they had a crystal ball. They can see that, “This is what’s going to happen, so we’re going to plan for it.” That’s the reason why we have a representative republic instead of playing democracy because they said, “As people concentrate in feeding, they’re going to be able to take control of everything,” and we can’t have that.

That’s why we have Electoral College so that New York can’t run the country, because that’s not how it should be. People need to have freedom. They need to have freedom across the board. I really hate when people say they could never have thought of anything beyond musket. Do you think they could think of something like the internet? Do you think they could have imagined a computer? Does the right to free speech only apply to quill pens and hands that hand-typed, which is all they had in the day? Does that mean that right does not transcend technology? No, it is a right. It is an inherent, God-given right. A lot of people don’t know that back in the days of the revolution. What was the number one, most powerful weapon that was available in the days of the American Revolution? Did you know?

No.

A canon, it was a field artillery. Do you know that when we fought the revolution, the majority of artillery that was held by the American revolutionaries were in private hands? That’s how we know that the founding fathers meant arms. They meant arms sufficient to repel a tyrannical leader, government or enemy. Our entire Navy at that time was made up of private peers, private citizens in service of the government, constricted to attack and pillage the enemies of that nation, either private individuals. How many canons are on a naval ship? Ten? Could you imagine me saying, “I have four Hollister canons in my garage?” People will go crazy but the Hollister was a canon. These are private individuals that had that. That’s how we know.

I love people and you and I have talked about my favorite phrase, Bruce, “The people that look at the world through their anal-optic.” An anal-optic is the person that uses their watcheye. I’m a hunter but I would never own one of those nasty “assault weapons.” I have news for you. Every single weapon that we have that’s existing has started as a military quality and military technology, maybe not all but almost all. Think about all the cartridges we have. The most prolific hunting round in the world started as a military round. The 308, what’s arguably the second most prolific round in the world started as a military round. The 223 Remington started life as the 5.56 millimeters, a military round. Every gun we have was, at one point, in a military service. The 1911, the action that changed the gun world, military weapon, was constricted by most as bad as a great weapon, “We need that.” What people do is they plan emotions, they play on fear and they look at the world through glasses where they think that less guns is equal to peace.

As someone that has been raised with guns, as someone that has personally introduced more than 10,000 children directly to shooting and hunting, I can tell you that we’re in more danger than we have ever been. If you are a hunter, that includes you. If you are a target shooter, that includes you. If you don’t own an AR-15, that includes you. If you only own bolt-action rifles, that includes you. If you only own shotguns, that includes you because it never stops. Once you allow the slide down that slippery slope, then they pick something else. It is the simplest explanation that I can give people.

That is if you could legislate away evil, wouldn’t somebody have done it many years ago? If we can say, “There will be no evil, the law says there is no evil,” and it went away, we would’ve just written that law. We wouldn’t have any evil. We wouldn’t have people murdering kids in school. We wouldn’t have people stabbing people to death because it would be illegal and that would work. Murder is illegal. Therefore, there shouldn’t be any murder. What makes people think that by allowing restriction or allowing the repeal of a fundamental right and a foundation of this experimenting freedom of the United States of America, what makes them think that would be different? I have to ask that question.

WTR AceL | Responsible Gun Ownership

 

It’s not going to be different. I think I talked about it with somebody, the hunting community, shooting community, the sportsmen community, guys in the arms catalog that carry Perazzis and go shoot quail on their plantation. We guys, gals and kids, we all need to realize that a chapter has been flipped. Time Magazine put those young people on the cover. It’s old news because you gain some historical reference to what happened in Germany with Hitler. It signified the mindset of the country because to put that out there, they knew that would sell magazines. That gives more fuel for the fire about these people with an assault rifle. You don’t know what an assault rifle is? I would challenge anybody, tell me what AR stands for. AR does not stand for assault rifles, ladies and gentlemen.

Here’s the big thing. We know that a ban on assault weapon doesn’t work for reducing crime. We had it. It was in effect for ten years. From 1994 to 2004, we had an assault weapons ban. What did that assault weapons ban do? It banned weapons based entirely on one thing, appearance, because a Remington semi-automatic gear rifle, the 7600, works on the same principle and the same action as AR-15. A Winchester Super X3 shotgun works via the same action and same principle as an AR-15.

There’s a great video out there that shows in a crowd a regular goose gun, loaded with buck shot is much more deadly, dangerous and effective than an AR-15. No matter how many magazines or bullets you have because people aren’t trained. They’re not trained to respond, to fight, to resist. Every time you pull the trigger, there are 20 or 30 pellets going out of that shotgun and it’s not the gun. If that kid had a shotgun, I can’t even imagine the devastation that we’d be through. What are we going to do then? Are we going to ban shotguns?

Remember the part about, “We don’t want to take your hunting weapons?” What’s a shotgun? It’s a bird gun. People think it’s only used for shooting birds. What if I throw a 500-grain slug in there? It will do a number on a deer or a bear or a person. Where do they stop? The answer is they don’t. This is the same as the anti-hunters that say, “We don’t want to ban hunting. We just want to ban hunting with dogs. We don’t want to ban hunting. We just want to ban cruel trapping. We don’t want to ban trapping. We just want to ban cruel leg-hold trap.” They always look for a way to split-off. That’s where the anal-optics comes in and they allow us to be fractioned. They allow us to be divided.

Now more than ever, we need a united front. We need all of the organizations together. If you’re reading out there, you need to join the NRA. There are 100 million gun-owners in this country. There were 5.3 million NRA now, that’s appalling. You need to join the NRA if you own a gun. Let’s say that you have a fundamental difference with the NRA. Idiotically, there are many people that say that. I don’t know why because I believe that if you own a gun, that’s where we are. That’s where you have to be. There are other organizations. Join the Second Amendment Foundation, which is a purely legal organization that works based on law. Join the Gun Owners of America. If you’re a part of the gun business, make sure you join the National Association of Firearm Retailers or join the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Now more than ever, we need people to support the people that helped us and protect our business.

Bruce, I’ll give you a little foreshadowing. I have an article coming out about the business in firearms, highlighting one business and talking about the number of people that they touch. Let’s face it. How many more millions of people are killed by cars every year than by guns? It’s not even close, thousands of people. Thousands of people are killed by cars every year and thousands more are killed by cars than killed by guns. More people are still being beaten to death than are killed by guns every year. How do you ban this? How do you ban lead pipe or kitchen knives or hammers? That’s where we’re at right now. They’re not coming for the semi-automatic weapons. They’re not coming for what is a cosmetic label, that’s the assault weapon. They’re coming for all your guns. This is not something that we can allow to happen.

The way to fight is join the NRA. The way to fight is realize that if you’re a hunter and you’ve never owned an AR-15, which I was. I did not personally own an AR-15. When people asked me, I said, “I never had a lot of experience and I haven’t found a big need for me.” Then a buddy took me out to shoot one. I looked over and I said, “This is fun.” Now, one of my main varmint rifles is an AR-15. I use that gun all the time and I use it to teach my kids how to shoot because there’s no recoil to it but it’s a loud band and the bullet will shoot far. They can practice to 200 yards without being beat up by a hunting rifle. We need to rally around a common theme and a common cause and that common cause is the Second Amendment. Am I off base? Am I wrong?

Not at all, you see it in social media all the time in the Whitetail world where I shoot a deer, it could be a huge deer or little deer but that’s my deer. That’s my trophy and I’m proud of it. I’m going to put it out there in social media then all of a sudden, hunters come back and say, “Why did you shoot such big deer, little deer, small deer, doe deer, buck deer? Why did you shoot that deer?” “Because I want to shoot the deer,” rather than celebrate the fact that I am a hunter. I am a hunter, I have been all my life, will when I die. Nobody knows about sheepdog, just Google it, On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdog and this is from Lieutenant Colonel, his name just drops out. You can Google it.

This was at University of Annapolis and he gave a talk there about the three categories in life. When they’re a sheep, people go to work and come home. They’re wolves, predators. Predators aren’t just people in the forest. Predators are next-door to you, they could be sexual predators, they could be predator for your kids, for your wallet, for your home. They prey on people. There are these guys and gals called sheepdogs. Sheepdogs don’t like predators. If a predator looks at a sheepdog, he knows they don’t like them and they’ll leave because when you’re in fear, two things happen. Your eyes betray and you smell fear. I’ve had it long enough that I’ve shot animals that knew I was there and they were afraid. It was either fight or flight when you’re in fear, two responses.

Thousands of people are killed by cars every year than by guns. Share on X

Wolves or bears or cats, they know. They can look at an animal and know they’re going to kill them and they haven’t moved to fight. Where’s all this going? We have to understand how the world works. The thing that jacks me off about this whole thing about the gun, every single day in the city of Chicago there’s a murder and I don’t know how many a minute, in an hour, I don’t have those stats in front of me.

Two or three every day on murder in Chicago.

That’s with a weapon. I don’t know if that’s blunt force trauma or a bullet, but every single day. Why isn’t that all over the news? That’s insane.

We need to ban guns. For 50 years, Chicago has the most stringent gun control in the country. It’s ridiculous. Speaking from someone that’s been in the situation, there is a day that I will never forget, Bruce. It was December 12, 2012. I was coming out of an event in the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee. I came upon a man burglarizing my Jeep. I called the police and confronted him. I said, “Leave the stuff, go away, the police are on their way.” The next thing I knew, he had a gun in his hands. He dropped my bag and he had a gun. My attitude and training and everything have all changed since then, but I was carrying a gun at that time. Due to a distraction, I was able to get the drop on that gentleman. I told him that I would kill him. A gun saved my life. Having a gun saved my life, I’m convinced of it. You cannot judge a person in that scenario until it happens to you.

The important thing to learn from that situation is it wasn’t that I had a gun and was able to protect myself. The important thing that everybody needs to know from that scenario and scenarios just like it, all across the country that happen every single day, is that from the time I called the police, he has a gun. To the time they arrive on the scene was 36 minutes, think about that. When you think that you can be protected and that the police are enough to protect you, where were they during those 36 minutes? The confrontation was less than three minutes. It still took them 36 minutes to get to me. The police station was eight blocks away, 36 minutes.

A gun fight lasts three to five seconds, it’s over.

For 35 and a half of those minutes was all it took for me to maybe be dead or bleeding to death on the ground. The police are there not to protect you. They are there to come and gather evidence so that they can find out who killed you. That’s not good enough for me. It’s not good enough for my family and it shouldn’t be good enough for yours. If you’re okay with that, I think that you should admit then that you’re okay with that version of police. Unless a crime happens to be committed in front or a block away from a police officer, they’re not going to protect you from bad guys. They’re going to be there to clean up the mess and maybe get you medical help, maybe save your life, maybe just gather the evidence to get your murderer. It’s the same for you, Mr. Deer Hunter, that shoots the gun six times a year and all you have is a bolt action 22 and your deer rifle. It affects you as much as it affects the guy that has 50 guns and shoots 500 rounds a week for competition. It affects all of us.

There’s no difference. If you pull a trigger, it doesn’t matter. That’s why I want to reach out to you because muzzleloaders are great and all these things, even my crossbow now, I pull a trigger. You think about that, I think about my grandkids and then my great grandkids. I’m one of those guys in the back of my pickup truck going to high school, grade school, had to single shot 20-gauge and come home, take it out to the shooting grounds to shoot a squirrel or a rabbit, and come home and eat it. That’s ten and twelve years old, I didn’t have a license. I never had hunter safety. I had somebody that mentored me and it was a farm thing.

WTR AceL | Responsible Gun OwnershipI had one teacher. One time I had a BB gun and I had it on school grounds, it was after school, we’re shooting cans. He said my name or somebody said my name and I turned and he was about to take my head off. Why? Because I muzzled him. He almost took my head off. I’m eight years old. I can remember it right now, place and time and everything. He said, “Don’t you ever do that again because you could kill somebody.” Once that bullet leaves the muzzle, you can’t call it back. Whatever happens, happens and your life is changed one way or another. I never forgot that. I had people that mentored me painfully. He grabbed me by the ear and twisted my hair and made me cry. This is grade school afterschool.

You certainly didn’t go home and tell your parents about that because they’d probably given you worse discipline. They’d ask what you did wrong to deserve that. That relates directly back to what we’re seeing now. Let’s look at these kids that they’re putting out there. Most of these kids, just some precursory use of who they are and what they’ve done and what I found out and heard about them. Many of these kids that they have as their spokespeople have never had a job, have never paid taxes, have never been involved in any serious type of falsification. They basically had an easy life. They have no idea what they’re talking about and that’s our fault. It’s our fault that things like these, these school shootings happen with nobody knowing what to do or how to stop it.

We have ways to stop school shooting. There are many ways to stop school shootings. We’ve had guns for 200 years in this country, in fact 250 years, we’re almost at. We’ve had guns in this country but school shootings have only started happening in the past fifteen, twenty? Why is that? Why are things different? Hint, it’s not the gun. To relate it back to the Whitetail Rendezvous podcast, and the millions of hunters out there, hunting is in trouble. There are many thousands more people that own a gun than people that own a gun and hunt. Here’s a funny thing about privileges and right in things like hunting and activities. If you don’t have a vested interest, you don’t care. What do you think is going to happen when the people that own a gun, the guys that are serious shooters, tactical guys, guys that just have guns and like guns but don’t hunt, what do you think is going to happen when the risk comes to hunting? I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. They’re going to say, “When we needed the hunters, they split off and said, ‘We don’t need assault weapons, we’re just hunters.’”

What they’re going to do then are just the same things that happened with things like trapping in western states. I live in Arizona. Do you know in Arizona, you can’t use leg-hold traps on public lands anywhere in Arizona? How many trappers do you think are going to work for and help with this current issue where they’re trying to ban the hunting of large predators in Arizona? It’s a real risk because the trappers will say, “Where are all the people supporting us? We can’t trap anymore. I don’t hunt big predators. What do I care? I just hunt quails. I don’t care about that.” Besides, if I use my anal-optic and say, “I’m a hunter but I would never with dogs.” When I use my anal-optic, that raises my social statue in my peer group, that’s the easy path. What do we do to fight that? All we can do is get together. That’s why you need to join organizations like the NRA. If you’re a hunter, you need to be part of the NRA. The NRA does a ton of stuff for hunters. You need to join Gun Owners of America. You need to join the Second Amendment Foundation because these people are not out just for “assault weapons.”

I heard a great analogy. Everyone says, “We should do something.” A child that’s drowning in the river, you can throw a brick at that child, that’s doing something. It’s not the right thing but it is doing something. Why are so many people wanting to jump on the infringement of a God-given right? Just in the name of doing “something,” it’s appalling. I don’t know where we go from there. Where do we go from there? Once you lose one, you lose them all. I’m famously reminded of the quote by Martin Niemöller, the pastor that was incarcerated under Hitler. Have you heard his famous quote?

No.

“First they came for the socialist and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” That’s where we’re at in this country, Bruce. That’s what we’ve come to. They have divided, there’s blood on the water and they feel like there’s an honest chance to change the constitution and change the Second Amendment. It’s very scary. We haven’t even touched on the other very serious infringement, that is the banning of videos and banning of search results on Google, places like Google and places like YouTube. There will be a day very soon that Apple might look at this podcast and say, “Talking about guns, out it goes. We can’t be having that.”

That’s real, that’s censorship in the highest order by somebody that disagrees with who you are, what you stand for and what you love to do. It’s a real thing. I don’t have Jerry on the show just because I want to throw a thing on the news and write the tales of the current event, because this is a real thing.

How is that different than burning books?

There’s no difference.

Unless a crime happens to be committed in front or a block away from a police officer, they're not going to protect you from bad guys. Share on X

The Nazis burned books, that’s what they had. Now, we have different Nazis, we have video Nazis. We have people that say, “We don’t agree with that, therefore you can’t do it.”

“I don’t agree with you. I have a right to ban you from my store.” That’s what’s upside down, I don’t get it. On one hand, people are saying, “I can’t do this because I don’t agree with you,” but if I go back and say, “I don’t agree with because of what you do.” They’ll look at me cross-eyed and say, “You can’t say that. That’s against my rights. You can’t attack me like that.” What you did to me and talked to some of the women and the outdoor sports who have social media present who hunt? It’s ugly, I think they’re social terrorist, myself, I just coined a new word, social terrorist about women haring, threat, murder, do whatever to people who show a grit and grin trophy shot.

How is that any different than if I come and threaten you? Let’s say you and I are on the street, and you walked up to me and you say, “Ace, I’m going to punch you in the face right now.” If you come up and say that to me, I am well-within my right to punch you first. How is that any different than the guy that sends a message to Michelle Bachmann and said, “I’m going to come and assault you, I’m going to rape you, I’m going to make you all kinds of vile and filthy things?” He said to her on social media, “How is that any different?”

There’s absolutely no difference.

How’s that different than the guy that several years ago when I lived in Wisconsin stalked me on social media and said, “I’m going to attack your kids. I’m going to kill your daughter.” Actually he said, “What if I shot your two daughters? How would you feel then?” Want to talk about threat? He threatened my family, you’re playing with fire because that is a legitimate threat if they did that to the president, the Secret Service would be there.

I just don’t get that context how you can overly, in front of millions of people throughout the globe, threaten to kill your two daughters. Yet, if you went to police station, they go, “This is inert. It’s out there in cyberspace.” Unfortunately, we’re seeing some of that bubble up to the top, it becomes a reality.

It becomes as real and they call for it. All of the things that talk about, “I hope you die. I hope a lion eats you. I hope that your children get stomped on by an elephant,” all kinds of horrible things.

It’s sick.

I never see that the other way. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but if it does, it is so rare. I would think that it was the other way, it would be all over the news.

WTR AceL | Responsible Gun Ownership

 

All over the news, I’d be in jail. You and I would be in jail.

I can’t find any examples of it. It’s that guy, it’s okay and this is what we are fighting against. I cannot drive the point home enough. If you are a hunter, we are on the same side. I am as big a hunter as they come. I hunt everything. I love to hunt. If I could walk out the door and not do anything for the rest of my life but go hunting, I would do it in a heartbeat, without question. That’s how much I love hunting, that’s how much I love being a hunter. I love responsible game management. I love healthy hunting. I love game utilization. I believe in utilizing and not wasting a precious resource like game and game meat. I would never be okay with going out and shooting a bunch of deer for fun and not using them, not utilizing them or donating them or doing something productive with them. I am on your side as a hunter. I am a hunter but I am an American.

Hunting is not a life. Hunting can be taken away more easily than the Second Amendment. If you look at how much danger we are in right now with the Second Amendment in this country, you should be terrified for the future of hunting. The is the fourth time I had to say it. Join the NRA. If you are an NRA member, buy memberships for two of your friends that aren’t members. I’ve had so many people convert because I’ve gotten them a membership to the NRA. I said “I bought you a membership to the NRA. I got you the American Hunter Magazine so that you can see what this organization is about.” You’re going to get the magazine every month. You’re going to get letters in the mail that talk about issues that are out there and you will see that these are not people that are evil. These are not people that are murderers. These people think that harming children is disgusting and reprehensible and they will do everything in their power to prevent it, but they ask a very good question, who’s the first person we call when a bad guy with a gun shows up? We call a good guy with a gun.

If we don’t need assault weapon, so-called assault weapon, for protection, then why when the police show up, do they show up with assault weapon? If we don’t need high-capacity magazines for protection, why when the police show up, do they all have a sidearm with a high-capacity magazine and several pair loaded high-capacity magazines with them? If it’s not an effective means of protection, why do the police use them for protection? Somebody, answer that question for me.

This is not about the gun. It’s about people from outside influencing our country. We are the only living experiment in freedom in the world. People can claim their freedom elsewhere. Other countries are not great. There is no other country that’s free like the United States. We’re in real danger and as a hunter, and a gun owner, it’s your duty. It is your responsibility to educate others. Don’t argue, just educate others. If you don’t want to get in an argument or discussion, tell the people, “I’m a responsible gun owner and I believe that everybody has the freedom to keep them.” That’s all you need to say because there is no such thing as an assault weapon. An assault weapon can be anything.

It can be my cellphone if I clock you in the head with it. It can be a can of soda if knock you up by the head with it. That’s an assault soda, because I’ve used it to assault you. In addition to being a hunter and a gun owner, I’m a 25-year martial artist. I’ve trained for the majority of my life, much more, I’m 30 years now in the martial arts. For 30 years, a vast majority of my life, I have trained in using all kinds of things as weapons, it’s not the tool. I’m the weapon. Whether it’s a gun or a board, a bat, a pencil, a pen, a rolled-up magazine, a broom handle, a rock, a stick, a t-shirt or a belt, should we ban belt? I can tell you, Bruce, there are dozen ways to hurt someone with a belt. There are a handful of ways to kill someone quickly with a belt, with a sock. It’s not the tool.

Jerry, how does somebody get in touch with you if they want to do anything?

If you want to learn more about me and more about what I do, one of the easiest ways is you can Google, Ace Luciano. I’m not a hard guy to find. I can tell everybody out there, I am open for appearances. I’m open for guest-on shows just like this. I do now, maybe a couple of these a month but I definitely have room for more. If you know people that are involved in the gun industry, people that are involved in the gun fighting, people in the media, feel free to pass them my information. I am more than willing to engage in open and educational discussions and debate on firearms and talk about it in a responsible manner and to help correct the mistaken priorities that we have for changing violence in this country. You can also go to my website which is simply AceLuciano.com. My name is Ace Luciano, I’m a hunter, I’m a fisherman and an outdoorsman, I’m a proud Second Amendment advocate and firearm owner. We’re all in this fight together.

There is no such thing as an assault weapon. An assault weapon can be anything. Share on X

I’m asked a lot about assault weapons, “Don’t you know what an assault weapon is?” There’s a great video going around YouTube. A guy asked, “Ma’am, do you know what assault weapon is?” She said, “Assault weapon, don’t you even read the paper?” She doesn’t know what they are. Can you define it? You have touched on it, but what is an assault weapon?

Assault weapon has come to be known as a firearm that is generally black but doesn’t have to be and has certain physical and cosmetic characteristic about it. Things like a pistol grip, a collapsible stock, a barrel shroud, an accessory rail. Things like compensators, flash suppressors, and has the capacity for a magazine to be inserted in and out. All of these things are simply cosmetic differences. There are bolt action rifles all over the country that take magazine, room for magazine and there are many of it, and can take high capacity magazines.

My Ruger 10/22, I’ve got a 100-round drum magazine, it’s a 22-caliber rifle for blinking and such. If you looked at that gun, no one will call it an assault rifle. It has many of the characteristic that people want to classify as an assault weapon. Any tool can become a weapon. Any weapon becomes an assault weapon when it is used in an assault. We would never be irresponsible enough to send our warriors into battles with semi-automatic firearms, to fight against our enemy, we just wouldn’t do it. An assault rifle is a rifle that has a selector that allows you to fire fully-automatic, that’s the difference. It’s illegal to own in this country without a very expensive license and a very thorough and extensive process, screening and background check process. It has been illegal to own since the ‘30s. It’s not about the tool.

Everything you see in the media, wherever that takes you, whatever platform. 90% or more people don’t know what they’re talking about. In the Congress in the United States of America, to the law-makers that are making these laws that are considering the Parkland or anybody outside that’s whispering in their ear and lobbyists that don’t want us to have guns do not know what we’re talking about on the show. They don’t understand it, they don’t want to understand it. They only want to do one thing, it came out of a movie, “Get the guns, I’m going to get the guns.” You have to think why do they want to get my gun, so I can’t go out shoot a can, squirrels, an elephant, an elk, a bird with a 500.

Why do you want to take that?

With a 500 with laser sight on it so we can shoot my door, I don’t use a nine-millimeter or 40 or 357, I just rack a shell. That doesn’t get them out of my household, game on. You’ve got to sober up. Quit saying, “They’re going to do this, they’re going to do that,” forget that. Shut up, call Pete Brownell, he’s a person in NRA. He’s a nice guy. He owned a gun company called Brownells in Iowa, been around forever, good guy, lovely headed guy. He wants his grandchildren to be able to do the things that he did. Go down the creek, trap raccoons, shoot foxes, shoot squirrels, hunt a whitetail deer, that’s basically it. Be a good citizen. Be a good person in your community. Somebody needs help, help them. Somebody’s raping the next-door guy’s daughter. You don’t have a gun, you don’t have an assault weapon, sledge hammer, crowbar or the balls to be a sheepdog, what kind of neighbor are you?

I did send that email about On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdog to you so you can take a look at that. The guy who wrote it, he wrote a book on combat. It’s all out there but you have to be willing to be a student of what you’re fighting for, not sitting in the bar and jawing over whatever. You have to get serious to say, “I have to do something now or what I know, my life I know, my son, my daughter, my kids, my nephews will never see again.” Once it goes, it’s gone. It isn’t coming back.

You don’t get any rights back ever.

When Jesus comes back, new deck of cards but if the Second Amendment goes away, in any shape or form, Ace knows more about this than I do, how did the whole thing but if that goes away or is modified in anyway, we’re screwed. It’s just a matter of time before they are gone and you don’t want to be on planet earth when that happens. You don’t because your mind isn’t setup to do what you need to do to survive. Forget work, just survive. Jerry, why don’t you close up and we’ll get out of here before I really get wound up?

Bruce, here’s what we know. There is evil in man’s heart. There has been since Cain slew Abel with a rock. If you could make a rule against evil and have it go away, we’d already have it. We have thousands of rules. There are thousands of rules against evil, to try and be more protective of those that are most precious things, our children. We’ll leave you with this final thought. 92% of mass shootings have taken place in a gun-free zone. If you can explain to me how the problem is on the gun, and that we have the right to keep and bear arms, and not how we need to better protect our children and better protect ourselves, I don’t know if there’s going to be any effective and educated debate on this issue. Join the NRA, join the group Gun Owners of America, join the Second Amendment Organization, 2AO and the Second Amendment Foundation, 2AF, and make your voice heard. We’re all in this fight together but we need your help. Thanks, Bruce, so much for having me on the show. It’s been a great pleasure, I’m Ace Luciano. Get in touch with me on LinkedIn. Google me, Ace Luciano or go to my website, AceLuciano.com.

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